With the new year fast approaching, I feel an urge to create something new. Now that I'm done with my undergrad and have my work situation settled for the moment, it's a great opportunity to reinvent myself and put my free time towards a creative endeavor. In short, I want to take a proper stab at making a simple computer game.

For the past couple years I've had a number of ideas rolling around in my head, but haven't really had the opportunity to pursue any of them. As usual, most were hideously out of the realistic scope of my abilities, both quantitatively and qualitatively. My interest is in making narrative-based games, but I've too often used that as a crutch to build out long, plot-heavy concepts instead of focusing on practical, resource-independent game design. This time, I want to come up with a solid set of mechanics and fit the story around them, not the other way around.

To accomplish this, I'd like to draw on some core mechanics from the Metroidvania genre. Specifically, the game will be designed as a top-down adventure wherein the player is mostly limited to a linear progression, but will be tricked by exploration-driving incentives into thinking they discovered where to go on their own, ala Super Metroid. This, combined with simple inventory-based lock and key puzzles, a dynamically-updated map to track progress, and some fetch quests (e.g. collect A, B, and C to open this door) will make up the majority of the gameplay. Some light combat, puzzles, or narrative choices might figure in where appropriate, but they won't be the central focus. The key motivators and aesthetics being targeted here are exploration and basic problem solving.

I figured that the most effective approach to telling a story around this concept would be to make it contigent, as much as possible, on the player's decision to buy into it. The idea already lended itself to an "uncovering mysterious backstory in the middle of nowhere" scenario in my head, so it's a natural progression to put most of the narrative being revealed into documents that the player is trying to find. An image came together of the PC as a freelance investigative journalist seeking answers to reports of a secret government facility conducting mysterious, inhumane experiments. But there's no need to talk too much about him in-game. In fact, most of the core narrative, stored in reports and files recovered by the protagonist, can be skipped by players that just want to complete their mission. I expect that many will be intrigued by the (brief) opening hook and want to figure out the explanation for everything, but even those uninterested in the story aren't forced to engaged with it and, in fact, still get rewarded in-game for collecting everything (again, see the Metroid series and its end-of-game collection % count).

Anyways, the rest of design details can be worked out once I've got a working prototype together. I already own DLS to Game Character Hub and RPG Maker VX for creating modern style sprites and maps, respectively, so I have basically everything I need in terms of visual assets to build this in RMVX. There'll probably be some other resources needed later (e.g. sound effects, music, icons, faux-document pictures, etc.), but I can create or scrounge for these things when they come up. For now all that's needed is to create a functional demo and iterate from there.