Hey!

I'm designing a top-down racing shooter game.

In that game, there will be a single and multiplayer mode.

So I'm thinking about the story around the game. To give you some insights your first vehicle is a tank. So you can shoot enemies to slow them down. During the game, you'll unlock cars (jeep, hippies car, train, etc) and guns.

There is also different kind of terrain on maps. Desert, ground, snow, grass with building, and houses.

I would like to write some nice cyberpunk story. In the game, everything happens after the war. But it wasn't a simple war. Because all of the buildings (or most of them) remain undamaged but abandoned. And main hero is some risky guy who doesn't know what he is doing yet. So, he participating in death racing. But no one knows whats the purpose of this race.

Any Ideas?

The most coherent backstory for "death racing" is the implicit one in Micro Machines: kids playing with their vehicle toys on improvised toy-sized courses in household environments.

If, as I suspect, child games aren't cyberpunk enough, degrading pay-per-view entertainment with desperate or suicidal volunteers or with forced contestants (e.g. Death Race 3000 or Hunger Games or The Running Man) is a solid excuse for any extreme combat sport; lethality could be low enough to allow eccentric amateurs too (e.g. Car Wars, real-world MMA).

Traditional plots include winning to get the prize, winning to be number one, and if the game isn't only about racing also escaping, fighting the evil race organizers and falling into unrelated trouble during a race.

@LorenzoGatti in general child game it's not so bad. At least it will be match with Art Style. But than, I had one more idea, that this racing, in which main hero participating, it some sort of cover for organisers to rob the bunker with some secret technology.

And I'm not sure can this 2 ideas live together… I mean, how do you think?

albo said:
But than, I had one more idea, that this racing, in which main hero participating, it some sort of cover for organisers to rob the bunker with some secret technology.

@albo I think the biggest problem would be how you implement that to your game.

If you're showing the story through cutscenes that's fine, though you should give the player the option to skip it, but if you're not then how would you show the player that the race is a cover to rob secret technology?

Will the first levels be the hero fighting against other contestants until the very end where the player fights the organization behind the race? If so, what would the gameplay be like?

Race against the organizers from obtaining the secret technology by getting to bunker first? Or the organizers managed to obtain the technology, which could be some supertank or something, and the player must shoot it before it reaches a destination in order to destroy it.

The story should be based on the gameplay and should complement it. I find the story to be interesting, just wanted to know how you'll implement it to your game!

@Polarice3

I thought about single dialog window before each race. So, the player supposed to tap it few times until the end of the text. Cut scene would be amazing solution but I don't have any experience with this and I don't have enough time resources. So, you know, I just need to create a good story, and everything else is work of players imagination ?

Except the story I have a multiplayer, so, you can always play with friends or any random person just for fun.