Sundown
This would be a game about Sundowner’s Syndrome. The disease itself is a form of dementia/Alzheimer’s wherein the patient is completely normal during the day but at night exhibits symptoms similar to Alzheimer’s. In the game the player would assume the role of an elderly woman on the verge of being sent to a nursing home. As you live throughout the day, you will perform various mundane tasks. As the sun sets, the tasks become stranger and more out of place, such as having dinner with your late husband or shoveling the driveway to clear away snow in the middle of August. Your daughter will begin to ask questions about your life, and you will have to remember what happened correctly. Your daughter may try to ask you trick questions to see if you’re lying or not, and if she becomes too suspicious she will send you to a nursing home. There will only be one image in the story, depicting your kitchen. The image will change slightly to reflect the situation, i.e. time of day / weather.
–Promptly at 5:15AM Margaret got out of bed to begin her day. Last night she had gone to bed rather early as she hadn’t been feeling well but a good night’s sleep seemed to have done the trick. Feeling a bit peckish, she went to the kitchen.
+ Make coffee
+ Make eggs
——————–
Faulty
For my second idea, I thought it would be interesting to make a game without visuals, but that relies heavily on visualization. In the game you would play as a piece security machinery that works at the entrance to a very important government facility. It is your job to sort through everyone’s loose belongings before they enter the building, and destroy anything that might be deemed a threat. The only problem is that your recognition software is on the fritz, and recognizes objects incorrectly, leaving you to use your limited sentience to determine what the object might actually be, and whether or not it is threatening. If you’re not careful and ban too many nonthreatening objects, employees will complain and you will be scrapped. If you miss too many, it can have dire consequences for the company, and you will be scrapped. The game will exercise the player’s creativity and associative abilities, and their ability to recognize/rationalize threatening paraphernalia.
Between the too I think that the first one is more interesting story wise. You don’t know what will happen next and there is a lot of tension in your choice of answers and I really like that.
The other one is interesting but for me doesn’t have that same weight in choices.
Both are cool puzzle like games and I think both would be fun to play.
Wow, I really like both of these ideas. I think the Faulty idea will take more time to think of the different problems the character might encounter. Personally I would rather play the Sundown game because I’m really curious about what kind of tasks lie in store. However, how would the game end? Is there an underlying plot underneath the mundane days and strange nights?
đ your first idea is not only creative, but hilarious!
My only concern is how are you going to keep your reader entertained? Whether normal and Mundane or weird and out of place, after choosing a couple of options, I can see this story getting repetitive quickly.
For Faulty, since we are using twine, how will you keep a running tally of the number of items your reader got right or wrong? The number of possible paths will get really crazy.
I think Sundown is a really cool idea. It seems like it will really push the player to try to perceive what is actually going on in the midst of mixed messages. While I am intrigued by the one image in the story, I question its role. Are there enough changes in the picture that will make me want to keep looking at it? Or is it only changing every now and then, in which case I would probably use it primarily simply to tell the time of day
I love the idea of artificially limiting someone’s actions with a mental illness. I think it might be difficult to express this story in a CYOA form, however, because of its inherent linearity. A more complex game in which you cycle between day and night at regular intervals might be more suitable for it.
I particularly like the old lady idea. I feel as though the player doesn’t really “win” the game though, the objective just seems to be not to lose as long as you can. When developing the idea, I would like some sort of finish line or final objective to win. But thats just me!
Based on what you described in the “Faulty” idea, I don’t know how well that would work with visuals. How would you describe the objects? It seems like it would be very easy determining how threatening an object is through a text-based description.
The first idea, “Sundown,” is very compelling, though (Also could be educational – I doubt many people know what Sundowner’s Syndrome is.)
For the first game, I think you should make it so that remembering a previous action when talking to the daughter is incredibly difficult. I honestly think not remembering things is the more interesting choice!
The second game is also a good idea, but don’t make the ability to correctly guess an item utterly arbitrary.
Sundown sounds like it’d be very compelling; an interesting look into a mental disorder that (I believe) most don’t know about. It has value in the contrast between menial tasks and interesting/nonsensical/whimsical/nonstalgic experiences that come in the night. The part that turns me off is with the daughter quizzing you; it seems to turn into too much of a game, and i feel it would lose something charming.
Faulty seems fun, testing the players’ recognition and creativity while pressuring them to ‘choose correctly.’ It is successful in establishing a goal and motivation (it’s a game). It may be too linear.
Both stories seem like they would be fun to play and entertaining. I like that you already gave the character on your first story a name, Margaret, which in my mind fits very well with the character you describe. If it was my story, I would probably try to make it as unique as possible in terms of what happens at night, for example giving a very detailed narration of dinner with her husband and the conversations that develop while at the table.
I really like the Sundown idea. I would consider the perspective of a daughter of someone with dementia though. They are less trying to catch their parent in a lie and more desperate for them to be able to remember. Maybe you should be fed a large amount of contradictory information and when the daughter asks you questions your goal is to try to wade through the crap and figure out what is real.