So both of my characters come from pretty dark places and the goal for me is to make the player uneasy.
1) Player’s Imaginary Friend Jeremy
So Jeremy is your imaginary friend since your childhood and has convinced you that he is your only friend ever and that if you ever leave him that he will hurt you. He reveals things about your past that you don’t know if it is true or not but is pretty horrific. He changes color based on mood. There really isn’t any winning to this game. Jeremy wants you to kill everyone and endings can be you doing his bidding or killing yourself.
2) You
I want to base you off of schizophrenia since it is a really interesting topic to me. I want to include some things like paranoia and changing the surroundings around you. Something like you have a spider on your back. Talking to you would be interesting since it is you. You are talking to yourself but at the same time it is a being that it is still you. This one would be a bit more complicated and I would have to do a bit more research to know exactly what I would want it to be. There would be no winning in this one either.
I like the potential in idea #2 for all kinds of pronoun confusion… created by a situation the English language simply wasn’t prepared for.
I feel like these are pretty much variations on the same idea, and I like the second one much better. Finding a manifestation of schizophrenia that isn’t the generic imaginary friend who goes bad could be interesting. Look for inspiration in actual research and medical journals. That kind of thing always helps me think outside the box.
I like the cute/creepy vibe that Jeremy has. Definitely gives me a horror game sort of vibe; it has the potential to be really scary if you add some creepy background music to the visual novel.
Idea 2 sounds a bit more complex and more difficult to execute. It’s a fascinating scenario, but I’m just not sure how the choices would go. The idea of talking to different facets of your own self is pretty cool, though.
As far as visual character design, I really like the first one because the colors and shapes really fit the vibe of the story. I think I’m a little confused about the second one because I don’t know what kind of things you’d say to yourself and how the story would progress, but I get that it still needs to be fleshed out and it does have some potential
Seconding the suggestion to look in medical journals etc if you go with idea 2, but also probably to try and find firsthand accounts of what schizophrenia is like– easiest way to avoid stereotypes.
First idea is creepy as hell but would probably also be pretty interesting.
Schizophrenia personified sounds like an amazing idea. Look for research and data to help you create a good character and try and stay away from the ‘imaginary friend who is psycho’ thing. Keep the game interesting with crazy mix-ups of words and crazy things.
I like the first idea, though I do see a lot of similarity between the two and think you could probably find a way to merge them if you want. I’m wondering if for the first one you would ever have the opportunity to interact with other people or just your imaginary friend. If yes, how so? If no, do you ever actually kill anyone? How does that work?
the first idea i really interesting but i don’t understand how the player would interact with the game