Stand-up Comedy as a bonus game mechanic.

[Haydeos]

The main character of my project fancies himself as an amateur comedian. While the game will focus on fighting their way to the big boss & killing it, I think it'd be kinda cool to have optional contests of humor. It can be used either as a way of gaining bonus items as a reward, or possibly used to skip over some fights by joking your way out of it.

As a mechanic, I think it'd have to be starkly different than the fighting system already in place (which is side-view ABS)

I was thinking something along the lines of DDR, where you have to input buttons at the right time, and it's merely presented as comedy by the character making jokes that appear on screen periodically, and the audience either laughing or booing depending on how accurate you're clicking/typing.

Thoughts on any part of this?

 

[Pluto Pluto]

Sounds like a great concept

 

[Rhaeami]

I like the idea. It would be enjoyable to brainstorm various systems that would work to represent stand-up comedy, but I'd imagine the trick is to find one you can make or have access to. DDR-style seems a bit off though, those styles of games are actually very difficult to play without a strong, rhythmic music behind it, which most stand-up acts don't really have anything to do with. It could work, it'd just be a bit abstract.

Let's see, ideas... how about... instead of rhythmic button pressing, have the type where it's a full sequence that needs to be input within a time limit, with each sequence representing one of the jokes they've rehearsed, or even one for the setup and another for the punchline. There could also be something about button prompts coming in from the audience as a bonus, representing reading the audience.

 

[Wavelength]

To add on to the idea, perhaps some of the "arrows" in the comedy routines could intermittently be replaced with different options for how to fill in a blank in a joke (which would be told on the part of the screen that the DDR meter is not filling); the trick is to only hit the options that make sense for the joke (in addition to the "regular" arrows), and to avoid hitting the ones that don't. Weight these special fill-in-the-blank "arrows" much higher than the regular arrows when determining the player's score/rewards.

 

[Dr. Delibird]

You could also have a dialogue picking system where, depending on how tough the crowd is that night will depend on which types of jokes will be a hit. To add more depth to the mechanic maybe being the first comedian to do their set of the night has a higher potential pay but you get no clues as to what the crowd is like OR you could pick to perform after X ammount of other comedians and get little hints from them but the potential pay is smaller.