concept help

This idea reminds me of 40 WINKS from the ps1 console.
But I will help you one the ideas but I need to reread you propasition again and send you my thoughts.If I dont send you something, then I will send some questions to ask and help you from there to get some new ideas for your game design doc.


BullDogRacing27

This idea still reminds me of 40 winks.If you had a different aproach on your idea then maybe i could understand your need of help.

BullDogRacing27

[sarcasm on]You forgot to ask people to program it, provide artwork for it, and write the story for you :-p [/sarcasm off]

Now, having gotten that out my system...

Why dreams? Dreams aren''t the only source of inspiration, the Muses of Greek mythology didn''t have dominion over human dreaming. So why is all this happening through the Dreaming (with kudos to Gaiman)?

I won''t give you specifics to use, not with so little actually conceptualized on your own, but offer you these thoughts to dwell on yourself: what motivation would an antagonist have to remove the influence of the Muses from human creativity, and why would they choose to do so in the dreamscape?

Or, in a related question - why would the Muses choose to contact these specific children for help, and why would they choose to do so through the dreamworld?

Is the antagonist evil, or does he/she have a purer - albeit misguided - purpose?

What relationship does your antagonist have to the Muses, or to the children - or to both - if any at all?

Who (or What) would stand to gain the most by removing the Muses from power? Who else would oppose that antagonist, trying to save/protect the Muses?

And...to further get the brain juices flowing...why has the "teddy" suddenly come to life? What - or who - brought it to life, and for what purpose beyond the obvious "help the children"?

Who are these kids and why are they - above all the other children - important and needed to save the Muses?

Also, decide if you want to keep the Greek connection or make the Muses more universal/modernized; it would alter the specifics of your story.

When you come up with the antagonist of your story and devise his or her relationship to the Muses and creativity, then you can start discussing twists to add to a storyline.

I also won''t answer the question of the style of game because that is also something you need to decide yourself, based on your capabilities.

Have fun!

Perhaps you should read up on the surreal style of art for the writing of such a game. It seems to me that besides the obvious "powerless" phase of the game, where the enemy has the power to inhabit policemen and you must escape them to return to the dream world to defeat your nemesis, you have to find your own sense of surreality and randomness to make a game with a real dream-like quality...

Want to study "the surreal style of art for the writing of such a game" Try the story "Call of the Cthulu" By: HP Lovecraft, which can be found in your local bookstore in "The Best of HP Lovecraft"

Reading this book will make you think more about your nightmares, and if you dont have them, YOU WILL! This story is almost exactly the plot of what you talk of.

as far as Ideas, I would recommend stealing ideas from already proven sources:

How about the movie "DreamScape" where the protagonist has to battle in the real world and also go into the dreamworld to defeat his foes? Perhaps the ''hero'' in your game could shift between worlds this way? The game Legacy of Kain, SoalReaver 2, has a feature like this, but he shifts between the real world, and the spirit world.

If you played ultima 9, perhaps recovering the muses could change the game world in some way. In ultima the 8 virtues were taken, then as you recover each one the NPCs gain that virtue back. For instance greedy npc suddenly become more generous when you gain back the virtue of sacrifice.

I would recommend breaking from the nightmare idea of the dreamworld to diffrent styles. Perhaps some of the dreams could be Alice in wonderland style, some horror, and some just random insantity.

a list of resources i would resommend for this type of study:

"Little Nemo: The Dream Master" - 8-bit nintendo game
"The Best of HP Lovecraft" -- Book (i would recommend ''The DreamCycle of HP Lovecraft'', but ''best of'' is better
"DreamScape" -- Movie
"The Matrix" -- Movie
"Labyrith" -- Movie

or you could just trip alot of acid, that might help