Well I've settled on my goals.
1. Joey Winn's Quest Gameguide
The games been well received by people who've played it, but I've received some complaints that it's too hard. Also i noticed most people who play it miss out on a bunch of the fun secrets in the game. I figure it's worth doing this.
2. Plan out New Game: Detective Max Paradise
I'm trying to plan out my next game tentatively called "Detective Max Paradise". it would be another comedy game, this time focusing the police and detective work. However I need to settle on how ambitious I'm going to be with it and get a game plan finished for it.
Tentatively I want to do the following:
- A overall "Police Trust" rating that changes throughout the game depending on your actions. The higher it is, the more willing witnesses are to come forward and co-operate with police. The lower it goes, the less likely people will co-operate making your investigations more difficult.
- I also want a reputation system tied directly to your character, this would be related to personal actions and help get things done inside the police force.
- I want to structure it as having an episodic feel where you have "main cases" in a set order you need to try and resolve to progress in the game, with each one getting you an annoying but funny partner that will hinder your investigation (fake psychic, profiler, writer tagging along, vigilantee who's a parody of Batman, ect) at the same time there being numerous other quests available throughout the city you can attempt to resolve which might not be investigative. Like one thing would be helping a group push through more funding for testing rape kits through city council. Do that and when a case comes up in the future, it will become much easier to resolve.
- Finally I want to do this and completely avoid using a combat system, making this largely an adventure game. If there's any combat, I'd like the options just to be things like "open fire" and dealing with the consequences, as opposed to having dedicated fighting in the game. I'm not sure this is a smart decision, but most people enjoyed Joey Winn's Quest by not getting into any fights and just solving puzzles. I figure it might be better to focus on that and make more and better puzzles.
- I'd also need a way to make investigations "fun" and challenging.
Thing is, I want to make custom graphics for this game this time around, so I need to plan carefully so my resources aren't going to get too stretched. I want to complete this game in about 4 months and have it about 3-6 hrs in length, but to pull it off I need to plan carefully in advance how I'm going to do this, what minigames to try and include, basic layout of the city, character ideas, ect. Hopefully I can finish the planning soon. Also I need to figure out if this is the game I want to make next or do I want to make...
3. Plan Out Other Game: The Canadians
The premise of this game would be to have a fun adventure rpg featuring Jack Layton, Ralph Klein, Pierre Trudeau, and Renee Levesque, dead Canadian Politicians who would be brought back to life momentarily to deal with a crisis threatening to engulf all of Canada. It would parody Canadian politics, history, and current events... as well as hopefully made in time for the Federal 2015 election. It would have custom graphics and be non-linear, but it would largely be a standard RPG, again 4-6 hrs in length, complete with combat system.
This game I do have a story already outlined for it, and a point, but I do kind of want to do something more original. Either way I need to decide by the end of December.
