Game Idea: Item Quest

Note: Yeah, yeah, sort of need to dust the cobwebs off of this thing. I have both the Design Documents done now (including 80+ Simpson NPCs and their in-game fighters), still need somewhere to upload them. It will be sorted soon, and then I'll finish up some more ideas.

This game idea is a bit meta. The name is sort of a joke on "quest item" (a term used to describe an important game item) and the various "_____ Quest" games that are emerging or have been around for a while, which tend to be a little experimental. Most notable of which would be Progress Quest: an online RPG that is entirely automatic and continues to run without player input, though still employs the usual "fight, collect, return to town to sell stuff, repeat" pattern. Though I should also mention here the wonderful new DS game Puzzle Quest, which is basically Zookeeper with some interesting modifications to the gameplay, including a large range of abilities/spells you can use on the puzzle grid.

The idea of this game is to have a huge installed inventory database numbering in the many thousands, including - but not limited to - sets, collections, figurines, postcards, etc. - the works. A lot of my games tend to have a collection subquest of some kind in them, but the intention here is to blow it up to extreme proportions and have fun with it. The game would have fairly standard dungeon crawling, with all manner of places to visit, and to cope with the scope of the amount of items and places in the world to find said items I was thinking something like a 16-bit SNES-era-esque 2D game with top-notch pixel/sprite graphics, with which to detail all the stuff you can find or fight. I could make it something huge and 3D like Oblivion, but I have a feeling this isn't the kind of experimental meta-game that developers would be willing to throw that kind of money at. Plus, making it a simple 2D program will allow it to be easily played over an internet-ready computer or on an online handheld/virtual arcade type deal, which would mean additional item packages can be continually produced and downloaded by players.

The story would be based on the common "adventurer looking for his fortune" story in a world where possessions = power. As you collect items and sell off spares (since having two of the same kind is generally pointless), you can upgrade your home base to include more buildings/wings/facilities for showing off your spoils to interested parties. As you upgrade and build up your base of operations, certain items will start appearing in the dungeons you're taking out (so without a portrait museum room, for example, you won't find nearly as many portraits). What little treasure you find that you're unable to display will be sent to your vault.

You also have adventurer peers working against you. They are also similarly building up collections, which you can observe if you wish. They may even be willing to swap their duplicates for yours, depending on their disposition towards you. Of course, you'll also have them attempting to thieve (or hiring folk to thieve for them, depending on their wealth and interest in your stuff) which you have to fight off or help the police/guards to arrest. You could even be challenged in direct battle for your possessions. The spoils go to the victor, and you could end up inheriting the collections of adventurer NPCs you fall in battle. If the game ends up being online, these peers could be other players and you can see your friend's collection of stuff. You'd obviously have the option of not accepting challenges or letting them theive off you (like a non-PvP thing). It's sort of like seeing other peoples' Animal Crossing houses or their rare drops in World of Warcraft, taken to the nth degree.

Another factor in your collecting is the age-old "good vs evil" aspect in RPGs. Certain.. items (slaves, trophies, stolen goods... demonist/necromancer iconography?) become available only to evil players, and its up to the player to decide how badly he wants a full set of items. This is sort of calling into focus the general misanthropy that people who prefer things over other people feel, though we don't want to concentrate on that too much as those folk will be the game's main market. The game would open up some interesting new avenues for item collections, including some very seedy contacts to buy/sell from.

The actual battle aspect should be relatively simple, but interesting enough to keep people wanting to keep playing and finding new stuff for their collections. Dungeons would be found by scouting areas, and you can even hire scouts to check places for you while you scout elsewhere. After finding a dungeon and doing a preliminary search of the surroundings, you will get a short blurb with details about that dungeon for you to check and decide whether or not to hit it. I'm thinking dungeons could be displayed by:

A) Their type - This may define the treasure/monsters they're likely to have. For instance, a Cave-type may be more likely to have natural treasures like gems and would also generally have more wild animals rather than undead or bandits.
B) Their total total treasure value - This gives you some idea of how worthwhile a place is to hit without giving too much away about what you could find. A high treasure value might just mean a huge pile of less valuable items, or one or two really priceless ones. This value will be more exact, to the closest 10000, 1000 or 100, depending on your scouting skill or the skill of the scout you hired.
C) Their total list of creatures - you would use this to judge your chances of victory. If the enemies sound a bit tough (and they usually have some hint, maybe color-coded like FFXII's wandering monsters) you can mark it and leave it until later. The clarity of this list is again dependent on your scouting skill, like the treasure value. At early levels of scouting you may just get a general monster class ("undead") or even an incomplete list (which may lead to a nasty surprise).

Battles would be automatic, and would determine your success on some variables: the opponents you're facing, your equipment and level and a few additional "decision" modifiers you can toggle on or off. These modifiers include the decision to be sneaky (if you pull it off or are a generally sneaky character class, several unobservant creatures could be taken down without a fight, though really observant creatures could get the jump on you while you're trying to sneak past them) or the decision to pack weapons that have been blessed by the local chapel (the donations to receive them would be costly, but beneficial if you're fighting a lot of undead). These decisions could be either beneficial or disadvantageous, so it will be up to the player to decide on what to use.

After the automatic battle, you will see the results. Generally, if you lose, you will retreat with whatever treasure you managed to find and will need to rest a few weeks to get your strength back to try again. If you win, you claim all the treasure in the cave and may even find a second level to the dungeon, which would be scouted for you instantaneously and ready for your next sortie (after sorting out your spoils, of course).

You will also find a lot of money, as well as duplicate items. As stated, you can sell off these duplicates, either to the local stores or a fellow collector (sometimes in exchange for other treasure, the rarity of which is based on what you're offering). The money can be used for upgrading your base, purchasing new equipment or purchasing new means to carry treasure from sacked dungeons (which range from pack mules a la Dungeon Siege to a device that transports it all back home instanteously).

Though doing away with the actual battling might sound like a duff move, I think it would help in the long run. People get tired of continually whacking monsters, and the strategic element of only taking on what you can manage (and using the modifiers correctly) will give players sufficient challenge to keep them entertained. Having these huge displays should be interesting too, since games with collection subquests (Katamari Damacy, CCG games like Megaman Battle Network, some Zeldas) or a large range of collectibles which you can show off and personalise (Animal Crossing, The Sims) tend to be absurdly popular. Like most of my ideas, I also intend to have lots of humor and in-jokes regarding the items you can find, so it could be good times for all concerned. Maybe.

Excuses!

Yeah, I haven't really been keeping up with the weekly blog update, but that's because I've been working on Design Documents for both the Simpsons RPG idea and the Hammerspace idea. Expect to see both sometime later this evening. Be warned: They're around 6000 words each and rising.

Online Design Documents

Update: I finished Final Fantasy XII at last. I guess my comment referring to a giant dragon boss with a dozen healthbars in the last update occured to me unconsciously from a boss in FFXII called Yiazmat: A bigass dragon that takes several hours of fighting just to whittle down its massive HP count. I guess it's this obsession with finishing everything that can be done with a game that makes me reluctant to try MMORPGs, since I'd be stuck in an endless loop of conquering every little bit of new content that is added. That, and the persistent bugbear of spending the price of a new game for the same one each month.

What this update is actually about, besides just bragging about beating a game, is an idea I have to upload some Design Documents somewhere for people to read if they're interested in the nitty gritty of all these game ideas. As it stands, I barely scratch the tip of the iceburg with these blog entries, even though they are often the length of a small novel. What I may start doing now is drop the word count by about half and just introduce a few concepts with the game idea, and then have a link to where I've uploaded a Word document (or just a .txt file, since I won't be doing too much with the presentation at this point) with the vast amount of detail I have in mind for the game at this stage and then keep updating that document whenever something new strikes me or I want to add a table of potential enemies or power-ups or something.

With this system, any visitors to this blog can just skim through the game idea posts a lot quicker. If the idea sounds intriguing, you can read further by following the link to the .doc . If not, skip it and read the next one. If you're able to read twice as many of these "nutshell" posts during a lunch break or what have you, it would help the chances of finding one that interests you. In time, I hope to translate these documents to browsable websites with different pages for each section (characters, features, playing stages) of the game idea.

There are a few problems with this that I can see so far:
1) I may need to rewrite the 20+ game ideas the blog has had so far for this shorter format. I think the best thing would be either to delete the old ones and have new and improved re-writes, or just leave them and use this new short-post system from this point onwards. I will, of course, make design documents for my older ideas too at some point.
2) It will take a lot longer to produce full game ideas, since I'll be investing more time in them. Thus, when a new game idea is on the blog the design document for it will be pretty short, because it hasn't been around long enough for a lot to have been written about it. I figure between new game idea posts on the blog I'll also do a "what design documents have been updated this week" round-up, mentioning what has been added to which document.
3) There's always the threat of plagiarism by putting largely developed game designs out there instead of short blurbs, but my low self-esteem assures me I have nothing to worry about there.
4) Storing doc/txt files somewhere on the internet. Obviously size isn't important, since the bigger ones will still only be about 300k at the most, but finding somewhere that'll host them for free.

Design Genres #14: Scrolling Fighters/Beat-Em-Ups

The Beat-Em-Up genre is one that has grown old and retired, now reliving its golden years on various online virtual arcades available on the Wii and XBox 360. Though it did make the transition to 3D, sort of, with games such as State of Emergency, Hybrid Heaven, Dynasty Warriors and others - these games are all classed as "action/adventure" and therefore do not really fit the bill of that classic 2D genre. However, there are still plenty of great scrolling fighters available for the handheld market, which is the last true outpost for the 2D generation of games.

While it is safe to say that Final Fight, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe and Double Dragon are perhaps the best known of the "traditional" scrolling fighters, we shouldn't overlook the Konami classics of The Simpsons and TMNT, Technos' other great scrolling-fighter River City Ransom and Treasure's phenomenal Guardian Heroes, which still counts as a scrolling fighter. I guess, technically, we could also include Castlevania titles. Viewtiful Joe is perhaps the last scrolling fighter to do something new with the genre.

Before I start, I should mention that I've already created a B-E-U (boo!) game idea in this blog already, as part of the "Spam Fighter" series of games comprised of content generated from online junk mail, but I sort of wanted a proper Design Genres for these games since I played so much of them as a kid.

My idea starts out like any of the above series: You control a street-smart fighter out to recover his girlfriend from the criminal gangs of the city you reside in. Cliche enough premise you might think, but it's important to keep this aspect deliberately old school initially as you'll soon see. You can have up to four players, learn attacks and gain health bonuses like any other games. You can find objects and use them: but the twist is you have to "learn" how to use more complicated weaponry by training, and you can also learn how to do more damage with more mundane items. Enemies drop money and sellable goods (treasure, in other words) like River City Ransom.

As the game gets on, it starts becoming weird. For instance, entering an underground subway to take a shortcut to enemy territory (it's a popular destination for games like Final Fight) puts you head-to-head against sewer zombies and all manner of evil subterranean creatures. As you emerge, you find out that the criminal gang has somehow been able to summon demons to take over the city. But it doesn't stop there, as after you enter the tower that the criminal gang has taken over, they start transporting you to various dimensions they've taken over. You end up having to take out robots from the future, medieval dragons and knights, and a hellish dimension of colossal Cthulhu creatures - all of whom bear the symbol of the criminal organisation. You find out that the criminals are actually an incredibly powerful secret sect that has been planning the apocalypse for millenia and taking your girlfriend was the final step; yet no matter what they throw at you you're able to beat the crap out of it with "video game kung-fu" moves and a headband.

The game is sort of both a spoof and an homage to all scrolling fighters. You frequently take on opponents many times your size and strength, and have to figure out the best way of kicking it in the face. While also keeping the gameplay simple and layering on the epicness boss fight by boss fight, there is a degree of RPG-esque development for your character: You can extend damage dealt, health and defensive power by earning "XP" from opponents. This XP is frequently flowing in from the hordes of creatures you're fighting. As well as the above augments, you can also make yourself "luckier" (increase drops), upgrade and modify combo attacks as well as purchase "summons": an additional fighter controlled by the computer who will fight on your side for a limited duration. These summons may be related either to older scrolling fighters - Abobo may show up therefore - or simply kickass warriors in general from all sorts of media. Having the T-800/Conan/Bruce Lee/Rocky/whoever on your side would help out a lot.

Because the game wants you to keep moving and not worry about levelling yourself, you can decide a general path for the XP to go in, letting it choose your next power-up for the sort of fighter you're suited to. If you like mindless tanks that wade in and clobber everything (and who doesn't?), the game will aim for power-ups that increase defence, health and attack power and ignore some of the more technical stuff. If you want to be a technical fighter though, it'll attempt to integrate more special attacks and combo modifiers in lieu of flat-out stat bonuses for the advanced player. You do of course have the option to keep track of what power-up you'll next receive - all XP goes towards one new power-up at a time, and you can assign which power-up should be the next one you learn - but if you have three other friends playing along this system can be set up to be entirely automatic in order to avoid long pauses during the fun.

The intention of this game is to start with beating up thugs on the street with five inch health bars that say "Slick" or "Morris" on them to massive bosses like giant skeletal dragons called "The Terrorwyrm" with seven or eight full screen-length health bars that go down just as rapidly as the thugs' did as you pummel it with atomic spin kicks. Awesomeness and lack of any kind of intelligent stimulation is the aim of this game, and I hope to design something like the above that will deliver on this front.

Final Fantasy XII

I promised myself I wouldn't do any more game reviews for the blog for two reasons:

1) Opinions on the internet.
2) Going on about how great other games are sort of highlights the amateur status of my own ideas.

However, my month-long obsession with this title warranted an article, simply because I've been unable to play or think about anything else. As a huge fan of all the Final Fantasy titles, I can safely say that this is my favorite.

Rather than go on about the graphics (amazing, but FF games are always top notch in this department) or music (again, amazing, especially the epic boss themes) or even the story (which is pretty standard) I'll concentrate on what makes this FF stand out above others.

First of all I should mention the battle system. While the manual introduces the game's combat as "the brand new Active Dimension Battle system", it's actually more a progression of Vagrant Story's strategic real-time combat and the real-time battle systems of a few other FF titles, notably FFXI (and many modern MMORPGs in general come to think of it) and FF:Crystal Chronicles. Making the game considerably more interesting than the usual endless chain of random encounters, players are now allowed to go where they want and take down the opponents they choose. You can often just go exploring the entire continent instead of following the next story goal, levelling yourself up to become inhumanly powerful and finding all sorts of hidden bosses and areas. You can follow the game's Hunting subquest which rewards you for taking down powerful monsters, or look for secret Espers (monsters you can summon) or even kill specific amounts of common enemies to learn secret information about new items, background on the areas/maps in the game or just jokey anecdotes in and about the world of Ivalice. Non-linearity of this scope in a Final Fantasy game is a new and welcome change.

The two new much-lauded features of FFXII are Gambits and the License Board. Gambits are a brilliant way to introduce configurable AI strategies for your characters to automatically follow in the field. It ranges from simple commands such as attacking the closest enemy and healing when low on health up to those such as casting Cure spells on undead enemies, using Potions on characters if you have more than 10 left, casting high-level black magic on your own characters when they have Reflect on them... The system allows for some amazingly complex planning and allows you to sit back and watch your stratagems go to work. Best of all, the game frequently introduces new Gambits as either treasures or buyable items, allowing you to test the waters with the simple modifiers before diving right into the more complex set-ups. Or you can ignore the Gambits and direct the characters manually if you so choose.

The License Board is less innovative though. It's basically FFX's Sphere Grid dumbed down a little using the old standard of Ability Points to direct your characters' developments. Like the Sphere Grid, you can choose the direction of how you want a character to grow; either using the old job system as a rough guide (a "warrior" character might acquire weapons and strength boosts and forgo magic) or abandoning it altogether. Unlike the Sphere Grid, all six playable characters start in the same place pretty much, so right at the start you have full command over who should become the short range fighters, the healers, mages, thieves and so on. Special areas of the License Board allow characters to learn Summonings and unique moves called "Quickenings" (nothing to do with beheading Immortals), these squares are then removed from everyone else's boards forcing you to develop your characters uniquely so they can all work towards acquiring their own seperate Quickenings at the edges and corners of the License Board.

Quickenings (which are the game's version of Limit Breaks - a classic FF staple) are controlled in a fast-paced mini-game of sorts where you quickly (hence the name?) follow one Quickening attack with another, and continue the chain for as long as possible. Damage is usually random, so one or two Quickenings may end up doing far less damage than even a normal attack and since they drain all your magic away such a result would be very bad indeed. Of course, getting a chain up into the 10s and 20s may end up destroying the boss in one hit, so it's a choice you may want to consider. Again, this make-or-break super-attack system is another example of FFXII giving players choices, instead of making the Limit Breaks mandatory if you want to take down a particularly difficult boss like with previous 3D FF games (spamming Renzokuken with Squall in FF8, for example).

I guess I'll finish by saying how the world of Ivalice is really starting to become a welcome "home" for the FF universe; the races and history of the world are fairly constant but the games are all different enough to stop it from being too overplayed. The new Summons are all bosses from FFT (a game I love which has a lot in common with FFXII) while the old summons (Shiva, Ifrit et al) cameo as the names of the gigantic airships of the token evil empire. FFTA is closely linked with this game too, bringing that annoying moogle commander Montblanc and most of the game's inventory across.

It remains an indefinable pleasure that FFXII is trying new things and a whole new battle system while still maintaining that innate FF charm and playability. I suspect I'll be playing it for quite a while longer.