In case you don't know, 81jono81 is hosting a competition that is due for the 28th, where all participants submit an original concept for a brand new game franchise. Naturally, I have a few dozen concepts just laying around that I'm never going to actually do anything with, so I picked a select few and will be revealing them all this week. Today's is the second. Be sure to check out the competition post in the link above, and keep checking back all week long for my other concepts. Ultimately, I can only choose one to enter, and I haven't decided which one it will be yet. So I will ask you guys to tell me how you like each concept, and at the end of the week let me know which concept you'd like to see enter the competition officially.
________________________________________________________________
Although this game is not for an existing franchise, this particular idea is one I came up with for Falcon-x32 on a blog about coming up with new Nintendo franchises, so it is supposed to be styled and suited to the same kind of tonality you would expect from Ninty games.
________________________________________________________________
It stars a young girl named Melody who was revered throughout a magical land filled with both humans and humanoid animals (and also regular animals, but never any of the same type as the animal humanoids) for her beautiful singing voice. There are rumors of how her voice had magical powers which brought peace and prosperity to the land. One day a jealous lass of a neighboring town devised a way to steal Melody's voice, thus plunging the world into troubled times. With some help and encouragement from her friends and family, the girl then embarks on a quest to recover her voice.
The world is somewhat open; Melody can choose to visit any village at any time and help them with their problems in exchange for help in finding her voice. The tradeoff is that the longer she lets a town go without her help, the more difficult it is to help them. This is achieved by giving each of the eight towns a unique sequence of events played out in eight stages until interfered with by the player. When the first town is finished, every other town moves on to stage two, and so forth. This is done to enhance replay-ability, since tackling the game in alternate orders will allow you to change the course of events in various ways, giving you access to unique items, side missions, and contacts that may have been locked out by default events in previous playthroughs. It's worth noting that without her voice, Melody cannot end the turmoil the town is facing; she merely helps them from being defeated by it until the game's conclusion.
There will not be much in the way of violence in the game, but there are enemies in the open world. Most of the gameplay will revolve around using magical items to give yourself different advantages in stealth and/or platforming. Enemies can be dealt with by force in the latter half of the game, after certain items/powers are found. These will be in limited quantities however, as part of the characterization I'm going for is that Melody is not a warrior and would prefer not to attack anything. Powers/items she may find include flight (limited), disguises, putting enemies to sleep, and a special ability to convince enemies to befriend you and abandon their evil ways. Using that last power will sometimes grant rewards if the player goes to visit these characters later on as nearby towns are helping them rehabilitate their lives. But most of the world will be designed with traditional platforming in mind, and in that sense most of the challenge of the game will come from navigating the world.
The concluding chapter of the game will occur as soon as the character finishes helping the last town. Being able to piece together clues given to her by the mayors of each town will show her where to go to find her voice, and the game will then conclude with a "boss battle". The "battle" will begin once Melody arrives at where her voice is held, but she does not actively fight her nemesis. Instead, the jealous young girl who stole the voice will begin trying to find Melody so she can kill her, because she learned the hard way that she could not completely take another person's voice while they still live. Melody must avoid the villain in a less scary version of the gameplay found in Slender, until she has found the password to the safe which holds her voice (the password is torn into three pieces and scattered to random places in the building). Once she gets her voice back, she will begin to sing a song, which calms the nemesis of the game enough to rid her of her jealousy and apologize for causing so much harm. Melody forgives her, so long as she helps make things right in the towns she's disrupted. The game then ends with scenes of the nemesis girl doing some community service work in the various towns while the credits role, all while Melody sings her magical songs and restores peace to the land.
As you can probably tell, most of what's above was just cut and paste from the original posting, but I've added the parts below to answer some of Jono's questions for his feature.
Given that the idea of this game centers around singing that brings peace and a lost voice, the music of this game will be very limited for the most part. In the early levels, there will be no music whatsoever. Each time you finish helping a town, the world gets slightly more musical, until the final boss battle which will feature some prominent musical accompaniment. I do want to incorporate some 8-bit music in just as a nod to the golden era of Nintendo, but you should expect most of the music to be rather whimsical and melodic. In terms of art and graphics, I think the style should be relatively close to the Skyward Sword, with a brighter color palate ala Super Mario World.
To give some better details on how our character would help these towns, I don't want to adhere to the standard idea of a boss battle. Sometimes it's going to be a simple matter of resources that's plaguing a town. For example, one town will be located near some water and required hydraulic power for pretty much everything in the town. When the land was plunged in turmoil, the town endures a tsunami which floods a third of the city and destroys all of their ships. Their fishing equipment is inaccessible, and the "power plant" is too flooded to sustain the type of current needed to properly power the town, leaving them with almost no lights and technology. Melody will have to navigate the flooded region to figure out how to drain the plant and restore the power to the town, and then help the citizens deal with the larger, more aggressive aquatic beasts that have been brought in to the town's waters with the tsunami and are now eating all of the smaller fish (damaging the town's main food source). Depending on the order you tackle towns, the power plant may not be completely flooded when you get there which would allow you to access a solution more easily, or it may require you to find a power upgrade to allow you to breathe underwater first (which would be found in another town or in a neutral location) which would make things more difficult. The number of migrated beasts would also increase with time, again making it easier to deal with earlier than later.
Another town I have thought about will be dealing with a contaminated food supply. Helping this town will require you to find the source of the poison and remove it, find medicine or a medical team willing to help (depending on how bad it has spread due to time), and help find temporary replacements for certain sick individuals in certain jobs (like a police officer or store manager).
Basically, this isn't going to be a game world filled to the brim with monsters. I mean, there will be some in the open world, but I wouldn't have more than one town really dealing with that issue as their major problem.
________________________________________________________________
Let me know in the comments what you think of Melody: In Silence. Whether you want to throw your money at me and tell me to get to work, or host a lynching to eradicate this abomination from ever seeing fruition, I will appreciate the feedback.
_______________________________________________________________
“You're a celebrated breed. Enjoy the corner dancing.”
_______________________________________________________________
On This Day In Music (September 24th)
Rust In Peace by Megadeth released on September 24th, 1990. Also released on this day:
- Nevermind by Nirvana (1991)
- In Absentia by Porcupine Tree (2002)
- Blood Sugar Sex Magik by Red Hot Chili Peppers (1991)
- The Razor's Edge by ACϟDC (1990)
- Souls Of Black by Testament (1990)
- Electric Warrior by T. Rex (1970)
- Dream Theater by Dream Theater (2013)
- Critical Mass by Ra (2013)