I'm very much a beginner when it comes to game development. I'm merely trying to come up with a concept at this point for a project later in life. I would like constructed input, opinions, and criticism that will help me fix things wrong with my concept in mind.
I've loved story-driven games, and have always thought about making one. I'm not the most colourful crayon in the box, so I find it difficult to come up with appealing storylines that are well designed for a video game and not a written novel. I've came up with several story concepts that I feel may be suitable for games, but for this thread, I'll only explain 1. Please respond with things that I should add, remove, or fix.
I want this to be a story-based game, obviously. I'm not sure if I want to create a game that looks like an old-school RPG game, a 2D sidescroller, a click-to-select, or any other media I happen to think of. I feel it wouldn't be good to make it a first-person perspective game, because that is usually used for gameplay purposes in survival games, shooters, and other games including first-person fighting, which, being a story-driven game, this concept does not have.
The protagonist is this kid that's around 20 years old that has seemingly dropped out of high school before the game's story takes place. Despite this, he's intelligent and classy, and is able to live comfortably in his own apartment; he even has his own job at a nearby bookstore, where he makes decent money. You figure this all out around the time you begin playing. After a while you notice that the protagonist is dealing with strong grief and sadness; could this be the reason he dropped out? But, what could it be?
This idea begins to grow itself into the player, but, as the player continues playing normally- meeting some of the protagonist's old friends, learning more about them- they begin to forget about the protagonist's depressed state. This is then brought back after a while of exploring the town and coming back to your apartment to rest. After doing so, the player is dropped into this "dream" first appearing to be your normal residence, but slowly becomes distorted over a few minutes until you realize where you are. You can't seem to wake up. This can be done a few sections later when you receive a necklace given to you by a dubbed "imaginary friend" from your childhood that appears in the dream. You can use this to your advantage if you need something to complete an area that is in the real world, shop for new items, or complete a day of work at the bookshop in exchange for currency. Doing so can and will affect the way you perceive the dream world; dreams are never the exact same. Enemies can become more difficult, an area can become more distorted, dialogue may change, tiles may switch, and you may lose or receive items. The amount of times you transfer between realms will affect the outcome towards the end; not by a lot. Only things such as dialogue, characters, and the attitude that characters have toward you will change.
The game will consist of a tutorial character that is seemingly a normal-looking person. Of course, since the world becomes more distorted throughout the dream, the leading characters/bosses will also become more and more bizarre and hostile-seeming throughout the areas leading up to the end of the game, where you discover the true background of the protagonist and the reality of the real world; the character was born with a mental illness that allows them to create a different 'world' to cope with trauma, and has morphed the real world into their own perception of a normal life, where they only have to deal with the grief hinted at towards the beginning of the game (the death of their mother). Though reality is actually very terrible; they realizes that the world is filled with horrible death, destruction, and peril that is not only being dealt with by them. This realization causes them to revert their perception or the real world back to this insane nuclear wasteland full of sorrow. They can't find any of their "friends" and can't go back to the dream world, because none of them were real; they were made up by them to cope with their mother's passing. The wasteland is also a perception by him, but it's much more realistic, figuratively speaking. The message from this is that no matter what your issue is, almost everyone else has, is, and will deal with the exact same thing that you are. There is so much bad in the world, so much death, and so many horrible things that you don't notice. So, you need to stop wallowing in self-pity and fix it yourself, because no one else is going to. They have their own problems to deal with.
Please respond with constructive feedback and advice. Tell me what to add, take away or fix.
Thank you for taking your time to read this.
