The Missing Piece RPG

• Your quest is to find the missing piece…
  
• Nobody knows what the machine does, or who made it. All they know is you’re the chosen one.
  
  

  A bit more info (not 100% decided)

  
  
  
  
  • You wake up in the mayor’s house, not knowing who you are or where you are.
    
  • You were found in a forest unconscious by the town’s mayor.
    
  • You learn about a machine in the town, and the scrolls of the chosen one being found…
    
  • The scroll contains a picture of you…
    
    As you've probably guessed by this post, the game is nowhere near finished - it's merely a concept at this moment in time, therefore making it open to suggestions and feedback from the gaming community. Our plan is to release this game at either 10-50 pence, or free. Dependant upon how much of our time this takes up (it's going to take up a lot!). Well, I'm currently learning C++ (to make the game in), and in a few weeks, I should be ready to start on it. Another member of our team is also learning C++ and teaching me too!
    
    Well, I appreciate you reading all of this
    - Jack

Here are my observations, and you can choose to ignore this if you want, I don't mind.

• Every time I see a "chosen one" story, I personally always think of Life of Brian. What's funnier? Being the messiah, or being the guy who was born next to the messiah?
  
• You don't know who you are? You don't know who you are?! Oh dear Brian does this cliché get to me.
  
• I don't see a game, per se, just a setting. I also don't see any goal or focus for this game. I'm sure you have one, so what do you have in mind?
  
• Who is the main character, and who is the mayor? You could very easily take what you have and turn this into a Bourne Identity sort of thing, it just might not be as interesting without some spin to it, because that storyline and much of its elements ("He's an elite spy and he doesn't know who he is") are so played out now. If I were you, I'd start by not even making the main character a male at all. Make her a female, and now she is the missing piece to something. Just for starters.
  
• You should know that starting a project from a story or setting has some implications for the direction of the project that you wouldn't have if you had started it, for example, with a gameplay idea. But either way, you really need some sort of goal or focus for the project, just so you can direct your blows without hitting air, so to speak.
  
• You're writing this in C++ and you're just learning the language. Beginning programming then? That also has certain implications. Keep it simple, okay?
  

Here are my observations, and you can choose to ignore this if you want, I don't mind.

• Every time I see a "chosen one" story, I personally always think of Life of Brian. What's funnier? Being the messiah, or being the guy who was born next to the messiah?
  
• You don't know who you are? You don't know who you are?! Oh dear Brian does this cliché get to me.
  
• I don't see a game, per se, just a setting. I also don't see any goal or focus for this game. I'm sure you have one, so what do you have in mind?
  
• Who is the main character, and who is the mayor? You could very easily take what you have and turn this into a Bourne Identity sort of thing, it just might not be as interesting without some spin to it, because that storyline and much of its elements ("He's an elite spy and he doesn't know who he is") are so played out now. If I were you, I'd start by not even making the main character a male at all. Make her a female, and now she is the missing piece to something. Just for starters.
  
• You should know that starting a project from a story or setting has some implications for the direction of the project that you wouldn't have if you had started it, for example, with a gameplay idea. But either way, you really need some sort of goal or focus for the project, just so you can direct your blows without hitting air, so to speak.
  
• You're writing this in C++ and you're just learning the language. Beginning programming then? That also has certain implications. Keep it simple, okay?
  
  

Thanks! I'll have these in mind when I fully write the storyline

In my opinion you need to stretch way outside of the ball park with this sort of idea. Chosen one stories do get done a lot in games. So you need to make yourself standout from the crowd and become renowned for innovativeness. For example:

Your entire game environment is steampunk, your machine is actually much larger than people realise..i.e. you go through the trapdoor in the floor and suddenly discover your machine is actually made up several football fields of brass pipes whizz-bangs watchimacallits and set of bagpipes. You are chosen one because you happen to be the only bagpipe player in town but you don't know this is the reason you were the chosen one. So after a series of calamitous adventure involving amongst other things a clothesline, a hessian sack and a cat wielding a baseball bat, you finally save the day by playing the bagpipes on the great machine which causes it to work thus opening a portal into the homeworld of the Tribbles.

Now unless you are a fan of such eccentric classics as Monkey Island and similar games you will probably sit there and say "What the hell is he on about?". What I am on about is quite simple. As you posted your skill sets are very much in the early days of where they need to be...So my opinion is the following: Make a very basic game that is within your current skill set and make it bloody entertaining through the story.

For RPGs, I think it sometimes helps to work backwards. Maybe there is a big plot to overthrow a kingdom or something and some mystic weapon somewhere that could shift the power, but in the past there was some guy who hid a map to it and he had a kid. maybe you're that kid, maybe you're a random soldier who has differing ideals from the powers that be who happens upon the kid, maybe you're the young prince of the evil ruler, maybe all three characters meet up.... but none of this stuff is known at the start, its the end product you discover throghout the game... add some other lose threads that the player meets up with, and you might have something thats more engaging than the standard RPG fodder.

I also love games that 'mock' cliches!

I also love games that 'mock' cliches!

I do too, to a point, and only because satire usually becomes the last haven for ideas when they become cliche. I tried to watch a movie last night on Netflix called "The Double" with Richard Gere and Martin Sheen, and I turned it off about ten minutes in because it was just one huge CIA-thriller-movie cliché after another. I thought to myself, "Man, this would be so much better if it was a comedy." But it wasn't, it was real and it had Topher Grace in it.

The irony there, however, is that satire can also wear out its welcome. That's what happened with National Lampoon, and everything the Zucker brothers have done since the first Airplane, and likewise for the Wayans family since I'm Gonna Git You Sucka! and Don't Be a Menace in South Central While Drinkin' Your Juice In The Hood. (And a lot of people liked White Chicks, too, but I never could stand it.)

• Nobody knows what the machine does, or who made it. All they know is you’re the chosen one.
  
  

It's very weak from storytelling perspective. Mystery works best if you have a lot of information, not when you know nothing. The key is to provide incomplete information, not to withold it entirely.

There has to be several theories why it was made and by whom. There has to be belivers of some sort that pursue the ideology why it was created (It is a machine that will bring rain and the earth will be fertile again! No, don't believe them, it is a hellish machine that will bring doom upon completion! No, no, don't listen to all these fanatic, it is a simple mining machine which can be very profitable if our company manage to complete it.) That's how humans behave.

Plus all what Heath said.