[Guilty] & [Invaders Must Die!] - Game Concepts

[jackvice]

First of all, I never took part to a Game Chef in the past, though I already tried to design a game (which is soon to be beta-tested, but still on alpha) that looks cool to me, at least till now. Second: I'm not english, so I'm sorry for my grammar mistakes. And if you don't understand what I typed, please ask me to explain it again ^^

So, after picking 4 threads that I totally disliked (to be honest, only 2 of them had an actual discussion, the others were two-posts-topics or something like that) I decided to go for the four ingredients.

I had some main ideas, the most consistent and interesting are those two:

Guilty

In this game, a group of four criminals have been cought and tried for major crimes. The ingredients are the roles of the criminals:
- The Lantern is the chief of the group, inspiring, idealist.
-The Doctor is the planner, the one who provides the gang with weapons, equip etc. and also the "scientist" of the group.
- The Mimic is the infiltrator, the one who spies the target's movements, the one who knows everything about everyone, and the one who prepares the disguises for the group.
-The Coyote is the brawn of the group, the "man of action", the one who get's the hands dirty.


The prosecutioning lawyer (whose player revises news about crimes on real newspapers) must prove their guilt in front of the jury. The criminals play for theirselves, accusing another fellow of the crimes, and so prove self-innocence, partially at least ("I just followed Lantern's commands", "Yes, I brought the drugs to our customer, but it was the Doctor who prepared 'em").Who will be just imprisoned? Who will be brought to the electric chair? Who will, instead, be set free?
As for "Last Chance", I thought that the whole game is just a long article written on the national newspaper, that explains what has been happened during the trial. So it's not meant to be played more than once: that's what happened to the ones known as the Lantern, the Doctor, the Mimic and the Coyote, fullstop. (still the game can be played actually more than once ).

Invader Must Die!

Totally different, Invaders Must Die! is a game about past-apocaliptic world, where aliens have nearly extirpated whole humanity. Supposing that books were no more a writing support for the evolved human race when the attack occured, aliens will never think that the only key of success for the survivors is a diary, actually The Diary. The manual is then, an in-game diary, a full set of instructions for surviving the aliens (and maybe taking a step towards their ejection form the planet).
The players will become a group of self sufficient, solitary Coyotes, swearing on the Diary itself to not reveal to the Aliens it's existance. The main success will be finding the Doctor, someone (or something) that might help for the mission. But aliens are not unprovided: spaceships know as Lanterns (due to the beam of light they send on the surface while probing) are always looking for humans to abduct, and the Mimics (sort of shapeshifters) are always infiltrating into human resistance groups.
Here the most interesting thing as for "Last Chance" I tought of (thanks to a friend's idea) was adding some information on the Diary for the possible next users, and those info will actually change the rules (and then the game as you played it will be only played once, always). Infact Coyotes are not meant to destroy all the aliens, just take a step towards the freedom and then give the book to someone else as "inheritance" (or if they die, to hope that the book will be found by someone else, more or like Jumanji).

Any feedback? what's most interesting in your opinion? I do accept every non-offensive comment, of course
Thanks for reading ^^

[Jonathan Walton]

Both of these game concepts are super-terrific. I suggest you make both!

[Troy_Costisick]

Both sound like they are a lot of fun!  

How about this for the Guilty game?  Instead of playing those characters, how about the PCs be the jury in some unique type of justice system.  Each player has to be an advocate for one of four people on trial (Coyote, Lantern, Mimic, Doctor).  The written article is the court transcript.  You, as the designer, would provide that transcript.  The players then have to try to convince the others that their client didn't do the crime.  Once a majority of the players (3 out of 4) settle on a verdict, they would then turn to a different part of the book or follow a link to a website with the answer of which charcter actually did it. 

This would make the game playable only once, since they would know the answer.  But it would be a fun exercise in reasoning and rhetorical skills.  Would that be too far off from what you originally envisioned for your game?

Peace,

-Troy

[jackvice]

Both of these game concepts are super-terrific. I suggest you make both!

Thank you for the encouragment, really appreciated it ^^

Both sound like they are a lot of fun!  

How about this for the Guilty game?  Instead of playing those characters, how about the PCs be the jury in some unique type of justice system.  Each player has to be an advocate for one of four people on trial (Coyote, Lantern, Mimic, Doctor).  The written article is the court transcript.  You, as the designer, would provide that transcript.  The players then have to try to convince the others that their client didn't do the crime.  Once a majority of the players (3 out of 4) settle on a verdict, they would then turn to a different part of the book or follow a link to a website with the answer of which charcter actually did it. 

This would make the game playable only once, since they would know the answer.  But it would be a fun exercise in reasoning and rhetorical skills.  Would that be too far off from what you originally envisioned for your game?

Peace,

-Troy

I guess I can think about it. I really like your suggestion, thank you ^^ Will see if actually is more interesting being the criminals and self-justifying against an advocate, or make the game more like a rethoric fight between prosecution and defence lawyers.

[jackvice]

Game Chef submission time is over since more than 48 hours now, and I didn't talk that much about my games during development on that topic. If someone's interested...

I gave up with "Invaders Must Die!": I think it was most due to the fact that no one was really interested in it. I asked friends: "what game should I work on, between IMD and Guilty?" and none voted for IMD. Infact, after finishing "Guilty!" I relaized that the theme of IMD was quite common, there was no great innovation in the game (out of the Diary and the way to change the rules). I'll probably work on it later, maybe using as rule system a Mix of Murderous Ghosts and Trollbabe (yeah, you heard it XD).

Anyways, I'm proud of "Guilty!". It's (I think) an original setting, has a cool way of and playing (with press clippings...even my dad found that cool ) and is rather quick, good as a one-shot game.

The second game I submitted, Burnin Opera, is quite GWEP (Gut Wrenching Emo Porn, Ed.) as someone said XD It's really oriented towards Jeepform. If you wanna read it (is just two pages, you can read it in 10 minutes) you can find it here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72959723/Game%20Chef%202012/Burning%20Opera.pdf . There are some misspellings due to the fact I wrote it in 3 and 1/2 hours and I'm Italian If you don't understand something, answer to this topic ^^

I wanna thank everyone who helped me, starting from my girlfriend Stefania, who was always helping me and listening to my annoying game design's discussions (I love you ^^); my dear friend Patrick (the one who submitted this game: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3oU31hjK9nleHFBMXl0NUh4aFE), for sharing hints, ideas and helping on game design and rules; and last but not least, my "new" friend Daniele (he also made a game for Game Chef: http://www.box.com/s/95570f38877b23f385ba), who told me about Game Chef, and with whom I shared some game experiences 'till now. Without those people, I really couldn't do what I did.
THANK YOU ^^

[jackvice]

BTW, GWEP was not meant in the offensive way, obviously. I just meant "Is a game that you probably will feel in the guts due to the theme it's focused on". That all