PPP (actually an untitled game for my free time)

I first downloaded Stencyl last year, while I was still teaching. My first game was based off of this dream I had - probably the most epic dream I have ever had. Of course, I did not know what I was doing with it and just fumbled around with artwork and gameplay. Even with the 1 minute of gameplay, everybody who saw it thought it was fantastic. Everybody I talked about it to, pushed me to complete it.  It would be played in the style of Myst. Obviously that means it would be a story driven rpg/puzzle game.

The premise is that you just came home from your mother's funeral. She was the last of your close relatives (as indicated in the introduction). You go to live with some of your more distant relatives because in your depression you should not be left alone. While there, you start experiencing frequent blackouts. Your goal is to figure out what is causing the blackouts, how to stop or decrease the the frequency of blackouts, and to get back into the world.  I won't say any more at this point because the story is much much more involved than that.

Anywho, now with my increased skills at stencyl and with doing artwork, I am thinking about picking up this game again. Looking back on it, I know that I would not have been able to complete the game before... or at the very least I would not have done it justice in its creation. I don't have a title for it. I remember I just called it PPP last year. It was something like Perdition.... something something with P's.   I have 20 chapters in my head just from the dream. I need to write all of it down and convert it into a playable version.

Please leave your thoughts or comments. If I get enough of a push, maybe I will add this to my regular projects list.

The presmise sounds definitely interesting....can you describe more how the gameplay will be like? When you write like Myst I'm thinking of "interacting with a pre-rendered scene to solve puzzles". Will it be like that? Or different?

Do you maybe still have the artwork from your first attempt at creating it?

Actually, I was just grabbing some of the artwork to put in here lol

Yes, it would be a prerendered scene with objects that you click on. Just like Myst, it would not be a "hidden pictures" kind of thing, but more what you interact with affects the overall gameplay.

The first two were from the original game. The third picture is from Poser, where I am actually constructing the house from memory

The house already looks cool, if you manage to create the models in such high quality like the sliding door on the back of the scene it could look really cool when it is done.

Which platforms would you be targeting? I'm asking because I fear that the pre-rendered background graphics might take a lot of space which might be problematic to release on Android or some Flash websites.

Yeah, I totally agree. I think desktop might be the only way to go. I'd have to really use the image API to make it small enough for mobile.

I've been playing around with animating in Poser. I think I could pull off background modifications to really show that you are affecting the world.

I was just replaying the dream in my head and figured out an awesome way to make it transmit into the game. At one point in the dream, I was able to get to get up to the top of this tower (don't worry its not really a spoiler . I think I can make that the end of a chapter or section of the game. The conversation I had at the top of the tower could be an interactive cutscene. The 20 parts I mentioned in my first post could all go into that first chapter. At that point, the player still won't know what's really going on in the game. The blackouts will be less frequent, allowing you to explore the world more openly. If I could gather up maybe four chapters of equal depth, that would make for a pretty nice game.

I'll have to pull from other dreams that I've had to tie some things together. Anybody good with storyline writing want to throw in their two cents?

I was just working on this one. I made the cutoff points for progressing the story. Each point will include a cut scene the give the player a little bit more information on what is going on. I have a prologue, 5 chapters, and an epilogue. I know how I want to make the cutscenes for each of them. Now I need to work on getting all of the material together for what happens inbetween. I have the main story for chapter one pretty much ironed out. I have a little bit of chapter two done. Not much done on actually gameplay. A couple of scenes have been created for chapter 1 and the prologue.

There were a few places that I couldn't get to in the dream, or at least I completely avoided them. This makes me think that whatever is there cannot be good. I'll see if I can work that into the story.

Sounds like a neat idea... reminds me a bit of -Dare to Dream-

Sounds like a neat idea... reminds me a bit of -Dare to Dream-

I'm watching a gameplay video right now. That reminds me of superhero league of hoboken

edit: Actually I can use something like like for turning around, have the cursor become a down arrow. I don't want to use the magnifying glass because I'd rather it be harder to interact or find what to interact with. Since you will be losing focus and passing out, I want the player to strategically click around