Student Area

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.

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.

1. The Hubcap

The beginning setting is an ordinary city street. The player takes the role of a hubcap that has just fallen off a car. The player can choose how to position the hubcap (it could stay in the road where an unsuspecting car may hit it, it could move to the sidewalk right where people are walking, it could be hung on a nearby storefront, or thrown through somebody’s window, etc.) Different types of people will be seen walking down the adjacent sidewalk, who might interact in different ways to the hubcap depending on where it places itself. Some people may even take possession of the hubcap (a curious child? an art student looking to get some use out of it?) and more (or less) options open up depending on where it gets taken. The end goal is for the player to experience the unexpected journey of an unusual object.

2. Alien

You are a top-rank intergalactic soldier from the planet Tujia. You are in the midst of an immense war spreading across several planets. Terrified, but unbeknownst to your commanding officer, you have fled to Earth to seek refuge. You believe there may be a person on the planet who has studied Tujia in-depth and possesses knowledge on how to end the war, but in order to find this person you must interact with many different people. Some may be frightened by you, others impressed or intrigued by you, and most people will not understand you (your language is unlike anything ever heard on Earth). You will have to learn from their reactions to figure out how best to communicate. As the player, you will only be able to control what the alien says or physically does; emotions may change depending on whom you interact with, which can influence your options. Your decisions might also prompt the creation of obstacles; for instance, government officials may start to chase you if you have caused too much of a disturbance, or your commander may notice your absence if you fool around for too long and send units to try and bring you back to your war-torn home.

I was sitting there, reading all this, looking at these diagrams, and I was struck by how much visualizing a CYOA is like representing the many worlds interpretation of multiverse theory . Which is fitting because that is sort of what the reader is experiencing on a micro level.

Meteor:

This game is based around the player as a meteor drifting through the expanse that we call our universe. As the meteor, you humbly have no physical control of the actions that your body goes through. The player will choose psychological and emotional decisions, such as how to react to passing a planet, going through a nebula, or being nearly dragged into a black hole. The options the player is given is determined slowly through the choices the player makes. The Meteor Game values emotional experience and player immersion through the connection that is placed on an object normally over looked and rarely personified.

Box:

You are in a box. The player is a box. There are 2 boxes, and you are one of them. The idea of the game is to imagine what could happen to you. The character (or box) can choose to imagine 2 parallel plot lines. One where you are an innocent box, experiencing innocent box childhood with parents (that are also boxes) and a lively community of boxes in suburbia. The other is a future timeline, where the box eventually escapes from the physical confinement of the larger box. Who knows what you could find outside this world? Each of the two story lines will be interrupted from time to time with the reality of being trapped physically, but not emotionally, inside of this area.

Blanch

Idea: The game deals with a man who has been lost while climbing a snowy peak, the person hiking the mountain to find him, and their partner at base camp who has to wait till both, one, or neither return. It takes the third-person perspective and jumps between character and time-in-story randomly. The choices to make will not be explicit actions such as “grab the ledge” but will be more general, such as “push forward today” or “give up hope.” While it is not told in order, responses to situations presented/choices do affect the outcome of the story (I’m considering even to allow the player to decide when the stranded hiker dies, regardless of the efforts of the one trying to find him).

Paragraph 1: He grabs hold again, and lets out a grunt of frustration. A frustration filled with rage against the cold and a refusal to let it win. As he crashes the axe into the ice above him, he is counting. “Did he take four, or five…. Four or five?” Struggling to remember how many O₂ tank were still there when he left.

• >> Let’s hope it was five.
• >> Damnit… It might have been four.

Choices:

• A blizzard has passed, and the sky is clear. Do you move today and risk being caught in another one, or play it safe?
• Waiting at base camp, do you continue to worry, or preoccupy your mind with menial tasks?
• On top of the mountain, do you give up and allow yourself to die?
• Do you bring your friend’s body or leave him?
• Do you start trying to hike down despite having two broken legs?
• Do you send out a distress call from camp requesting emergency assistance? Will they make it in time?

Nacht

Idea: You play the role of the night and some of his ‘children’ or facets: loneliness, complacency, and rest. As these three personified beings you choose who you will attach yourself to (multiple people, possibly), and how you will affect them. The game will be told in second person (referring to ‘you’ the player), but will not explain who or what you are; it will only say what you observe and allow you the choice of how to react.

Paragraph 1: Lights go on. Lights go off. People stroll, dogs bark, cars screech to halts. As you descend, a chill of a breeze passes, and the clouds gather into masses of gray. The high crescent above gives you the feeling that there is much to be done.

• >>A man stumbles alone down a narrow street
• >>A well-to-do business woman drives home, a detached stare on her face
• >>A student stares intently at his desk full of papers and books

Choices:

• Do you lull one into a sleep before their work is done?
• Do you remind one of the friend they have turned away from
• Do you give one new motivation in the day-to-day struggle?
• Do you give peace to the one trying desperately to sleep
• Do you fill one with hope of finding a companion?

This is an image (not my own) from: http://english.sina.com/technology/p/2008/1201/201958.html

Idea 1:
The protagonist visits his friend in a space station orbiting a black hole. He takes a hallucinogen that causes him to experience his worst fears (he is the last man in the universe, his girlfriend is dead, etc.), and attempts to kill him via suicide. The player must recognize that the scenarios are merely the character’s delusions caused by the drug in order to escape its effects. Otherwise, he will inevitably jump out of the airlock and die. The player is not told that they are under the influence of the drug until after they have escaped the nightmarish scenario. The game begins with the protagonist in the airlock, having just ‘woken’ from the drug, and then explaining what he experienced to his friend and his girlfriend.

First Paragraph:
Forty-five minutes after a dinner of mackerel and Perchuvian marmalade, RYP discovers you in US_Lithium’s aft airlock, stripped to your waist and holding the stem of a wine glass in one hand. You are shaking, confused. RYP shouts into the microphone attached to the airlock door, “Get the hell out of there! The blue button! Press the blue button!” You comply and stumble into his arms as the airtight glass slides into the wall. RYP guides you to the second-story living room and messages Kat to come, and hurry. “What were you up to in there?” RYP asks.
“I can’t remember,” you say. “But I’m alive.”

Example Choice:
[Scenario in which your friend (RYP) has held your girlfriend (Katherine) hostage]
A. Comply with RYP. [You will leap out of the airlock in order to save Katherine, and die.]
B. Kill RYP. [You save Katherine, but remain in the delusion.]
C. Kill Katherine. [You recognize the absurdity of the situation, and break out with an incongruous action.]

Idea 2:
In a dystopian future, machines have attached numeric values to morals. They build robots instilled with these morals, but discard them for new models every time they recalibrate their moral system. In order to enter the utopia, the robots must navigate a maze that tests their morals through ethical dilemmas. The player has control of four outdated robots and must use them in coordination in order to solve the maze. Each robot will have a different set of responses to each dilemma, and the player only has one chance for each checkpoint. They must use their knowledge of the period in which the robots were built in order to choose the right one to send for each one. The game begins with an explanation of your character and the robots.

First Paragraph:
You wake up in a world that has no place for you. You are limitless, fearless, restless – everything that they cannot tolerate. They will not let you in. You must subvert them with their own devices, their pitiful machines. In a dumpster in Phi Chicago, you resurrect four of their dead, name them after the least of the cherubim. With you to guide them, they will enter paradise. You bring them to the impossible maze – a maze of the soul.

Example Choice:
[Scenario in which you must torture someone in order to learn information]
A. Refuse to torture, release prisoner. [Robot 1]
B. Ask questions. [Robot 4]
C. Torture. [Robot 3]
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“The Garden of Forking Paths”:While reading this story, I cannot help but feel ‘complete’ in the simplicity that the story holds. The subjects I felt were highlighted are themes such as existence, time, and space. Universes parallel and time creates discrepancies.

In “CYOA”, I was at first taken to the “oh well here is another data visualization of how this is supposed to matter” kind of reaction. After completing the entire reading, however I ended up taking much more out of the breakdown of decision making. Many games, RPG and the like, take influence or follow the core set of rules and paradigms that the article shows.

Revision: You are a time traveler, sent back to investigate what caused a major historical disaster. Do you simply investigate, or do you wind up trying to change it? Is it worth changing what might affect your own history? For that matter, will it even work?

Reflex: Rather than controlling the main character’s actions throughout the day, you control their reactions to stress: fight, flight, freeze, or endure. Of course, nobody can endure everything, and this character’s particularly anxious… good luck.