LÖVE

Hey Guys.

Recently I began a project that revolves around randomization of events. It'll be a game revolving around you, the protagonist, trying to combat a disease you know nothing about, and your behaviors over the next 30 days will dictate wither you live or die. Randomized conditions will have to be met in order for you to live, but you will never know what the conditions are, only the symptoms that occur as a result of your actions. The game is set in sort of steampunkish overcrowded artisan-class city full of diverse and fantastic opportunities to make or break yourself in terms of your medical health.

Small things will influence your chance of survival, such as emotional status, interactions with other people, what you ate 5 days ago, what you plan on eating 5 days from now, physical activity, exposure to clean air vs. dirty air (Based on occupation), financial status, and more.

I'm aiming for replayability and unpredictability, as well as a general good time.
I'm also aiming for unforgiveability, resulting in you having to bend your way of thinking.
(i.e. When you think physical activity will improve your mental condition, it may traumatize the disease and worsen your condition
or, when you think vegetables will improve your condition, it may only strengthen the parasitic disease, hastening your soon-to-be-dead procession)

I'm here to ask for suggestions for features, disease names (Structured as Adjective and Official name, i.e. Chronic Fartophobia), and aesthetic implementations that I may want to include. Also bits of code that you may think will be useful in my endeavor will be nice. This is my first game using Love, and I'm using this game as a method for teaching myself lua so... yeah, suggestions and support please :L

I might call the game "Oh Well, Looks like you're going to Die."

This sounds a m a z i n g! I could see myself playing a game like that over and over and over again. My only sugestion is that it kinda sounds like it'll be a long game but I think the concept fits a fast-paced arcade game perfectly. Maybe you have 5 real time minutes to find out the diesease you have, but in the game its your man running around the houes clutching his head, or laying down, or vomiting and you have to drag meds/food to him, and after 5 min you find out if you live or not. It seems hard to acomplish if you've neve used lua or love before, so Good Luck and God Speed!

BulbaMander wrote:This sounds a m a z i n g! I could see myself playing a game like that over and over and over again. My only sugestion is that it kinda sounds like it'll be a long game but I think the concept fits a fast-paced arcade game perfectly. Maybe you have 5 real time minutes to find out the diesease you have, but in the game its your man running around the houes clutching his head, or laying down, or vomiting and you have to drag meds/food to him, and after 5 min you find out if you live or not. It seems hard to acomplish if you've neve used lua or love before, so Good Luck and God Speed!

I was thinking to make it fast paced so that you can play several sessions in a matter of minutes (And also because I'm too lazy to put together a save game)
The player will freely be able to scroll back and forth through the 30 days that they have to live (As in you can flip through the 30 days like the pages of a book), changing factors here and there and the finally submitting it and seeing if they survive or not. A timer will be added as a sort of "How fast can you find the requirements to cure the disease" but then again, you can sit back, take your time, and enjoy the narrative, because I'll be throwing story elements here and there. Such as government affairs lead to your salary being dropped a bit (money is used to buy food, medicine, or maybe hit the bar), or too many people have your disease (because you decided tog o to work that one day) and in so, the government has began exterminating infected individuals.

The game will have no way of telling you what your cure-conditions are, unless you pay fairly close attention to the symptoms. But even in so, your chance of survival are slim.

Another feature I plan on implementing is a sort "carry-over" system, such as if you die in a prev play through, you have a 1 in 20 chance of your money carrying over to the next play through, as a sort of "inheritance from the uncle you never knew you had" encouraging you to play over and over again.

http://concerned-joe.com

game looks cool ;D