So if you remember my game called swap its a puzzle based first person game where you can swap around the entire room witch is made entirely of squares or cubes and you progress threw diffrent rooms much like portal but i also wanted to add in a compelling story line but without making the game a copy cat of portal. i had one idea of a alien built rat maze and you the player are the rat figurtivaly your actually a human but you get the idea. So ya if you guys have any ideas let me know thanks.
I like the rat idea, I think I do anyway, - So your a rat/human and an alien is forcing you to go through mazes? I think thats really good! My idea - maybe your a human - get captured by another human (evil scientist?) and he forces you to go through these puzzles and keeps talking about your brian (“Brain test improving, mwhuaahahah”)!
you are a human i was just using the rat for example because of thows mazes with cheese at the end you know but ya i like the evil scientist idea but its kinda like glados in portal forcing you to do the puzzles.
You should align the story with the mechanics of the game.
The important question of your game is:
Why should someone play the game?
-> What is the goal of the game?
-> What is are the challenges of the game?
You can design the story around the answer of this question.
Tell why the “inital” situation is as it is.
Tell why the situation should be changed (motivation).
Tell what the resulting situation should/could be.
You do not tell the player the complete story. The player just need to feel as he is part of a story.
How about that:
Situation:
Space station hit by an meteorite. The meteorite contains alien artifacts. Some of them are broken by the impact.
The broken artifacts released nano bots. The nanobots interact with the space station environment system (walls, air condition, air supply, power supply, communication, whatever).
Infected systems do not behave as it should be. The station is not usable anymore.
The artifacts might be spread of the whole station. Broken artifacts might released different kind of nanobots. That way some parts of the station have a domination of a specific kind of nanobots.
The crew was evacuated before the meteorite impact (alternative locked in survival areas).
Players situation:
The player arrives from outside as “rescue” team. Why the player?
He is the only person in close range of the space station. A “headquarter” contacts the player at the beginning making him enter the station. (possible reasons: asked for help/support, money, hero, treats, emergency landing, planned landing… whatever background you like).
Think about a reason why the player can’t simply leave the station (infected shuttle after landing).
Goal:
- check what is going on (tutorial levels)
- survive
- reestablish the normal condition of the space station
- contact and rescue the crew members
- discover the alien artifacts (they might help)
BTW. the artifacts/nanobots do not need to be bad. They simply produce errors. (But you do not need to tell this to the player).
Is that enough?
edit:
The prize
Ah you need a prize for the player e.g. an epic end.
This can be an explanation why the player had to go through the whole game.
This can be an “happy-end”, “bad-end”, “open-end”(for sequels)
This can be more details regarding the background.
I suggest:
- the artifact is a probe of an alien race
- the goal of the probe was to analyze planets
- to do that the probe contained all this self-replicating nanobots
- on impact the master control unit was not activated
- on impact only some cluster controllers where activated forcing the nanobots performing useless things.
- happy end = master control unit fully activated => nanobots deactivated
- happy end = collecting all artifacts => assembling the complete artifact => receiving information regarding all the already discovered planets => option for new colonies => option for more artifacts
If you stick with the RatLab-Idea, then the Aliens might recently have discovered Earth and are now examining it, wherefor they try to »imitate« several Chemical Elements they find on Earth and Testing how they impact each other, while another Part of the Alien Scientist Team would study the Humans themselves – mostly via Field Study by watching they Everyday Life on Earth, but partially by, well, »inviting them« to their Ship. The Player would then be one of those happy Souls being kidn— invited and one Day the Guys from the Chemical Departure would be like »hey, Dudes from the Planetar Inhabitant Research Department! Lend us one of your ‘Examples’ so we can study the Earthlings Interaction with Elements«. (They might learn faster by watching this, for Earthlings are better used to usin’ the Elements than the Aliens are.)
And after a While the Aliens would then even decide to let you interact with THEIR Elements – fictional ones, you would make them up yourselves and how they would work.
Wow first i really like your idea monster, and i really really like your idea CA ligari i am kinda leaning toward the rat maze idea kinda like ligari’s thow but what if the aliens found earth and are looking for brains to build warriors to fight a battle with some other alien civilization so they look at the human brains and decide to kidnap a few including the player and test to see if there good enougth for there perposes. But they kidnap them at a really young age like a year old so that they have there enitre life span to study them witch to the aliens is like only a weak kinda like stone flys only live for a day but for them it probaly seams longer. anyways but they dont start the swap part of the testing witch is the gameplay until there teenagers but before that they just do small tests but you as the player dont remember any of that because they put you asleep everytime so all the player will know is waking up in a strange room and having to complete each level untill later on you start to remember things from your childhood being tested on and such.
or does that sound to generic?
Hmm, it sound s a bit boring.
From story point: What can they remember if they lived in a cage before ;). They would nether know the story.
Playing the game (swap) would not make the player a warrior at least not as we know warriors.
What would motivate the player to continue the level and the game?
Finally it has potential. You can give the character false memories and false tutors (rats). While playing the “player” finds out that the things are not they seem. with that you need two stories: The fake and the background story.
The players motivation would be to discover the background story and to discover the real goals of the tutors.
Such story offers options for other choices: Not following the main plot as given by the tutors.
well the player itself isnt a warrior the aliens are trying to harvest human brains to build like warriors for themselves and there testing to see if the human brain is smart enough for them to use and your not really in a cage you just get tested on when your a baby and such and you just get put asleep before they actually start but you still see whats going on before that but when your a teenager you start teh real testing of the game and after awhile maybe in a squeal you start to get bits and pieces of it back and you start to put things together and remember things.
hey look for brains, this idead is kind of old, I think that you cna be more creative than that, a good story line take at least a week of your time, try to write down something, when you are creating a history you need to fill the gaps on it with portions of history to link the characters and the content, the more abusrd history can be good if the writer fill those gaps.
Latelly the US movies are doing exactly the oposite, they are creating superficial histories with a plot full of dumb gaps, and I m kind of horrified how the histories are sucking latelly, spend time and try to create something smart, otherwise you ll have a lame history for your game.
ya it was just kinda ruff scratch of what the story is but ya the more i think of it its basically what they did on the movie “Skyline” witch sucked haha ya i agree im just kinda using this thread to brainstorm with people.
Well, why actually Aliens? I mean, how in the World did the Aliens get into the Story? How in the World to Warriors get into the Story?
It is a PUZZLE Game based on ELEMENTS.
I mean, Aliens are cool, I like Aliens, me freakin’ Nerd believes in Aliens, but for Stories, they are just the »Unoptanium« that you could use for any Story, but mostly it might be simple Randomness.
You see, if you are brainstorming, then suddenly »ALIENS« might be said and they would make it into the Game, but Brainstorming is totally unproductive, because Ideas get thrown together without Correlation: Rather try a Method of MINDMAPPING.
ELEMENTS --> Elementals --> Gods --> possibly Aliens
But hey, you simply could go with Gods, Elementals, some of those.
This would lead to Mythology and Religions, most Religions have their Roots in Nature Divinity and therefore praisin’ what we simplifiedly can call Elements.
So how about that as a Starting Point?
Well im killing the idea of them using human brains to make warriors for themselfs cause its basically a copy cat of the move skyline
and also by aliens dont mean like green guys with entenas and big eyes i want them to be more civilized i guess kinda looking like humans but with noticable diffrences and also the player will never know that they are in a testing chamber thing witch is the size of a desktop in a aliens labatory they just know they have to figure the puzzles out and then the story will play in and eventually they will figure it out. but aliens is just one idea im open to any. I like your idea of the gods but why would they be testing humans, and also i just dont want to go into all of that. This is very hard because theres a thin line between a good uniqe story for the game and very easly being to much like portals background story.
As written, you need something to motivate the player to continue.
The background story can be anything. You can even pick up a story of your daily live. Just something you usually would not think about. It can be even just a silly idea.
Your game more or less restricts you a “cubic” environment. That means nature and organic surfaces are mainly excluded.
- Sci-Fi is a good choice (as already mentioned)
- Micro-worlds can be good (tiny creatures living inside a stone, table, chair, tv, computer …
- Artificial/Virtual worlds can be good (e.g. lego, mindcraft, tron)
Ya and also what about releasing the game much like a tv series in episodes and season finale’s leaving the player in suspence, each episode would consist of 10 or 20 levels or parts.
On that Point you must know for yourself. I guess it is a good Idea, I am just a Bit fed up by that Episode-Trend.
You see, that modern Trend to split a Game into Episodes is actually due to practical Reasons: A Game gets developed, and at a Time where the Game is not finished but a Part of it is, that finished Part gets published, and if People like it, the Rest gets developed – otherwise there will, forever, be an unfinished Game. That is, of Course, practical for the Developers. But as I Player I always feel punked, because I want my Game as a complete one when I get it.
But 20 Levels would be a Lot for one »Episode«. In Fact, that even could make a half a Game – like Portal has 20 Testchambers before the Escape Part.
Well, you would benefit from splitting you Game into Episodes, and the Trend would not have gone on for Years now if People did not like the Concept. You would finish one Episode to see how People react, that would actually be like a huge Demo. From that Point of View it is just a Matter of Words, actually…
Yeah, go for it!
Ya i dont want it to feel like your getting ripped off or have to wait forever to get the whole story of the game it just plays out over a matter of time to build of the intensity and the curiosity for the player and get people to talk about the game and get it to be a phenomanone like minecraft or portal and not just another average game. And it takes you threw a journey so it makes you feel like apart of the world.
I would not care about episodes right now. Just finish one closed story.
You can embed it into a larger background. That is what a lot of series designs are (film or book or short story).
I refer to the sci-fi series “Perry Rhodan”. I really like them. The structure is quite cool.
Each story is a story by its own. You do not really need to know the previous stories to understand it.
Multiple stories form a cycle. Each single story tells a part of the cycle. But you do not need to know then for the single story.
Multiple cycles form a mega cycle.
The motivation is when you read several stories you get a grasp of the cycle background and you want more of that.
This is often done in TV series if they survive the first season (e.g. Babylon 5).
For an indy game that would be a bit to much. Better concentrate on a single plot. Just motivate the player to continue the game (especially when entering frustrating situations)
Hmm… ya i guess so considering its just my first game well serious one that i should focus more on a single thing like you said im just having trouble figuring out how to go about telling the story like without having a voice telling you things how would you do it what about 3 or 4 little bot like guys that cant speak but can only use facial expressions and point and things kinda like wall-e but that still doesnt solve the story aspect of it and i cant make it so you like go behind the scenes of the levels like you do in portal cause well portal does this allready.
A common way is to use intro scenes.
One large intro scene tells the player about the situation and where he fits into it. The easiest and very often used way are them nicely presented text pages. This is quite easy to achieve.
Then you can have briefing scenes before a level starts. They tell the player what is expected in the next level. Alternative you can use on the fly messages.
A summary scene can show an analysis how the player proceeded (showing points, time, achievements).
These things are quite easy to implement. You need a a GUI (that you might have already) and a way to provide text.
Make sure the player always know what he should do.