That is the setting, I went out and dreamt up a game last night (it is now 06:07) and it is a tropical 10 degrees Celsius now (apparently I woke up with a sense of humour). So what happened? Well, it is partially based on Peter Molyneux’s Black and White, but only casually so. The game looks at something called Faith, you gotta have it and that gives away the title. The ‘land’ has villages. And these believers (or heathens) are in two camps. The believers of Hecate and the ‘others’ follow Sekhmet (I got your back auntie). But things are not as cut and dry as it looks. You see, you are bound by your follower, as such, it matters who the priest is (or Shaman if they follow Sekhmet). As such you need to pour your energy in the right people. Because your power defrays and it only refreshes when the village becomes dedicated to you, so you need to be cautious how you spend your energy. It is a whirlwind of supporting your own flock and harming the other flock. But harming the other flock does little for you, it merely stops the other from gaining their powers.
After the introduction and the basics a third is introduced. The people that introduce whoring and gam bling. Yes you got it, the Christians. They tend to remove faith from both camps and settle in both lands. So as we see the influence of evangelists, the power of dedication that the price of your path and the shaman of the other team, we can see the interactions that come with it. But the game has a more mellow state and a longer running time per level. I wanted to take away the parts that made Black and White great (because it was a great game) and settle towards the interactions that these two settings have. And later the disruptions that the Christians brought, because they are that in this game, pure and simple disruptions.
Still the idea settled in my brain and whilst some parts might look a lot like Black and White, the execution does not. You do not set the entire village into ‘chanting’ around a wonder, or devoted to a giant turtle. It is basically getting the right person to advocate your power, which is harder, because you could have put your ‘trust’ in a snake oil salesperson, hurting yourself in the process a lot faster. There are still a few sides that my brain has to work out, but the setting was there right from the start. And as your village grows and takes turns, the priest of that town will settle into giving insights into another person who will settle an apothecary, or a doctor who will settle the village and making it healthy. As such it is not a negative setting, as healing is separated from superstition, the village becomes a lot healthier and they set the positivity of faith. So the dedicated mind is also a force of good, not the setting to take away mythology to create atheists.
There are still a few sides to work out, but I think that this game might have a few upsides. The nice part is that it is not a call of duty action setting, but in all this I wanted it to be an educational tool, because as I see it, that side of education is often neglected. As some say “Mythology offers deep psychological and emotional positivity by providing a proper framework that foster resilience, a sense of belonging, and personal meaning” and I want that part to be set into the game, the psychological setting was too often ignored, but how to set this? As I see it, places like the herbalist (apothecary) sort these parts in motion (as well as resilience). Well will you look at that, another game finds itself uncovered. So as Microsoft announced it intent on limiting its 15 hour limit on cloud gaming and in September they announced 14 games and all but two could be played in the cloud. What a way to fight gaming education and I reckon that above those 15 hours it will cost the gamer plenty of drachmas. And my setting would need no additional funds (above the purchase of a game). So whilst we might entertain the ‘validity’ of their actions, I merely came up with more ways to keep the gaming community entertained and in that I claim the sold ground towards gaming pleasure. And they give the ‘nice’ setting of “As for what’s leaving, 11 games have been confirmed to depart in early September”, so what if there s one game in these 11 that you have revered for the longest time? Because if they were not that interesting, it was merely storage, so I am guessing that the impact is larger. Considering that some say that storage is $0.08 per GB, not that much of an impact, so I am guessing that the impact is a lot larger, but that is me, speculating.
So at this point I end the article, perhaps there is another part coming, perhaps not, the idea is out in the open perhaps an indie developer sees the inkling of options that I am seeing and they will go with it.
Have a great day today, for me its time to find my local dealer for coffee as my blood is depleted of caffeine at present.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 