VectorStorm Blog

So I’ve been thinking over game design ideas for a few hours now, and have come to a few conclusions.

First, I’ve decided that I really, really don’t want to have to create a cow sprite. So as much as I like the idea of integrating the context of the initial quote, I really don’t think I’ll do so, this time.

Here are a selection of just a few of the ideas I’ve been entertaining:

• You are a “Muncher” a very small organism in a petri dish that eats small cells. As you eat, you grow, and can begin to eat larger cells and other munchers. Think of it as an eating version of Katamari Damacy. Goal is to grow large enough to leave the petri dish. (I guess that this is basically fl0w, or the first level of Spore, so it’s certainly not my most original idea, in retrospect)
• You are a kid in a treehouse. The munchers are chewing at the supports of your treehouse, and you need to fend them off! (or build new supports faster than they can chew away the old ones, or something like that) Goal is to last as long as possible.
• The game is Pac-Man, but you aren’t playing as Pac-Man or one of the ghosts; you’re playing as the bunch of cherries. Goal is to survive as long as possible, before Pac-Man catches and eats you.

That pretty well covers the broad possibilities suggested by “Munchers”; you can be the Muncher, the Muncher can be trying to eat you, or you can be trying to defend the thing which the Muncher is trying to munch. Being the muncher leads to the most traditional arcade-style games, whereas being the victim of the munchers generally lead toward Daleks-style avoidance games, and ‘defender’ roles often lead to various puzzle and Tower Defense-style strategy games.

Haven’t picked a direction yet. I’m hoping to pick a broad design tomorrow, and begin coding by tomorrow night. Today was only about generating ideas.

Well, I’ve had a week of vacation, and suddenly I’m feeling the pressure to do another “Game in a Week”. Like last time, I’m selecting the topic immediately before going to bed (early night tonight!), and will finish by midnight on Sunday.

Today’s book is “Which Lie Did I Tell: More Adventures in the Screen Trade”, by William Goldman. It’s a paperback edition published by Vintage Books in 2001. A friend loaned me his copy of this book and I enjoyed it so much that I bought my own copy — this one — solely so that I could loan it out to other friends. But it’s not out on loan right now, and I randomly opened the book to page 324, where the first sentence completely on the page is:

Still just a bunch of munchers.

(It’s actually part of a ‘CUT TO’ direction in an example screenplay fragment, and is referring to a herd of cows which aren’t actually doing much of anything)

Initial reaction is that it’s suggesting a Pac-Man sort of game. But that’s probably too obvious, and somebody’s already made Pac-Man. Maybe I can take the context of the quote and do something about cows. Or even focus on the word “bunch”, and do something involving a flock or swarm of something. Or maybe all of the above.

In any case, I’ll start on a real design tomorrow after work.