2D RPGish Adventure

Christa and I have been kicking around an idea for a while; we don't actually have anything physical produced yet, but we've talked about it quite a bit. Sort of a 2D/exploration/rpg in the vein of old school Zeldas. Exploring mostly wooded environments, some towns, you'd fight monsters and maybe some hostile humans. Fighting could include swordplay, ranged weapons, and spells. I'd like rpg elements, like upgrading abilities and finding new weapons (not quite as random as some rpgs, but more weapons than Zelda).

I've been on a bit of a kick lately of wanting to have an homage to old school games while still being clearly new school. I'd rather it had newer graphics and sound rather than 8- or 16-bit. Though I was also thinking some of it (possibly the environments) could be hand-drawn; that's another thing I'm interested in playing with. We've also come to expect a little more from our stories and gameplay, even in 2D type games.

The genesis for this game was actually based on the idea that a lot of games have characters that are clearly the good or bad guy. I don't think the idea that we've come up with is absolutely revolutionary, but I think it builds a bit more on the complexity of character other than just making the hero an "anti-hero" type or giving the villain some humanizing backstory. Part of the idea is to switch characters midway through the game to get a completely different view of the world.

Sounds interesting, a possible take might be playing as a character that is an ally to the hero of the story. A character that is off doing things to help out the main character but isn't actually the hero. With something like that you could do a lot of play off of the cliches and standard things in the genre for comedic effect.

That would definitely be an interesting take on the story. See your main character through the eyes of a friend or employee or something.

What I'm thinking ::spoilers, I guess, if this ever gets made:: is that the main character gets killed halfway through, then you play as his killer up to that point. I'm worried about the actual gameplay implementation of that. How do you let your character level up, yet make sure that the character you play next is strong enough later to defeat the first.

That's a really interesting idea. It'll make the players think about how perspective can really change the context of a story.

As for balancing and leveling, you can have the killer work up towards an artifact that can be used to kill the first hero. Or playing off some weakness the main character has.

If you haven't played it, I might check out Final Fantasy Adventure. The game looks like Zelda, but you get different weapons. Some have a greater reach, some are more powerful, and some swing faster than others.

Considering the fact that Final Fantasy Adventure was the first in the Seiken Densetsu series, and would eventually spawn the awesome Secret of Mana and the horrible remake of the first game Sword of Mana, that one is a bit hard to gauge. I would definitely look at Secret of Mana for some inspiration, though, especially if this is going to be a 16-bit adventure. I don't know what it is. I like 16 bits for some reason.

I downloaded some NES/SNES roms a little while ago, and Secret of Mana is at the top of my list to play next.

If you need writing, I would like to work on this project with you. If you private message me with some more details on what you are thinking, I can have a 3-5 page short description of basic plot, settings, and characters ready to be approved and sent out to programmers, artists, and musicians within a week.