I’m pretty set in the idea of working on one of two projects that I’ve got laid out now.  The first is Fix, which I explained at least vaguely in an earlier post.  I’m still writing up stuff for it, and I’ve got some damn good ideas.  The extreme basics of the engine work, but I’ve got a lot more to do on that front before there’s anything really presentable.

The second project might be called The Influence, and it’s a puzzle-horror game.  It’s a story about the biggest fucking conspiracy ever.  Like, take the sort of cheesy idea of a shadow organization, but extend it to Lovecraftian scales, where it doesn’t even really exist as a normal entity anymore.  The basic goal is to make you paranoid about every single thing in your day.  The enemy isn’t just everywhere.  It’s everything.

As it stands, I’ve got three games that have good stories but no gameplay yet.  Here’s a quick runthrough of them.  These will most likely be the last three games for my contract with Armor, unless something cooler comes around.

1)  Chivalry is Dead

This is a game about the roles we put ourselves in, and the relationships we form with each other.  The White Knight feels obligated to save the princess from the castle, mostly because he knows that this is the sort of thing that the White Knight is supposed to be doing.  CiD sits somewhere between drama and dark humor at this point–I’ll very likely shift it more towards dark humor as I continue to write for it.

2)  Fix

Fix may or may not be a prequel to Company.  I haven’t decided yet.  Limbo has put me in a “whole game in one level” mood, so that’s how Fix plays.  If it ends up being a prequel, then you’ll be playing as Kathryn.  Either way, the game features a recurring motif of the player occasionally passing through a strangely realistic house, and watching it slowly become more and more decrepit as you get through the game.  Braid is to Company as Limbo is to Fix.

3)  Grief

In development hell for quite a while now, but still present.  I’m taking a break from this one to work on one of the other two first, because the gameplay that was coming along just plain old wasn’t good enough.  It wasn’t fresh enough, it wasn’t satisfying enough.  Wasn’t anything special, and that’s no good, so I’ll let it sit on the back burner for now, until I figure out something better.

First of all, if you own an XBox, stop reading this, because I have something more important for you to do:  Go buy Limbo.  Play it right now.  It’s $15, and it’s better than every game I’ve ever made, and it’s better than every game that I’ve ever played.

Anyway, I’m back from Edmonton, now, which means I’m back to my own work.  I’m still in a state of never being actually satisfied with how Grief plays, so I’m gonna let the project rest for a bit and work on something else.  The script is mostly finished, and I like it a lot, so that’s all good.  The gameplay needs, once again, to be redesigned, though.  Best course of action that I can see is to let the ideas churn for the time being, and work on another game for my contract with Armor.

At the moment, I’m calling this new game “Chivalry is Dead.”  More details when things start to come together.