I am thinking on the following problem, while trying to create my own game and reading some articles, I just came up with that problem: History is conflict, the player is the protagonist, the protagonist must do choices (even if there are actually no choice, but then the player must not notice that he is being forced). How do you make a game with a great history with a gameplay exactly like Asteroids gameplay? Gameplay changes that does not mess up the basic idea of the game are welcome...

I mean if you're making an "Asteroids" clone, then make up some B.S. story about space, the future, and aliens. It's been done before many of times.

When I was in high school I did an "asteroids" clone except I made the spaceship fly horizontally while ships of different sizes, weapons would fly from the right to the left.

I called the game Resortion X, yea doesn't make sense now that I think of it, but I had much fun working on the game, and it was a success at my school.

I had people playing it all the time before lunch, after lunch, after physics test, etc...

The memories.

Good Luck,

Give the player a motivation. Why is he destroying asteroids?

Start out with the why, and you can build the story from there.

Also, are they actually asteroids? Perhaps the player is a T-cell destroying germs, or a sunbeam melting evil snowballs, or a guy attacking the dandelions marring his perfect lawn, or a space creature which lives by eating asteroids...

I do not made myself clear...

The problem is not coming up with a "background" this can be done easily...

The problem is coming in integrating a great history with the gameplay, have the history progress as you play, like Half-Life or RPG Games, but with a gameplay that is seemly repetitive, like blasting "things" around on the screen, then finishing clearing the screen, then doing it all again.

Of course, one can throw cut-scenes in the middle, but that is easy, and it feels like that if you removed them from the game, it would still look the same, to the point that having them probably would only annoy players.

Oh you want to tell the story through the gameplay? Well, the best way to tell the story depends on what the story is. Perhaps the 'asteroids' could talk as they appear and get shot. Also asteroids games often allow the player to shop for upgrades between levels, that's a great place to put NPC dialogue.

Have you ever played the game Mrs. PacMan? This is an example of a simple arcade game which had cut scenes between levels. Yes it would have been exactly the same game without the cut-scenes; but, the players played the game to see the funny cut-scenes, and tried hard to survive for more levels so they could see what happened next.