WIP Games

If you haven’t taken a day to yourself, completely (or almost completely) free of worries, you should do that sometime.  I did it today and it helped; it wasn’t even a complete worry-free day because of my Math and CS recitations, but I still feel a lot better right now than I did this morning. 

For two reasons. 

1. Still getting adjusted to college and thus college time management. 

2. I’ve been sidetracked on creating a small shmup in Game Maker (a prequel to the shmup detailed below).  I’m still on the spriting part, and I’m not surprised if I scrap the project, but I’ve been itching to create an actual shmup, so I guess we’ll see what happens to that. 

I never knew that creating terrible-quality art with MS Paint was so darn fun. 

The ideas that eventually became the Potentium series had their humble beginnings in several other stories and games my brother and I considered, but later scrapped.  The whole concept of Potentium didn’t actually come to us until late one night, in a car on the way home from… I forget where.  All I know is that it was a long ride. 

The conversation turned to how horror stories and movies were stagnating, focusing more on the gore than the psychological aspects of horror.  My brother cut in that horror simply didn’t ask enough questions; instead, the genre often pumped out stock films where everything is clear to at least the viewer, and the only speculation is about who’s going to die.  He then floated ideas about a new stone arriving on Earth that posed enormous power, yet responded only to the strongest of all feelings: fear.  It made an interesting premise for a book.

The concepts of what Potentium is and does has changed almost completely since then, and we have at least 5 installments of storyline sketched out already.  I think our greatest challenge will actually be staying focused on making each story or game a quality product on its own.  I’ve already began to consider what we’ll need; an artist, for starters, unless my brother’s art skills improve enough (and he’s certainly been getting better).  By now, I’ve learned enough about patience that I think I’ll be able to see this series through in some form or another, even if my brother doesn’t (which I really don’t think will happen, considering that this series is practically his brainchild). 

One of my brother’s most ambitious projects is a series of RTSs based on the Potentium series.  Both him and I are working on the concepts right now.  Stencyl is shaping up to be a possible platform for these games, so I’ll be posting a couple of updates here, as well as a couple questions about some design decisions I’d llike you to have some input on (if anyone even reads this).  There are many ideas being floated around right now, so nothing’s set in stone, but I’m in the process of writing up a design document right now. 

However, I can’t say much about the story right now, because the game chronologically takes place after Dawn of Potentium (which takes place at the same time as the first book, if my brother ever gets around to writing the series).  So I’m not going to spoil anything.