So, I had an idea for a video game...

Basically, it goes like this:

Your characters are... the people you would normally find as Cannon Fodder in any other video game.

The main character is a zombie.

Her father-figure used to be a member of the Shining Crusades- a Master Engineer- but they were sent out to investigate a village that had been riddled with a supernatural plague. By the time they got there, the character was the only one left alive. She was thirteen at the time.

They tried to keep her alive long enough to cure her... And in the meantime, they all grew close to her. So, when she finally died, they said 'Screw this' and quite the Shining Crusade, taking her to a village of Undead. They asked a Necromancer there to reanimate her, figuring that an unlife was better than no life. And they were right; she was happy.

The members stuck around, shrugging off their Shining Crusade skills to become Blood Crusaders.

As an Undead Zombie, she is weak to Fire and massively weak to Divine damage. She gains skills slowly- 4 skill points a level, compared to the regular enemy's 5- and she can only wield Infernal and Water/Ice-based weapons/armour.

However, she has a LOT of skills to choose from.

Her Companion is a Warmech.

Her father figure built it for her when she was a little kid, just in case anything ever attacked her.

It's a sentient Warmech. They are built with Magitech, which prevents them from being able to use magic, and also makes them take extra Magic damage.

The Warmech doesn't level like you do. Rather, you need to scavenge parts from Engineers and other Mechs you fight, and take them to a friendly Engineer to have him upgraded.

He deals a LOT of physical damage- both melee (Blades) and ranged (Guns). He can also deal Magic-type damage (Lasers), but doing so costs him HP.

The friends she meets along the way:

An Orcish Warrior.

"He's fairly stupid. He joins up with you because the Shining Crusade attacks his village the same as they did yours.

He levels up slowly. He can learn very basic buff spells, but most of his skills are oriented towards melee- stunning, lowering defences, etc.

A Gnomish Mage.

He joins up with you to keep an eye on his friend, the Orc.

He levels up quickly, and gains 11 skill points every 2 levels. However, his skills are limited to offensive Fire/Earth skills.

Edit:These two have been Killed Off for Real.

A Half-Dragon Mage.

This one joins up with you after a particularly emotional boss battle. In which you fight a Red Dragon that is being controlled by a Beast Tamer, then kill the Tamer, allowing the Dragon to die as itself.

When the Dragon is dead, her young child crawls out and pitifully cries. It then joins up with you, swearing to kill the ones who ordered its' parents dead.

This one is the most difficult to train up. However, it is perhaps your most useful mage. It is the only one to learn to Heal- otherwise, you're stuck relying on healing Engines and Potions. It's also the only thing in the game, bar special items, that can heal your Zombie, with its' Negative Damage attack.

It can also learn status attacks, like Paralyze, poison, stun, petrify and Freeze. It has an auto-attack that deals moderate Fire Area-Of-Effect damage to your opponents.

The Human Engineer is your prisoner, the only survivor from your first Dungeon.

He sticks around because you have stolen his Goggles, which are what allows him to Invent new Engines. Otherwise, he's forced to rely on stealing other people's Blueprints.

He's the other strangely-leveled one. He doesn't actually level up. Instead, every time you fight a Mech or an Engineer, scavenge an Engine, or have an Engine fail when it's thrown at you, he studies it, and is then able to determine the Blueprints fr making the Engines from them.

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THE PLOT

The plot starts off as you're happily playing in a Crypt with your Warmech, until suddenly, some people in shiing silver-and-gold arour bust in.

You flee back to your underground village, only to find it leveled. You are told by one of the survivors that it was done by a party of adventurers from the Shining Crusade.

Gritting your teeth, you swear revenge.

Only... It's not that simple. Politics are in play. In your first rash move, attacking an outpost of the Shining Crusaders, you make an enemy of the Engineering Guild, and have them sending enemies after you all the time.

But this also prevents the Beast Masters Guild from sending anyone out after you- in fact, they ask you to work for them, since they have a VERY deep and bitter rivalry with the Engineering Guild going on.

You constantly find yourself making friends and enemies as you progressively move closer to finding out who ordered your village burned. The game gets harder and harder until you face the climactic boss- the adventurers who did it.

And... It turns out to have just been a regular Dungeon Crawl for them.

Needless to say, they don't survive. Except the Healer. She does, 'coz she never hurt anybody.

---

Does any of that sound good?

edited 5th Feb '11 4:49:33 AM by CyganAngel

Sounds like Sonny.

... except for that your use of But for Me, It Was Tuesday in the ending may tick off many hardcore RP gamers who would identify more with the antagonists than the player.

edited 3rd Feb '11 5:21:41 AM by ArgeusthePaladin

Thanks for the link.

The For Me It Was Tuesday ending is the whole point of the game.

You're facing off against the people you'd usually be playing as, playing as what you'd normally see as a nice little chunk of EXP.

I really like this idea.

(I do think making the lead protagonist only heal-able by one means isn't good, though. That's my only criticism though, so that really says something.)

Have you played Gobli's Adventure in the first U.S. RPG Maker? That game rocked so much.

The ending is the only part that bothers me. For Me It Was Teusday— perfectly fine. Great. It's just, the main characters can't win. Those characters never win. They're not supposed to. The battle should end with the humans guiltlessly emptying the main characters' pockets, exchanging banter that hints at their larger quest that never had anything to do with the main characters, perhaps having let the Engineer live for obvious reasons.

Now, I don't like video games where you have to level up. Ever played the PC version of Fellowship of the Ring? Fantastic game, you get some item/spell/move upgrades naturally as the game progresses, but it just makes fighting more complex as the monsters get harder, without any grinding. Same with the Zelda games. I also think you've got a few more characters than you need, and I think a single "main character", presumably a basic warrior-type, going after the people who destroyed their town, kidnapping an engineer, and teaming up with the dragon mage, would give the right 'underdog' feel. You've got three people in a world where you need a whole party, and you'd get more attached/used to the few characters you have. That's just a personal preference thing, though.

Aight, looked at your character list again. The Orc and the Gnome seem extraneous, and the Zombie and her Machine could be controlled as a single character (you control the zombie, and she can direct the machine...hard to explain.)

edited 3rd Feb '11 5:59:16 PM by DaeBrayk

That... is a good point. I think I'll take a look at that, and consider removing some of the characters.

That said- the characters increasing in power is meant to invoke that... that thing, where the enemies level as you progress in the game. Normally, as you progress in a game, the enemies increase in power, often with a Palette Swap.

That's what the whole point of the leveling is here. Only, instead of just casually grinding and staying a few levels ahead of your enemies... You're the one who is struggling to catch up to the heroes.

Hmmm... Maybe I should look for a new gimmick, though.

I can certainly see the Draconic character being a Blue Mage of sorts- able to only use spells that have been used on him. It would still keep that difficulty- try keeping him alive to learn Doom, eh?- but it would get rid of the whole leveling system...

Hmmmm...

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The entire plot of the game... revolves around you being the ones to defeat the heroes. You're constantly fighting the people you would be playing as in any other game. But then, you're also more limited, in that you can't kill them. You knock them down to a certain amount of health, and they teleport back to a Save Point. You'll fight them again, once they've gone and ground a few levels.

But then, you do run against the final team a few times before, in plot-relevant situations. In any other game, you would be the Quirky Miniboss Squad. But here, they're the ones serving that purpose.

Uhhh, should I go into more detail regarding the plot?

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The Warmech and the Draconic character make up a large part of the endgame.

The Draconic character ends up urging you to find out why the Beast Master controlled his parents, since the Guild didn't sanction it.

You end up undertaking an entire quest chain for him, near as long as the original, that involves saving the rest of the Dragons in the world from the threat of encroaching civilization.

With the approach of Civilization, see... The magic in the land is becoming more... human. It can't sustain them like it used to.

So you end up taking on an entire Human civilization in order to preserve the last Dragons. DAMNED difficult to do, involving many difficult sidebosses and difficult fights and near-impossible dungeons.

And... The Warmmech has another plot of its own, regarding the origins of the Warmechs. It's not as long as the previous quests, but it is more... personal. As you have to take on the entire guild of Engineers, and their massive Colossals, and all that stuff...

It's quite amusing and fun.

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The game is meant to be challenging. That's why you have so few healing methods. Your zombie deals out death and massive Infernal damage- but you can rarely heal her, so much of your strategy is around defending her. Your Warmech is goddamned powerful physical fighter, but your Engineer ha a HUGE variety of situational gadgets... but your Engineer needs to constantly maintain your Warmech, or it breaks down over time. Your Draconic can heal itself, your zombie and your engineer, and inflict a lot of status ailment on people- but he doesn't have a lot of MP, so you'll be spending a lot of time risking him in melee to steal more...

So, I was actually considering doing away with the leveling mechanics entirely, to make it a bit less... grindy.

The new mechanics would go something like this:

Zombie would gain powers by being hit with magical attacks.

1. Darkness or Inferal attacks, the easiest for her to survive, would give her skills oriented towards typical Undead stuff- draining life, casting Poison, etc. These would also slightly increase her HP the more she is hit with them (1 extra HP for every 10 times she is hit with a attack that deals more than 10% of her health in damage).

2. Light or Divine attacks, the near-Insta Kill attacks, would give her her more powerful abilities- skills like Death and Inflict Wound. Basically, the opposite of typical White Magic Spell like Heal (Inflict Wounds), Revive (Death), and Esuna (Inflict Deadly Poison).

3. Elemental Attacks, like Fireball and such, would let her learn basic Infernal-style attacks, like Shadow Strike (A Stealth Backstab attack) or Hellfire (Summon a field of Hellfire around the environment, damaging everyone but you.) Being hit by these attacks would also increase her MP pool- 1 extra MP for every spell that deals damage to you.

Warmech gains extra weapons and armour by taking scraps of machines and such to friendly Engineers. They will build the best weapons and armours they can with the scraps you bring them, and install them on him.

Engineer reverse-engineers every Engine he comes across, to figure out how they are built and build more of them. As you advance further in the game and your enemies use better Engines, he gets better.

Dragon Blue Mage's every spell you come across, excluding outright damage attacks. Hit with Mass Petrification and survive? Dragon learns it. Hit with Inflict Deadly Poison and survive? He learns it. Hit with Icicle? He dies.

The more complicated the spell- the more MP used to cast it, or the larger the Area of Effect- the more times he needs to be hit with it to learn it.

Sound alright? Thoughts?

edited 5th Feb '11 5:07:34 AM by CyganAngel

I'm not sure if it's a good idea to have two blue mages on the party, even if you want it to be challenging. Also, the new mechanics don't look like they would make the game any less grindy, since all of them depend entirely on winning fights to gain new powers.

Also: Needless to say, they don't survive. Except the Healer. She does, 'coz she never hurt anybody.

Is the problem with that kind of logic supposed to be overlooked by the "monsters"?

Still tryin' to figure out a good one for Zombie. That one was the one I made up as I went along. Just rather... difficult to find a good one for her.

Um, the thing with the Healer is actually related to a plot earlier in the game. I haven't added that in yet, because I haven't gone into the plot in enough detail.