Step 1: Goal

efloehr on 2011/09/11 14:21 of Programming for 30 years now, never made a real game, gotta try now!

In my previous post, I mentioned hearing Mel Chuna talk at Linuxfest about gamification, and that the four components of a game are goal, rules, feedback, and voluntary participation.

After brainstorming with my family, we came up with a lot of ideas.  Biology-related, something with genetic algorithms, aliens, evolution, etc.  The ideas were rolling around in my head as I was falling asleep when I started to think about aliens.

Being a father of a 13 and 14 year old, I thought about what alien mothers and fathers might think about.  And where alien children in school might go on field trips.  And what advanced aliens might do with all that technology available to them.

So my thought for my game goal is this: you are an alien parent whose alien children went on a social studies field trip to study the primative life on Earth when the school-bus alien spaceship malfunctioned and crashed.  Thankfully all the children are ok, but they have been scattered around and your job is to successfully retrieve them.

The "collect stranded survivors" theme has been used successfully in a number of older video games, like Choplifter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choplifter), Defender (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defender_(video_game)), and Robotron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotron:_2084).  Its also a theme in many newer games as well, but I'm thinking specifically of games that could be similar in capability for a Pyweek challenge.

As for how to incorporate the Mutate! theme, I'm thinking that the aliens are so advanced that they have no concept of killing or lethal weapons.  If fact, the only tool available to you, the alien parent, is a mutator ray.  So now, how to make a fun, playable game with good rules and feedback and mechanics out of that?  Stay tuned...