Two recent games spring to mind: Second Sight and Psi Ops: The Mindgate COnspiracy. Neither has particularly terrific graphics (Second Sight is done by the same team that did Time Splitters 2, and has the same exaggerated character traits), neither has revolutionary sound or gigantic guns, but both have a terrific innovation in their Psionic abilities features. These games can get away with less extravagant basics because of their innovations and gameplay. Give them a try; I think you'll be interested at just how long a clever system can make a game fun.

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Makes it sound like you are still going to end up with an Protagonist vs Antagonist system. Whenever you have a system like this where you pit two opposing sides against each other they will almost always see the other side as evil and them as good. It's all relative, in this case since the player is really the only one able to make this distincition they probably will still think that your game is Good vs Evil (or to make it a distinction not based on ideology how about you vs them). Maybe you need to think of a mechanic to erase this distincition, make the game not be you vs them.

Hi, Vanke, you make good points.

My basic idea is set in a series of comics I have drawn about 10 years ago. I think than my friend and I have managed to create a perfect world where everyone is evil :) Everyone has good and bad sides. Those who once act extremely brave next time might run from a battle cowardly. There is no empiric evil in this world.

What I want to do is to create a game that is as close as possible to these comics as graphic style and as a world.

Most of todays games are made that way: there is a huge terrain (mostly linear) and enemies waiting to be slaughtered by you all over the place. All the games give me the feeling that the solely purpose for the existance of your foes is to be destroyed by you. While I was playing Morrowind I didn't have that feeling.

BTW: Do you prefer long games or short games?
For me a game shouldn't exceed 10 hours :) and each level shouldn't be longer than 15-30 minutes. That's because I don't have much free time to waste. So I prefer short but condensed gameplay. For example Diablo 1 is short and very intensive and Diablo 2 is long and boring and it takes forever until something interesting happens.

Perhaps because of that I loved The Chronicles of Riddick so much :)

I probably wouldn't play it, but more because the story doesn't sound interesting than the graphics. If you had graphics as good as Yoshi's Island that would be accptable to me, but I require the story to either be cute and funny or to be profound and literary.

Thanks to everyone who's answered me!

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I probably wouldn't play it, but more because the story doesn't sound interesting than the graphics. If you had graphics as good as Yoshi's Island that would be accptable to me, but I require the story to either be cute and funny or to be profound and literary.

I'm talking about this sort of graphics:
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/gfx/proj/hatching/
so it's something totaly different than Yoshi's Island.

I haven't said anything about a story yet. I'm trying to understand if people would be interested in something that would try to avoid the Good vs. Evil boredom found in all games, save the princess from the Evil Wizzard, destroy the orcish kingdom, etc.

Okay that hatching rendering is really neat and i think it could be a great graphical style for your kind of game (simple yet interesting i think it what your shooting for)

But as for your thoughts on the good vs. evil part of the game and the lack there of... STOP!

I don't think you've really gotten the point.
No matter what you do, if you have a combat system or any type of conflict you've created a good vs. bad scenario no matter how you try and explain it away. Games are based on conflict, especially those which conatian a story line because, as we all know, all stories have a type of conflict. Well any one that's worth its salt and is going to make any type of transition into a game does. You can't not have a good vs. evil theme to your game. It's impossible. You mention fighting so there you have a conflict and all conflict resides around one party vs another. good vs evil, evil vs. evil good vs whatever, it all boils down to the same thing.

You probably already know his stuff though.

I think what you're getting at is you don't want a gigantic conflict to be the main focus of your game. This in mind i urge you to have some sort of really interesting goal that a player is striving towards. All to often nowadays we see games with dull, meaningless storylines that try break away from the patterns set by the classics. This useally fails and leaves the player not caring about what he/she is doing in the game.

A game must contain a focus.

Remember Star Ocean the Second Story? Saga Frontier? Those games based their premise on being non linear, open ended games that can be played anyway you want. But what it ended up like is you running around not really doing anything worth while and never gaining a sense of accomplishment. All thoes old classic games that were fun, were fun for one reason. They had a purpose. An adventure games relies on it's story line. Make it a good one, let us follow it. Let us have a whole lot of fun doing it and we'll love it. Games don't need to be open ended, go no where, simulate the real world dull fests just because you think the good vs evil formual has been done to death.

Sorry this is turning into a rant but i truly belive that if you can create a game, with simple nice looking graphics, an interesting story, and have a fun way of guiding a player through it, making discoveries, plot twists, and really neat fun characters it would be awsome.

Note i'm basing this stuff on the idea that it's an adventure type game like you mentioned.

Anway whatever you do i'll be interested in the final product.

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Original post by NamelessTwo Quote: I probably wouldn't play it, but more because the story doesn't sound interesting than the graphics. If you had graphics as good as Yoshi's Island that would be accptable to me, but I require the story to either be cute and funny or to be profound and literary. I'm talking about this sort of graphics: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/gfx/proj/hatching/ so it's something totaly different than Yoshi's Island. I haven't said anything about a story yet. I'm trying to understand if people would be interested in something that would try to avoid the Good vs. Evil boredom found in all games, save the princess from the Evil Wizzard, destroy the orcish kingdom, etc.

That's an interesting type of graphics, I would be curious to see a whole screenshot done in that style. If you do both the background a forground that way you are likely to have problems with lack of contrast.

And you did so say something about the story - you said it would be about fightng enemies who are unlucky enough to encounter you. I'm not interested in stories about fighting.

To make the hatching thing work, you would need color coming from somewhere. Suppose you could plug that into gameplay, and somehow make the color return the further you get, who knows.

Story would have to be strong too. But I suppose that's a given. And no, story isn't just the Good vs. Evil thing. Story is the whole bundle. Actually giving characters dimension, and making them believable(or un-believeable).

BTW: Do you prefer long games or short games?[/qoute]

Too be honest it doesn't really matter to me, I recently just picked up Ikaruga which has only like five levels and if you were really good you could probably go through it in a couple of hours or even less. My favorite game of all time has to be Planescape: Torment, and I spend around twenty to thirty hours minimum each time I play through it. Too me the quality of the game is what I look for. Although for games that have a very well developed story I tend to like them longer, as I like to get immersed in the story and don't really want it to end.

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Everyone has good and bad sides. Those who once act extremely brave next time might run from a battle cowardly.

So basically everyone will act very inconsistent, everyones a coward and a hero at the same time? Is there a reason for this or is just that everyone in your world is crazy. Do they have a reason to be like this. I think it would be pretty cool to have a world populated by "grey" characters and not just the asymetrical dichotomy that is seen so often in games these days. I imagine it'll be a little bit of a struggle, especially since you're character will be running around killing/beating up whomever gets in there way, and unless nobody in your world cares about anybody else, people are going to start seeing this menace as evil.

Although since this is a game you could populate your world with creatures that don't have human values and emotions, I can see this as being a challenge however, since I've noticed that us humans like to anthropomorphize everything. (I can't tell you how many times I've had to apoligize to my cats because my girlfriend thought I hurt there feelings.)

BTW: Do you prefer long games or short games?[/qoute]

Too be honest it doesn't really matter to me, I recently just picked up Ikaruga which has only like five levels and if you were really good you could probably go through it in a couple of hours or even less. My favorite game of all time has to be Planescape: Torment, and I spend around twenty to thirty hours minimum each time I play through it. Too me the quality of the game is what I look for. Although for games that have a very well developed story I tend to like them longer, as I like to get immersed in the story and don't really want it to end.

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Everyone has good and bad sides. Those who once act extremely brave next time might run from a battle cowardly.

So basically everyone will act very inconsistent, everyones a coward and a hero at the same time? Is there a reason for this or is just that everyone in your world is crazy. Do they have a reason to be like this. I think it would be pretty cool to have a world populated by "grey" characters and not just the asymetrical dichotomy that is seen so often in games these days. I imagine it'll be a little bit of a struggle, especially since you're character will be running around killing/beating up whomever gets in there way, and unless nobody in your world cares about anybody else, people are going to start seeing this menace as evil.

Although since this is a game you could populate your world with creatures that don't have human values and emotions, I can see this as being a challenge however, since I've noticed that us humans like to anthropomorphize everything. (I can't tell you how many times I've had to apoligize to my cats because my girlfriend thought I hurt there feelings.)

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Planescape: Torment

That's the best game I've ever played. I never compare its quality with any other games because to me it is more than a game. It's a story. It's a world.

Unfortunately I couldn't finish it when I played it last time because of a nasty bug. Some important item disappeared and I couldn't continue. Instead of giving it to a NPC I dropped it on the ground and it just vanished.

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Although since this is a game you could populate your world with creatures that don't have human values and emotions, I can see this as being a challenge however, since I've noticed that us humans like to anthropomorphize everything.

Exactly! There are two challeges:
1. To overcome my own human emotions and values and try to play a God and not to start liking some creatures more than others.
2. To make the player/reader feel the same way.

Enough talking - time to work. It seems that the only way to understand really what I want to know is to release a real world demo and test it on real world people. Their feedback will show me if I'm on the right track or not, if it can be done or not.

[Edited by - NamelessTwo on February 3, 2005 10:28:25 AM]