Since playing Fortnite, I realized how addicting building is, so I was thinking of a game that can incorporate the building aspects of Fortnite, but with the combat mechanics and level design of the Dark Souls series, but with compelling story, characters, and world-building. I don't have the imagination and writing skills, so I will describe these in generic detail.
I envision that the main character you play is fully customizable, but regardless of what your hero looks like, they will have a set personality along the lines of Kat from the Gravity Rush series or Sora from the Kingdom Hearts series. So your hero will have actual dialog and will interact with NPCs like Kat or Sora would. No longer will you just stare out in blank space when something important is going on.
The story takes place during the medieval ages with your parents who are both master carpenters, so you grow up knowing how to build things on a competent level, though it was found that your athleticism and combat awareness are your true strengths.
Following Horizon: Zero Dawn's (HZD) brilliant tutorial section that incorporates the story AND character development, your childhood will take you through basic building concepts in a similar fashion to HZD story-telling methods.
Each village tends to have the following necessary NPCs. The healer (this is where you heal and level up your healing items), Spell master who is versed in all the sorcery arts, another master in martial/fighting arts, blacksmiths, and fashion designer (clothes are a basic necessity). At age 5, after finishing the building tutorial, there's an alien invasion where, in a surprising twist, your town was decimated but your parents and most of the villagers survived, thanks to your parents' work on building near fail-proof emergency shelters. Usually in these games, everyone except for you gets killed.
Other villages, unfortunately, did not fare well, and almost all the people there were killed. Stragglers who somehow chanced upon your village, ended up settling there.
Your parents are kind, and though they wanted you to follow in their footsteps as they come from a long line of master carpenters, they nevertheless allow you to fully actualize your talents, so along with learning how to build, you also learn all the offense/defense of the game, encouraged by your parents even before the invasion, but the village then rallying around your skills after the invasion, which will be shown in a cutscene.
In this aftermath, at age 5, the tutorial section of your learning how to fight and using various spells will be spelled out (pun intended), probably following the same concepts of Dark Souls, such as sorcery, cleric, dark arts, and so forth.
Here in this tutorial section, as this is your education into battle, you chose your class, and in terms of leveling up, you can increase each stat any way you want, following the Dark Souls model.
The rationale of your village's support in honing your battle and magic skills is that the few stragglers who arrived at your village told their stories, and how after their villages have been destroyed, each destroyed village is installed by one of the many leaders of this Alien species (i.e your main bosses), and they have sentinels extending and guarding the main village (i.e. the trash mobs).
As your village nevertheless flourished, population grew and becomes rapidly overcrowded. Therefore, you're entrusted once you reached adulthood (18 years old) to go out to each village, destroy each Boss, making the area safe for volunteer citizens to live there.
Enemies respawn after resting at each reclaimed waystation (i.e. bonfire) and ultimately village (fog gate boss arena), as in the Dark Souls series. In terms of story conceptualization, I'm thinking that the leader (Final Boss) gets word that you found a safe place and/or saved the village and settlers have settled in, so the leader will reinstall the same trash mobs after you rest, to prevent your progression.
I'm not sure how to explain story-wise why the bosses can't be regenerated, perhaps something about how they're "unique" so they can't be duplicated, but the trash mobs can be regenerated.
You're BFF will accompany you, who is an expert in traveling and scouting (although he will watch and make comments during your battles, so your character will be the only one fighting). Your friend scouts out the area, and once he finds a suitable safe spot, he will put up a waystation (i.e. bonfire), where you can rest and replenish your healing items, en route to the afflicted village.
Once each village is cleared after successful defeat (and when you kill the boss, it will say "You Defeated" as homage to Dark Souls 1), your friend will bring people over, as shown in cutscenes after each boss, though these scenes will be unique and build upon the story/lore/character development.
Of course, all cutscenes are skippable. Your friend will also help develop character and story during your travels due to various cutscenes where you both have conversations, as you progress through the fighting. This kind of follows the JRPG model of storytelling where your party team tends to have discussions and getting to know one another.
Your village decided that each successfully installed village must include the "essentials", namely: 1 spell master, 1 blacksmith, 1 healer, 1 martial arts trainer, and 1 fashion designer. So each village you clear, you can level up all your stats and equipment there. Each village's NPC will be distinct in personality and diverse.
Along with the brilliant level design including vertical and horizontal considerations like Dark Souls 1, the combat mechanics is also the same. There will also be massive dungeons at the level of the 3-D Zeldas, pre-Breath of the Wild.
The aliens intentionally made complex, convoluted areas and dungeons for people to get lost and killed. After triumphing over these confusing areas, once you defeat the boss, as a competent carpenter, you must build and reclaim that village.
For those who really hate building, you can just put up 4 walls and 1 ceiling, or per Cheesus Almighty's brilliant suggestion, you can chose amongst pre-set buildings, but you need the necessary amount of materials to build them. As Cheesus Almighty posed, everyone wants to go to a nice village as opposed to plain, basic homes.
However, if you don't have the resources, you can still put up the 4 walls and 1 ceiling so you can progress, but when you collect the necessary materials, you can come back and change it to one of the pre-set buildings.
Those who really love building can go hog wild, as the space will be large enough for you to build pretty massive structures, though of course each of your 5 buildings must be able to fit within the expansive area. You can interconnect the buildings as well, as long as there's the space for you and the NPC.
There will be a guide to make sure you build the minimal area for you and the person to fit in the building. You will then have a marker in-game to show where you want to place the person (i.e the sorcerer, healer, etc), and you can also build staircases, furniture, as well. You can move the markers if you get bored seeing him or her in the same place.
Of course, this game is created by the ideal video game developer, and they will have a gallery on their website of the most impressive buildings/interior design submitted. Perhaps giving out contests with prizes such as increased EXP points (but NO unique items in-game as that will be unfair), signed posters, etc from time to time.
When the game becomes successful, free customized skins and/or additional pre-set building blueprints are given as a thank you, perhaps given out at set periods of time (i.e. every month for the next 3 months).
When even more successful, they will offer grand prize to anyone who owns the game an all expense paid trip to the studio with 4 free game codes to give out to your family and friends. Next prize down is 4 free codes. This is following the CDPR and Guerrilla Games' model of generosity.
The level design and treasure will always be the same and in the same place, as I prefer getting meaningful treasure instead of random loot. The resources for crafting, however, will be randomized, so you will have to continue to search and explore for these resources, making exploration more varied.
If you make mistakes in your building, you get your materials back when you destroy it, so you can experiment without fear of losing materials. Further, to save time and reduce the tedium, you just need to whack the structure 3 times to destroy it.
In terms of quantity of materials held, you will start initially with 3 slots for each material, comprising of wood, brick and metal. As you build more, you get building points that can be used to buy 5 additional slots (this is one level up). You can store 999 of each type of material/slot, and the building costs are much reduced compared to Fortnite. The amount of slots you can have is 50 or even more, so this will help those who love to build and/or horde.
Along with building materials, you can also find cotton/linen/dyes for your furniture covering, also 999 can be fit into 1 slot. In other words, our ideal game developer wants you to have a lot of varied resources in adequate quantities.
Initially, you can't reinforce like in the Fortnite mechanics, so your building doesn't look very nice, but again, as you build more, you level up by learning from your parents how to reinforce up to two times. The first build requires 5 materials, then reinforcements are 10, then 15. Whenever you level up your building skills, you can chose either increasing your slots, or reinforcement when you talk to your parents.
Whenever you have enough building points, you can fast travel to see your parents (or you can see them anytime), who will have special dialogue each time you level up, with cutscenes to further the story and flesh out the characters.
That will include the 10 cutscenes every time you gain slots, and then 2 additional cutscenes whenever you level up your building reinforcement. So story and character development are key here and of course, you can skip these cutscenes.
After building all 5 buildings to house the important people who will level you up, you can always come back to build more if you'd like. Weapons, armors, catalysts, wands, etc can all be upgraded. Each time you upgrade your weapons and armors, they look fancier and more detailed, weapons, wands, catalysts and chimes getting larger and more "bad ass" like in the Monster Hunter series.
You can find special items (perhaps 5 in each NG cycle) where you can completely change your stats such as in Dark Souls 3 through the All-Purpose Fashion Designer. You can change your appearance and gender whenever you reach a village through the designer as much as you want, to prevent being bored by the way your character looks.There will be a transmog/overlay system for fashion souls.
After killing all the mandatory bosses, the leader finding out that it's the last one standing, it then encounters you. You defeat the final boss, and save the world. End cutscene which will have dialogues of your parents and the major NPCs showing their gratitude.
In terms of multiplayer, there will be COOP. It will be cool to see what other players' villages look like as you go into the boss fight, so the game will allow you to go around the villages.
As it makes no sense for your heroes to fight each other, for the PvP elements, in your option menu, you hit "Guilds" which takes you outside of the main campaign, and there's a post where you click and you can chose what faction you want to belong, with character customization.
This character will have the same stats as your hero. Further, since it's just a fancy looking stick in the PvP area, you can use the materials you have and create a building next to the post, or around the post, or you don't have to build at all if you're aversed to building.
Since the boss fights are amongst the most fun aspects of the game, after defeating the final boss (before going to NG+), there will be in-game story explanation that after fighting it, it's spirit is placed in that area.
Due to its spirit, you can chose to fight these bosses again as you want to hone your skills in case there's another invasion. In other words, this will help those who want to do a lowest level build challenge, because you can keep practicing against these bosses instead of having to play the game over and over again.
Further, you can chose what level the boss is from NG up through whatever NG+ cycle you are in. You can see how much you advanced if you're in NG+7, fighting an NG boss.
NG+ will follow Dark Souls 2 where the enemies get harder each cycle, and you can find more powerful rings up through +3. There are also special weapons placed that you can get for each NG+ difficulty. They'll be just as viable as the other NG weapons, but have different movesets, feels, and appearances. Although it may not be as powerful as your favorite NG weapons, I think by wielding one of the NG+7 weapons will be a badge of honor, plus, it will look more "bad ass" then the NG through NG+6 weapons.
Further, your building area gets larger and larger up through the hardest difficulty NG+7, so you can add even more buildings/structures if you want as you do more NG cycles. The buildings you made can be kept in the save menu area, so you don't have to build again. For instance, after finishing the building and you installed the person, you can select save. If you add/change any additional structures, you can just click on the building outside, and save over the old one, as much as you want.
Therefore, before entering NG cycle, you should make sure that you saved all the buildings you want to keep in your building menu. So it's worth going through additional walk-throughs for those who love building, as you get more space. Highest difficulty is NG+7.
In general terms, you can customize the sounds, including turning off the crunching footsteps that most people hated in Dark Souls 1, but I love. You can adjust the music and environmental sounds. There are absolutely no maps, so you have to explore, but the brilliant level design makes you want to look for the randomized building resources, and the treasures.
Description: A semi-open world action RPG with sandbox elements due to the building aspects. Of course it will be 1080p at 60fps for the current gen consoles. The graphics is along the lines of the Gravity Rush series, where it looks like a hand-drawn animated movie such as seen in Studio Ghibli.
Exclusivity: This game will be exclusive to the Xbox One, to take advantage of the power of the XBox One X. It will be advertised that the XBox One X will be enhanced. Further, being on only 1 console will allow for best optimization.
Achievements: There are NO missable Achievements. When you beat the game, you go back to the place where you're about to fight the final boss in case you want to complete out the Achievements. The game encourages you to play blindly and explore at your leisure, so you can avoid spoilers that often occur when people read Achievement or Trophy requirements.
Difficulty level: No difficulty levels. The game is like Dark Souls 1 where it's hard but fair, so no adding 500 enemies to make it artificially harder or 1HKO. It can be easy mode as the spells will be pretty powerful such as in Dark Souls 1. If players are still struggling, there is the COOP option.
If you can make any video game you want, with unlimited resources and the most talented and pro-consumer team, what would you like to see?
The How of Happiness Review
I envision that the main character you play is fully customizable, but regardless of what your hero looks like, they will have a set personality along the lines of Kat from the Gravity Rush series or Sora from the Kingdom Hearts series. So your hero will have actual dialog and will interact with NPCs like Kat or Sora would. No longer will you just stare out in blank space when something important is going on.
The story takes place during the medieval ages with your parents who are both master carpenters, so you grow up knowing how to build things on a competent level, though it was found that your athleticism and combat awareness are your true strengths.
Following Horizon: Zero Dawn's (HZD) brilliant tutorial section that incorporates the story AND character development, your childhood will take you through basic building concepts in a similar fashion to HZD story-telling methods.
Each village tends to have the following necessary NPCs. The healer (this is where you heal and level up your healing items), Spell master who is versed in all the sorcery arts, another master in martial/fighting arts, blacksmiths, and fashion designer (clothes are a basic necessity). At age 5, after finishing the building tutorial, there's an alien invasion where, in a surprising twist, your town was decimated but your parents and most of the villagers survived, thanks to your parents' work on building near fail-proof emergency shelters. Usually in these games, everyone except for you gets killed.
Other villages, unfortunately, did not fare well, and almost all the people there were killed. Stragglers who somehow chanced upon your village, ended up settling there.
Your parents are kind, and though they wanted you to follow in their footsteps as they come from a long line of master carpenters, they nevertheless allow you to fully actualize your talents, so along with learning how to build, you also learn all the offense/defense of the game, encouraged by your parents even before the invasion, but the village then rallying around your skills after the invasion, which will be shown in a cutscene.
In this aftermath, at age 5, the tutorial section of your learning how to fight and using various spells will be spelled out (pun intended), probably following the same concepts of Dark Souls, such as sorcery, cleric, dark arts, and so forth.
Here in this tutorial section, as this is your education into battle, you chose your class, and in terms of leveling up, you can increase each stat any way you want, following the Dark Souls model.
The rationale of your village's support in honing your battle and magic skills is that the few stragglers who arrived at your village told their stories, and how after their villages have been destroyed, each destroyed village is installed by one of the many leaders of this Alien species (i.e your main bosses), and they have sentinels extending and guarding the main village (i.e. the trash mobs).
As your village nevertheless flourished, population grew and becomes rapidly overcrowded. Therefore, you're entrusted once you reached adulthood (18 years old) to go out to each village, destroy each Boss, making the area safe for volunteer citizens to live there.
Enemies respawn after resting at each reclaimed waystation (i.e. bonfire) and ultimately village (fog gate boss arena), as in the Dark Souls series. In terms of story conceptualization, I'm thinking that the leader (Final Boss) gets word that you found a safe place and/or saved the village and settlers have settled in, so the leader will reinstall the same trash mobs after you rest, to prevent your progression.
I'm not sure how to explain story-wise why the bosses can't be regenerated, perhaps something about how they're "unique" so they can't be duplicated, but the trash mobs can be regenerated.
You're BFF will accompany you, who is an expert in traveling and scouting (although he will watch and make comments during your battles, so your character will be the only one fighting). Your friend scouts out the area, and once he finds a suitable safe spot, he will put up a waystation (i.e. bonfire), where you can rest and replenish your healing items, en route to the afflicted village.
Once each village is cleared after successful defeat (and when you kill the boss, it will say "You Defeated" as homage to Dark Souls 1), your friend will bring people over, as shown in cutscenes after each boss, though these scenes will be unique and build upon the story/lore/character development.
Of course, all cutscenes are skippable. Your friend will also help develop character and story during your travels due to various cutscenes where you both have conversations, as you progress through the fighting. This kind of follows the JRPG model of storytelling where your party team tends to have discussions and getting to know one another.
Your village decided that each successfully installed village must include the "essentials", namely: 1 spell master, 1 blacksmith, 1 healer, 1 martial arts trainer, and 1 fashion designer. So each village you clear, you can level up all your stats and equipment there. Each village's NPC will be distinct in personality and diverse.
Along with the brilliant level design including vertical and horizontal considerations like Dark Souls 1, the combat mechanics is also the same. There will also be massive dungeons at the level of the 3-D Zeldas, pre-Breath of the Wild.
The aliens intentionally made complex, convoluted areas and dungeons for people to get lost and killed. After triumphing over these confusing areas, once you defeat the boss, as a competent carpenter, you must build and reclaim that village.
For those who really hate building, you can just put up 4 walls and 1 ceiling, or per Cheesus Almighty's brilliant suggestion, you can chose amongst pre-set buildings, but you need the necessary amount of materials to build them. As Cheesus Almighty posed, everyone wants to go to a nice village as opposed to plain, basic homes.
However, if you don't have the resources, you can still put up the 4 walls and 1 ceiling so you can progress, but when you collect the necessary materials, you can come back and change it to one of the pre-set buildings.
Those who really love building can go hog wild, as the space will be large enough for you to build pretty massive structures, though of course each of your 5 buildings must be able to fit within the expansive area. You can interconnect the buildings as well, as long as there's the space for you and the NPC.
There will be a guide to make sure you build the minimal area for you and the person to fit in the building. You will then have a marker in-game to show where you want to place the person (i.e the sorcerer, healer, etc), and you can also build staircases, furniture, as well. You can move the markers if you get bored seeing him or her in the same place.
Of course, this game is created by the ideal video game developer, and they will have a gallery on their website of the most impressive buildings/interior design submitted. Perhaps giving out contests with prizes such as increased EXP points (but NO unique items in-game as that will be unfair), signed posters, etc from time to time.
When the game becomes successful, free customized skins and/or additional pre-set building blueprints are given as a thank you, perhaps given out at set periods of time (i.e. every month for the next 3 months).
When even more successful, they will offer grand prize to anyone who owns the game an all expense paid trip to the studio with 4 free game codes to give out to your family and friends. Next prize down is 4 free codes. This is following the CDPR and Guerrilla Games' model of generosity.
The level design and treasure will always be the same and in the same place, as I prefer getting meaningful treasure instead of random loot. The resources for crafting, however, will be randomized, so you will have to continue to search and explore for these resources, making exploration more varied.
If you make mistakes in your building, you get your materials back when you destroy it, so you can experiment without fear of losing materials. Further, to save time and reduce the tedium, you just need to whack the structure 3 times to destroy it.
In terms of quantity of materials held, you will start initially with 3 slots for each material, comprising of wood, brick and metal. As you build more, you get building points that can be used to buy 5 additional slots (this is one level up). You can store 999 of each type of material/slot, and the building costs are much reduced compared to Fortnite. The amount of slots you can have is 50 or even more, so this will help those who love to build and/or horde.
Along with building materials, you can also find cotton/linen/dyes for your furniture covering, also 999 can be fit into 1 slot. In other words, our ideal game developer wants you to have a lot of varied resources in adequate quantities.
Initially, you can't reinforce like in the Fortnite mechanics, so your building doesn't look very nice, but again, as you build more, you level up by learning from your parents how to reinforce up to two times. The first build requires 5 materials, then reinforcements are 10, then 15. Whenever you level up your building skills, you can chose either increasing your slots, or reinforcement when you talk to your parents.
Whenever you have enough building points, you can fast travel to see your parents (or you can see them anytime), who will have special dialogue each time you level up, with cutscenes to further the story and flesh out the characters.
That will include the 10 cutscenes every time you gain slots, and then 2 additional cutscenes whenever you level up your building reinforcement. So story and character development are key here and of course, you can skip these cutscenes.
After building all 5 buildings to house the important people who will level you up, you can always come back to build more if you'd like. Weapons, armors, catalysts, wands, etc can all be upgraded. Each time you upgrade your weapons and armors, they look fancier and more detailed, weapons, wands, catalysts and chimes getting larger and more "bad ass" like in the Monster Hunter series.
You can find special items (perhaps 5 in each NG cycle) where you can completely change your stats such as in Dark Souls 3 through the All-Purpose Fashion Designer. You can change your appearance and gender whenever you reach a village through the designer as much as you want, to prevent being bored by the way your character looks.There will be a transmog/overlay system for fashion souls.
After killing all the mandatory bosses, the leader finding out that it's the last one standing, it then encounters you. You defeat the final boss, and save the world. End cutscene which will have dialogues of your parents and the major NPCs showing their gratitude.
In terms of multiplayer, there will be COOP. It will be cool to see what other players' villages look like as you go into the boss fight, so the game will allow you to go around the villages.
As it makes no sense for your heroes to fight each other, for the PvP elements, in your option menu, you hit "Guilds" which takes you outside of the main campaign, and there's a post where you click and you can chose what faction you want to belong, with character customization.
This character will have the same stats as your hero. Further, since it's just a fancy looking stick in the PvP area, you can use the materials you have and create a building next to the post, or around the post, or you don't have to build at all if you're aversed to building.
Since the boss fights are amongst the most fun aspects of the game, after defeating the final boss (before going to NG+), there will be in-game story explanation that after fighting it, it's spirit is placed in that area.
Due to its spirit, you can chose to fight these bosses again as you want to hone your skills in case there's another invasion. In other words, this will help those who want to do a lowest level build challenge, because you can keep practicing against these bosses instead of having to play the game over and over again.
Further, you can chose what level the boss is from NG up through whatever NG+ cycle you are in. You can see how much you advanced if you're in NG+7, fighting an NG boss.
NG+ will follow Dark Souls 2 where the enemies get harder each cycle, and you can find more powerful rings up through +3. There are also special weapons placed that you can get for each NG+ difficulty. They'll be just as viable as the other NG weapons, but have different movesets, feels, and appearances. Although it may not be as powerful as your favorite NG weapons, I think by wielding one of the NG+7 weapons will be a badge of honor, plus, it will look more "bad ass" then the NG through NG+6 weapons.
Further, your building area gets larger and larger up through the hardest difficulty NG+7, so you can add even more buildings/structures if you want as you do more NG cycles. The buildings you made can be kept in the save menu area, so you don't have to build again. For instance, after finishing the building and you installed the person, you can select save. If you add/change any additional structures, you can just click on the building outside, and save over the old one, as much as you want.
Therefore, before entering NG cycle, you should make sure that you saved all the buildings you want to keep in your building menu. So it's worth going through additional walk-throughs for those who love building, as you get more space. Highest difficulty is NG+7.
In general terms, you can customize the sounds, including turning off the crunching footsteps that most people hated in Dark Souls 1, but I love. You can adjust the music and environmental sounds. There are absolutely no maps, so you have to explore, but the brilliant level design makes you want to look for the randomized building resources, and the treasures.
Description: A semi-open world action RPG with sandbox elements due to the building aspects. Of course it will be 1080p at 60fps for the current gen consoles. The graphics is along the lines of the Gravity Rush series, where it looks like a hand-drawn animated movie such as seen in Studio Ghibli.
Exclusivity: This game will be exclusive to the Xbox One, to take advantage of the power of the XBox One X. It will be advertised that the XBox One X will be enhanced. Further, being on only 1 console will allow for best optimization.
Achievements: There are NO missable Achievements. When you beat the game, you go back to the place where you're about to fight the final boss in case you want to complete out the Achievements. The game encourages you to play blindly and explore at your leisure, so you can avoid spoilers that often occur when people read Achievement or Trophy requirements.
Difficulty level: No difficulty levels. The game is like Dark Souls 1 where it's hard but fair, so no adding 500 enemies to make it artificially harder or 1HKO. It can be easy mode as the spells will be pretty powerful such as in Dark Souls 1. If players are still struggling, there is the COOP option.
If you can make any video game you want, with unlimited resources and the most talented and pro-consumer team, what would you like to see?
The How of Happiness Review
Not gonna tear into it with games designers teeth, just a labour of love and that's alright, that's alright. However just a few suggestions for you to consider if I may, You mention just simply 4 walls and a roof being enough for a house, but just because they might not care about the building stage itself, it doesn't mean they want 4 walls and a house to be their village, it might be a better option to offer preset buildings for the player to choose from. Also, consider taking a brief look into the good gameplay mechanics of Fallout 4, I see a lot of similarities in a way.
ReplyDeleteactually that's a great suggestion, b/c it can be intimidating if you want a nice building, but can't build like me. That's a great feature: if you want a specific pre-set, you must collect the necessary materials to make it. I'll add your suggestions!
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting, I avoided Fallout 4 due to the bugs. the ideal video game will have minimal inconsequential glitches at worst (i.e. 1 instance where enemy you killed floating up). Don't know if Bethesday fixed all the game crashing bugs?