So the ingredients for this year's Game Chef have been released. This year's theme is a picture. I am allowed to interpret it however I like. It just must influence me as I design.Now looking at the picture I think of these things: traversal, transport, movement, ascension, bilocality(is that even a word?), Alien, falling, midgard, midland, middle. I guess I will let that simmer for a while.
I thin had to take 2-3 of the ingredients and incorporate them into my design. Again these ingredients are pictures. I chose three of them. here they are, as well as my thoughts on each one:
Apple turns, corruption, decay, madness, depression, Lovecraft, whispers of temptation, trap, poison, poison apple, white queen, fairest, endless sleep...
Paper lantern, illumination, will o' the wisp, prayer in the dark, alone, searching, enchanting, looking, hope, falsity, walking in the dark(heh), blindness, back is turned, seeking, truth
Snow on the mind, geometric shape, fractal mind, fractal universe, eternal snowflake of the minds eye, madness, crystallized, OCD, blank, hollow, falling, mindscape, astral snowstorm, wilderness of the mind.So that is my first go at brainstorming ideas. I have a few themes that are recuring and I think I have a few ideas on the mechanics and teh type of game I will be making. I think I am looking at a game about alien gods who treat earth as their playground(the idea of the middle realm), they use their fantastic mental powers to control the minds of most humans. they are great worms that seek to control mankind, hollow them out for food. perhaps the characters play the roles of people who have been hollowed out, but did not die, instead they replaced their minds with something else. perhaps they are the lamp lighters, those who seek to take humanity back from the horrors that stole the minds of humanity oh so long ago.
In the beginning there was Man and Woman. They lived in a garden. that garden was Earth. Into that garden came the Worm. Crawling and slithering and oozing into the garden. where it passed plants withered and fruit rotted o the vine. It came to Man and Woman and seeing them grew envious. It wanted what they had. The Worm slithered into the minds of Man and Woman. Since that day, Man and Woman have been slaves. Only we few, the hollow and the empty, see the Worm. We fight as we can, as long as we can. We fight for our lives, we fight for our freedom. We fight for the future.
Based in "real-world" earth? I quite like it. The story you've got there sounds pretty original (some of the individual elements may have been done before, but what hasn't?).
ReplyDeleteA random idea that came into my head is that perhaps the presence of the Worm explains humanity's fascination with gold. Perhaps the Lamp-lighters are freed from that curse.
Apart from that, here are a bunch of questions that come to mind, maybe you can answer them:
The term "Lamp-lighters" implies that they're not just dealing in ad-hoc "fight the power" but have something specific they can do to push back the darkness (lighting the metaphorical lamp --- if it /is/ metaphorical). How does one "light a lamp"? I guess it is non-trivial or we would have won by now. Who does it affect, is it a physical effect that encompasses a geographical area? Or does it affect a social group of people, perhaps a family? Are people freed in this manner capable of becoming Lamp-lighters themselves, or is that only possible for those who have been hollowed out? What sustains the Lamp-lighters in spite of their having been consumed, is there another power at work?
Is there any way to tell if someone is Worm-infested, a Lamp-lighter, or free? Does the Worm affect people from childhood onward, or is it something that affects adults; is that why so many adults lose their dreams? Do people naturally die of old age/sickness, or is that just a physical symptom of being hollowed out? Does the Worm have any direct human agents, whether wittingly or otherwise? Or does it just act through the mass action and culture of humanity? When the Lamp-lighters succeed in freeing some people, what happens to the wormy things crawling around in their souls --- do they just shrivel and die, or do they take a physical form to fight for their existence?
Okay, I'll stop for breath now.