Went to sleep, tripped balls, woke up and was struck with inspiration.

[Evilshy 5,090]

So, I didn't get much sleep last night, so I took a nap. During this nap, I had the most ball trippiest dream in recent memory, and woke up with an extremely strong feeling that it would make a fucking awesome video game. I literally jumped out of my bed (which is a top bunk, so me feet hurt now) and, pausing only to grab a can of Dr. Pepper, began typing up everything I knew so I wouldn't forget it. I basically went stream of conscious for about an hour, typing up not only the dream, but as much as I could remember from the massive bolt of game ideas that all hit me at once. Here is the unedited result. It's kinda funny, you can tell by how I write that I was gradually waking up while typing this up.

If it seems a little disjointed, it's because all of the dream stuff was, obviously, while I was asleep and it's pretty damn difficult to remember most dreams, and all the game-related stuff literally came to me in about the first 30 seconds after I woke up.

 

Anyway, without further ado:

 

 

 

The dream:

 

Playing weird squirt gun game with friends, as per request of raven god that came to me outside unnamed fast food place. Squirt guns shot strange liquid that made people disappear. Never saw how exactly they would disappear, the “camera” would always look away just as someone was getting hit, and when it went back, puddle of liquid and the persons gun would be on the ground. We were all chill with this, because they either didn’t kill or we were okay with killing our friends (the latter would be strange, because this was a childhood game, and even if I didn’t recognize any of them, we were all good friends).

Playing outside what looked like a walmart, but had a strange feeling like we couldn’t go in. dudes in body armor with guns similar to ours but bigger and more awesome and weapon like looking came out and yelled at us.

Don’t remember what happened, but I was either captured or shot by the dudes.

Woke up some time later in strange building. Baby, smaller than normal, in a full body fuzzy brown starfish costume, lying on the floor. Somewhat loose fitting because baby still had full freedom of movement. Baby gave off the feeling of being abnormally intelligent for a baby. Women comes by and picks up baby and walks off, seeming to ignore me.

I seem to be in full health and start exploring the area. I have the distinct feeling it is the walmart-esque building I was in front of. It is a lot taller on the inside (possibly sunk into the ground by 20-30 feet?)

Anyway, really tall roof, looks like a huge warehouse. Lots of metal storage shelves (all painted reddish brown, a bit like wood, but they were definitely painted metal) with large white crates, most wrapped in some kind of plastic wrap looking thing. Some are translucent, and I can see shapes moving inside. A lot of the shelves are simply empty. I wander until another of the armored dudes comes and yells at me. Yelling was indistinct (it’s not that I don’t remember what he said, I specifically remember not being able to tell what he said. It was muffled, but I don’t think it was simply a different language. Perhaps hearing problems, or I had brain problems. Not sure on the latter, but as you’ll see in the rest of the dream, I definitely wouldn’t rule it out.)

Don’t remember what (if anything) happened here, next thing I remember is wearing some kind of uniform, sweeping, hauling crates, basically just being a worker in the warehouse place. The baby shows up a few times, always the same size and body, but he is developing (judging by the fact that I don’t seem to age, developing alarmingly quickly). He is always wearing the same brown, fuzzy starfish costume. Before long, the baby can talk, and we hold several conversations. I don’t remember what they were about, but I WAS able to understand him, and I do remember his conversations being weird and somewhat confusing, but interesting. The same old women from before would always come by and pick him up and carry him off, ignoring me. I never followed her for some reason, I had the feeling that I shouldn’t. The baby never complained about being taken away. We never talked about it in our conversations (at least, I’m about 90% sure we didn’t). This went on for a few months, I think.

At one point, I was talking with the baby, and this time, I can remember some of what was said. I was commenting on his abnormally fast mental development, and why didn’t seem to be growing physically. He didn’t answer, just kind of laughed. I asked when he thought he’d be able to walk, and he looked at me a bit strangely. Then all of a sudden, I fell down (but it didn’t hurt and I was unharmed) and unable to get up. The baby, calmly as you please, got up and started walking (a classic baby walk, not very stable. He was also walking more quickly than babies do at that age. Some of the guards (the dudes with armor and guns I’ve mentioned several times now) ran up, shouting incoherently about something. They rushed towards the walking baby, who didn’t seem to notice them coming. I blacked out before I saw what happened. When I woke up, I was sweeping. I never saw the baby again.

Time skip forward a few weeks (there was a lot of time skipping in this dream). I now have a strange feeling that I need to get out and kill someone. This someone, I’m not sure if he had a name, but I remember catching a fleeting glimpse of him; he looked like me, except blond, no glasses, and there appeared to be tentacles coming out of his face (I saw him from behind and to the side a bit as he walked away and around a corner, the tentacles appeared to be coming out of his mouth, but since I couldn’t actually see his face, I have no idea. I have tentatively named him Tentacle Boy).

Potential problem here, because even though I don’t ever remember being told that I can’t leave, I knew that I wasn’t allowed to, and in fact hadn’t been outside once my entire time working in the warehouse.

Somehow, I got into some of the armor (I think it was some sort of prototype armor, because it was bulkier and had laser guns built into the wrists) and I killed some dudes. A little fuzzy on the details, but I think I hid out in some sort of freight train car.

Time skip forward, and I’m in another building, battling some dudes. I am overwhelmed and jump out a window, to find myself falling down several hundred feet; I was in an extremely high tower, reminiscent of the Combine Citadel, if you’ve ever played Half-Life 2 (except it wasn’t quite that tall, was light grey and white, and had plenty of windows).

At this point, I gained full control of my actions. As I was falling, some sort of insect looking robots jumped onto me and began to take apart the armor. I didn’t know what to do, so I tried to fight them off, but I was too late; they got the armor off. One jabbed a needle of some sort into my arm and I died. This is where it got video gamey, because “KILLED BY POISON INJECTION” appeared out of nowhere (as though this was a HUD in a game) and I respawned at the moment of jumping out the window. As I fell, I saw the robots coming at me again and shot one as it came down, then smashed the other as it landed on me. More came at me, and I killed them all in similar ways.

Somehow, I survived the fall, but lost the armor in the process (I think it saved me, but was so damaged it was impeding my movement, so I took it off). I had the impression that I was still being followed, so I started running. I noticed that I could enter a sort of “speedy mode” where I could run faster, but it was a lot harder to turn and stop.

The landscape seemed to be that of an industrial area, lots of concrete walls, piles of random stuff, steel fences, trains going in and out of areas. There were other people, but none seemed to notice me.

I ran for a bit before entering a tunnel sort of area where I got hit by a train. A message saying “KILLED BY TRAIN” popped up, and I respawned just outside the tunnel. This time, I timed it better and got through, and narrowly dodged a second train as it came. I walked through an empty parking garage looking thing and found a door. I opened it to see a field. I walked out, and after a few seconds, thin, but long, tentacles wrapped around my arms from behind. After about a second of them being there, I died. The message was “KILLED BY TENTACLES”. I respawned in the parking garage and walked back out. This time, I was watching my arms, and as soon as I saw the tantacles start to wrap around them, jumped up and landed on my back. I felt a wet sort of squish and the tentacles slid off. I looked at the ground and saw some sort of jellyfish looking thing. It was now dead.

I walked through the field for a bit before a red insect thing jumped at my face. I fought back, and eventually managed to throw it off. A crow flew down and attacked the thing while yelling “I will eat it!” (yes, talking crow). After the crow swallowed it, it looked at me for a minute before it started coughing. It’s head deformed, it’s beak grew in size and became red and spikey like the insect it had just eaten. The crow had been taken over by the insect. It flew at me, but I knocked it out of the air, leapt onto it and tore it’s head off. I suddenly had the feeling that this could be used as a weapon, so I shoved my hand into the torn neck of the bird and put my fingers up in the beak, sock puppet style. It was not wet or bloody or anything, for some reason. I now had a beak/parasistic insect death glove, which I used to kill several other insect/bird hybrids.

 

At this point, I woke up, was hit with inspiration, sat up straight, and then literally jumped off the top bunk, grabbed some soda, unlocked my computer, and started typing this up before I started forgetting everything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Game stuff:

 

Technically an FPS, although there might not be a lot of shooting.

Freestyle; there is a story, but not particularly clear and you can do other stuff whenever. Possibly open world; at the very least, semi-open world.

Earth-like world, but not quite. Most things seemed modern or near future, with some more futuristic anachronisms (such as the prototype armor I mentioned, and the flying insect bots that tried to kill me (and succeeded once).

Lots of tentacles and tentacle-ish things. It’s sort of a theme. Plenty of strange animals, reminiscent of real ones, but sinister and deadly, trying to kill the player, and most have tentacles of some sort somewhere on their body.

HL style, no real custscenes, except in the form of your body being taken over and stuff happening to you.

Tons of ways to die. No healthbar, maybe red around edges to indicate pain, but maybe not. A lot of instant death.

Frequent check points because there is A LOT of dying and respawning, sort of like Limbo.

Very free movement and physics. For example, if something hostile is on your back, you can jump backwards into a wall to crush it.

Freedom also extends to what can be used as a weapon; physics is part of the damage system; you can be hurt by falling or falling object, things can be swung around and damage according to weight and momentum and stuff. I also want to be able to take parts of dead things and use them as weapons, as I did with the insect/bird head.

Sound would be a big part. Since a player obviously couldn’t feel it if something attached itself to their back, they’d need to be listening.

No saving or checkpoints in the traditional sense; only reincarnation (explained below).

 

 

 

Story stuff:

 

As far as the universe, it’s perhaps 21XX, so about 100-200 years in the future. A lot has changed, not the least of which is all these weird and hostile animals. The warehouse I was talking about is owned by some government somewhere, and is storage area for some sort of government biological program. They deal in reincarnation (and that’s what really happened in the beginning; you’re killed by something in the beginning and then reincarnated as a lowly warehouse worker).

As far as the weird weapons, what I’m thinking is: with the biotechnology available, creating new bodies is easy, but new minds are still impossible. The weapons people have (not liquid based like they were in the dream, by the way) somehow “absorb” a persons mind as data when they kill the body. When someone is killed by police, soldiers, or whoever, they have to submit their data cartridge so the minds can be used in new bodies. As data, the minds can be altered (memory erased, intelligence increased or decreased by small amounts, etc), but the framework is so massive and complex that it can’t be reliably copied or made from scratch.

There is also, of course, a black market in minds, since the government doesn’t make them publicly available. I’m sure you can imagine all the different things that editable minds could be used for by criminals. The possibilities are near endless.

People know about the reincarnation thing (although obviously the government doesn’t tell them everything, such as the editing and other such experimentation that goes on), and a religion has sprung up around it. It is the world’s major religion, and it’s teaching are why nobody really minds when people die as long as their minds are gathered first, because then they never truly leave.

I’m thinking that the game with the kids in the beginning is something like that; people have some sort of home reincarnation thing that they can wear. It’s kind of like laser tag; you get hit in a vital area, and your mind leaves your body for maybe 5 minutes, then goes back in and you can keep playing.

Things like this could also be used to make sure that people who die of natural or other non-mind-gun causes can still be reincarnated. This could also explain the respawning without even breaking immersion; whenever you die, you get reincarnated from some little device you have implanted in you somewhere. The time of day would change whenever you respawn to reflect the wait after you die.

Perhaps, if you die in certain areas, your body can be found and retrieved by people, so you wake up in a totally different area (bad or good).

I’m thinking that perhaps there are automated robots or something that fly around moving bodies to safe places before people reincarnate. It would explain, for example, how I died in the field and then respawned back in the parking garage.

It would not, however, explain how I respawned at the moment of window jumping.

Maybe, in that case, when you die, you get picked up by bots who take you back to the tower, and you have to escape the tower again? That would be cool.

 

 

 

The early part of the story would play out much like my dream; you end up in some sort of warehouse, talk to this creepy-ass baby with adult intelligence, see weird moving shapes in crates that you move around, get accosted by guards with weird futuristic weapons. Very obvious that some seriously weird shit is going on.

Tentacle Boy is introduced through some weird vision or something (possibly shown to you by the baby as he is being taken away after walking; I have a feeling the baby needs to play some sort of role in this). You get the feeling that the tentacle boy has something to do with you being stuck in here, so you have to go after him (possibly, other stuff will happen in the beginning that makes your time in the warehouse worse and more creepy, to give more motivation to find and kill that tentacley bastard).

The escape happens much the same way, though I’m not yet sure how you’d get the prototype armor in the first place. The escape in the train, the tower fight and window jump are the same.

From there, it’s an open world, with plenty of weird and cool stuff to see, plenty of ways to die a horrible death, plenty of weird people to meet and befriend or fight with. Strange, creepy, and cryptic clues as to who Tentacle Boy is and where he might be (I don’t even know yet).

 

The baby will be significant in someway, because he sure seemed to be in my dream.

The baby is a result of a highly risky experiment. They were trying to see if they could make the baby’s mind develop at a highly accelerated rate, while they kept most of his body from growing so he wouldn’t be able to move much on his own, and thus be much less of a threat. They allowed him a pretty great degree of freedom while they studied his development, which is how he came to meet you. From there, he took a liking to you and would ask to be put in areas where he knew you would run into him, so you could talk. The women is some sort of highly mind-edited drone, almost, who they send in to grab the baby when they think he is saying too much, or that he’s distracted you from work too long, or for any number of reasons. She ignores you because her one purpose in life is to move the baby where her boss tells her too; she ignores others unless they are a threat to the baby. I’m thinking, given the free and open nature of the game, you can attack whoever whenever. If you, say, start whacking the baby with your broom while sweeping, the care taker comes out and tears you apart with her heavily modified body. I’m thinking she has retractable claws and armor under her skin. She’s like old woman Wolverine.

 

[AnonBrony 1,468]

Holy crap thats one wall of text. I didn't think you'd write THAT much. Hmmm... maybe this dream means somethin'. Like an Omen. Maybe you are suposed to make videogames? Or maybe write the story for 'em? Never know man. Maybe you born to be the best video game writer ever heheh.

[Evilshy 5,090]

Holy crap thats one wall of text. I didn't think you'd write THAT much. Hmmm... maybe this dream means somethin'. Like an Omen. Maybe you are suposed to make videogames? Or maybe write the story for 'em? Never know man. Maybe you born to be the best video game writer ever heheh.

 

When I get into the zone, I write text walls

And seeing a their were several parallels between the dream/subsequent ideas and a game I was already kind of planning, I definitely think I need to make this a game at some point in my life. Or at least work with someone else to make it happen.

Edited November 15, 2012 by Evilshy

[AegisReflector 886]

This honestly sounds like Doom and Half-Life mixed together in some weird odd way lol.

 

I like the concept but I'm more into the basic FPS's like Goldeneye 64 and Wolfenstein 3D, but I like the whole reincarnation/spawning system. It kind of reminds me of Contra where when you die, you spawn at the exact same spot and that serves as like a checkpoint or whatever. A very neat gimmick.

 

Like Resident Evil, I always love it when physics is the key in order to get out of tight situations (even though the moves themselves are as corny as introduced in The Matrix lol), but it sounds like your vision has your character very limited when it comes to health and weapons, so it's always good to use your head and use what's around you. I love that in a game, and if I saw more of that in today's FPS genre, I would gladly be interested in it.

[Rain Dance 131]

Evilshy Really? When i first saw this i was so close to comment. "Are you serious? Am i supposed to read THIS?!" Now i read it tho and i found it a really good idea. It felt the same for me when i started to write my first Fan-Fic everything just randomly kind of popped into my head.

 

This reincranation system seems really cool and that baby give me some damn creeps..

Edited November 15, 2012 by Rain Dance

[Betez 1,734]

I wish I could have trippy dreams like you, Evilshy. I literally have the exact same dream every night. It's always about how I do something really stupid, embarrassing and/or life-threatening; and I wake up in sweat thinking it actually happened.

[Evilshy 5,090]

Had another dream along somewhat similar lines. Not a lot like this one, but it definitely had some themes that fit, and helped me come up with some more stuff for this universe.

 

I don't remember as much of this dream, but I remember enough. I am somewhat omniscient in this dreams. I don't know everything, but I frequently get impressions/ideas/feelings/whatever that something works a certain way, even though I probably wouldn't know it if I was actually in the dream. I was not in control at any point in this dream.

 

It's not as long as the other one, don't worry

 

 

I was driving somewhere important, I think it was some kind of interview somewhere, so I was driving there. There were an awful lot of people walking around, and quite a few were walking in the road. For some reason, neither I nor anybody around had any problem with me running people over. It felt normal to me to be carrying out mass vehicular manslaughter, and all the people who saw it barely batted an eyelash at the sight.

 

I came to a tunnel which was closed to car traffic for construction, but pedestrians were still allowed to walk through on a sidewalk. I was close enough to my destination that I decided to just park and walk the rest of the way. In the tunnel, there was a small shop. Curious, I walked up to it and saw that the counter was displaying various human body parts. The man at the counter did a little sales spiel, saying how fresh the body parts were. He then leaned over and whispered in my ear, thanking me for letting them restock their inventory under the table for free, and that he'd let me have a few organs for free if I wanted. I got the feeling that he (or at least, his employees) were going to harvest organs from all the people I had run over, and that it was technically illegal, but the police would probably turn a blind eye as long as he didn't talk about it. I got a liver, a stomach, and a trachea for free.

I don't remember anything after this.

 

 

 

 

Anyway, this gave me an idea for the universe. You know how I talked about how bodies can basically be built from scratch, modified, and whatever, quite easily, while minds can be stored, edited in a limited fashion, but not created?

So basically, all citizens have something implanted in their brains that is recording their mind every 5 or so minutes. When a person dies, their mind is put into a sleeping state and transmitted to the nearest mind server, along with a reincarnation will (a will that gives specific information as to what is to be done with a persons mind when they die; everybody with a transmitter has at least a basic reincarnation will). Here, the mind can be transferred to a new body as specified by the will.

Reincarnation has led to all kinds of new laws; accidental manslaughter isn't as big of a deal, but it's still a felony (murder is still just as bad, though). Reincarnation fraud is a fairly widespread and can be highly illegal*. Minds can be subpoenaed if a they are relevant to a criminal case of sufficient severity. People can bequeath their minds after their final death, or even give copied parts of their mind away while still alive. Piracy of well-known minds is fairly rampant. Identification is done through DNA testing, since minds can be "read" (with quite some difficulty and a lot of expensive equipment). The list goes on and on.

Body parts can be bought and sold as commodities, and can be spliced into one's body. Some wealthy people even hire private bioengineers to make custom organs and parts.

 

Anyway, the player is used as guinea pig for several experimental technologies (which could explain where he got the armor or whatever in the beginning, if I end up going with that), one of which is a prototype instant reincarnator designed for the military. Basically, after the person dies, a small drone pops out of the brain implant, flies to a safe location (in war, behind friendly lines) where it deploys nano-bots that attempt to synthesize a body for the person, then reincarnates them right there. Since it's a prototype, it's not very fast (so every time you die, you lose maybe 12 or so hours of ingame time), it's guidance system isn't particularly well developed yet (so respawns are flexible; no real check points or static respawn points, you can respawn almost anywhere that's safe and has the necessary materials to synthesize a human body).

There would be a mechanic where respawn times can change depending on where you respawn (it's going to take longer for the nano bots to pull the necessary atoms and molecules out of a rocky wasteland than a grassy field). If you find someone with the necessary equipment and can pay/convince them to, they can alter your reincarantion specifications, so you reincarnate faster, stronger, bigger, smarter, or any other of a number of things.

 

Your thoughts?

 

 

*reincarnation fraud covers things like killing yourself because you want a new a new body (relatively minor), or having your will say you don't want to reincarnate (and therefore just die naturally) while sending a copy of your mind to an illegal reincarnation clinic (they exist, and some are quite advanced) and therefore being officially dead (a major crime).

 

 

--- IMAGINARY POST-DIVIDING LINE GOES HERE ---

 

 

Yet another extremely weird Evilshy dream that has given me some ideas for this

 

 

I don't remember how exactly it began. I was with a group of people I knew, but I can't really remember who exactly it was. It was kinda weird in that way.

Anyway, we were hiking in this dark wasteland. The rocks were all sharp and craggy and black, a bit like a volcanic landscape. The sky was dark with smoke, ash, or something of that nature. We got to the top of this hill and looked down to see a small, well-hidden building. We went in, and found it was some sort of research facility. We weren't supposed to be there, but we looked around anyway. It appeared to be deserted, but we eventually found a bunch of kids. There was a brief discussion about what to do with them, but we decided to take them back with us.

Time skip here, but we got back to civilization, although we ran into trouble along the way and all but one of the kids died (we lost a few from our group, as well).

Anyway, we were at some fancy party, and one of the kids was there as a sort of guest of honor. One of the group came up to me and whispered to me that they had received new information: all the kids were being manipulated by the opposing side, and the last little girl had to be killed before she told our enemies that we found the research facility.

Now, I obviously disagree with killing kids, but in the dream, I had the feeling that it was necessary. So while I don't remember what it was, there was a damn good reason why nobody could know we found that place, good enough for me to kill a little girl D:

 

Anyway, doesn't really matter, because she was under such heavy guard that I couldn't find a way to kill he without being caught, in which case our enemies would know who found the facility anyway, making the assassination pointless.

Anyway, we all had to flee.

I stole a police car and attempted to drive away. However, it operated differently from any other car I've ever driven, and was extremely hard to control. I kept going up onto the curb and narrowly avoiding pedestrians, or going into the opposite lane and narrowly avoiding oncoming traffic. Eventually, I got out of the city, but I hit a telephone pole. The car, somehow, still worked (barely), so I drove it to this out-of-the-way place off the road and hid it with some undergrowth. Then I ran to a convenience store I had passed on the way there and acted all casual like, buying some Red Vines, a Sobe, and calling my contacts to tell them I had escaped and was safe at the moment.

 

A few minutes later, as I was walking to a friends house, some of the enemy forces found me and I woke up during the ensuing gun battle.

 

 

 

Anyway, this gave me an idea for several things. First off is government experimentation on people, which I was going to use anyway, but what I remember from the facility, to some of the kids and stuff has given me a few ideas that are hard to explain. Second, I like this thing where the police cars (and presumably, other government issue things) are controlled in totally different ways than civilian stuff, making it impractical or even impossible to steal government stuff and use it effectively unless you've been trained for it.

Edited November 26, 2012 by Evilshy

[Alex Kennedy 1,228]

@@Evilshy, 

 

Okay, I realize this was about two months ago, so I'm pretty late to the party, as it were, but seriously, this game needs to happen. You can't just get people this interested and then never produce anything, that would be downright sadistic. I don't care what you have to do, just MAKE THIS GAME HAPPEN!

 

On a more constructive note, I think trippy, moldbreaking, sci-fi/cyberpunk games like this are really popular right now, and if you can actually manage to produce this game it would definitely have the potential to be really successful. For some reason it kind of reminds me of Dead Space (maybe because of the character's possible insanity and/or mental problems, and also the tentacles I guess), which is definitely a good thing.

Edited January 23, 2013 by Alex-Kennedy