The point at which the game disintegrates into subplots is fast approaching; one more post and I won’t have a concrete order in which to write these anymore. This is pretty wild. Chunk 6!

There are two things you can do at this point: stay in Phyrenia, which is less obvious, or chase the extraspatial demongrain across the sea to the city of Akredia, which is much more obvious. Basically the only thing that staying in Phyrenia accomplishes is giving you an easier jumping-off point to the quest that will get you Avira, and there’s no dungeon associated with it, so I’m going into Akredia now because that will actually be interesting.

Story

You get on a boat from Phyrenia and head across the sea to the third of the trifecta of rival trade capitals, Akredia. Upon arriving, you tell the Akredians upon unshakable warrant-driven authority that their grain is actually evil. They aren’t happy, obviously. So their authorities say, alright, we won’t distribute our illegally-acquired grain to the peasants around our city, but we expect Phyrenia to reimburse us for it later because the harvest this year is going to be really bad. They also say that they’re going to have to dip into the city stores of grain to give stuff to the peasants, which they’re none too happy about. The stores are actually kept out of the city, a little ways off to the west in a location that makes it easier to distribute their grain and makes the stores harder to attack from the ocean.

So they send a messenger, and you wander around Akredia for a while talking to people and stuff. Then, once you get back to the palace, the messenger comes back and says, hey, the stores are pretty weird, somebody should go check that out. The Akredians pretty much give you a meaningful look, and you have to be the fall guy and check out the silos for them.

Guess what? Demons!

But there’s something weird about the stores – the demons that have infiltrated and taken them over haven’t really materialized in their true forms. In the Eastern continent, where all the other dungeons have been so far, the demons have been in very solid, physical beings for the most part. They’ve been able to materialize as their true selves in a way they can’t seem to manage in this new area, and they have to manifest themselves indirectly – in this case, as plants. So once you’ve cleared the city stores, whose grain is thankfully unharmed, you realize that the inter-planar portals in the grain shipments from Phyrenia were the main jumping-off point the demons had in their invasion, and in preventing their shipment you’ve won your first real victory. However, it’s certainly not the only plan the demons had to invade the Western continent: they actually have two contingency invasion plans in effect right now, and within your time frame you’ll only be able to prevent one…

Akredia

Akredia has the same basic setup as the other big cities you’ve been to so far – four outskirt screens, four interior screens, and one square screen. It also has the Phyrenian structure of the docks at one end of town, so there’s one outskirt screen from which you can’t reach the world map. It also has a different kind of art direction – the Akredians were, until fairly recently in terms of world history, nomads, and their city has a kind of ramshackle feel to it, like a bunch of people just kind of decided to stay there and started building on top of their yurts. In terms of the magic-technology axis, Akredia is kind of the third wheel, but if its culture is based on anything, it’s religion. Akredia’s culture centers around a kind of animistic spirituality, a belief that all objects and organisms have an inherent spirit that can influence the outside world. This is the basis of Khavir’s Curse ability (I don’t know if I’m calling that Curse or Hex yet) and Sufiri’s mounts.

Anyway.

You head over to the grain stores, which are covered entirely in horrible twisting green vines. Good luck.

Akredian Grain Silos

There are three silos, so I guess this is formatted sort of like Lucan Temple. The catch is that all you actually have to do is the middle silo – the other two are effectively sidequests. If you don’t do them, all that will happen is that certain things in Akredia, like better weapons and stuff, won’t be as readily available later on, but if you want you can go back and do them whenever you want.

The puzzle mechanic in this dungeon is burning the vines. You can use one of Enata’s spells outside of battle in this dungeon, so you’ll use it to burn paths through otherwise-impenetrable vines. However, if you screw up, you can end up crippling your progress in the room and having to leave and reset it, or worse, you could even burn a whole in the floor and have to do the whole floor again. So the dungeon is really all about foresight and seeing the consequences of your movements.

Monsters

The Akredian Grain Silos contain Tanglers, Reapvines and Tendrils.

Tanglers are basic enemies with not too much health, but they attack in large groups, and their real bitch skill is the fact that their attacks have a chance to cause Slow. So you have to kill them fast, or else they can get in a million attacks before you can do anything. They can Attack, Constrict (causes slow 100% of the time but deals no damage), and Tighten (deals extra damage for every turn Constrict has been in effect).

Reapvines are hard enemies to deal with because they can spawn Tendrils. They can Attack, Constrict (no chance to cause Slow, but does damage every turn passively), and Spawn.

Tendrils are extremely weak, but they can link together to get stronger. They can enter battle independently of Reapvines. They can Attack, Link (combines all Tendrils in battle into one mass with more health and toughness, and one attack for each Tendril in the mass) and Regenerate (heals slightly, chance to create another Tendril).

Boss – Boreal Horror

Once you enter the final room in the dungeon, it attacks you. The vines, omnipresent and creeping all over the walls, split off and merge into one giant tentacled piece of evil. It’s the Multi-Limbed Boss of Escalating Difficulty per Limb Severed by Player, guys!

This boss has six tentacles and a head. You can’t hurt the head until you’ve killed all the tentacles. It moves slowly, but it gets one attack for each tentacle and each tentacle is on a separate attack gauge, so you have to cope with a steady stream of attacks all the time, which is very hard to deal with in an Active Time Battle System. This gives you an incentive to kill all the tentacles. However, once you do, they retract into the floor and then wrap around the head, making it more powerful. So the head starts off very very weak, but as you damage its limbs, it consolidates its power. By the end of the battle, it only gets one attack, but it is a fucking strong attack. It can Attack, cast Vine, Thorn, Nettle, Poison, Venom, Sinkhole and Pit, use Spores (chance to Stun or Slow), and, when all of its tentacles have been killed, use Chamber Contraction, which does heavy earth damage to the entire party.

Killing it gets you a Twisted Staff, which can heal and has a chance to slow an enemy every time it is used for anything.

I hammered out a little bit of a stat system here. I know I’ve been rattling off high-low stats for all the characters, but I hadn’t actually given it any thought until a few days ago. Now I know which stats manage which attributes when it comes to battle. Here you are:

• Strength manages how many hit points a character has, as well as, obviously, how much damage they do in battle. It also manages how many techs a character knows, if they know techs, and adds a small amount to mana. Strength is important for everyone.
• Intelligence manages primarily how much mana a spellcasting character has, the number of spells they know, and how much damage those spells do. It also adds to how much damage a technique does, although it’s not the major determining factor.
• Defense manages how much damage a character actually takes from physical attacks and adds a small amount to hit points.
• Resistance (this one is new, because I forgot to add it until now) manages how much damage a character takes from spells and affects Mortal Damage (more on that later).
• Accuracy affects how likely it is for a character to hit with their physical attacks (spells always hit; none of that stupid IT FAILED crap like in pokemon).
• Evasion affects how likely it is for a character to dodge physical attacks.
• Luck has been beefed up heavily from what it usually is in other games. Luck is basically a secondary stat for everything. It manages the likelihood of critical hits, and then secondarily manages hitting, dodging, and special weapon effects. It also affects Mortal Damage.

Basically, my idea for luck is that when you fail an accuracy “check”, the game rolls a luck check, and if you make it, you hit anyway. Same with dodging.

Mortal Damage is lifted pretty much directly from Earthbound. When a character is hit by an attack, their hp doesn’t just immediately lose the amount dealt by the attack, it scrolls quickly. If a character takes enough damage to kill them, the game makes a few resistance and luck checks while the hp is scrolling, and if you’re really, really lucky, the character will survive with low health instead of dying outright. This is really handy.

Just so we’re up to date, Alarim has high resistance, Imere has average resistance, Alistair has high resistance and Enata has high resistance.

Anyway, here’s Chunk 4:

Story

Before going to Cilusia, the characters actually have the option to go to Lucan, but I’m assuming they didn’t. If you do go to Lucan, what basically happens is that the hereditary leader of the town, a monk named Vinan, tells you that Lucan has been withholding trade from its former ally, the southern city of Phyrenia, and forming an alliance with Cilusia. However, it looks like Cilusia is taking negotiations slowly, and Phyrenia is getting pissed, so he sends you to Cilusia to ask them to speed the hell up and send some protection over.

But you didn’t do that, so it doesn’t matter.

The city of Cilusia awards you for saving the outskirts of town from danger and saving the life of a little orphaned girl, gives you negotiator status, and sends you off to do its dirty work in Lucan for it. You head off to the tiny, pathetic mountain town of Lucan with only a vague idea of what’s going on. When you arrive, you find it blockaded by Phyrenian soldiers, who let you in because you’re an ambassador now.

The situation in Lucan is this: it’s been trading only with Phyrenia for a long time now, but just recently, it’s broken off its alliance and begun trading with Cilusia more and more exclusively, gradually edging Phyrenia out. Phyrenia, which claims it still has a binding treaty with Lucan on trade, has sent a detachment of troops led by Cathan, a man who was born in Lucan. When you reach the town’s central hall, Cathan and Vinan are arguing in the main room. It turns out that they’re brothers, which doesn’t make the situation any easier to deal with. Basically, they had a fight over the succession and the townspeople chose Vinan to lead, which led to Cathan leaving angrily. Vinan felt betrayed by his brother and has basically created his town’s anti-Phyrenian tendencies out of petty anger. Obviously this came to a head, which is where you are now. You have to choose which of them is right. On one side, Cathan threatens a declaration of war against Cilusia, and on the other Vinan implores you to back your new ally up. Basically, it’s a really awkward situation.

If you pick Vinan, a lot of stuff transpires and eventually the people of Lucan rise up and drive the Phyrenian soldiers out. If you pick Cathan, the Phyrenians strong-arm the people of Lucan into cooperation. Either way, before anything more can happen, a loud crash tears through the village and you get a report that the windows on the ancient temple to the north of the village have just lit up with some kind of unearthly flame. You figure that’s probably a bad sign, so you head up to the temple to see what’s going on, along with whomever you picked. The temple has been overrun by demons, as is becoming the norm, and they’re using it as a stronghold from which to attack west. You head over to the temple with whoever you sided with and kick the shit out of the demons, kill their leader, and then come back to Lucan, where some interesting stuff is starting to happen. If you picked Cathan’s side, he allows you to enter certain important parts of Phyrenia later on, and if you picked Vinan, you’re allowed to come back to Lucan later on. Both areas have an associated sidequest. Also, the dude you picked joins your party permanently, but that goes without saying.

Characters

Vinan – A physically powerful man who has had the leadership of his town thrust upon him before he was really ready for it, but is trying to make the best of the whole situation. Vinan has always been seen as the more responsible of the two brothers, which contributed to his brother’s disgust with the whole situation. He’s fairly soft-spoken, which belies his ability to deal extremely large amounts of damage. He has high strength, accuracy, evasion and speed, average defense, and low luck, intelligence and resistance. He can’t equip any weapons whatsoever – he just has extremely high attack unarmed.

Cathan – A man sick of living in the shadow of his brother, Cathan left his hometown after his father died and was shortly put in his unenviable current position by the military of Phyrenia and the cruel twists of fate. Cathan seems to have something to prove: his brother had the title of “responsible” clinched, so Cathan decided to join an army and is now in command of a major detachment. He has high accuracy, defense, strength and resistance, average speed, and low intelligence and luck. He can equip spears and swords.

Lucan

Lucan is pretty damn small. I’m thinking a winding mountain road over two screens with a few houses on the side, and then the town hall-type building, which will take up two screens – one for the main room with all the rabble in it, and one for the back room with Cathan, Vinan and their honor guards. The houses near the entrance to town are barely populated, but the people in them will sell you weapons and armor and let you sleep for free, which is nice.

Lucan Temple

This dungeon is a tower, so it’s formatted as less of a sprawl and more of a stack. There are three towers in the temple. The main floor has one passage on each side, and these passages lead to smaller side towers that need to be completed before the main tower can be climbed. The puzzle mechanic for this dungeon is the statues – in the religion that proliferated in and around Lucan at the time this temple was built, it was apparently considered important to have statues strewn around your temples, everywhere. So expect a lot of statue-pushing to sort out mazes, as well as some Dominion Rod-style statue escort missions. The catch is that a lot of the statues are different sizes – some of them are up to five times as big as the player, so sorting the mazes out is made harder by that. Also, expect some out-of-doors scaling and ladder-climb bits.

One of the things about this dungeon is that there are no random encounters – just bad statues. Not all the statues are pieces of scenery; in fact, many of them are malevolent critters who would like to jump on you when you press A to push them or whatever. This can be a serious problem when they’re, as previously mentioned, five times your size.

Monsters

Lucan Temple contains Homunculi, Ravenous Idols, and Golems.

Homunculi are the smallest statues. Normally an entire party of them will attack you when you touch a bad small statues. They can Attack, Latch On to party members (long-lasting drain effects, take party member health and gives it to them), and cast Thorn.

Ravenous Idols are the generic middle-of-the-road statues. They can Attack, cast Stun, and use Armor (halves damage for two turns).

Golems are the big statues. There are only two of them, and they’re the minibosses of the two side towers. They can attack, use Armor, cast Pit and Landslide, and Turn Away (negates all damage for one turn)

Boss – Abyssal Icon

The Abyssal Icon is the obligatory Bitchy Boss You Can’t Usually Hurt. He’s in perpetual Turned-Away status, which means he can’t attack, but you can’t hurt him, either, and then when he turns back around he fucks you up and you don’t really have a chance to hurt him much because you’re too busy healing and trying to stay unfucked-up. He acts twice on his turn, and he can Attack, cast any first- or second-tier earth-aligned spell, along with Stun. Spells aside, he can Devour a party member, which has a chance to instantly kill them, and he can use Quake, which I guess consists of him jumping up and down. Basically, it shakes the whole temple and Stuns your whole party for a turn. He’s pretty well-armed. Killing him gets you a Relic Sword, which has to be reforged by a blacksmith in Lucan, but does heavy damage in both Earth and Holy forms, which is very very nice.

I’m sorry this has taken so long. I don’t really have an excuse except that I haven’t really been playing that many RPGs. Saps my creativity or something. Whatever. Anyway, now I have FF4 DS, so I’m alright.

Before we get started, I want to say that I’m adding an entire dungeon. The players don’t have enough to get familiarized with combat strategy before they reach Iuris and the entire Demon Convoy sequence is probably too hard for an early level, so I’m adding a path through the mountains between Crasada and Iuris called Iuris pass.

Dungeon – Iuris Pass

This is a fairly long dungeon; longer than Merisi Mine, definitely. It’s probably the first real dungeon-crawl experience the players get. The basic puzzle mechanic is the rockfalls: loose rocks on the walls of the mountain pass tumble down and block the players’ path unless they push the right configuration of blocks against the wall to block the spread of the rockfall. The sites where the rocks will fall are marked by barren stretches of ground, and pushing rocks around the borders of the sites blocks the sliding rocks. The problem is that the supplies of pushable rocks are limited, so you have to figure out how to maneuver them efficiently to block off the rockfalls. At certain points the path of the dungeon splits – if you use the obvious configuration of rocks, it routes you along a more roundabout path, whereas the more complex configuration earns you a straighter path.

Monsters

Iuris Pass contains Rockhoppers Desperate Bandits and Minor Golems

Rockhoppers are large bugs. Fairly easy to kill, but they’ll wear you down over time. They can Attack, Bite (light damage for two rounds) or Chitter (decreases either defense or accuracy for duration of battle).

Desperate Bandits are starving humans. They’ve got knives and hunger. They can Attack, Slash (plus one-quarter attack damage) or Call for Help (60% chance to bring one extra Desperate Bandit in).

Minor Golems are magical rock constructs, presumably used by the bandits. They can Attack, Crush (plus one-third attack damage, 30% chance to Daze) or Call Superiors (75% chance to bring one Desperate Bandit in).

No boss. Okay

Chunk 3

Story

Alarim, Imere and Alistair travel west from Iuris to the capital city of the nation, Cilusia. When they arrive in the suburbs, they come upon the burned-out husk of a house, and then the player knows shit’s about to go down. Basically, there’s been a rash of random, apparently unmotivated arsons recently. No deaths have been reported yet, but most of the people they talk to figure it’s only a matter of time. Even worse, the municipal government is occupied with what is only referred to for now as “The Lucan Problem” and can’t turn its attention to the destruction of its suburbs. Naturally, being heroes in an RPG setting, the three kids take the law into their own hands and set out to find what’s going on. There’s a house on the very outskirts of the city that’s always boarded up; the local kids think it’s haunted. It seems suspicious, so the players visit it. They find a way to break in and discover that it is linked directly to the older, unused sewer system of the city, which they journey through until they find the cause of the arsons: a young, magically-talented girl named Enata. Enata has been possessed by a pyromaniacal demon, whom the players manage to defeat. In gratitude, Enata joins the party, and you suddenly have a badass fire mage with you.

Characters

Enata – An orphaned street girl who has nursed a profound natural talent for magic her entire life. She is quiet, timid and guilty, which contrasts oddly with her violent, conflagratory abilities. She has been possessed by a demon for several weeks when you find her, which has turned her into a skeletal, emaciated wretch. She has high intelligence, speed, evasion, and accuracy, average luck, and low strength and defense. When you meet her she can cast Flame, Flare and Fireball, which means you’re pretty much set offensively. After a few levels, she gets Salamander’s Blade. She can equip staffs and knives.

Cilusia

Cilusia is huge. I mean, seriously fucking enormous. Nine screens: four for the outskirts of the city, four for the cosmopolitan interior, and one for the city square where all the really good shops and important plot-driving NPCs are. All the talkative townsfolk (or at least the ones with relevant things to say right now) are in the four outskirts. You can find out things about the The Lucan Problem from them, as well as the arsons. Also, the cheap inn is in the outskirts. The shops that sell things you don’t already have are in the city center, so that’s important. You come in by the Farmer’s Gate, on the east side (represent), and the first burned house is right there as you enter. Enata’s hideout is on the west side, by the Merchant’s Gate.

Cilusian Sewers

So, these sewers are pretty old. They haven’t been in use except by the obligatory Thieves’ Guild for a really long time now. The demons have kind of refurbished them since they arrived, and by refurbished I mean set everything that could ever have carried any kind of liquid on fire. So now, instead of unspeakable human waste flowing through the tunnels, there is fire. Not lava. Fucking fire. The basic puzzle mechanic for this dungeon is rerouting flows of fire – making tunnels walkable, for the first part, and then using the fire to flip switches to other levels. There are three levels. The last puzzle, the one right before Enata’s chamber, uses all three floors and requires both previous mechanics to open the door.

Like the Merisi Mines, the Cilusian Sewers have another, lower level that gets even more devilish. I guess these are the really old sewers or something. Whatever. Pretty much, the puzzles are much harder. They use the same mechanics, but the puzzles are longer and more mind-bending. At the end, you either get the Staff of Light (if you have Eusoph) or the Possessor summon (if you have Ricca). The Staff of Light is an incredibly powerful Holy-aligned weapon which can simultaneously cast Judgment and Angel’s Mercy once per battle, and the Possessor lets you take control of an enemy for an MP cost that changes with the enemy. Handy.

Monsters

The Cilusian Sewers contain Corrupted Thieves, Pyrodemons, and Fire Elementals.

Corrupted Thieves are the thieves who were present in the sewers when the demons showed up. They’re like beefed-up versions of the Desperate Bandits from Iuris Pass. They can Attack, Fire Slash (plus one-quarter attack damage, fire-aligned) or Summon Help (50% chance to bring in one Pyrodemon)

Pyrodemons are stronger, fire-aligned versions of the Minor Demons from yore. They can Attack, throw Fireballs (attack damage divided evenly between all party members) or Burn (monster-only spell, does poison-type damage, but fire-aligned and alleviated after end of battle).

Fire Elementals are made of fire. They can Attack, Burn, Split (divides self into two Elementals, each with half HP of original.

Boss - Possessor

This guy is a pretty serious problem. Basically, he’s inhabiting Enata’s body. If you kill her, you lose the battle, so you have to do just enough damage to her to make him vulnerable, and then use a special ability that Alistair gets for battles like this called Exorcise to force him out of her mind. Then, you fight him. Enata herself is very powerful: she gets Cutscene Power, so she has like four or five times the HP she will have when she’s in your party and she gets much better spells (alright, she has the same spells, but she also gets Torch, which is very dangerous this early on). The Possessor can cast everything she can along with Explosion and Drake Fire (a weakened form of Dragon Fire which can still seriously fuck you up). Enata can do basic attacks, but the Possessor can’t, being technically incorporeal. Once you defeat him, he cackles and escapes to the lower levels of the sewers, where you vow to find him later (The boss of the really old Cilusian sewers is him in full corporeal form, which means he’s maddeningly strong). He drops a Staff of Darkness, which would be very powerful if you could equip it without fucking your characters up: it Curses them, which means it does damage to them and can’t be unequipped unless you take it to a hospital and have it exorcised. Exorcists are common in hospitals.

I’ve decided to do this thing in what I’m calling “chunks” – large bits consisting of a few plot elements, a dungeon or two, maybe a new character, a town and some monster profiles.

So, as an example, here’s the story you got last time, in chunk format.

Story

Alarim, a fifteen-year old youth from Merisi, a small but prosperous mining town in the mountains, is eagerly awaiting his sixteenth birthday, only a few days away, because it is the date he will come of age in Merisian society and be allowed into the mine. However, two days before his birthday, the men of the village fail to return from the mine until, just before sunset, a badly-beaten one stumbles out of the mine and collapses. Alarim heads into the mine with Imere, the quiet but skilled daughter of a caravan guard staying in the village. When they manage to open the seal on the door open, they find themselves in a changed mine; liquid obsidian is leaking out of the walls, and the place seems in the process of melting. They fight their way through and kill the boss, an Abyssal Lieutenant. He tells them with his dying breath that they don’t have a chance to stop the flow of evil into the world, and they might as well accept defeat. With his death, the obsidian hardens and retracts into the walls. Alarim and Imere resolve to warn the surrounding world of the threat and, if they don’t listen, to save the world themselves.

Characters

Alarim – the silent hero of the game. At the beginning of the game, Alarim has a borrowed sword he got from Imere’s father. He has Mario stats – decent all around. He has average strength, defense, speed, accuracy, evasion and luck. He has above-average intelligence, which is vital to his magic. His spells at the beginning consist of Cure, and then two choices of spells – he can learn Sleep, Poison or Daze (like Stun) for his status ailment spell, and Douse (basic water), Vine (basic earth) or Gust (basic air) for his damage spell. He can equip swords, knives and axes.

Imere – The daughter of Castal, a guard who works the caravan route south of Merisi and has just come up north looking for better prices. She’s been taught swordcraft by him from a young age, so she knows her shit. She has a better sword than Alarim at the beginning of the game. She has high strength, speed, accuracy, evasion and luck, average intelligence and low defense. She can’t use magic, but she can learn powerful sword techniques throughout the game. The one she knows at the beginning is called Quick Slash, and it allows her to attack for extra damage before any enemies have attacked. The techniques run down her MP just like spells would for a caster. She can equip swords, knives and spears.

Merisi

Merisi is a very small town. I’m thinking about three screens top-to-bottom and only one screen wide. Most of it is one street, with the inn and the shops at the front, surrounded by caravan wagons, houses behind that, and then the entrance to the mine. The shops don’t sell anything you don’t already have, but you might be able to pick up equipment from the caravan guards. Nothing very interesting happens here. Before you enter the mine, the first day passes as you perform chores and talk to people to get yourself acquainted with the game’s controls.

Dungeon – Merisi Mine

This is a small dungeon to suit the town. There’s a hidden key in the first room, which allows you to open the seal on the door. The dungeon mechanics are pretty simple; the basic puzzles are going to revolve around rerouting mine cart paths (of course there are mine carts) to crack the cocoons that the Merisian miners are trapped in. Once that’s over, there’s a short walk to the boss room, where the Abyssal Lieutenant is waiting for you. There are two wings of the dungeon, and one mine cart puzzle for each.

You can come back here later in the game and enter the lower levels of the mine. This is a much, much harder multi-floor dungeons with similar mine cart puzzles on a larger scale and water-pumping mechanics to clear out flooded areas. Once this is over, you receive one of two things: the Purified Armor, if Eusoph is in your party, or the Abyssal Lieutenant summon, if Ricca is in your party. The Purified Armor allows Eusoph to channel holy energy and block 95% of damage to the party for one turn, and the Abyssal Lieutenant does a huge amount of Unholy damage to one opponent.

Monsters

Merisi Mine contains Imps, Minor Demons and Obsidian Elementals.

Imps are basic cannon-fodder, the easiest enemies in the game. They can do basic attacks or Bite a target, which does light damage for two rounds.

Minor Demons are slightly stronger. They can do basic attacks and throw obsidian shards, which does extra damage.

Obsidian Elementals are much stronger, but slower. They can do basic attacks, throw obsidian shards, or Charge, which does double their ordinary attack damage.

Boss – Abyssal Lieutenant

The Abyssal Lieutenant is a very hard enemy for this early in the game. He has high health and defense, but low speed. He has a suit of Desecrated Armor on, which can be destroyed to decrease his defense but increase his speed. He can do basic attacks, throw obsidian shards, and cast Daze, Drain (leeches enemy health to replenish his own) and Nightshade (Unholy damage and a chance to Poison and enemy). Killing him saves the mine and gives the player an Obsidian Knife, which is a good weapon this early on.

Alright, so that’s what a chunk is going to look like. Now on to magic theory:

Magic has six elements, and they oppose each other differently in this games because damn it, I feel like defying standard RPG tropes this once. Basically, the four “ordinary” elements chase each other in a rock-paper-scissors way. Fire beats Earth, Earth beats Wind, Wind beats Water, Water beats Fire. However, diametrically opposed are the last two elements, Holy and Unholy. Obviously, Holy does extra damage against the undead and demons. Unholy does extra damage against every living, super-planar thing, which makes it extremely dangerous, especially since you can’t use it except for a few spells and summons.

There are three types of spell per element – one that does high damage to one enemy, one that does medium to three, and one that does low to five – and three spells per spell tree. As an example, the spell trees for all the ordinary fire element spells go:

• High damage, one enemy: Flame – Torch – Eruption
• Medium damage, three enemies: Flare – Blaze – Inferno
• Low damage, five enemies: Fireball – Explosion – Meteor

The paths for status-ailment and healing spells are different, and there are a lot of extra-powerful spells for each element that don’t progress on a tree, but I’m not going to go into that yet. I’ll have a full spell list ready by next week, maybe.

I haven’t posted for over a month. Whatever. I’m in a play and I hadn’t hammered out some stuff.

So I have some backstory, some story story, and some theory. In that order.

The world this game takes place on is in the middle of what is effectively a stack of worlds. Below it, on a different plane, lies the ubiquitous shadow-counterpart like an infinite ocean of ink. Above it is something, but nobody knows what it is. The priests have their theories, but nobody can agree, and its denizens, if they exist are either incapable of interacting with the world below or uninterested in them.

However, the beings of the sub-world are entirely interested. Daemonologists of the great cities who delve too deeply into their work, who stare into their grimoires for too long or draw their magic circles too well, are entirely aware of this. Often their minds are completely destroyed by the horrors of the dark mirror-world below them, and sometimes they disappear totally except for persistent crunching noises which seem to linger in their chambers.

The good thing is that, without intervention, the dark things from the lower plane are completely incapable of interacting with humanity. They are not sentient, and further, they are rarely even corporeal. The lower plane is a realm of abstracts, where things like malice, greed and cruelty can exist in their most truest forms. It is only when summoned into this world that they must wrap themselves in disguises. Usually they implant themselves in the bodies of humans; some say this pervasion is where all evil in the world comes from, although it is far more likely that only exceptionally evil people carry these seeds in them.

However, when summoned in large enough quantities, these literal varieties of evil coalesce into physical forms determined by their “ingredients,” as it were. They form horrifying monstrosities almost too evil for people to look at; these creatures are known as demons. The science of summoning demons is the study of figuring out which quantities of what varieties of evil to draw up from the pit.

The demons are incapable of accessing this world themselves. Or at least, that’s what everyone has though since forever. Now, however, the two planes may be beginning to intersect, and the borders may be weakening. The lower plane is beginning to soak through the world like ink through a very thin piece of paper, and demons are starting to show themselves. More terrifyingly, they are not just slavering beasts, but intelligent, thinking creatures.

This is where the story part comes in. The hero, Alarim, lives in a small mining town, buried back in the mountains north of a major city-state. One morning, his father goes into the mine at the back of the village and does not come out. In fact, none of the village’s men do, except for one, who limps out at dusk, murmurs something about a cave-in, and collapses. Alarim goes into the mine to help out, accompanied by Imere, the daughter of a mining caravan owner.

What they find isn’t a cave-in; it’s a seal. What appears to be a wall of rough black obsidian has sealed off the mine.  Neither of the two children have any idea how the man who escaped was able to. The two hunt around for a while, until they find something glimmering in the dust of the floor. It’s a key of some sort; when they touch it to the wall, a door-shaped section shimmers and disappears, leaving them to enter the mine.

The inside of the mine is entirely changed. Viscous black liquid runs down the wall, slowly coalescing into the same black obsidian that was blocking the door, and the whole place is populated by demons. Alarim ad Imere fight their way through until they discover the village’s men, cocooned to the wall in slowly-growing black crystal. They are guarded by some kind of ranking demon, whom they kill after a violent battle. With his dying breath, the demon cackles about how killing him means nothing: the mine is only a small operation in a greater, worldwide campaign. Soon, the whole world will have been soaked through with evil.

Alarim and Imere rescue the men and leave the mine, but the demon’s words remain on their minds. So, the next night, they leave town together and set out to at least warn the world against the threat. If nobody listens, they will have to save it themselves.

So here’s the theory:

Dungeons. I’ve decided this RPG is going to definitely be game, and it’s going to center on dungeons. A surprising amount of RPGs don’t do this; as far as I can see, Chrono Trigger and a lot of Final Fantasy center the game heavily around plot and combat. There are a lot of dungeons in them as well, but for the most part these dungeons are pretty small and only really difficult because they have a lot of monsters and a lot of decoy doors to lure you down the wrong path. Earthbound’s dungeons are a little better, because there are a lot of rewards for decoy paths and there’s usually at least one dungeon per town, but they still don’t have much in the way of puzzles.

Compares this with Golden Sun, which contains dozens of enormous, labyrinthine dungeons filled to the brim with insane, devilish puzzles. Anemos Sanctum has the mirror blocks, the Gabomba Statue has gear-switching mechanics, and Mercury Lighthouse has the water-pipe puzzles. And that’s not even mentioning Air’s Rock, all of which is one giant interlocking series of wind-current puzzles. Dungeons with lots of puzzles are just more fun to play through, in my opinion. I mean, look at Zelda. Puzzles are just the parts of dungeons you remember. I don’t remember anything from the Unown caves in Pokemon, but I sure as hell remember those ice-block puzzles right before Mahogany Town.

As a sidenote, I fucking hate those ice-block puzzles, and I am no better at them now than when I was eight. But that’s beside the point.

So I’ve decided that every important town is going to have a dungeon associated with it. And it’s going to be a big dungeon filled with traps, monsters and crazy puzzles. Also, there are going to a few giant dungeons that apply to multiply towns scattered throughout the game. And there are going to be optional dungeons to get extra super-powerful summons. Dungeons everywhere.

Also, I have character names now.

• Hero Guy – Alarim
• Quiet Girl – Imere
• Cleric Guy – Alistair
• Arson Girl – Enata
• Barbarian Guy – Khavir
• Monk Guy – Vinan
• Lancer Guy – Cathan
• Rider Guy – Sufiri
• Pilot Girl – Avi
• Tank Guy – Baldwin
• Priest Guy – Eusoph
• Summoner Girl – Ricca

I’ve got ideas. Here is a basic storyline.

The world is slowly but inexorably being literally consumed by evil. Most people can’t sense it, and won’t be able to until it’s too late, but inky black stuff is starting to spit out of the ground and congeal all over the world at specific locations, and it’s spreading like ink blotted on a page. Unless our heroes can stop, it is going to eat everything. And even if they can save the world, they’re going to have to make sacrifices. Naturally this affects how you can get characters.

Here’s how it is: you have a basic party of four -

• Hero Guy;
• Quiet Girl;
• Cleric Guy;
• Arson Girl.

After that, there are eight other characters-

• Barbarian Guy;
• Monk Guy;
• Lancer Guy;
• Rider Guy;
• Pilot Girl;
• Tank Guy;
• Priest Guy;
• Summoner Girl.

The thing is, you can’t get all of them. For various reasons, one of which is that if you have a certain number of them, the Evil eats the towns you get the others in. So in the whole game, you can only get half of the extra characters, which means you have to strategize which ones you want to get and which ones you don’t really need.

Here are some bios and basic storylines. I’m still working on it.

Cleric Guy
You get this guy very, very early on. He’s in the second or third town, which is in fact a theocratic village built around a monastery. Their high priest has been kidnapped, and the cleric guy, who has been studying for his final initiation ritual, joins your party to find him. His skills are pretty obvious – he performs basic white magic. He can heal your party, which is really important. After a while, the Hero can’t do enough. He also has a weak form of summoning, which allows him to do Holy damage to stuff. Remember, Revive Kills Zombie.

Arson Girl
A talented mage from a major city-state. Up until about six months ago, she was considered promising and pretty. Then her whole family died in a house fire, and she disappeared. Everyone assumed she was dead. When you reach the town, the residential areas have become increasingly terrified of a string of arsons which, predictably, have been caused by her. You have to defeat the minion of Evil that’s been controlling her and nurse her mind back to health before she’ll join you. She becomes the main offensive caster for the party. She can use black magic, which is very useful for killing large numbers of enemies. Most of it is probably based around fire.

Barbarian Guy
The barbarian is acquired in a wasteland frontier town. Basically, the mass of Evil outside the town has gotten so big that it’s forcing the native tribes into the trading post town, and you have to ally yourself with him in order to defeat the guy who’s maintaining the Evil and free the town. Secondarily, you have to rescue his tribe’s shaman. If you accomplish both of these, he joins your party. Where Quiet Girl’s fighting style is mostly based around Techs (fancy sword moves with different effects a la Cyan in FF6j), the barbarian’s style is based around strategic use of Rage – he does like three times as much damage, but takes twice as much. I don’t know if that’s the right ratio to use, but whatever. In addition, he has the Curse ability -  a shamanistic charm that lets him passively apply status effects to enemies like a counter ability. They attack him, and it poisons them, or puts them to sleep.

Monk Guy
By this I mean a martial artist, not a Franciscan. He lives in his family’s old house in a small town in the mountains, upholding his family’s traditions, unlike his brother, who has left to join the army in the big city. Because he is effectively the head of the village, and because his brother’s city appears to be slipping in influence, he has allowed his town to ally itself with an enemy of his brother’s city. This doesn’t please his brother, who leads an army against the small. He is determined to defend it to his death. The party has to break the conflict up, and then choose one of the two brothers to adopt. The monk is a versatile up-close fighter who does well in all areas. He can use techs like Quiet Girl, but they’re much weirder. He can get ki blasts, shields and turn skips, among others.

Lancer Guy
The monk’s brother, who sickened of his village’s stale, old-fashioned mindset and joined the army in the big city. He rose through the ranks and became a ranking officer, only to have his brother stab him in the back by allowing his village to ally with his mortal enemy (this mortal enemy happens to be Arson Girl’s town). He leads a force to reason with his brother, and is met by open, armed hostility. Naturally, he calls for reinforcements. The party has to sort the whole thing out, etc. He can use an ability called Stance, which allows him to change his role in battle in a variety of different ways. He starts off with offensive, defensive, and speed stances, but he can develop others, especially based on who’s in your party. This lends him to a highly specialized but highly effective form of combat.

Rider Guy
In a town near the wasteland town you get Barbarian Guy in, there is a major cattle trading post. However, because animals can sense shit we can’t, the cattle are fidgety and scared, and it’s making it hard to sell anything. The party has to join forces with the rider to keep the cattle contained when they ultimately do stampede (which hopefully does not take the form of a horrible minigame) and destroy the evil presence that’s causing them to get scared in the first place. Then they get a cut of his profit on the cattle as well as the much greater bonus of him joining the party. He fights mounted, which obviously makes him very fast, but his real strength is in his Charge ability, which lets him do heavy damage to a row of enemies at the beginning of a turn. Also, he can buy different mounts. You have to revisit the town you get him in to stable them, but he can ride horses, wolves, giant carnivorous ostriches, and hell, probably even rhinos, which all have different Charge effects. He also increases the party’s overworld speed and reduces overworld monster encounters. He’s worth it.

Pilot Girl
The pilot is acquired in the city the lancer comes from. She owns an airship. That’s more than enough of a reason to want her in your party, but the problem is that she also has enemies in the mob. There’s some kind of crime syndicate in the city that pretty much wants her dead, and she doesn’t know why. Her airship is across town, which means you have to run her across town to get to it while fending off hostile criminal agents. If you got the Lancer beforehand, it’s probably a lot easier. Once you get her in your party, you get the Airship, which allows you to travel at a normal run speed over any kind of terrain, excluding mountains. So if you’re crossing the ocean, it’s good to have it, but if you’re crossing the desert, you should probably go with the rider and his birds. She can Spot enemy stats, which is valuable against bosses, and she also has a Bomb ability, which does damage to every enemy but can only be used once every 3 or so turns, and she used guns. Guns are cool.

Tank Guy
This guy is a knight. He fights in a huge-ass suit of full armor and uses huge weapons like flails and lances. He’s from the same religion as Cleric Guy and Priest Guy, and the town near him has been overrun by the servants of Evil. You have to ally yourself with him and take it back, which basically which means killing hundreds of monsters in a few minutes. When you’ve saved the town, you notice that they’ve kidnapped the Cleric Guy’s priest teacher, and you save him. The tank decides to stay on as a result. In battle, he is a damage sponge. His entire role is to soak up a shitload of damage. He has a universal Counter ability, which allows him to take damage for one other party member and attack back with no chance to miss. He also has a special ability that is only usable when you have Priest Guy or a highly-leveled Cleric Guy. It is called Unflinching, and it lets him shield the whole party from damage and be invincible for a turn. When he gets hit, he attacks back for twice the damage with the added bonus that it’s Holy. Unfortunately, you can only use it once per battle.

Priest Guy
This is Cleric Guy’s teacher, and a mage of incredible power. How he’s been kidnapped by monsters for so long is kind of a mystery. You spend much of the game chasing him, and when you meet him, there’s actually a chance that he’ll leave shortly afterwards and never come back. If you get the Summoner Girl, he will leave in disgust for your heresy and return to his town. Thankfully, he won’t drag the Cleric Guy or Tank Guy along with him. In battle, he can use the same kind of healing magic as the Cleric Guy, but he also has the Divine Wrath ability, which is a lot like summoning but less heretical. Basically, he prays to the gods, and based on which one answers, he gets different stuff. This can be anything from causing every enemy to fall asleep and become poisoned to causing a lightning storm. Most of them also heal the party.

Summoner Girl
She lives in an isolated village on a tiny island. She fishes for a living, but lately something has been poisoning the water. Naturally, it’s Evil. If you help her out, she joins your party, but not before you fight your way through a horrible, hellish Underwater Dungeon and kill some kind of Cthulhoid squid monster. That monster becomes a summon, and she learns that she has the ability to conjure and command monsters from thin air. Priest Guy gets pissed and leaves. Once you have her, you have to spend a lot of time wandering around in caves all over the world looking for whatever monsters you can find, but it’s worth it, because summoning Bahamut has always been the most satisfying thing ever, and you know it. She knows a bit of black magic, but her real strength lies in Summoning. She has a few very powerful one-off summons like Beholders and stuff, but she can also manifest weaker monsters to help your party out through a whole battle, and she can probably even raise skeletons out of enemy corpses. Crazy.

The characters are based around an idea of counterweights. They balance each other out in pairs. Your default party has a balanced guy, a physical attacker, a healer, and an offensive caster. This is pretty balanced.

After that, though, you start to get pairs of people who balance each other out, and you can’t have all of them, so you have to choose. Here’s a list, to spell it out better:

• Physical Guys:
  • Barbarian Guy (high attack, low defense) vs. Tank Guy (low attack, high defense)
  • Monk Guy (high versatility)  vs. Lancer Guy (high specialization)
  • Rider Guy (high ground mobility) vs. Pilot Girl (air mobility)
• Magic Guys
  • Priest Guy (extra white magic) vs. Summoner Girl (extra black magic)

You don’t have to choose between each of those pairs if you don’t want to, and I hope it would cement some kind of FF1 replay-challenge factor.

So there’s my shit. This post took an hour and a half and I’m tired now.

Four White Mages? It’ll never work!

I’m getting warmed up. Before I really start working on this thing, I need to have some idea of what makes RPGs tick. I’m going to apply a lot of this to my storyline, which is a little painful, since it goes against a lot of what I usually think is good in writing. But damn it, I’m going to get this right if it kills me.

The first is the hero. And I hate to say this, but I am going to go with a generic RPG hero here. The RPG hero is ubiquitous. He is a tabula rasa. He is between the ages of 13 (Ness) and 17 (Isaac), he is a he, and he lives in a small town. He is inherently good and pure, and he has some kind of special ability or history. He is naïve, but brave and willful. To top it all off, he doesn’t usually talk.

Naturally, there are a few exceptions. Cecil, in Final Fantasy 4j, is a thirty-something (I think) Dark Knight in the service of the king of a major power, ans as such he lives in the capital city. But for the most part, you can’t really escape the standard RPG hero.

The only thing on the above list I’m not going to use is the silent protagonist, because that’s just not how I roll.

Second: the villain. The RPG villain is rarely on an even footing with the hero, and is usually inherently evil, which makes it less objectionable when you kill him. He is often an ex-human who has ascended to godhood or even some kind of force in and of himself. He’s very rarely a human at all, at least by the end of the game. Giygas is the embodiment of the essence of all evil in the universe, Mithos is the ruler of the angels, and Kefka is an insane general who has attained godlike power.

One really weird exception is Golden Sun, which doesn’t have a villain. The characters who would be villains actually have complex motivations, and by the end of the game the characters end up mostly agreeing with them, even if they have to kill them. They’re also definitely human and admit the possibility that they’ll fail.

But fuck that. If I’m going with the inherently innocent and good main character, I’m going to juxtapose him with something really, really evil.

Next is the party. There are so many stock characters in RPGs that I could easily just pick and choose them, but I’m not going to. I have to draw a line somewhere. The natural assumption is that the main female lead is a healer/mage and uses a staff and is probably in love with the hero. Also, one of the male friends is big and dumb, one of them is small, intelligent and shy, and one of them is grizzled and cynical. And then there are sidequest characters. Some of this is alright, but I’m going to change some of it up.

Here are some ideas I’m throwing around. I’m thinking the healer is not going to be a pure magic girl, but might actually be a male cleric-in-training who joins the hero to save his master. I’m keeping the main offensive caster as a female, but instead of being cute and collected, I’m going to make her a dangerous psychopath. She has some kind of horrible mental disease brought on by Evil. She probably uses fire magic, too.

I like the idea of the shy, intelligent friend juxtaposed with the big, dumb one, but I’m changing that, too. The shy friend is a girl, which I guess is sort of alright, and I’m sure it has a precedent. She’s from the hero’s hometown, so she’s naturally the first party member, and she’s probably secretly in love with the hero. She’s also not an offensive caster, since we already have one of those, so she is in fact the only strictly fighter-type character for most of the game. Since the hero is a jack-of-all-trades who can do a little offensive magic, healing, and fight pretty well, she’s going to just have attack power, but have it in spades, with fancy attack techniques and shit. Doesn’t go well with her personality, but that’s interesting.

In contrast, the big dumb guy is acquired in the middle of the game, and is a barbaric tribesman from some wasteland with crazy tattoos and warpaint and skulls. He’s also strictly a fighter, and instead of having techs like the quiet girl, he has a typical berserker rage mode where he does a fuckton of damage but also takes more. He also has some kind of shamanistic magic-type thing, but I don’t know what that does yet.

I don’t know about sidequest characters yet. I’ll probably have some; the barbarian guy might even be one. I definitely don’t want to just have the Light Warriors Party of Four, but I don’t want to go the way of Suikoden and have something totally ludicrous 256 possible characters, either. I’m thinking between eight and twelve, with four being the active combat party, and maybe a row system so your second party can give support, too.

I need some towns, too. I’ve decided to structure this in a pretty standard way: you go to a town, which has a problem, and you fix the problem. You are rewarded somehow, and you move on to the next town. The rewards are pretty varied, and they can be anything from a major dungeon to a plot element to a new character to a key item. In fact, I might have every non-waystation town have a character to acquire, necessary or not. Or maybe I won’t, since that could get to be kind of ridiculous if the game is long.

I do intend for towns to be pretty big, though, so maybe it’s okay. One of the (few) things that really annoyed me about Golden Sun was that the first town, Vale, was a huge monster of a town with at least five screens of scenery, even though it was supposed to be a tiny village in the mountains, and then every town after it was basically a crossroads, even the two towns that were supposed to be gigantic merchant metropolises. So I’m going to make all the towns big and multi-layered but maybe not have so many of them.

I am going to have a world map, I’ve decided. Just to clear that up because I’m sure you were all wondering.

Anyway, some towns:

• The first town is your home, obviously, and you are sent away from it, along with Quiet Girl, to save the world. This kind of thing happens. It doesn’t have a problem in and of itself; rather, the whole game is its problem.
• There’s a town early on in the game, maybe the third or fourth one, which has sprung up around a monastery. Its problem is that something has happened to the high priest of the monastery, which understandably has everyone pretty freaked out. He’s either dead or kidnapped. You acquire Priest Guy here.
• The fifth or sixth town is a big city, one of a few major city-states in the center of the civilized world’s politics. Its problem is that there has been a rash of arsons in the residential areas, and people are starting to lose sleep over them. Obviously, you acquire Pyromaniac Girl here.
• There are at least two other city-states, each of which are at some level of hostility with the others. This is preventing them from seeing the encroaching threat of Evil, and much of the game revolves around scrambling to bring peace. They’re all big cities, and they all definitely have sidequest characters, if not important story-driving characters.
• One of the mid-game towns is a tribal settlement on the frontier. Its problem is that Evil is slowly and inexorably killing the land and life in and around it, and nobody knows why. You acquire Barbarian Guy here.
• There’s definitely a port city, and probably one or two crazier cities, like a flying castle or something.

Okay, so that was cool and handy. Stay tuned, kids. I don’t know what I’ll do next post, but it’ll be something.

So I just finished Earthbound, and I’m starting Chrono Trigger at school. I’m going to download Final Fantasy 6j to play at home, and I’m finishing the sidequests in Golden Sun II on my DS. Next on my wishlist for after FF6j is Secret of Mana.

I really need to design an old-school RPG.

Like, really. So much it is hurting my mind.

So expect that as my next big project. I’m going to do some planning, and maybe as early as tomorrow I’ll post some stuff. I intend to at least have characters, complete with equippable item classes and stuff, a storyline, and a developed world. Probably some specific posts on what I see as RPG theory. Maybe a battle system post. We’ll see. We’ll see.

In any case, GET READY.

Testing out my new “tiny game idea overload” format:

Sim Domination
You have successfully taken over the world. The Age of Empires portion of your career is over. Now, all that remains for you to do is to manage everything. Make sure no rebellious heroes get through any cracks (by which I mean ventilation ducts) in your fortress. Keep taxation at a high enough level to pay for champagne for your generals, but not so high that China will revolt and stop making shoes for you. See how long you can last until you are overthrown. Victory occurs when you deliver a soul-crushing O’Brien Monologue to a captured hero and it becomes clear that your oppressive regime will never, ever go away.

Sim Label
Choose your genre – thuggin’ rap, super-hip indie, angsty punk, or arrogant electronic – and sign some guys. Build your empire until you become a universal household name. Manage your funds carefully, and make sure your PR campaigns and tours are handled well. Remember, if you are a hip-hop label, signing a band that lists “Insane Clown Posse” as an influence on their MySpace will give you an instant game over. If your label becomes trendy enough, you make spark your own sub-genre. Many bonus points.

Sim Crimefighting League
Those secret identities aren’t going to conceal themselves, and that secret MoonBase isn’t going up overnight. Choose from any number of procedurally-generated superheroes, make sure you apprehend supervillains before they become too powerful, build your super-secret hideout, and handle personality clashes, drama, and the inevitable Legion of Doom. For extra bonus points, start your own guerrilla marketing campaign and distribute comic books.

Sim Mystifying Television Show
You know the ones. The shows like Heroes and Lost that are so full of plot twists that you almost can’t believe it. The shows that make you feel like the writers have absolutely no idea what the fuck they’re doing. You can handle one of those shows now. Pay your actors, introduce new characters and elements when your ratings start to sag, conceal your own arc words in secret places every episode, and do your best to keep the viewers growing their Epileptic Trees higher and higher. If anyone ever publishes a correct theory on the internet, you have three options: hire them as a writer, abruptly change the direction of your show to avert an I Told You So, or silence them. By any means necessary.

Sim Crime Syndicate
Cosa nostra is a very hard to thing to run. It takes ruthlessness, determination, will, and exorbitant amounts of old Sicilian money. Convince your family to immigrate to America, start dealing whatever (heroin, alcohol, guns, whatever), and build your criminal empire until every US FBI agent from here to Alcatraz is itching to bring you up on charges. Naturally, there’s no way to actually win the game, but if you become a martyr, you’ve pretty much got it clinched. If you become a catchphrase – “Say hello to my little friend!” – you might as well have won, because in ten years nobody will remember who shot you, but they’ll still spout your last words. Maybe they’ll even wear your face on t-shirts.

Sim Quarantine
The most depressing and dehumanizing game you will ever play. A horrible plague has broken out, and it’s up to you to make the hard decision – split up families, hospitalize those who can be saved, and set fire to those who can’t be. You can play this at different technology levels – from Black Plague in the 1400s all the way up to AIDS today. You can even pick your diseases in the modern era – for an extra challenge, try Ebola. It’s pretty much guaranteed that you’ll lose. Maybe even head into the future, in which you can quarantine entire planets once their Grey Goo advances to far and you have to nuke colonies from orbit if even one case is ever reported. Watch out for Yeerks.

That’s all for now. I do like this format, though.

So there’s a growing fad for doing games backwards. You know, like the RPG where you design the dungeon instead of going through it. So I figured I’d do it too.

The Shooter in Reverse
Your army is vast, your funds limitless, and your troops absolutely fucking useless. The enemy’s dwindling force, long on the verge of crumbling, have augmented their soldiery with a single super-soldier, a man capable of cutting through entire armies with his bare hands. Your object is to place your massive numbers of pathetic, mindless drones in such a way that they can damage him enough for your few powerful troops, or (for extra style points) bosses to mop him up. From there, you can mastermind your rule over the planet/galaxy/cosmos/country/what the fuck ever.

The Sports Game in Reverse
Your team has been paid to throw the season. That is to say, you must lose all the games. Unfortunately, it’s also the best team the world has ever seen. You have to narrowly miss goals/passes/tackles/hits/whatever, keep the league in the dark, and claim your massive prize money without anyone noticing, because if they do, nobody will let you play ever again, and Tom Hanks will probably make a movie about you in 70 years. (Or whoever made Field of Dreams. Not looking it up.)

The Survival Horror Game in Reverse
Like the shooter, but this one is really easy. The hero is smart, but easy to kill, and he doesn’t have any ammo. Cover the valuable ammunition dumps with your strong zombies and send your weak ones out to wear him down. Wear him out psychologically until he’s desperate, and then send out your baghead chainsaw man and cut him to tiny hero pieces.

The RTS in Reverse
This is a little weirder. Basically, there are two players on the map, one who is very good and one who is very bad. In real-time, you must edit the map in such a way that the bad player cannot lose. However, you cannot directly harm the good player’s units. You have to wall them off with terrain, but they can climb, dig, or go around; it just takes longer.

The Puzzle Game in Reverse
It’s very hard to design a puzzle that’s hard for you to solve, but the idea in this is that you design puzzles until the computer can’t solve them, and then you win. The puzzles can range anywhere from mazes to those insane ice-block puzzles (god I fucking hate those) to Myst-style lever-block-whatever puzzles that span entire islands. The computer, naturally, has different difficulty levels, and I guess you can do it two-player as well.

Alright, so there’s some stuff for today. I actually kind of like this formula. Lots of little game ideas are kinda nice, and it’s definitely easier to write in the middle of the night.