Welcome back to Bullet
Points, a series that covers topics of large variety in games, movies,
comics, and really anything that spells out “nerd.” It’s just a few weeks
before the big E3 announcement jamboree, meaning gaming news slows to a crawl.
I could talk about the big “Kickstarter Boom” going on with games like
Yooka-Laylee and Bloodstained showing companies like Microsoft and Konami how
horrible they’re failing, but I won’t. Folks like Jim Sterling have already
covered that.
Today, I still want to talk about games, but I think I’ll do
something more unique and tell you a game idea I have recently thrown together.
If I were a capable game programmer / designer, I’d make it myself. But since
I’m not and probably won’t be for some time, I’ll put this idea to the ether
and see if anyone will pick it up and run with it. Maybe it’ll get made then
and I can enjoy my genius idea after a master craftsman of gaming puts it
together instead of vomiting up some code on my keyboard and calling it a
playable work of art.
The idea came to me when I joking made a complaint about how
a less than stellar job I had was stealing my time when I could have been more
productive. The phrase “stealing time” stuck with me. Then I kept messing
around with the idea, creating something like a Time-Vampire, which I know has
been done in films like that somewhat recent one with Justin Timberlake proving
to the world he is a capable actor. So the main crux of the game is you steal
time from enemies in the game. Why? Because you have a limited lifespan which
acts as the variable determining whether you can continue or you get a game
over. 
In the beginning, you meet “Father Time” or whoever the
time-based villain will be. He places a curse on your protagonist for doing
something stupid, which gives you only 99 seconds to live. In that short span
of 99 seconds, you must decide what you’re going to do and how you intend to do
it. You can choose to do nothing and accept fate. You can choose to stay in
your home and do what little things you can to feel normal for the remainder of
your life. Or you can take action and try to find ways to extend your time just
long enough to get your life back.
When the timer reaches zero, the game ends and you must
start over from the beginning. Time can be extended by stealing time from
others and killing them. But if you want to be a pacifist, you can find relics
to slow the passage of time, speed up time, extend your time, or find pockets
of space in the world where time stands still, allowing you to get more time
than expected. There would also be secret paths and puzzles, that allow you to
get through areas faster to meet Father Time before the lifespan expires.
I came up with the alternate paths idea, trying to think of
ways to make the time-gimmick feel more fluid and varied. The first way was
thinking about what things you could do at the very start of the game to
explore the mechanic, of if you even wanted to. The idea isn’t to give the game
multiple endings based on your actions, but just different ways to complete the
game as you see fit. I hate games that don’t let me pass by enemies without
killing them because sometimes I just want to play pacifist and get to the
objective with nothing else in mind. Consider it the rebel side of me to not want
to kill in a game where you’re given a shit ton of guns.
I also thought the idea of having “Warp-Pipe” like areas
where you can skip entire segments of the game would be needed to progress for
the pacifist run would be necessary in order to reach the end within the
allotted time. And, again, certain items or power-ups would benefit the player
as well to extend whatever little time they had remaining. With any luck and
the right set of skills, this could be done, but otherwise they might have to
resort to hurting others.
And in hurting others, I think the AI of NPCs would have to
change as you progress. The more you kill in order to survive, the more
aggressive they act towards you. By the end of the game, you could have made
yourself a wanted criminal for the mass murder of countless hundreds of people
or you could simply pass by to Father Time’s chambers completely unnoticed
because you’ve not hurt anyone. Perhaps have it where the first three kills
only alert those nearest to the player. Then the next three kills alert enemies
just outside your field of view. The next three alert the entire level. Then the
next three make all NPCs aggressive or hostile (save for the small few who
might be needed for progression).
The main point of the game, or the “message” behind it.
Would be that time is what you make of it and by giving players so little time,
it gives them a moment to decide how they want to spend their final moments. Do
they spend it in a panic? Do they spend it reflecting on their life (however
short it was)? Do they simply contemplate life? Do they take action? Do they
hurt others to ensure their own survival? Do they trust anyone or anything else
to be able to help them and not waste their time? These are all questions I
want players to ask in this hypothetical game idea as they play the game.
So if you had a limited amount of time left and knew how
long it was, what would you do with it? Leave a comment below or maybe discuss
your own suggestions for how to improve this game idea. If you enjoyed the
read, leave a comment, like, share, or subscribe to the blog or YouTube
Channel. We’ll be back with more BulletPoints very soon and we hope to see you
there.
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