So after a bit of thought, I was thinking that I could resurrect the setting for a fantasy novel that I started writing once, but never got very far in: The City of Light and Fire. The second part of that story opened as follows:
The basin had been a mold, shaping me to look roughly like a human. But I was still far from perfect.
The figures that carried me put me down on a long stone bench, and then left. There were other shapes on both sides of me, other early-stage embryos. I did not yet understand anything.
Time passed, and the lava I was made of grew more solid. My innermost parts were still hot and liquid, but I had a firm outer crust. When I had become hard enough to be worked on, the mason had me brought to him. He studied me for a long time, examining me from every direction and seeking out any imperfections. Whenever he found one, he reached for his hammer. Gradually, he shaped me into a man.
After the mason was done with me, I was taken to the clay maker. The beings carrying me were cautious, for the mason had opened holes from which my innards might spill. I don’t know whether they spilled any, but when I reached the clay maker, I was still viable.
He studied my shape, and then molded a layer of lifeclay around me. It was much softer than lava was, and more sensitive to heat. The clay maker filled the pair of holes the mason had made, fashioning there eyes. Below them he made a mouth, and on their sides a pair of ears. The clay was as good in shaping heat as the walls of the towers were, if not better. It collected warmth and funnelled it deep into my core. My eyes had been made with particular care, and it now that I slowly began to see.
From the clay maker, I was carried to the edge of a great hall. They placed me next to the other infants, on a belt of heatstone close to the wall. The stone burned hot, keeping us sated. I rested there, together with the others. We watched and listened to the things happening in the hall, enjoyed the ever-shifting flows of warmth inside the stone. For a long time, we remained still.
As in the original story, the main character in the game would be a creature who had just recently been brought into existence for an unknown purpose. He (she?) comes to existence with some basic skills, such as knowing how to talk and walk, but knows little besides that. His creators clearly have a purpose in mind for him, but don’t care to tell him very much about it. Other creatures that have been created in a similar fashion might have clues of just what exactly is going on, as do others who he meets on missions that he is sent on… but he has to figure out what exactly it is that can be reliably inferred from the various claims that the different creatures make.
Advantages: This would instantly set up a mystery (just what is this place? why was he created? what’s going on?) to make the player curious, and gathering various clues about his origin, as well as completing different missions that the character was sent on, could serve as short-term goals for the player to pursue. An added benefit of making the main character non-human is that the whole belief network could be diegetic—perhaps connecting the different pieces of evidence would concretely build up a physical belief network inside his body, and by closing his eyes he could somehow see and manipulate that. Such a setting would also allow us to question the beliefs and attitudes that were commonly believed and taken for granted within the setting, without getting into the politics-is-the-mindkiller territory that having a game about questioning commonly-accepted real life beliefs would involve.
Here’s an old description of the setting:
I earlier described that as “a New Weird-ish
story about a corporation whose different departments are in semi-open
war with each other. The main character is a gargoyle created by
Product Development to infiltrate Marketing and kidnap some of their
harpies, to be pressed into slave labor to boost Product Development’s
morale.” Though actually sirens are a closer match to what I had in
mind than harpies—I mixed up the two.
Anyway, it’s this weird dark fantasy setting with a huge, black stone
monolith in the middle of a city. The Corporation exists within the
various halls and caverns of the monolith, and its workers produce and
sell various goods to the people in the city. There are also other
cities and in them other corporations, which have a bit of an
influence in this city as well, but mostly they remain in the
background.
I don’t actually have very many details worked out yet, mostly just
concepts and images. Here are some of them:
In the city around the monolith, there are sentient stone towers.
They are filled with hot lava, and they communicate with each other by
selectively making their outer shells more or less transparent,
shining light around them. They can choose to voluntarily let out a
small amount of their lava and let it cool, creating a new being
separate from themselves that serves them. Or somebody might break
their shell and take some lava by force to create a new being, which
is how the story’s main character was created. The towers have their
own interests, and they often do not look kindly upon the Corporation.
The ultimate leaders of the Corporation are the Owners, who never intervene directly. The Owners are what seem to be clouds of
ever-burning gas above the monolith, who communicate their desires
through patterns in the fire.
On the roof of the monolith are the Prophets, monsterously shaped philosophers who sit on top of large stone pillars and watch the sky, interpreting the messages of the Owners. They keep making a constant
humming sound, which communicates their interpretation of what the
Owners want. This is in turn interpreted by the Scribes, who sit at
the feet of the pillars and write down what they hear. A constant
stream of messengers takes what the Scribes have written down and
relays it to the various departments.
When the department heads receive their orders from the Scribes, they
too apply their own interpretation, seeking to follow the instructions
in the way that best benefits them personally. The original orders
being distorted after going through several steps in the chain, the
department heads are free to do almost anything they want. It is
because of this personal benefit-seeking that the various departments
of the Corporation are in a constant conflict with each other.
Information only seems to pass down from the Owners to the
Corporation. If information does pass up to the Owners, nobody knows
how.
Even the department heads do need to follow some rules, however. In
the middle of the monolith there is the Timetable, a wall which shows
the past and a possible future. In particular, it shows various things
which the Corporation might be able to achieve in the future. If those
things are indeed achieved, all is well.
If they are not, cracks begin to appear in the Timetable. This is a
bad thing, for the Timetable has been built to seal a rupture to
another reality, in which terrible beings live. If the Timetable ever
breaks, the beings will burst out and destroy the monolith and
everyone who lives in it. Because of this, the department heads cannot
let their infighting get so serious that the Timetable won’t hold. It
is said that the Timetable, and the rupture behind it, were created by
the Owners for this very purpose.
The titular Fundamental Question could then also refer to the task of figuring out just what it is that the Owners really want (which could also be the real reason that the character was created).
A disadvantage of this setting pitch is that there might be a risk of the setting becoming too weird and different to effectively relate to, or for people to very naturally transfer the lessons of that setting into real life. But that could avoided by focusing more on the surrounding city, which could be more normal, or something. Thoughts?
I have to agree. I really like this setting, but on a gut level it gives me similar vibes to when I played Machinarium, and that would make it difficult to connect with personal experience / outside life.
Yeah, upon consideration, it’s probably not that suitable for this.
Playing around with various ideas for the setting and aesthetics, here’s a rather different approach.
The game’s set in our world, with elements of magical realism: the main character is a fairy-like figure of ambiguous sex and age (goes to school, but that school could conceivably be elementary school, high school or even college, letting the player project their favored interpretation, though this might be a little tricky to pull off). This approach takes the fundamental question considerably more literally: the main character knows things, but does not know why (s)he knows them. At all times, we are shown a set of maybe three beliefs that (s)he has, but cannot remember why. A large part of the game is about finding out what led her/him to come to believe those facts (what was their ultimate causal origin), and whether they should actually be believed. When ever (s)he manages to answer this question for a particular fact, it is replaced with something else.
Possible opening sequence: the game opens to a black screen with some white text.
“What is your name?”
The player enters a name. The text on the screen then disappears, to be replaced by the following:
“My name is [name]. There are many things that I know. For example, I know that X, Y, Z. But I do not know why I know these things.”
(alternative, if we can find a voice actor with a clear, somewhat child-like and androgynous voice, the opening narration could be spoken: “My name is [some gender-neutral name]. There are many things that I know. For example, I know that X, Y, Z. But I do not know why I know these things.”)
The text then vanishes and the blackness is replaced by a bright light which initially fills the screen with whiteness: it then fades to reveal the character being in their home, the brightness being the sunrise in the window. Icons for the three beliefs that are being investigated flash for a moment at the top of the interface, then stop flashing. Peaceful, ambient music plays in the background. A brief investigation of the house quickly reveals some of the causal history of each belief: maybe a table holds a letter from a friend, in which the friend spoke to the character of the belief. Upon reading it, the character says something like:
“Oh yes, [the name of my friend] told me this: that is why I believe it. But should I believe it?”
At the top of the screen, the icon highlighting the relevant belief flashes again: it shows a line extending back from the icon, to the icon of the friend. For a moment, the interface displays both (and they take up twice as much space as the representations of the other beliefs, which are only one icon each); then the representation of this belief shrinks back to mostly just the icon of the belief, but also showing in miniature the network behind the belief, which at this point only holds one node but will eventually expand. The icon is highlighted with a small bright glow, to indicate that it can be clicked on in order to bring up the whole history graph.
It’s time to go see that friend.
A lot of the game would be about rather ordinary events, like going to school and making friends; but the question of “why does [some character] believe what they believe” comes up a lot, and considering it helps the various characters solve a lot of problems. Perhaps, after the early game, it’s the player who gets to choose which would be interesting beliefs (hypotheses?) to investigate, instead of the game choosing the active beliefs for them.
This seems like a much better starting point. The first half feels like it risks evoking some unmentionable tropes not suitable at all for the target audience, but the target audience is extremely unlikely to know these tropes unless they’re, like me, also the kind of audience that would find this a plus rather than a downside (the two type-of-audience traits correlate—and they’re usually referred to with only one common category label).
As for the second half (i.e. once the three belief-icons pop up)… wow. I’m once again positively impressed by the thought you’re putting into both the game design and player experience.
Based on this so far, if I had this game in front of me I would be very intrigued and would quite want to play it, though I can’t tell how much the aforementioned trope pattern-matching (and past experience relating to those) accounts for that ;)
Setting and story
So after a bit of thought, I was thinking that I could resurrect the setting for a fantasy novel that I started writing once, but never got very far in: The City of Light and Fire. The second part of that story opened as follows:
As in the original story, the main character in the game would be a creature who had just recently been brought into existence for an unknown purpose. He (she?) comes to existence with some basic skills, such as knowing how to talk and walk, but knows little besides that. His creators clearly have a purpose in mind for him, but don’t care to tell him very much about it. Other creatures that have been created in a similar fashion might have clues of just what exactly is going on, as do others who he meets on missions that he is sent on… but he has to figure out what exactly it is that can be reliably inferred from the various claims that the different creatures make.
Advantages: This would instantly set up a mystery (just what is this place? why was he created? what’s going on?) to make the player curious, and gathering various clues about his origin, as well as completing different missions that the character was sent on, could serve as short-term goals for the player to pursue. An added benefit of making the main character non-human is that the whole belief network could be diegetic—perhaps connecting the different pieces of evidence would concretely build up a physical belief network inside his body, and by closing his eyes he could somehow see and manipulate that. Such a setting would also allow us to question the beliefs and attitudes that were commonly believed and taken for granted within the setting, without getting into the politics-is-the-mindkiller territory that having a game about questioning commonly-accepted real life beliefs would involve.
Here’s an old description of the setting:
The titular Fundamental Question could then also refer to the task of figuring out just what it is that the Owners really want (which could also be the real reason that the character was created).
A disadvantage of this setting pitch is that there might be a risk of the setting becoming too weird and different to effectively relate to, or for people to very naturally transfer the lessons of that setting into real life. But that could avoided by focusing more on the surrounding city, which could be more normal, or something. Thoughts?
Hmm, on other thought a more realistic modern setting might after all feel like a better fit for this kind of game. Hmmh.
I have to agree. I really like this setting, but on a gut level it gives me similar vibes to when I played Machinarium, and that would make it difficult to connect with personal experience / outside life.
Yeah, upon consideration, it’s probably not that suitable for this.
Playing around with various ideas for the setting and aesthetics, here’s a rather different approach.
The game’s set in our world, with elements of magical realism: the main character is a fairy-like figure of ambiguous sex and age (goes to school, but that school could conceivably be elementary school, high school or even college, letting the player project their favored interpretation, though this might be a little tricky to pull off). This approach takes the fundamental question considerably more literally: the main character knows things, but does not know why (s)he knows them. At all times, we are shown a set of maybe three beliefs that (s)he has, but cannot remember why. A large part of the game is about finding out what led her/him to come to believe those facts (what was their ultimate causal origin), and whether they should actually be believed. When ever (s)he manages to answer this question for a particular fact, it is replaced with something else.
Possible opening sequence: the game opens to a black screen with some white text.
“What is your name?”
The player enters a name. The text on the screen then disappears, to be replaced by the following:
“My name is [name]. There are many things that I know. For example, I know that X, Y, Z. But I do not know why I know these things.”
(alternative, if we can find a voice actor with a clear, somewhat child-like and androgynous voice, the opening narration could be spoken: “My name is [some gender-neutral name]. There are many things that I know. For example, I know that X, Y, Z. But I do not know why I know these things.”)
The text then vanishes and the blackness is replaced by a bright light which initially fills the screen with whiteness: it then fades to reveal the character being in their home, the brightness being the sunrise in the window. Icons for the three beliefs that are being investigated flash for a moment at the top of the interface, then stop flashing. Peaceful, ambient music plays in the background. A brief investigation of the house quickly reveals some of the causal history of each belief: maybe a table holds a letter from a friend, in which the friend spoke to the character of the belief. Upon reading it, the character says something like:
“Oh yes, [the name of my friend] told me this: that is why I believe it. But should I believe it?”
At the top of the screen, the icon highlighting the relevant belief flashes again: it shows a line extending back from the icon, to the icon of the friend. For a moment, the interface displays both (and they take up twice as much space as the representations of the other beliefs, which are only one icon each); then the representation of this belief shrinks back to mostly just the icon of the belief, but also showing in miniature the network behind the belief, which at this point only holds one node but will eventually expand. The icon is highlighted with a small bright glow, to indicate that it can be clicked on in order to bring up the whole history graph.
It’s time to go see that friend.
A lot of the game would be about rather ordinary events, like going to school and making friends; but the question of “why does [some character] believe what they believe” comes up a lot, and considering it helps the various characters solve a lot of problems. Perhaps, after the early game, it’s the player who gets to choose which would be interesting beliefs (hypotheses?) to investigate, instead of the game choosing the active beliefs for them.
This seems like a much better starting point. The first half feels like it risks evoking some unmentionable tropes not suitable at all for the target audience, but the target audience is extremely unlikely to know these tropes unless they’re, like me, also the kind of audience that would find this a plus rather than a downside (the two type-of-audience traits correlate—and they’re usually referred to with only one common category label).
As for the second half (i.e. once the three belief-icons pop up)… wow. I’m once again positively impressed by the thought you’re putting into both the game design and player experience.
Based on this so far, if I had this game in front of me I would be very intrigued and would quite want to play it, though I can’t tell how much the aforementioned trope pattern-matching (and past experience relating to those) accounts for that ;)