I also went back and reread the first few dev logs of this
project, mostly to look at the notes and add any big-picture stuff to the to-do
list that slipped my mind. Well, going
back and rereading it revitalized me a little bit. I forgot lots of things! This will certainly end up being far more
complex than just the little basic things I've been working on so far, and that
gets me excited to work deeper on it.
Getting little things like plurals to work properly is a mind-bending
enough task on its own, but to get particularly big mechanics in like the
multiplayer functionality and puzzles and stuff will be a deep challenge (and
hopefully a fun one).
On Easter I did a bit of yard work, and it seems like my
mind thinks about this project a lot when I'm raking. Thinking over the old notes and what the
scope (and for that matter, theme) of the game should be, I've come up with
what I think is a great direction to go.
When you think about this as being an allegory of growing up, you
wonder, apart from the other players you meet in school (common zones), what
about adults? Why are there no adults at
all? Well, what if the player is a latchkey
kid? A latchkey kid is a child who comes
home from school to an empty house because both parents work. So what if that's basically the commonality
between all players? Each player is a
latchkey kid, and the puzzles of the game revolve around self-reliance and
learning to occupy your time or figuring out the world on your own, because
your parents aren't there to help. Each
player's situation is different, but there are enough commonalities that
players can still give general "life tips", as it were--tips on
playing the game. Clues can come in the
form of notes or answering machine messages from parents as to what to do to
solve puzzles.
I think this is a really interesting way to go about
things. Hopefully I can subtly add this
layer of story and symbolism into the game without getting to pushy about
it. In the meantime, of course, just
getting basic mechanics to work is the first step.
No comments:
Post a Comment