I'm very new to everything gaming and I've only ever used the RPG makers for my games so I needed a bit of help. I want to make a game that plays mostly like a real-time life sim like Animal Crossing mixed with a bit of the anime Chobits. The idea is you inherit an android that was an old mans life work and slowly bond with it and teach it to feel while going about your life. You would have character creation for you and the android with plenty of customization options and clothing you could buy later. Also, the AI would have to be decent so that you could really bond with them as the player. The game would run off of real time, fishing and crafting would be available, there would be some fighting and levels, story and events, as well as interior design and furniture options. You would start with a small garden and sell flowers then eventually upgrade to have a small backyard farm, also odd jobs would be an option to make money. Any tips or engine that would be easy to use?

BASIC INFO---Imagine getting home from work after a long day and booting up your game. You're greeted as you load your save by your Android companion who has missed you since you last played. It's late after work in the real world so in the game it's also night, beautiful fireflies flutter about and the streetlamps in your town are lit. The two of you make your way to the moonlit beach for the first time which unlocks a special scene and Heart Points for the android. After the scene you run over to the dock and decide to fish for a bit hoping to sell the haul at the store tomorrow morning when it opens. Perhaps before you log out today you'll check on your garden you've been building up or see if the Dojo is still open to earn some exp? Or perhaps you'll simply spare with your android earning less exp but bonding with some Heart Points?

No matter what you do you won't be alone, you have someone who will always be at your side unconditionally. You can find peace fishing, gardening, fighting or even crafting things for your house...but nothing compares to the fact that finally you're not alone.

STORY---You've always been a loner who wanted nothing more than to have someone that would never leave. Being the weird nerdy kid in school you've dreamt of cool android companions but never had the skill to create your own. One day on the way home from work you help an old sickly man and your life changes forever. The old man tells you his story and how he's spent his life designing the perfect companion. He fears with his ill health and age that his creation will be left alone. Perhaps if he found someone who would love them as much as he does...

Starting from the waking of their artificial conciosness you begin to bond with what is at first a very mischevious AI with a mind of it's own. The day they recieve their body and wake to the real world is the most magical day of your life! Through your actions and interactions with your companion you shape who they become as you go about your life. Will they be a proud and gentle protector? Or a mouthy and stubborn rebel who annoys you in the best of ways?

LOCATIONS

Your house with upgrade options and interior design abilities

Amusement Park

Fairgrounds with games and odd jobs to make money

Dojo for training your fighting skills

Outskirts of town that act as a sort of dungeon with enemies

Beach, forest, lake and camp for unlocking scenes and catching bugs/fish

Shopping district with access to clothing, house upgrades, gardening and other items

Shooting range

FEATURES

Fishing/Bug catching

Crafting and cooking

Housing customization and upgrades

Full customization of both characters

Holidays running off of real time that offer items and special scenes and Heart Points

Heart Point system to customize who your android becomes

RPG mechanics and full story

Gardening and farming

Minigames that provide money

If you're new to everything gaming, then I have to stop you and ask: can you make a Space Invaders game? Or a Breakout? Maybe tetris? Because those games have all the building blocks of what you need, but if you can't whip one of those out yourself, you're probably not ready for attempting to implement any of what you've described. Start small.

I remember hating that advice, and steadfastedly refusing to follow it some 11 years ago. Well, I would have been a much better programmer much faster if I had! But I was stubborn. Try some very simple games. Then learn to juice the ever-living-tar out of them. Then add complexity.

Oh, and you can ease the learning curve by going straight for the this: https://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/contents.html which became my bible for a while. Simply using the Component Pattern and Observer Pattern together revolutionized my experience with game design. Complex features like what your describing become feasible using these patterns, and coupling vanishes. I talk about it a lot nowadays, but it's really the most absurdly flexible approach I've found after years of searching and made virtually all of my old code obsolete overnight. I refuse to even look at the tangled messes I used to write. Save yourself the trouble!

@Zouflain I've been dreaming this game up for 15 years but haven't been able to do much until now. The problem with everything is I'm very hard to focus unless I'm very passionate about something. This is the game I want to pour my heart into, I know I won't focus on the small stuff. I don't know if unity would be something that I could jump into that could pull this kind of game off. RPG maker is great but I don't think it can do a lot of the stuff I want. If I had a team I might be able to jump in but who knows.

Well getting a team to make your dream game for you is VERY hard (unless you pay them real salary of course, but i assume you dont have the means to do that). This is a very long project for a large group of experienced professionals with a big budget.

If you are hellbent on making this as your first project, well… at least dont make it 3d, you will fail less hard that way. Sorry for sounding pessimistic but what you describe is REALLY complex. Basically it's the standard dream project of many persons that has never made games before: it includes almost EVERYTHING at once.

Maybe this would be more doable as a pen and paper roll playing game. One person could play the AI andriod! And the thousands of special cases that will come up can be handled with imagination. As a computer game, this would be hard to pull off even by a professional studio.

Blackth0rn said:

@Zouflain I've been dreaming this game up for 15 years but haven't been able to do much until now. The problem with everything is I'm very hard to focus unless I'm very passionate about something. This is the game I want to pour my heart into, I know I won't focus on the small stuff. I don't know if unity would be something that I could jump into that could pull this kind of game off. RPG maker is great but I don't think it can do a lot of the stuff I want. If I had a team I might be able to jump in but who knows.

Here is the the fundamental problem with this… You have an idea but you don't offer any skills which will contribute to the bulk of the work. This will make it extremely difficult to gather up a team without paying them a salary. If you were offering up money then it wouldn't matter. My advice, and this holds true for any ‘idea people’, obtain skills in either programming and/or art before attempting to gather up a team because at least you can concept out the idea in more detail and build a prototype.

You really have to factor in some points here:

1. This is YOUR idea, which means nobody has any ownership in the concept… they didn't build upon the concept for 15 years as you've described (I hope you have a GDD - Game Design Document) so why would anyone work towards your goals and not a common goal? Your goal here is to gather enough interest to get other people on board, but at the same time you'll have to be open to their ideas as well which means this game is no longer yours in that regard.
2. You're not providing enough value as an idea person on a team. No matter how revolutionary or well thought your game idea is, the bulk of the work will not be done by you. Your artists, programmers, and composers/sfx engineers will be clocking in the hours. If you were a game designer that would be different because you could contribute enough to build working prototypes and draft up visual concepts, ect… and would have valuable experience to add on-top of that. Idea people are not game designers, but game designers do have ideas and so do artists, programmers, and everyone else on the team.

If the game means this much to you then you'll either fork up cash to build a team, or you'll spend the time to acquire the skills and build up a prototype then come back and pitch for help. At this stage it would be extremely hard to believe anyone would jump on board and stick it out to completion.

I do wish you the best in your project. If you want to get started in learning how to do art or programming, or even both let us know and we can suggest resources for you.