Point two from yesterday

Yesterday this setting passed by my eyes. Someone had placed the CBM64 music from a game called Zoids. I remember it, because it was the only real appealing part of the game. It was based on a toy. I also remember seeing the toy. I never had a Zoid, but the setting was interesting. A smaller Zoid could be merged and create a larger Zoid. As such you can go from Spider to Scorpion and so on. That is all I remember of it. A novel idea, but it wasn’t as enticing as the toymaker was seeming to push for consumerism (to buy more and more) and I do not support consumerism with children (or really young adults). The game was basic to say the least, as such it didn’t have much of a future. 

Now ‘seeing’ that set my mind in motion. Consider the setting of combining pieces and take a game like Paradroid (CBM64 and Amiga) and my mind went on a tinkering tour. So take a setting of you waking up in a sleeping dome and you have no idea what was going on. So as you explore this ‘mall’ you find that things are dead, robots and utilities are also dead. There is a catch. You have an innate knowledge of technology and systems, but as you find out (in the beginning) your face is mangled, scars all over your face and chest. You do not remember how you got them. As such you need to get out into the open and the mall you find yourself in is dead in nearly all aspects. So as you start repairing janitor class drones (cleaning and utility drones) the place is starting to get alive. So you start with disposal, servant and maintenance classes. From there the messenger classes come into play (as you enter the second stage), this gives you the lore of the game. There is a larger stage here where you need to clean things up and get things working. That leads to a crew droid and there we have service droids and from there we get retail, medic and logistic droids. The logistic droids give you more lore on the place you have, the medical droids lead you to the medical location. This is where you can get you to be repaired (after some repairs to more maintenance droids). The crew droids are androids, below that they are small machines like your vacuum cleaner. So as this is done you get a first glimpse of where you are (more lore) and at this point you get to a point where the windows could be opened. 

The lore initial lore gets you the setting that outside is dangerous. 

So you need to be ‘careful’. So when you get to upper levels you will find broken sentinel, security and battle battle drones. Last of this is a command drone that is in charge of the facilities. 

This game would have about a 12 – 20 hour challenge per location and there are 5 locations. The Mall, the transit tunnel, the airport dome, the hangers and a fifth location (still pondering that). So whilst the game seems open and exploring, the airport dome introduces stealth to you. The security drones here are all about keeping people out of some locations. There is more, as you repair stuff (essential) you will get more security systems online. You will also get to seek security tags. They can be wearable items. And that introduces gender specific issues. You can find female or male tags and neutral tags. So you can only be ‘caught’ with your own gender tags or a neutral tags. There are also ID cards and these work nicely in the beginning but from the airport dome the ID card need to correctly suit you. 

That is as far as I got in about 2 hours. There is also the replayability (my demand), so the locations are ‘redrawn’ every time you start a new game, so as the Mall (level one) is mostly the same, walls will be redrawn making the route differently. From the transit tunnels onwards it is more of mess getting to pass and that is where replayability comes into play. So as some game makers give you more of the same, I came up with something mostly new (the ideas were already in part out), I merely redesigned this into something no one had ever played before (ain’t I great). That is me at 5 and Ubisoft at 1. Not a bad feeling to have this morning. Oh, and I just thought of a new function for the Medical systems.

So that was my second thought. Tomorrow something completely different (sorry Monte Python). So enjoy the day, Vancouver just started Monday, mine is mostly gone now. Have Fun everyone.

Gaming, Zoids, Paradroid, Ubisoft, Commodore, CBM64, Amiga,