First go here and watch the video.
http://illwillpress.com/
If your speakers don't work or you don't have Flash installed for some reason or you wait two weeks for the next update, it's a cartoon of a squirrel ranting about all the evil corporations in video games either making zombies or making viruses that make zombies and it's your job to save the world.
Zombie games rock. Few things creep me out as much as a well done zombie game. I don't mean First Person Shooters (FPS) like Doom where you have to go room to room slaughtering everything that moves. I mean games like Thief where there's just a few zombies or undead homicidal lunatics that move like a grasshopper dying from wasp spray. There's other good zombie games. They move silently, slowly, unrelentingly, and come out of nowhere. Zombies rule.
There's another point in the video. Why is it that you're always having to save the world (or destroy it)? Give us some less dramatic games. Give us something with minor problems.
Minor inconveniences - the game
Level 1 - You go out to your car to get your lunch and see someone stealing your car. It's your job to recover your lunch.
Level 2 - You need photocopies of your presentation, but the copier is down.
Level 3 - You lost your keys.
Level 4 - You have to meet your date somewhere, but everything goes wrong.
Etc.
The point is that in each level you have a minor problem to solve and you have to deal with it in the most ridiculous method possible. Buildings are destroyed, governments toppled, aliens fended off, high speed car chases, etc. Just to recover a BLT that's been sitting in your car all morning.
2 comments:
Oh I totally agree. I've imagined a video game - "Mom" where the entire purpose is for you to be a suburban mom, driving a minivan around. In the space of one day, you need to:
- Take one kid to elementary school
- Take one kid to middle school
- Take one kid to pre-school
- Get the oil changed
- Go to the grocery
- Get a haircut
- Make your dentist appointment
- Pick up kid from pre-school
- Get lunch
- Pick up layaway items
- Return curtains
- Get new curtains
- Call your mother
- Pick up elementary school kid
- Pick up middle school kid
- Take elementary school kid to eye appointment
- Take middle school kid to band practice
- Take preschool kid to dentist appointment
- Get elementary school kid's dance clothes on (which you left at home)
- Get elementary school kid to dance lessons
- Take preschool kid to friend's house for playdate
- Fill up gas tank.
- Pick up elementary school kid from dance lessons
- Pick up middle school kid from band practice
- Pick up preschool kid from playdate
- Take kids home for dinner
I figure you could have various demerits.... like if you're running late, you can run by a restaurant for dinner, but you lose points.
First time you play it straight. Second time it unlocks new weapons.
Third time it unlocks new vehicles. And each time the game gets a bit
tougher to increase the need to use them. Alarm clocks fail to go off,
the cleaner gives you the wrong outfit, a line at the gas station,
your credit card gets shut off, the kids get colds or develop ADHD, a
preschooler gets jammed in your wheelwell when you blow out of the
school zone. In response you get the option of the minivan or the
sports car or the Prius or helicopter or personal jetpack. First thing
in the morning the alarm doesn't go off so you rush out back, load the
kids into a cannon, and have to read the map and windspeed just right
to aim them properly before firing them in the direction of the
school. Between the school and the eye doctor there's a major
obstacle, like a building or 30 car pileup on the highway, that you
clear out with the death ray in the trunk.
As the game progresses the damage you cause early on comes back to
haunt you later as firetrucks, police, and news crews further impede
progress.
One way to fail is when Child Protective Services busts you.
As you finish the day on the hardest level you put the kids to bed as
outside the window we see the sun setting over the smouldering ruins
of the city. Specially tuned to your particular damage.
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