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This a good game idea (The School - or something better)

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Caden Black

Guest
Hello, I'm making a game that I hope can get popular or sorta popular. So far my friends and family think the story is great and love it! But I want better advice. My game is called Project T.E.S.T. You, (Zack), and your two friends, Zeek and Zoey, go to TECC labs to do a prank in Mr.Neal's office. (The founder) But you soon find out there's more to the school than meets the eye. There'll be five chapters, each revealing more to the story. Chapter One - Infiltration is in progress. Please give suggestions, maybe even a better game title.

EDIT - Chapter One Story: Your at home watching your favorite mystery show, "The Missing" when you get a phone call from your best friend Zeek Albert and wanna be girlfriend Zoey Elise. They want you to join them for some "fun." but what they want you to do seems like a death sentence.

Thanks!
 
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Niels

Member
It's nice to have a setting and backstory ready, but to make it a game you need to have a idea of what the gameplay mechanics/loop is for your game and what genre will it be?

From what you describe it could be either a visual novel, a point and click game, a top down open world game, or even a platformer (like night in the woods)
 
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Caden Black

Guest
Well it's sorta like an RPG and visual novel. Chapter One doesn't involve any RPG style gameplay but more of the visual novel. The other chapters will have battles and RPG style game play. Thank you!
 
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Caden Black

Guest
Also it's been worked on for about two months now, if you want to hear the story line for Chapter One let me know and I'll put it on here, maybe even improve it since I haven't looked at it in about 2 weeks.
 

Toque

Member
It's nice to have a setting and backstory ready, but to make it a game you need to have a idea of what the gameplay mechanics/loop is for your game and what genre will it be?

From what you describe it could be either a visual novel, a point and click game, a top down open world game, or even a platformer (like night in the woods)
Yeah need a bit more info. Okay RPG. So its a bit of a adventure type game. Im not sure what kind of battles you might have. Zombies? Bullies? Aliens?

I think it has potential for a neat game.
 
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Caden Black

Guest
Toque thank you! So the battles are more of well SPOILER INCOMING

You find out there is a ton more to the school than just the hallways and classrooms. You'll battle some kids and adults who are part of the "program" I was thinking for the battle system something simple as a run and fight. Better weapons, better damage stuff like that, personal soundtrack (made a few boss themes already) monsters/mutants. Also some clues about Zack are in Chapter One. Chapter Two - One Way Out, may take the rest of my summer. But it'll be worth it in the end. Some twists.
 
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Caden Black

Guest
Toque thank you! So the battles are more of well SPOILER INCOMING

You find out there is a ton more to the school than just the hallways and classrooms. You'll battle some kids and adults who are part of the "program" I was thinking for the battle system something simple as a run and fight. Better weapons, better damage stuff like that, personal soundtrack (made a few boss themes already) monsters/mutants. Also some clues about Zack are in Chapter One. Chapter Two - One Way Out, may take the rest of my summer. But it'll be worth it in the end. Some twists.
Also my sprites and tile sets may be pretty cruddy, here's Zack's front image sprite.
 

Niels

Member
Could be a fun game. Consider colaborating with a artist when you are further in your development progress
 
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Caden Black

Guest
Yea, I may do that may not, kinda wanna be a single developer. Maybe with a few friends. Just with people I know and can have better contact with.
 
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Guest User

Guest
afaik visual novel RPGs are fairly popular (or at least numerous) on Steam. may be worth taking a look at some of those while you're still early in development to get a grasp on how the genre and these particular combinations of mechanics are being handled if you find yourself struggling.

story-wise, blurbs are nice and i'm sure you don't want to spoil the whole story but what you've provided could describe like literally every High School Anime ever so it's kind of hard (imo) to tell you whether you've really got a good idea here, y'know?
 
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Caden Black

Guest
Not really an anime more like an experiment gone wrong in science class ;) also like raising your grades...from an H? to an A. ;)
 
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Caden Black

Guest
Probably not a good hint for the H and A...it'll make more since when Chapter One comes out.
 
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Caden Black

Guest
Yea um, if I could spoil some of the story it'd make more since of why this school is weird.
 
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Caden Black

Guest
If you mean trying to guess what's going to happen without knowing any details pretty good, keeps you guessing.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
Just a heads' up: people generally won't steal your ideas, because it's too much work making something profitable with them. Share the story.

I remember an old stupid flash game called The Dark School where you got dumped in a dungeon by the headmaster, and then had to fight zombies using a gun. It didn't have much depth (it only used a single enemy type) but it had an ongoing story and a lot of the graphics were "so bad it's good".

I think that unless you have the potential to make actually good stuff, you should embrace the campiness and make something exaggerated and intentionally stupid - the kids can pick up furniture to use as weapons, you go through portals to hell on a daily basis, you can hover in mid-air whenever you're aiming your gun so you can slow-mo shoot enemies behind cover... that kind of stuff. It's usually much easier to make senseless action than deep emotional stuff, so might as well do that.

Also, Eric's name doesn't start with a Z. Consider renaming him to Zeric. Or maybe his nickname is Zero because he has so bad grades, which is the reason why you wanna do that prank in the first place.
 
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Caden Black

Guest
So um... you want to know the story? I like Eric better though.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
So um... you want to know the story? I like Eric better though.
My honest answer would be "no": I'm not particularly interested in it, because everything you've been mentioning so far has been advertisement blurbs without substance. Save that for when you're writing up storefront pages and are about to actually release it :p
We're not really an audience to coerce, we're fellow creators that are here to contribute.

With that said, though, it's probably going to be impossible to discuss it unless you tell us about it. So please do, and also please edit the first post to add the story summary there as well (since most people read the first post and then instantly jump to the end of the topic and post something that only uses the first post).

You're free to call your characters whatever you want, it just seems like a missed opportunity to have two characters whose names start with an uncommon Z by coincidence. Having all three start with Zs could make it more of a "thing". :p
 
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Caden Black

Guest
Ah I see what you're saying. I was thinking about the Z thing and "Zeek" would work. Zack ,Zeek, and Zoey. I'll put the Chapter One story summary up on the first post.
 
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Caden Black

Guest
So I'm gonna change it from a School to a Computer Lab, works better with my "project" ;)
 
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