I'm making a game in which I want to make the player want to cry and want to replay the game.
Here is the summary for the game: A little girl with a wild imagination has been sent to the edges of the world to find charms to save her dying mother, but it comes with a cost... her own life.
Help is much appreciated and will be in my special thanks for my credits!
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Just act out the summary - flesh out the summary into a full story. With each piece she obtains, she gets weaker. She can take strengthening medicine, but she knows (and the player knows) that damage is done. Have her communicate with her mother occasionally, giving her mother hope while hiding the truth of her own plight. Love and sacrifice should accomplish your goal.
I think this is more a Writing topic than a Game Design topic. Writers (narrative designers) know best how to wring players' emotions. Moving this to the Writing forum.
-- Tom Sloper -- sloperama.com
If you have any personal experiences you can draw from, I think it'd be really effective to use these as sources for inspiration and emotional investment. It'll make the creative process a lot easier (or difficult, but in a good way, depending on how you look at it), and people will notice the more authentic presentation of your story.
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Infinite_Studios said:
save her dying mother, but it comes with a cost... her own life.
Child giving life for parents is an interesting plot idea, but it has a problem: No mother would want her child to die for her. She would prefer to die herself instead.
So, one idea would be this: Mother has a terrible disease. She feels the worst pain on earth, and it gets worse and worse, until she will die slowly after long time of torture. Daughter can save her, e.g. by giving her heart. But she has to do so secretly, so her mother never will never know the daughter sacrificed herself.
The decision of the selfless daughter to give life in secret makes her even more good hearted and selfless… sniff… so the moment of that decision is an opportunity to shed some tears.
Something like that, maybe. It still has issues. Nobody will be happy at the and, so the daughter is good hearted, but for nothing.
Infinite_Studios said:
I want to make the player want to cry and want to replay the game.
Haha, won't work for me. For that, add rocket launchers, portals, guts and splatter, and spaceships :D
Making someone cry through storytelling (and not onions -lol-) usually comes from the fact that the listener can relate some past memories with the said-story… for example, watching a movie that brings back an emotional past, a book that reminds you of your own experience or maybe a friend's, … a last Christmas dinner with grandma, a lost sister or brother, etc…
So if this is what you really want to achieve then you need to dig into people's emotional past (make an anonymous social survey or poll) then make the game such that "that moment is not violated or trivialised";
I wouldn't advise that the game be replayable because of that moment, instead I'd advise that the game then shows that after such a tearful moment, life can generate joy, hope, happiness and other relivable moments; but the fight to these good fruitful moments is still on: this could be a journey requiring of the player, perseverance, patience, wisdom, discernment and endurance, etc…;
…and the motto of the game could be: “Your life is a not a game, play it wisely” meaning play [the game] wisely, get it? -lol-
have fun ?
ddlox said:
Making someone cry through storytelling (and not onions -lol-) usually comes from the fact that the listener can relate some past memories with the said-story… for example, watching a movie that brings back an emotional past, a book that reminds you of your own experience or maybe a friend's, … a last Christmas dinner with grandma, a lost sister or brother, etc…
I don't think that's true at all. If anything, the opposite is more true: sad events in real life cause people to cry because they remind them of sad stories. But that's not really true for me either, because usually I don't cry at real life sad events, but there are movies that cause me to burst into tears each time I watch them.
(respectfully) i'm not sure i fully understand what u said… but it's okay, we can agree to disagree ?
also, if what i said sounds like i'm generalising for the whole world then please accept my apologies, it was not the intention, i was just giving an idea for the OP's game;
Anyway, that's it … all the best ?
