GAME IDEA!

GAME IDEA

I talked to my brother and he helped me come up with a few more ideas for the Game Idea with the girl and the alligator.

Girl crashes on planet (hyper-sleep?), you then explore the planet. Eventually the girl starts to go crazy (from loneliness) and sees hallucinations (things chasing her, the player has to run away) she turns around and its gone. (could be linked with her past) Eventually she finds an alligator amidst the vast planet with no life form. The alligator is aggressive at first but the player realizes that she is just protecting her eggs. (a-sexual, it fertilizes its own eggs). The player has to make sure that nothing happens to the creature as it is the only life form on the planet. Every time it turns night-time, a large creature (machine) circles the planet, the alligator gets scared and the player and alligator have to hide from it. If the machine finds you, it kills you. (re-spawn). (maybe if the alligator dies, the game continues, alternative ending?)

The player has a future map thing which shows you certain things on the planet to check out. The player eventually gets to temples where you have to puzzle solve to get through. (maybe there are traps, there are things written on walls !micro narrative!, am I right??). The player gets small hints along the way as to why the planet is uninhabited. As the player gets through the temple, they activate a button, the player has to travel to each temple and turn off each button in order to turn off the massive machine. Once the player turns off all the buttons, the machine is meant to die, but it doesn't. The player has to find a new way to kill the machine (maybe an epic fight with the alligator and the machine, maybe the alligator dies and the player has to look after its eggs, making sure they survive and create new life form on the planet) – maybe gameplay or ending of the game- or the player uses nature to somehow kill it?-

The planet is smaller than earth, and circulates faster, making day and night happen faster. Insects are the only thing that exists on the planet. All of the trees, flowers etc is perfectly fine.

Earth has become overpopulated, scientist search out a new planet to go to and find the perfect one (insert cool name here). However, the planet is full of life and creatures that there is no room for all the humans, they send out engineers and scientist to create a machine to kill off half of the creatures so that the humans can come live on it. The machine malfunctions and destroys all life from on the planet (except the alligator). The scientists and engineers quickly realize and send out help to earth. No response comes back and the scientists and engineers are killed by the machine.

-maybe they created the buttons to switch off the machine but were not able to turn them off in time- (seems kinda anti-climatic though) Or they couldn't find a way to switch it off and that's why they send for help.

Maybe the girl worked for NASA and had to leave her family behind in order to go seek out new planets to live on, but she ended up crashing on that planet instead.

Game play: puzzles, open world, maybe the character has to survive (eat drink) and look after the alligator as well (thirsty etc). Maybe if you become too dehydrated, you start seeing hallucinations from your past (or there's actually the ghosts of the planet that wonder the planet sometimes)

Maybe you see shadows every now and then and if the player chooses to follow them it will lead them to the temple/or to a reward.
The girl wears a spacesuit and a helmet, when she finds the creature (alligator thing or mad up creature) she takes off her helmet which causes the alligator go go angry, the player has to quickly put the helmet back on (the alligator hates humans because they were on the planet before). Maybe the player has a motorbike they can travel on but the alligator crushes it, maybe later on as the girl and the alligator become friends, you can eventually ride it?
The shadows on the planet (ghosts of the creatures and humans) lead the player to the temple. Maybe when she starts hallucinating, a mix between hallucination and ghosts. The player then has to follow them.
Maybe the player has to climb stuff (Uncharted) to get into the temple.
Maybe the protagonist is a robot and was sent to the planet to check for life from and destroy the massive machine. At the end of the game she looks at her wrist (where she can send out word to the earth that the planet is save again) and decided to throw it away, or not to call it. It ends with the robot surrounded with life on the planet again.

The player can make stuff out of stuff (build shelter, make a boat, make transport). Maybe the player can help the environment as well (make sure the flowers are blooming or something).
The end temple is the Machine!! The player has to find a way to get inside it and destroy it.
As the game progresses, the player finds other spaceships and finds the pilots, they look exactly like her, the player finds out that she is actually a robot.
The player has to find all the bodies of the pilots as they have a chip in them. Once the player collects all of them, the backstory is revealed.
thinks past her programming, evolves through the game

Player(s): Is the game single or multiplayer?

The game is single player.

Genre: What genre is it (if it is a hybrid, or no genre is easily identifiable, what genres are influences?)

The Genre is adventure, art game.

Background: Where does it take place? What story or backstory drives the experience? Who are the main characters of the story, or what is the main focus of the experience?

The main character of the story is a female robot, who crashes on a planet with the mission to find life form.

The main focus of the experience is world exploration and narrative, the player is meant to have a lot of freedom at the start of the game and just explore the planet. As the player gets deeper in the game more hints at story are presented which keep the player playing to find out more.

The game starts off with the protagonist (female main character, NOVA) crashing on a planet. The player then takes full controll; Nova's main mission is to find life form. Nova has a sensor detect life from, so if the player gets close to one it will 'beep'. However, the sensor sometimes detects life where there is none, shadows appear on the ground and run away and the player has to follow them. The day and nights on the planet draw quickly, as the planet's circulation is faster than on earth. The shadows lead the player to a cave where they find a life form. Nova takes off her helmet in a friendly gesture but the creature gets aggressive and won't let the player near it. Nova quicklty puts on her helmet again. (this is all out of view for the player so they don't get to see her face). Night strikes and loud stomps are heard in the distance. The creature whimpers and quickly hides in its cave. A large black machine-like creature with spotlights as eyes circles the planet. The player then has to quickly hide with the creature in the cave. Inide the cave, Nova has to gather wood to make a fire. When the fire is lit, it illuminates markings inside the cave, showing that humans have been on the planet. The player and the creature venture deeper inside the cave until they arrive at a large door where the player has to figure out the puzzle in order to open it. Once it is opened more puzzles await the player inside a large temple. The player has to jump onto things and always make sure that nothing happens to the creature they are travelling with. Once the player reaches the end of the temple, they find a large switch with a note attached to it: find all 5 temples. The player activates the switch which causes the temple to fall apart. The player has to quickly escape the temple with its new sidekick. Once outside, the player has a new task: to find all 5 temples. Nova takes off her helmet and the creature doesn't budge this time, showing that it trusts her now. Nova's fave is revealed to the player: a bald young woman. The player then has to explore the planet and hide away at night when the machine comes and find all 5 temples. Throughout the planet, there are spaceships scattered, which if the player finds them, reveal that they all look the same as Nova's spaceship. As the player progresses through each temple, more things will be revealed; there is the body of the pilot hidden in every temple, they all wear the same outfit as Nova and have a micro-chip, the player has to collect all of them to find out the backstory, but their heads are missing. The player can choose to which temple they want to go first, it doesn't matter in which order they play in. When the player reaches the fourth one, they find another pilot body, but with its head still attached. Nova decides to take off their helmet; it reveals the same face as Nova's. Nova sees that she was looking at something. Nova traces her look and sees a drawing of the machine; the last temple. The player then has to wait till night to search for the Machine and find a way inside it. Once the player is inside, more clever puzzles await and once the player reaches the end of the temple, they are presented with the last pilot body. The player collects the last micor-chip and takes off their helmet. Nova puts the micor-chip at the back of her neck, irt reveals the backstory: The Earth had become too overpopulated that makind seeked out a new planet to move to. They found this one. There were too many animals living on it so they send out engineers and scientists to create a machine that would destroy half of the planet's population so that mankind could move there. The machine started to malfunction and destroyed all the life form on the planet, the scientists and engineers quickly realized and send out help to earth, no response came back. They lost all hope and were killed by the machine.

Nova then activates the last switch and the machine dies. Nova comes out of the machine with her sidekick and looks at her wrist; bush button if life found. Nova smiles and turns away from it, towards her friend. The creatures eggs hatch and the flowers start to bloom.

Game entities: Who or what populates your game? E.g. player characters, non-player characters, monsters, enemies, etc. Descriptions of a minimum of 3 game entities must be provided unless otherwise agreed upon with your lecturer.

The player character is Nova, a robot who has AI. The non-player characters is the creature the player befriends and later in the game can ride on. The enemy is the massive machine that roams the planet.

Game goals: What/who do the players control? What are players trying to achieve? What do they do? What are the major challenges?

Reason: Why create this game? What is special, exciting or fun about it?

I like the idea of making a game with a message behind it, I think it would be a fun game because the player has a varitey of gameplay: open world, puzzle solving and adventure. I aslo like the freedom of roaming around in a world with a narrative that keeps the player interested as well.

Influential games: Include screenshots of similar games you could use for ideas/reference while designing the game further (5 minimum). Annotate your screenshots with reasons why they are interesting and will be useful (key features, gameplay, look, layout, controls, etc.).

GAME LOOK
I looked at the art styles of games, I imagine my game idea world to be similar to "No Man's Sky" and "Journey" and I imagine the character's style to be similar to "Folklore" and "Wind Waker". A simple style with some complexity.

GAMEPLAY
I'd imagine the gameplay to be a mix between Uncharted (puzzles), Windwaker, Journey and Red Dead Redemption. 3rd person view (perhaps a bit further away so that the player can soak in the environment), similar to Journey. I really liked the designs of the temples of Zelda (some of the puzzles not so much...). I liked how in Uncharted the puzzles were clever and made you think, rather than find a thing to shoot at and then the door opens. Journey has a little bit of puzzle solve as well, I think it would be interesting to have a mix of hard puzzles and easy ones.