Idea 1: God complex. You directly influence the lives of people as a guardian angel, but you can’t know what’s best for them.
Sample Paragraph: You never awaken, because you have never slept. As a guardian angel, your role basically consists of constant, supernatural watchfulness, and protecting the well-being of your subject. Tommy isn’t too bad, either. He’s a nice kid, tries hard in school, and right now he’s riding his bike back from Algebra tutoring. You see that he is about to hit an overturned trash can as he turns the corner.
Choice: Let it happen, or steer him out of the way (a classic guardian angel moment, but the reality is that if you let him crash he will learn from it and grow, and if you protect him then he will remain in ignorance).
Idea 2: Multiple Perspectives. Without much indication to the reader, this narrative is a collection of witness testimonies in a courtroom, but the crime and punishment are both choices which present themselves to the reader along the way.
Sample Paragraph: I had thought it was just going to be a normal day. I got dressed, went outside, and Ryan was there waiting. His car had broken down earlier that week. We drove to school; Ryan had his window rolled down, and everything was the same as it always was. If only I didn’t think to stop for gas. I would’ve been alright. There were still a few gallons left, but we stopped at the Quickee Mart near my house. Then… then it got bad. I saw a guy drive up to the pumps, but he wasn’t slowing down.
Choice: I shoved Ryan to the ground, or I just stood there, or I ran inside.
Okay so I really dig your second idea, and I kind of wish I hadn’t read about it so that it would be a surprise when I played it. I’m just a little confused about the implementation. Are you playing through a string of witness testimonies? As in they each tell a different piece of the story in chronological order? Or do they each give their own interpretation of the event, and are capable of contradicting each other? I think either option would be interesting…
I like the first idea more, and I think it has potential to examine a variety of moral dilemmas. To me, the most interesting sentence in your proposal is “You never awaken, because you have never slept”, implying that the angel is fundamentally not human, and doesn’t understand human values. It could be interesting to include options that we wouldn’t traditionally think of as ‘moral’, such as imprisoning someone to keep them safe.
The guardian angel concept seems pretty solid. However, I wonder how easy it would be to kill a character off. That would of course depend on what options you set up for the player.
The second idea needs to develop a little more. As said before, you need to make clear if the testimonies are recounting a story piece by piece or if it’s multiple viewpoints of one story arc.
Guardian Angel seems to have its strength in the conflict between doing good to the kid and doing good for the kid. I’d like to see how it plays out; do you jump far into the future where something you did while Tommy was younger affects how he is as an adult? The scope may be too big, but I think focussing solely on the subject as a child may limit the action/interest of the story.
I’m compelled by the idea of testimony in the past tense deciding the outcome of Multiple Perspectives. The ambiguity of ‘who are the speakers’ and ‘what is the actual setting’ would retain me as a reader. I can’t think of weakness right now…. right… now….
I myself liked the guardian angel idea more. Though i think it may be difficult to reflect how being overly protective will impact the child. However you decide to do this thats probably going to be the most difficult part of designing the gameplay. Besides that the idea is pretty straight forward!
Concerning the court case one, I like the aspect of finding out whats going on along the way. It keeps that element of intrigue that keeps the reader interested.
The first one seems like a familiar plot, so I would avoid it. The second one is interesting and I like that there wouldn’t just be a handful of story lines it could potentially be many different ones n * m where n is the number of crimes and m is the number of punishments. Very cool.
I really like the second one because there is so much emotion behind it and I think you could make it interesting having a lot of the story unfold in a way that isn’t linear.
The first one is also interesting but just doesn’t have as much feeling behind it but the moral dilemas are interesting because they are so subtle