Would this game be worth creating?

I'm interested in working on a solo pet project and the idea seems very interesting. Would you play this game at all Sup Forums?

strawpoll.me/11808532

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Have a semi retarded dog but looks super cute pic.

If done well most will like it so give it try and see what you can make

That's fair but the Strawpoll says otherwise. If anyone could give me further reasons on why they don't like the idea i'd gladly welcome that as well. Thank you for everyone who voted so far.

sounds fucking gay

Unfortunate, can you explain to me on what parts you feel are shit? Or just all of it?

I like the concept but I can't really envision what the gameplay would be beyond a visual novel.

A lot of these I see sound cool but boil down to just making choices and having things happen, not much gameplay involved. If you can actually spin it to be fun then go for it.

If it were done right I'd play the shit out of it. I wouldn't play a one-man attempt at it, though.

By done right, I mean, you are a massive teddy bear in the world of Ted (movie) but gameplay like GTA.

You could just mod GTA:SA. There's almost certainly a Ted model in it.
Alternatively, I think there was one game where you played as some sort of serial killer bear. Don't remember the name, tho

That sounds like you hit the nail on the head. I was thinking a third person stuffed animal running around which used a skill point system. You'd have to use planning, stealth, and understanding of enemy AI in order to have success in the beginning of the game. You are very weak in the beginning and you can't really hurt much so in order to actually kill anyone you'd have to plan a strategy and have them fall into the trap as your attacks would be almost useless. Each time you are successful you would be rewarded with hugs, emotions and the like from the girl. You would also be given skill points to use because you benefit from her care. This could give the player the ability to become stronger, utilize heavy items like knives and hammers, and even get to the point where you could kill people/animals one on one if you so chose.

I was thinking along those lines. Reward the player for success, and make failures hard, such as killing her dad. If you regret killing her dad you'd have to sacrifice one of your limbs through satanic ritual in order to go back into the past. You would eventually receive a new limb if you nurtured the girl to love you and sew you back together, or you'd have to replace it on your own which prove difficult. Losing limbs would take away skill points. So we'd emphasize on players making choices they are comfortable with.

How does that sound?

Adding on some things, for Stealth I would probably try to emulate Hitman but with a stuffed animal scenario. Along with that, know that you would be clumsy in moving from the start. I'm thinking that with each skill you put your points into, you wouldn't be great at doing these things in the beginning. With movement you could still move alright but sometimes you'd falter and stumble/fall. Utilizing experience alongside skill points could help you become a fast runner and could even jump to high places (with your demonic skill point help), and create new scenarios where you could sit perched and watch as a scout for new information from her family, friends, and foes. Pressing F would make you go ragdoll and seem like you're just lying on the ground.

Sounds like shit.

If you could just go into it a little more on why it sounds like shit that would be greatly appreciated. I'm starting to form a consensus on whether or not it's a good idea, I would value your input though.

Problem with a tripping mechanic is nobody wants 2 things:
1. Movement mechanics that are so complicated you might fuck up and trip, considering how often every character moves
2. Random tripping they have no control of that could come at a pivitol moment in their game and ruin everything.
And those are just about the only ways to implement tripping.

As for the rest I don't like the ritual shit, ditch it, hurts the theme, and it sounds like a bit much focus on the killing aspect, try adding shit like subtle persuaion or sabotage.

It's not a bad idea but it's gotta cover a lot of bases and have a lot of content to be good.

Good points, currently just throwing out ideas but am open to a lot of things. The player would have to probably go through a tutorial stage where it becomes alive and struggles to function with movement. Once passing the tutorial the player would receive just enough skill points to be allowed to understand the trait system. They would get one point per branch of the skilltree, which would considerably improve each piece. The tripping at this point would happen much less often, and only be triggered by key points in a mission and only if they were below the threshold. I do understand that tripping could be well frustrating if someone failed because of it. I will definitely keep that in mind and never trigger it when things become very crucial to success. Perhaps including a type of seriousness meter, which if it became more serious the character became more alert and thus stopped tripping. I am also suggesting infrequent falls and tripping, it definitely wouldn't be a key component.

For the ritual stuff, I understand. I wouldn't want to make the game too emphasized on the killing, subtly would be much appreciated and the more we think about it, killing would have very serious consequences and be very hard to do. I would probably decide that you could only start one on one killing once you are at the near end of the game, otherwise it would take a lot of plotting and strategy to off someone. I like the persuasion technique as well. Every night when she goes to bed you can whisper things into her ear which help you sway her to your decisions and ideas for her future. Want her to be popular? Help her succeed with confidence in her mentality by leaving a Youtube link open on her computer on how to be confident and likeable. wish her to be a sociopath? Influence her by whispering in her ear that all her friends are out to betray her and she cannot trust anybody.

Subtly and persuasion are key, sabotage duly noted. Killing can have very negative effects.

What would the hypothetical artstyle choice be? Life is Strange ish? Cartoonish stylized 3D? 2D RPG MAKER shit? that is really important

3D, most likely semi-realism. The girl would have to probably be appealing which could help strengthen emotional ties to the girl. Game would probably end up going to a darker route, but total Satanism is not concrete yet, especially not for the prototype. Do you think this would be an acceptable choice?

I think a stylized look would help the game with standing out more

>The girl would have to probably be appealing which could help strengthen emotional ties to the girl
You should worry more about the way you will write her, since the player giving a fuck about the girl is obligatory to move forward

As for the rest, try to aim at being believable, not appealing, forced feels and waifu bait should be avoided at all costs

Fair enough. I will definitely look into stylized artstyles for successful games, as artstyle can usually be changed just within the materials and shaders themselves. Characters might need to be made in that style however.

When you say believable, are you saying to write an average pre-teen girl? Because I do know with life experience they can be very annoying and adhere to stereotypes for little girls. When I say appealing I'm also not saying waifu draw in, I'm just saying someone who will be able to be empathized with and cared for by the player. As a reference from The Last of Us, a lot of players actually cared for Ellie while they played through the game. Characters would have to be believable and strong, so by that I mean appealing. Hope I could clear up any misunderstanding.

In regards to the tutorial segment, you've gotta keep in mind that nobody likes getting strangle held by the controls for long, so keep it brief. Also I'm not a fan of the idea of it "coming alive", leaving its origins and details about it a mystery would be cooler I think.

Persuasion has a lot more than just whispers though, from editing her papers to get her higher grades to boost confidence but suspicion, planting fake evidence that would lead to her father thinking she's been slacking off/doing drugs/some shit that causes her to get grounded and keeps her at home and away from outside influences, wrecking havoc with the neighbors in a way that causes the family to need to move to a new area, changing the influences and things she is exposed to, all kinds of shit.

It'd be important to realize the outside influences bit, as she is going to change a lot and you'll need to be really good to get her to become exactly what you want her to be. You'd need to be a fucking behavioral scientist to know everything about how children develop in the teen years, but I'd say try talking to some parents with daughters if you can to poll for how their children developed and changed.

You're trying to convince the player they're manipulating a real human being, not exploiting a faulty AI. That's key, get as close to that as possible within a computer if you want something ground-breaking. I've got high expecations, if you couldn't tell.

This would also work if it was given the chibi robo style, having only a few characters knowing you can move like other toys or stuffed animals/creatures, maybe one human that's a bit mentality unstable

Too fucking niche for the AAA Open World meme.

>bullies intent on killing her
what

Expectations noted, but the higher they go the harder the fall is. I really like your details on persuasion. Perhaps her father seems like an asshole in the beginning because the player is receiving the girls outlook on him as that. As time goes on however you will begin to realize that the father is actually a loving man, and just has his own demons he has to deal with. I think each decision you make to mold the girl into what you want, the harder it will be to keep up with your amendments. If you give her A+ in all her homework she will have great grades but terrible intelligence. Signing her up for school tutoring could be one way of helping her, alongside possible other ways to help her become smarter. Leaving books on her bed with a note saying "From dad" could help her become studious and intelligent.

I really like the ideas you've come up with, because in reality the player decides what the girl can become, it's not set on just making her have a great life. The player could in theory be very selfish because if she has a successful life she could very well leave you.

What is this shit? That was rhetorical. It's shit.

change the preteen girl to a preteen boy.

Idea Guy: The Game

It wouldn't be AAA graphics and it certainly wouldn't be SKYRIM YOU CAN GO ON THAT MOUNTAIN blah blah blah horseshit. One home, a small school, and a block that the house sits on with perhaps one drug store on the corner. I don't want to make a ton of work for myself and doing a huge neighborhood with a suburb would be retarded. In all reality the game would take the most place inside the home, with the neighboring homes.

Amended. Bullies intent on fucking with her mentally and physically. I did not write the original image.

Yeah, I think having 1-3 supporting stuffed animals could definitely help, with one main supporting role as a ear to listen to your troubles and help you with your "problems". Characters you could use to fetch you things or help you with missions could also work.

>someone who will be able to be empathized with and cared for by the player
Thing is, that depends on whoever is playing, if you care too much about making the character likable you will just end with one of those bland minority characters from comics and cartoons nobody likes, even if you made her friendly and nice to the player someone would still hate her, drop the game and call it shit

you will have more luck with picking a path and going balls deep into that, which means giving the character believable (AKA shit that would make sense to be there based on her personality, the place where she lives, her childhood etc) traits like being an hypocrite, liking indoors, being afraid of elephants or finding pineapple pizza disgusting. you don't need to literally explain where everything comes from through exposition, just have the sketchy DEEPEST LORE shit inside your head and choose what information you think its important enough to be delivered to the player and in what order to make the player interested in whatever is going on with her

Very good point. Humans are individuals, not all the same. I will add that writing would probably take place in later stages, as I'd like to get character movement, the base home, and base mechanics up and running before I peak my head here again. I will be saving all of the ideas posted here, they will most likely be very helpful to expand on later.

What would you actually do, specifically, and how would it be fun?

As far as I can tell, the game loop is
Do nothing while girl complains about problems at school > Abstract idea of interacting with things, somehow > Repeat

You should shoot for cell shading if you can. or at least aim at making it look cartoony.

Perfect artstyle for this would be Valkyria Chronicles, video of it in motion coming up: youtube.com/watch?v=mnl0QXhK1wA

That might be a bit much to shoot for, but I hope it gives you an idea of what I mean.

Now as far as the "appealing" aspects of a pre-teen girl, think less about Ellie. She's honestly a bad example of what you want since she lacks the.... I don't wanna say innocence, but more like the naiveness of youth. She's a girl that had to kill ffs. Instead look towards Joel actual daughter from the prologue. She's more similar to what you want to shoot for and she's got a bit of the cliches you mention which you should not avoid. if you want a "realistic" portrayal they should be in, just make sure they don't dominate her character or she WILL be the stereotype, If you go the other way and avoid them she will seem too doll-like, and you've already established you don't just want her to be a waifu.

Reasons it's a bad idea;

>It's about a preteen girl
you've already lost me

>you play as her stuffed animal trying to better her life
Okay. In Mario, you get to the end of the level by jumping on Goombas. In Halo, you get to the end of the level by shooting the guys. In this game, you ... what? What do you do?

Oh wait you "kill her father", "pass messages to the boy she likes", "beat up bullies", "sabotage parts of her life just to keep her dependent on you" ... fucking user ... what the fuck??

Are you trying to be the next Gone Home? If so go for it.

It's a super cute dog, why are you calling it retarded?

The base loop is that the girl tells you her current problems or dilemmas, goes to sleep, and then you can move around and do whatever for eight ingame hours which would really be a length of minutes depending on how fast the game would be decided to move. Then the girl goes to school and sometimes takes you, most times doesn't, especially during the older stages. While this happens you're free to do whatever you want at home while she's at school, and can snoop around, explore, and fulfill your own quests you choose, alongside interaction with 1-3 other stuffed animals. When she comes home often times she would interact with her parents, usually through a dinner type deal. The main human NPCs would be her, her father, and possibly her mother who could stay at home or etc. The loop wouldn't only have you move during set stages, you would most likely be free to move around whenever you want too, with minimal restricted movement, most likely when she confides in you.
Ya of course, I'm just saying that the character learned to like Ellie because she still resembled a real person. In this scenario I would definitely go for a more realistic young girl and would probably have to talk with multiple parents who have had daughters.

Art style is noted and linked in the notepad.

That's not a game. That's a story. That's an "idea" that doesn't really have shit to do with a game. I fucking hate Ideaguys.

Now now, experimenting with things is how we get new things user, no need to toss it into the fire just yet.

when you see it in motion you can declare it shit, right now it's just ideafagging

WHY IS V BEING SHITPOSTED TO HELL

I'm having Metal Gear flashbacks here user
go on

fuck Sup Forums and it's faggotry

See
No because in this you would actually have gameplay. It wouldn't be a walking simulator.

You're right, that is basically a summary of an interactive story. It's something Sup Forums came up with and I was interested in expanding it to create a prototype.

It's a good concept, but a big problem would be branching choices. If not done right, you get something like Mass Effect where the choices are so minimal they dont change anything noteworthy and it just pisses people off cause choices were a selling point.

If done well, it's hard to execute. Usually it's hard to keep the same quality up, when the branching starts the quality would go down.

The only game I can think of the top of my head is Pathologic. You get to play from 3 viewpoints, and while essentially the game is the same it's 3 completely different experiences.

Look, I may have been too harsh, but seriously that in your pic really isn't a game. Try formulating it better. Write a small "pitch document" about it. You need to better explain HOW things work, and WHY things work that way. You say the stuffed animal can kill her father. How do you even get to that point. It's like taking MGS2 and saying "well, you can get naked".
What are the actual challenges? Is it just arbitrary choices? Then maybe a VN-like game with a heavier focus on story and characters would be better. Otherwise the game just smells of feature-creep. It's something too big for someone probably doing it alone, without actual experience and that still don't know what does he/she wants out of it.

Just my 2 cents.

That is a good counter. Creating too many choices would make it really hard to control and still make things seem worthwhile. Luckily I am assuming that many choices would just help mold the girl into what you want, with visible changes noticeable from the previous actions. Since multiple people have brought this up, I am also realizing that a lot of dialogue would be needed, with references to past points. That would definitely make the project a lot more grueling.

You're right, it really isn't much of a game definition. I didn't write it and saw it in an archive of past Sup Forums. I will definitely be making a base GDD and make a list of what is needed and what base mechanics are. Also yes, without a team it would take a very long time if I was to create everything mentioned in this thread and have it mesh together properly. I can however create a base prototype to show other and if it ever looked to be something good and worthwhile, I'm sure I could even put a small team together.

Bottom line for me is to make a base prototype with a good fleshed out house, a working stuffed animal, most likely a teddy bear with a movement system, alongside the skill tree implemented with a temporary girl character to create mechanics off of. Thank you for the sincere criticism.

If you want to make these important changes like her father dying then you need to compromise.

If her father dies, her aunt comes to live with her.
If her father lives, her aunt comes to live with her because her father died in an accident, or because he simply left her. Or because he got arrested for abuse etc

Regardless of what happens, her aunt ends up with her. BUT, the fact that you decided to take action and kill the father or simply let the time do it for you should have an effect on the child. If he left, he might decide to come back and put more psychological pressure on her. But maybe that's better than having her see him with his throat cut from ear to ear with her teddy smeared in blood

My point is, if you want choices you need to approach them in a smart way that doesn't require you to do a lot of extra work.

Violent acts might make the girl start to become violent and selfish, for YOU this might be good because she'll become a psychopath that talks with her teddy even when she grows up. Making her dependant on you

Making her life better might mold he to be a good and successful human, but then she throws you in a rubbish bin

No problem. But I still think that, for first timers, it's not a good idea to take a project too big/complex. It just kills all of your motivation. Even if you're going to get a team or whatever, try making smaller, but "complete" games. Participate in game jams, either alone or with friends. Before I actually got into the industry the times when I learned the most was during game jams. When you have only 48/72 hours to just make game you learn all sorts of tricks and shit that aren't taught anywhere.

This is very valuable as it points how to cut the work in half. The only problem I can see with it is that the player could easily recognize decision branches and it would take them out of the momentum. I will definitely be following that advice though as it could easily work to make things much nicer for me.

Yeah, I hear you. I'm currently a generalist and wanted to put some time when I got home to create my own pet project and see where I can go with it. Appreciate the advice.

what

this teddy bear game sounds unique, im not sure its something id play. But it sounds like this could be some epic casual tier. And that the stuff that makes money.

Having time limits on each game day could work out the best in a game like this is think. So like every morning youd have a little scene setting up the day and what your goals would be, comicbook style cutscene would work great here imo. And then depending what you did or didnt do during that game time would dictate how the story played out?

style something like slime rancher would look the best i think, so youd have teh colors and nice detail,,, but maybe thats too similar to the rest of the pixar type stuff

I like that there could be checklists for what you wanted to do. An interactive scene with your stuffed animal buddy who according to what needed to be done you could have help you give missions and quests. Now that I'm thinking more about it, each of the three stuffed animals have different specialties who you used to achieve different goals. Also, when you say comicbook style cutscene, what are you meaning? Also you wouldn't be able to dictate all of your own terms on what to do, sometimes the main story would force you to have to achieve things, and how you decide which way you go about it would influence the story.

I'm thinking that meshes but if you have further input I'd be happy to hear it.