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Idea/theme sharing

A topic by Sealed Library created May 14, 2020 Views: 2,824 Replies: 94
Viewing posts 1 to 34
Jam HostSubmitted(+2)

Hi folks,

I thought I'd get the jam going by sharing my game idea for the jam, and encouraging you to do the same. If anyone wants to bounce ideas around more privately, you can DM me on Twitter too @iammattsanders. I know Chris (@pangalactic) is up for the same.

I'm planning on writing a game tentatively titled Fake Guru, Real Vice. You play a millionaire self help guru who has everything, but is totally trapped by all their dirty secrets and vices. They're beginning to lose control of that and the experience is seeing how long you can keep those secrets under wraps and what eventual end befalls you.

I think it's a game that'll need some heavy content warnings because I'm obviously opening a Pandora's box of dangerous themes with this and one of the challenges in writing it will be handling the content right. I'm definitely excited about exploring the idea of someone who isn't physically alone, but is surrounded only by sycophants and leeches and has to confront the enormity of all the dodgy things they've done. After the first two games were about someone who was actually alone I wanted to take things in a different direction.

HostSubmitted(+3)

So in the spirit of sharing - the game I'm working on is called Bitemarks & Bloodstains. Where The Wretched was my attempt to distill Alien down into a journaling game, this one is an homage to films like Red Dragon and Se7en

You play an investigative journalist one the trail of a ritual killer. You're trying to build a psychological profile of the killer to be able to identify them and get a scoop on the killings before the police get there first, but in the process you begin being hunted by the killer.

I'm changing up the formula with this one, introducing multiple oracles and allowing the tower to fall a couple of times before the end of the game. Each time the tower falls the killer strikes again, and you move on to a new set of oracle cards as you investigate the new killing. I know a few other people taking part in the jam have made changes to how the mechanics work - one game I can think of that's being written has the player building the tower from the base rather than pulling blocks from a fully-constructed tower, which is awesome! I'm really keen to encourage experimentation with this stuff, so if you're working on something interesting let us know!

And, as Matt said, if anybody needs any help or wants to throw ideas around feel free to get in touch. There are a lot of people in this jam who have never written games before and I'm more than happy to offer any assistance I can.

Looking forward to seeing what people are cooking up!

(+2)

Oooh. I really like the idea of multiple oracles. That's a really good fit for escalating or changing situations.

HostSubmitted(+1)

Yeah I'm really enjoying playing with the format in that way! The issue I'm having is making sure the game doesn't go on for too long, so I'm trying to balance the number of pulls etc. One mechanic I'm stealing from Rose Quartz is having the player twist the tower like a helix after rebuilding it, to make it fall faster the second time reound - which will also represent the killer becoming more frantic/speeding up their ritual. There's a long way to go on this game yet and I don't think I'll finish it during the jam but I'm really happy with where it's headed.

As I mentioned on Twitter, I'm now considering multiple oracles (well, two at least, possibly three) for my Castle Dracula idea. But as you said, I don't want the game to drag on for two long. (Though now that I've said that, I'm rather interested in knowing how long a game can go, and if it'd continue to be fun.) Other ideas I had on making the tower fall faster after each reset were 1) rolling more dice for initial pulls, and 2) having cards that force multiple pulls.

(+2)

I'm really excited to be here, this is my first game jam and i'm really excited to work with the Wretched and Alone SRD. 

The working title of my game is The Returned, about a lone newly raised undead who is attempting to return to their family. The game is them moving through the world encountering opportunities to try and complete/fix themselves from the scraps and remnants of the world around them. I don't mean just physical but also mental or spiritual, finding more anchors to who you are in the world beyond just your family. 

I wanted to move away from a single individual in a contained space to making it someone who is hopeless even among people, with the container separating them from their own enemy being their own form. 

I'm thinking of changing the 10 tokens aspect of the game but still brainstorming exactly how, i think i want to do some sort of called-shot for drawing certain cards at the start of the game to see if someone can really 'complete' themselves. I know this would increase the chances of 'success' but i have a plan for that.

I am pretty excited about my journaling medium, in that i'm thinking of asking the player to either write single words or symbols on their own body, otherwise sticky notes pasted to yourself work just as well. Im thinking about some mechanic to have the player 'muddle' these written notes later on but again, thats half-baked at this moment.

Much like Matt mentions above, the themes of this game could be difficult for a number of different reasons.  I'd rather throw this whole idea out then make something harmful. I'm really afraid I won't hit the right notes and end up making something unintentionally harmful, so any advice would be greatly appreciated. 

Jam HostSubmitted(+2)

I think the theme is executable. In fact, I think it's really interesting actually, a smart choice.

I think there are difficult themes there, but nothing that shouldn't be included. I think providing a note to warn about potential triggers is sufficient to help people decide if they play the game, or to inform how they play it.

(+2)

The idea of being alone but still out among people is really cool.

Submitted(+2)

Hello!

My working title is "The Cold Palace". You play as the Empress who has been spurned by the Emperor and imprisoned. Fortunately for you, the Emperor can't just casually murder you - there are traditions that one must uphold and your family are not simple peasants content to wring their hands in their sleeves while bowing their heads. Through connections, luck, and loyalty, you may survive the freezing of the Emperor's heart. But most likely, you'll end up at the end of a silk rope no matter what you do.

I'm considering using a tarot deck instead of a block tower - both because my play space isn't really great for setting up a tower and hoping to keep all the pieces (or, alternately, risking the possibility of damaging my tablet screen when they fall) and because I collect decks for use in solo play and I want any excuse to use them! (Also, as cool as seeing a precarious tower is visually fitting, "the deck is stacked against you" also works.)

I'm not entirely sure if I'll have the time to finish before the deadline, but I'm still very enthusiastic about this and seeing what comes of everyone else's projects!

Jam HostSubmitted(+2)

This is a really cool theme, way outside of anything I'd considered and that's half the point of a jam!

I'm really keen to read more games that use tarot as resolution. I have a couple of decks knocking around that I've never really made full use of and would like to. I've never quite got through using it differently to a standard deck of playing cards.

I think Itch is a good platform because you can release a game that is in development and update it later. So, if you can get to a completeish stage, you could definitely still submit it for the jam.

Submitted

Awesome! I've been reading a lot of (translated) Chinese webnovels lately and the concept of "the Cold Palace" comes up a lot, along with court intrigue, so it's been floating around my head for the last few months. When I saw the W&A game jam, I started digging through my brain box looking for "alone, powerless, and in peril" themes I was interested in exploring and it was the first one to pop up that I had a strong reaction to. In the webnovels, the heroine is usually in a bad position, but uses some secret advantage (often second-chance reincarnation, isekai other-world experiences, or a super power) to beat the odds. But without that advantage, it would probably play out badly for her.

One of the interesting ideas I'm exploring as I let things cook on my mental back-burner is an advantage with using the tarot - the major arcana. The minor arcana can map easily to a card suit (coins/pentacles to diamonds, for example), but the major arcana step outside of that and can be used for other things. For example, using the card Death for exactly as it sounds. Right now, my concept is to use the minor arcana as different "people" to put between Death and the Empress. Cups/Chalices represent those who are most loyal to her (family, friends, lovers, personal servants; etc). Coins/Pentacles represent people whose skills can be bought for gold (assassins, spies; etc). The more of these people in the "Tower", the safer the Empress is. But the Emperor card can order them to die, removing them from the deck permanently. 

Absolutely something I'm going to spend a lot of time playtesting to make sure it works out the way I want it to. Controlled, slow-burn tension at first, and then eventually more and more out of hand as human resources are lost to Death.

I'll definitely share the game as a playtest version if I get something that seems playable!

Submitted(+3)

Hi, I'm working on a few ideas.


Adrift, you are the lone survivor of a shipwreck and drifting at sea on a raft constantly circled by sharks.

Dead Drop. You are spy who has been caught. You are trying to make it through your interigation. Unfortunately they have all your encrypted reports you sent to mother Russia and are playing them back to you one by one.

Ransom note. Send daily instruction to the people you are blackmailing. Use a way of disguise your voice for your daily log.

Cascade. You work for a corporation that has been hacked and it's all your fault. Tower represents the files and systems of your employer been hacked. It's a race against time to save as much as you can, repel the hack and cover up your involvement. Cyberpunk setting.

Jam HostSubmitted(+1)

Wow, four games is incredible.

I'm into Ransom Note especially. I guess that has three outcomes. Get caught, kill the hostage and go on the run, and get the money?

Submitted(+2)

Yo, I’ll be making around 2-3 submissions for the jam (ideally 3) based around different 3 different horror genres: body horror/torture porn (Martyrs, The Human Centipede, Tusk, The Guinea Pig Films), home invasion (Funny Games, Inside, Hush, The Strangers), and Asian Revenge thrillers (Oldboy, The Chaser, Lady Vengeance)

I’ll be going super loose with the system so that means no Jenga HA because blocks are expensive here in Malaysia I guess.

Jam HostSubmitted(+1)

I think we got a cheapish jenga tower in Malaysia from some Chinese toy shop, or maybe it Tesco? There's cheap ones on Lazada for like RM15 too.

I think the revenge films one is the one I'm excited about. Which perspective do you play from?

Submitted(+1)

oh rly? ok that’s not too bad then I’ll check out some options

I’m not so sure on Revenge game just yet - most likely from the point of view from the pursuer but a cat/mouse thing would be interesting to explore.

I have, however, found an interesting/compelling way to execute the torture porn game which doesn’t devolve into meaningless violence so that’s the one that’ll most likely see the light of day.

Submitted(+3)

Hi, excited to be taking part in this jam. 

My game has you playing the part of a lighthouse keeper alone on an island after your fellow keepers mysteriously vanished without a trace. 

You will have to keep the lighthouse going by yourself while you wait for the boat to arrive and bring you back to the mainland. 

Jam HostSubmitted

Ooh, this is a NICE theme. Do you plan on revealing or hinting at what happened to the other keepers? I'm not sure whether it should become at all clear. Are you planning on hinting at it, spelling it out, or making the player invent it? Or something else?

Submitted

Thanks. I am kind of on the fence with it at the moment. I don’t want to spell anything out at all but maybe drop the off breadcrumb that might be a red herring, its a balance between the two.

I think I would like to leave it a mystery but maybe not.  

Jam HostSubmitted(+1)

Perhaps as a solution to this you could make one of the suits of the oracle 'investigating my colleagues' fate'. Have two versions of it, one that contains a solid conclusion, one that only hints. The player can choose which type they want when beginning.

Another route would be to have a conclusion, but it's revealed by a single specific card or combo of cards that means it is technically in there, but you are unlikely to find it?

Submitted(+1)

I had kind of thrown the idea of a card that reveals what happened out this afternoon but was toying with the idea of having a deck that is all about the other keepers and I think I might have figured something cool out to do with it too. Actually quite excited to work on this tonight.

Another thing I did think about was making a supplementary multiplayer version where everyone plays one of the keepers and it ends with two going missing while one is away!

Ooh. Would you mind sharing more about how you're doing a multiplayer version of your game? I'm pretty sure I'm going with a Dracula inspired game for mine, and it struck me that I could possibly do a multiplayer version: Each  player is a hunter, with their own deck of cards and block tower, and after each day the player writes and then mails a letter to the others. It seemed interesting, but I'd want the oracles to (somehow) interact with and affect each other, so the players felt like they were working together rather than playing multiple games of solitaire.

Submitted

I don’t think I am going to have time to do it now :(  but I was thinking of mimicking lighthouse keepers routines. 

There were always three keepers on an island and they would work in 4 hour shifts keeping watch. On the late night and earlier shifts there was an unwritten rule that you woke the next keeper up just before their shift and would make them a cuppa and sit and chat for 20 minutes or so to make sure they were awake. I wanted to do something around those late night conversations but had not fully formed the idea.  

That sounds pretty cool. There being a set routine that everyone is aware of would help set up the player turns.

Submitted

It looks like we are working on very similar stories! Looking forward to seeing how our games are similar/different :) 

Submitted

Ooooh, battle of the beacons! :)

Submitted(+2)

Super excited for this jam.

My submission will be about a hacker who is in waaaaaaay over their head with debt. Mysterious benefactor gives you the supplies to make one last run at one of the biggest megacorps out there. Get the files they request and wipe away the debt. Hope your brain doesn't get fried by your rig, or your body shot up IRL before its done.

Plus boyzie and I have something cooking up for after that ;)

Jam HostSubmitted(+1)

Ooh, I like the futuristic theme here. I rarely go that way in my design ideas. Not sure why, but it really fits here.

Submitted(+1)

Got a couple of ideas:

Windswept: the diary of a soldier alone at a desert border post/warning beacon, who starts to have an existential crisis in the absence of other people. The four suits would correspond to Fire (glory, dreams, ambitions, hopes), Home (memories and mementos), Tower (the border post, orders, structure, supplies), and Dust (decay, strangeness, breakdown, unreality). I haven't decided what the tower falling means yet.

Paranoir: an audio log representing either dictaphone recordings or an internal monologue, either way by a hard-boiled PI pacing their office reflecting on what they've learnt earlier that day on each day of the case they're working. Slowly, piece by piece, the case grows ever more complicated, and reality shifts to make matters worse—until the tension breaks, the tower collapses, and the detective achieves a moment of pure clarity where they spill out their whole breakthrough. So, that's kind of an inversion (but the fun of the game should be in getting as much evidence onto your corkboard as possible and then finding weird ways to tie it all together into one theory). This idea (and maybe Windswept too) also involves questions—a list of questions you can add to as you go along, and oracle prompts that let you answer them (or un-answer them, or do weirder things with the format).

Ploughshares to Swords: some kind of propaganda by a rural population about to be invaded by a more powerful army, inspired by the English invasions of Ireland in the 1700s. The tower fall is the landing of the ships (or otherwise the sighting of the enemy), but until then you can propagandise and prepare for the invasion and probable guerrilla war.

Last Words of the Digital Polyp: an ancient alien AI in its creators' ruins on a distant planet is reawakened by the presence of human explorers, but their systems are fading fast. Lots of choices in the oracle—whether to use your power (draw a block) to do something (e.g. help the humans explore or understand, drive them off, influence their minds, protect secrets, kill them) or leave things be. The tower falling is the final power failure or isolation of the AI, and the glimmer of hope is when the humans realise there's an intelligence behind the phenomena they're experiencing and actively try to repair the system. This idea still needs a bit of fine-tuning to make it all narratively and emotionally consistent, though.

Unnamed idea!: inspired by The City of the Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith; a human being slips between worlds and finds a strange, alien dimension that's fascinating, beautiful, and potentially deadly. They come under the influence of something awesome and terrible that keeps them coming back again and again, but in the meantime, the alien world is so fascinating that they don't resist the pull as much as they could. The glimmer of hope is that an even more powerful force (or apex predator or whatever) intercedes, or predatorially overpowers the first.

Submitted (1 edit) (+2)

Windswept and Paranoir are based off old projects of mine that cooled down (Windswept because it was originally a hack of a game that the designer's withdrawn from public access, and Paranoir because it was for one of the first game jams I entered early last year and I got cold feet). Ploughshares to Swords and Digital Polyp are based on very vague ideas I had, and it struck me that this system could be a good fit (or maybe not, we'll see). That last one is something I just came up with now, though I've wanted to do something based on Smith's cosmic horror and weird fiction for a long time.

Jam HostSubmitted(+2)

I think I'm most excited by Paranoir and Ploughshares to Swords. Both of those are really evocative ideas for me and they toy with what the jam is about really nicely.

Submitted(+1)

Thanks! For another one that plays with the concept, I've got one for 2 players where one player is a lost hiker who's stumbled into a supernatural deep forest, and the other is a park ranger they manage to contact by radio. The hiker has the tower and die and the ranger has the cards; the ranger tries to advise the hiker, while the hiker explores and tries to survive (whether following the ranger's advice or not). Meanwhile, something or someone is hunting down the trespasser/interloper/prey. I'm also considering map mechanics, where the ranger sets up a map of what the forest should be, and the hiker slowly pieces together a map of what it is.

Jam HostSubmitted(+2)

I'm glad to see someone floating a 2 player version! I've had a discussion with Chris about a 2 player game using W&A, but it's an idea that won't see the light of day for a while. 

In fact, I think I like this idea the most of all. It reminds me of Firewatch in a loose sense, but the supernatural layer makes it something else. 

Submitted(+2)

I am working on an idea that had been bouncing around my head for ages. In the game, you are playing as someone who is trying to balance his social, work, family and love live, and failing at most of them. As you play, you are likely to become more estranged from everyone, and end up cutting ties with them altogether. I'm currently working on a Jenga tower version and one without it, that tweaks a lot of the rules around, but keeps the themes.

The game is called Overcoming Solipsism.

Submitted (1 edit) (+2)

There's like a dozen (ETA: at least!) of great ideas in this thread! Super exited to see all these games.

I think I might want to play with the idea of a person caught in some kind of time travel/flashback scenario gone wrong. Trying to hang on to their memories and find a way to communicate with their loved ones outside of their weird lost-in-time situation. Some touchstones for me are 12 Monkeys, that one episode of Lost (The Constant, I think), parts of The Butterfly Effect, Insterstellar, Memento, The Jacket and so on.

I think the main threat in the scenario is slipping away into oblivion, becoming unable to reach other people, and losing your memories and sense of self.

Jam HostSubmitted(+2)

Love love love this! 

And I agree, I'm so pleased at the scope of the ideas that people are working  on, I think we're going to have a really varied set of games comes out of this. Far more varied than Chris and I dreamed of ourselves. 

Submitted(+3)

Hey, I am making Wretched Wasteland. An ode to all my favourite post-apocalyptic pop culture. Adding a little map to use as the Salvation. 
This is my first attempt at something like this. I have written some D&D adventures, but nothing like this. 

Jam HostSubmitted(+1)

Great to have you on board and doing something different with game design. Looking forward to seeing how you make the map work.

(+1)

No guarantee that I'll be able to get a game done, though I'd really like to. I've shared some of these ideas on Twitter (which is basically where I live), but I'll put them here as well. I'm finding that a fair number of game ideas that were already floating around in my head seem like they'd work well in the W&A format.

ESCAPE FROM DINO ISLAND: Basically just Jurassic Park–make it off a dinosaur-infested island without getting eaten (card draws) and before the army bombs the site (tower collapse). Probably the least divergent from the SRD. Journal entries would most likely be audio recordings, as having a cell phone makes sense.

THE INVOCATION: You've finally found the artefact and are making preparations to summon your demonic/infernal parton. That involves gathering materials, preparing the space, preparing yourself, and losing people/relationships that once mattered (the four card suits). If the tower collapses, the ritual fails. Certain card draws mean you did something wrong and your patron abandons you. Make it to the end, and you're deemed worthy of their love. This idea is inspired by the very NSFW comic The Invitation: Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, and is a metaphor for being transgender–preparing yourself involves body modifications (basically becoming your ideal self), and the people/relationships you lose are those who can't handle your new identity.

ON THE RUN (working title): You're the ward of an important vampire, and, for reasons, are on the run. You've got to keep them safe and fed, avoid detection, and clean up any messes they accidentally cause. Tower collapse means you get caught, and certain card draws mean some other fail state (not sure yet, maybe your ward runs off without you). Card suit categories are Food, Haven, Safety, and Affection. Inspired by my love of YA paranormal romance fiction and the first few chapters of Vampire Academy (which I thought were the most interesting), where there's romantic tension between two vampires who are trying to dodge their keepers–which is why one of the card suits is Affection. The situation's more interesting when you're romantically involved.

SECRET CRUSH SLUMBER PARTY: Again, a romantic one. You're at a slumber party, the last one before people split up for university, and your secret crush is here too. Can you tell them how you feel about them, and how will they react? Tower collapse means the night ends before you're able to tell them how you feel, and certain card draws mean they find out but aren't into you. You aren't alone in this game, but the scenes the player writes about are quiet moments between them and their crush during the night. Also, instead of a die roll to draw cards, you draw and flip over set of four to determine the current group activity (eating pizza, doing hair, watching movies), where you are your crush are (on the porch, in the basement, on the couch), what you notice about them (slightly crooked tooth, stray wisp of hair, how they smell), and what pulls them away before you tell them how you feel (another party member, awkward silence, they get hungry).  Basically a way for me to get the teenage girl sleepover experience (with some blushing tosssed in) that I now feel I was robbed of.

Submitted(+1)

omg all of these sound SO GOOD. i really really want to play the sleepover one!!

I'm back with another concept, i wanted something a little more light hearted / hopeful in initial tone so i'm also working on Disc Jockey's Final Ride You play a radio DJ who needs to stay on the air to keep enemies ('them') from attacking people. So long as your radio frequency has something going on, you'll be saving lives. Heck, you could even find a category of music that repels them and please don't say country music

I think radio personalities are their own weird microcosm that would be interesting to hear as subjects for the log portion of the game.

Categories as of right now are Hearts - Music, Diamond - Equipment, Club - Callers, and Spades - The Enemy. 

(1 edit) (+1)

Hi everyone! You all have great themes going on. Can't wait to see what you come up with. The one idea that pop-up when I was reading the SRD is: 

You are a horror novel writer with an history of mental illness. Your editor has been begging you for a fourth book but you've been battling the blank page syndrome and a bad case of the booze for a couple months now. Your spouse had a great idea: "Why don't you go to my parent cabin in Maine to focus on the book? Alone, with your thoughts, in the woods, nothing can go wrong. Heck! You might even breathe some fresh air." You will write that DAMN book even if it drives you mad or you drink yourself in a coma or both... 

Inspired by movies like: In the Mouth of Madness, Secret Window, Misery, The Shinning 

But I still haven't started writing it yet... So wish me luck! :-)  

Submitted

I like the sound of this. I thought it was going an evil dead route. Do they write the original necronomicon? Clatoo veratoo cough cough mutter.

(+1)

There is a virus in you, one that can wipe out all life in this galaxy.  You are alone, in a spacecraft that is auto-piloted to take you to Sector 36.  If *they* have their way you will be stung by the creatures here and "Delirium Trigger" into a galaxy wiping explosion.  You must change course or risk the lives of everyone in the galaxy.  

It doesn't help your mental state that you were tricked into believing your entire family had the virus too.  If you hadn't have done what you had done, well the experiments and horrors they would have faced is to hard to imagine.  At least you did it with love and mercy.    

My first ever #gamejam and looking forward to finishing it.  

I'm working on something House of Leaves inspired, where you play someone lost in a mutable and unreal space, trying to find your way back to reality by descending into the abyss.

(+3)

Crap.  My post got eaten, but I've been developing CASTLE DRACULA on Twitter, and think I'll do that one first. You play an English solicitor, sent to Transylvania to act as an estate agent for  Count Dracula, and get imprisoned in his castle. Basically, you're the previous Jonathan Harker.

Two ideas that other people might want to develop further occured to me while brainstorming; character inventory and a "mini oracle."

Character Inventory: In Dracula, Jonathan Harker's shaving mirror and small crucifix helped him discover what Dracula was and kept him safe. long enough to escape. You could have the player character start with some items–represented with cards, tokens, or just notes on paper–that affect the mechanics of the game. Skipping a tower pull, redrawing a card from the oracle, shuffling a card back into the deck, even modifying what prompt a card asks. These items would have limited uses (tracked by tokens maybe), could be recharged and depleted, or even lost or broken by certain card effects. No idea how this would affect the outcome of the game.

Mini Oracles: For Castle Dracula, I want the player character to encounter the same rooms multiple times, but for the details to be slightly different each time. I want to simulate both the player character not knowing if they're being drawn to certain rooms, just getting lost, or if something is pushing them towards specific rooms, and for them to not know if their memory is faulty or if something is gaslighting them by moving stuff around.

To do that, instead of there being four categories for the four suits, each value of card (or a subset of cards) could have it's own "mini oracle" determined by the card suit. Heck, you could have the mini oracle determined by a die roll (either the one use to set the number of tasks for the day or a new roll), drawing a card (which then gets shuffled back into the deck), or the value/suit of the previous daily task card. For example, 7s could be Master Bedroom, with the same general details. But for one suit the bed is made and in another the sheets are rumpled and the bed has obviously been slept in.

Depending on how many entries the mini oracles have, you could keep the same presentation (four lists of card suits), but if there are a lot of choices or the prompts get long, you might have to make each card value a separate page.

Unreliable Narrator: Lastly, I'm thinking about ways to have the character player destroy or alter previous journal entries. This reinforces the idea you can't trust even your records of events.

Feel free to use, adapt, or ignore those ideas as you see fit. :)

Submitted(+2)

I already have one submission in, but reading this thread has made me want to do an Obra Dinn-inspired game. Tax collector traversing a ruined ship, trying to figure out exactly what happened there.

Submitted

I have two ideas, one that will be up in a day or two, and the other I am not sure if I will finish in time for the Jam, but will be getting made eventually regardless.

1. The Buried. You are a miner who survives a cave in. Only, you now find yourself in a strange system of tunnels that no human hand dug. Introducing a mechanic for darkness...basically you have a limited number of charges for your headlamp, and you choose when to use it (each charge is good for one card). If a card has the darkness modifier, you have to pull twice. There will be ways to add to your charges (one of the Aces for example).

2. The Forlorn Hope. There were military units called Forlorn Hopes. Basically they got double the pay (unless they were convicts being forced to join), but got sent on all the suicidal missions like being the first wave to attack the walls. Young officers would take the risk leading them however, because if you lived you were sure to move up the ranks. So you'll be playing a young officer trying to keep as many of your men alive as possible, and staying alive yourself, for the duration of the campaign.

(+1)

Both of those ideas sound awesome. I'd been thinking about something like your darkness/headlamp mechanics for my vampire game. Very cool.

Submitted(+1)

They say write what you know. This is what I know. Hopefully, this does not turn out to be desperately boring.


You are a project manager of some experience. 
Which is why you are worried
Your company has asked you to “just get us started” on a substantial project, though the final contract terms have not been settled.
Madness
You have warned them that this is a bad idea, but management insists. They explain they are confident that you can handle it.
You know the odds are not in your favor
Project managers can ask, but they cannot compel. Their greatest strength comes from speaking truth in meetings. 
Document everything.
Submitted(+2)

it crossed my mind that a game based in an office setting where you just have to survive cubicle life could be fun, and this sounds awesome!

Submitted


Glossary of Project Management Terms
  • Company - your employer. By definition, always right.
  • Client - your employer’s employer. By definition, also always right.
  • Stakeholder - one of the bosses (either Client or Company) paying attention to the project. Often, they want the project to succeed.
  • Senior Stakeholder - like a demi-god, reality shifts in their presence. They do not care about the project, they only want the outcome the project will bring them, and as far as they are concerned, you were already late when the project started.
  • Project - a business activity with a hopeful beginning, a stressful middle, and a ruthlessly pragmatic end
  • Risk Register - a document summarizing all the ways a project can fail, in the vain hope that those failures will be avoided
  • Project Manager - a highly organized wretch, practised at both hope and disappointment
  • Project Management - the art of making tradeoffs that nobody likes then explaining them to people who don’t want to hear it
Submitted

Totally falling down a rabbit hole here, trying to model budget and schedule risk in a deck of cards. Think I'm going to pull back out of that. Maybe that's the game I make next. :D

Submitted (1 edit)

I've already submitted BLOOM, a game about girls at a boarding school being mutated by a disease called the Tox, based on the book Wilder Girls, but I'm currently working on three more!!

Changeling: A standard Wretched & Alone game in which you play a changeling who's body is failing. The tower represents your body finally collapsing into sap and wicker, the kings represent a mob coming after you after someone in your town figures out what you are. The suits (tentatively so far) are Memories (of the feywild, your birth/construction, your passage into the human world, and the "real you" being kidnapped by the fey), Relationships (friends, family, and foes, including romantic options because I just can't help myself lol), Body (your changeling body failing in specific ways, becoming more obviously non-human, having to avoid people seeing the ways in which you aren't human, and your changeling tells causing you problems), and... I'm not sure about the fourth suite?? WIP.

The Kissing Game: A deviation from the standard W&A model, this game has no lose/win conditions and really only qualifies as a Wretched Jam game because I use many of the same mechanics for it. It's a game about self-love verging on narcissism in which you perform tasks like writing love letters to yourself, staring at yourself in a mirror, and kissing yourself in a mirror, among other things!

Steal Marry Kill: Another deviation from the standard W&A games. This game is designed to accompany a workout routine I call "The Viking Workout," in which you pretend to be a viking raiding one or more small villages. The game rewards you by instructing you to roll a die after each workout and draw that many cards to see what loot you obtain! Diamonds represents precious treasure like gold and jewels, Spades are general goods and equipment and useful items, Clubs are livestock and foodstuffs, and Hearts are beautiful women that desire to fling themselves adorously into your strong viking arms! This game has no win/lose mechanics and no end, and is just designed to be a fun addition to a fun exercise routine!

Jam HostSubmitted

That's quite the range of themes! I think I'm most into Changeling. Thst surprised me becuase I've generally been most up for the games that push the boundaries of the W&A themes and mechanics the most, but here it's the closest take on the SRD. 

What do you think you'll get done in time? 

Submitted

hopefully all of them! it's mostly just a matter of thinking up things for all the cards at this point x3

Jam HostSubmitted

At this point, I'm planning not to try and complete another jam entry and focus my jam-related efforts on helping people in the jam finish stuff up so please let me know if you want some input/a sounding board etc. 

Submitted

totally!! thanks!!

Submitted(+1)

So, I've been thinking about a second game that would play a lot with the concept of unreliable narrator:

HOW THE MIGHTY FALL: You are the elected leader of a major country. You know you are great, and you know you are destined to be one of the great historical leader. And yet you watch helplessly as the media attacks you, your close friends and coworkers are thrown in jail or worse, and your country revolts against you. As you go on, your arrogance grows as you just try to fix this goddam country full of ungrateful scum.

It's mostly based in the Smiler from Transmetropolitan, and maybe a few others that don't really pop to mind right now...

 


Submitted(+1)

omg so i started working on another game idea bc rip me

it takes place over a week/weekend, so i'm considering a few different things for the cards:
1. each of the suits represents a time of day (morning, afternoon, evening, and night), or
2. each round is a time of day (morning, afternoon, evening, and night) instead of a day, and instead of pulling 1d6 cards, you pull one of each suit

not sure what the suits would represent in #2 yet. maybe location, emotion... idk. it feels very half-formed right now

Submitted(+1)

The "pulling one of each suits" bit sounds really promising! It could work really well with scenes necessarily composed by four factors, like the ones you mentioned!!
We immediately thought about how it could be used to create a "Clue"-like game, in which a serial killer is on the loose and each day you'd pull one of each suits to determine their Method, Weapon, Location and Victim...

Crap, now I guess we're making this game.... Is it okay to use the suits idea and give you credits for it?!

Submitted(+1)

totally go for it!!!! 

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

and i think the idea originally came from hyvemynd, so she should get the credit!

Submitted

Okay, let's credit both!

Submitted(+2)

So, I've already submitted "The Artifact" which stays fairly close to the original Wretched & Alone template, with one little twist around using a joker to extend the story.  After reading through some of the other posts in this thread, I've got a few more ideas, and I think I'd like to develop at least one more of them before the time runs down on this game jam. They all play with the rules/idea of the game in different ways. 

1. Hunter/Hunted - The idea behind this game is to have you switch perspectives halfway through. You start as an assassin stalking your target, and when you inevitably fail, the assassin's guild sends someone after you, and you basically play the game again, but this time you are the one fleeing from the assassins.

2. I don't have a good name for this one yet, but it plays with the idea of the unreliable narrator.  Here's the overview: you are investigating a conspiracy theory, and it is much easier to win the game than usual. However, when you get to the end and "win", you discover that the conspiracy you have been obsessing over is invented and not true at all.

3. You Are A Volcano - In this game, you are literally a volcano. You recently emerged from beneath the ocean to form a volcanic island, and some people have settled on you. Each "day" is about 100 years, and for each day you would draw one card of each suit, representing things like cultural developments, technological developments, weather/climate/geological patterns, threats to society, etc. and describe how the society that has settled on you deals with/incorporates those four things. Your goal, as the volcano, is to find a way to relieve the pressure that is building up in you before you explode and wipe out this little civilization. The tower would represent catastrophic eruption, not sure about the Kings yet - maybe they abandon the island? I'm thinking about ways to make the pulls from the tower work in this situation, and maybe make it a bit more winnable? Or, like the Downfall RPG, maybe the point is to build the society before destroying it?

I'm really leaning towards doing the Volcano one. That seems like a fun challenge to me,

-B

Your volcano idea sounds really cool.  I was thinking about a game where the player drew one card of each suit per turn as well.

Submitted(+1)

Oh, I love the idea for the Hunter/Hunted bit, and I'm really curious to see how you're going to execute that!! Are you planning to write twice the number of oracles for when the roles shift, or would the player just read them from a different point of view on the second playthrough?

Submitted(+2)

My first idea was to just write twice as many prompts, but it might be more interesting to have you read the same prompts and think about how you might foil those tactics on the second time around.

Submitted

Not gonna lie, I love the Volcano idea! I'm a big fan of Civ games (though I don't have that kind of time to play anymore) and I really like the idea of balancing the development of the society with the risk of blowing up.

Submitted

"You Are A Volcano" is now live!

Submitted

So, after releasing two W&A games for the jam, we thought we were done but....... We're thinking about trying to get another one ready before the end?

The idea we're playing with right now is to implement social media interaction - as in, you'd do your journaling on twitter by using the game's hashtag, and there could be positive or negative triggers for interacting with other posts?

We're still debating between making an optimistic game (the Earth is being visited by extraplanar creatures who judge civlizations and wipe them out if they're not good enough... And they have found Twitter. So the only way to push them away is by sharing good memories and deeds and things worth fighting for, in a sort of Doctor Who-inspired vibe?) or making a creepy game (inspired by social media conspiracy theories/Save Marina Joyce, and using the hashtag to help the next people who are being hunted by whoever we decide is hunting the players)

(+1)

Ooh. I love the idea of a social media-interactive game. Very excited to see what you come up with.

(+1)

Hi, I only just discovered that Game Jams have message boards and I wanted to comment here.

This is the first Game Jam I have officially entered, and I was drawn in by the hopeless aspect of the game’s themes.

I have one concept and it is based on a short story I wrote in 2016 about a potential possibility where all Palestinians and Jewish peoples are expelled from the earth on a colony ship due to the racism and bigotry of those in hegemonic powers after it was determined that we were no longer valuable as a tool to appeal to white Christian zionists. This is a very personal story to me as a Palestinian and extremely niche, and I don’t expect it to be incredibly popular.

Withered On The Vine: The game starts off with my short story where an unnamed Palestinian man and his Jewish friend Eli are accompanied by their grandchildren/greatgrandchildren to see the arboretum of the colony ship while the two old friends reflect on the circumstances that resulted in them being on the ship in the first place and how it could have been avoided, while the children talk avidly about the colony that the old men will never see. I thought about changing it so that the elderly Jewish man in the story was also nameless to allow more ambiguity between who is who in the short, but I named the character after my friend Eli and decided I wanted to leave it in.

The game begins with an explosion, a ship crashes into operations section of the colony ship and everyone on board rushes to civilian quarters, except for one of the two elderly friends, they are trapped inside the operations section and they need to be rescued, but the only one who knows to look for them is their other friend. This is where the game starts.

Create your character- you are an elderly Palestinian or Jewish person, male, female, or non-binary, between the ages of 65 and 90. You have been on this ship for the past 50 years. You had a job before you were on the ship that fits into one of 6 categories and you had a job since you got onto the ship that fits into one of 4 categories.

Create your friend- Your friend is an elderly Palestinian or Jewish person (the option you find;t choose for your character), male, female, or non-binary, between the ages of 65 and 90. They have been on the ship for the past 50 same as everyone else and they had a job before they were on the ship that fits into one of 6 categories and they had a job since they got onto the ship that fits into one of the 4 categories.

Record your first journal entry talking about the first time you and your friend met and then begin drawing cards.

The game plays out that you are trying to locate your friend while also trying to stop the actions of an agent sent by earth who is now trying to destroy the operation of the ship, while also trying to avoid being caught by the agent. I am not sure entirely how I want it to work but I am including a 52 card deck with two additional cards, the black, and red joker. The black joker represents your friend and the red joker represent the agent. If you pull the agent card without being prepared for them, with your friend as a team (you can only be prepared for them if one of you has one of the two job categories from before then ship that don’t exist from the time on the ship and having a discussion about your plan) the game is over as you will be overpowered and eliminated by them. If you pull the black joker without fulfilling the prerequisites, then you find that your friend has been taken out by the agent or one of his sabotages.

Odd-numbered cards in the deck represent problems that the agent is causing to the ship’s systems with each different suit corresponding to a category of jobs on the ship. When you pull a card you have to pull from the Jenga tower to represent the deteriorating condition of the ship unless you have experience in the job category from either before the ship or while you were on the ship. Even number cards count as your efforts to find a friend with you needing to pull two pairs before the black joker in order to save your friend. Each time you pull cards you have to choose whether you are searching for your friend, solving problems, or hiding. If you are searching for your friend you don’t get to offset ship damage with prior experience as you are focussed on your friend. If you are solving problems then you don’t get to keep any even-numbered cards you draw. If you choose to hide and the red joker is drawn you don’t get eliminated, but you also don’t get to solve problems that round or save even cards. I read above that there was the idea of using multiple oracle decks and I like the sound of that. I think I want to do that as well, but I have to puzzle out how to do that.

For the journaling aspect of the game, I want it to be audio recordings, basically, the friend who is searching is recalling the events of their friendship and recording it in case neither of them survives or incase only one of them survives. The friend that is searching is hoping that the friend they are searching for will be able to hear it eventually. The recordings act as a way to move the story along but can also benefit the player if they come across something that they couldn’t normally handle in the problems. The recording happens during the searching/problem-solving phase. During the problem-solving phase if the friend that is searching can recall an event similar to this in the two friends’ past then they can borrow their friend’s skills to solve one of those problems without pulling from the tower. If during the searching phase the friend that is searching can recall a moment that challenged or strengthened the two friends’ connection to one another then they can negate one of the problem cards.

The game ends when more than half the ship’s systems have been compromised and the colony is left to drift in space, when the friend that is searching is incapacitated by the agent, or when the two friends stop the agent together. The last possibility is extremely unlikely and also not a true win condition because unless the friends can make it seem like the agent succeeded then earth will just send another, so if one of the two friends do not have the second of the two categories of jobs not found on the ship in order to trick earth.

The point of this game is that surviving as marginalized stateless people is nearly impossible, but it is absolutely impossible if you think that you can do it alone and that the greatest allies for the Palestinian and Jewish people are each other. It is a very heavy game topic especially considering it deals with issues of genocide and ethnic cleansing, but it is one I want to tell as a Palestinian.

Submitted

this sounds amazing, both conceptually and mechanically. it's an incredibly beautiful story.

Thank you. It is a rather sensitive topic though so I am hoping to get some other Palestinians and Jewish peoples other than just myself to look it over when it is finished.

Submitted (2 edits) (+2)

So like the true ADHD kid I am, I heard a song on the radio and have started YET ANOTHER game.

In this one instead of journaling you draw a map which I think is pretty cool. (I mean technically you could totally still journal if you wanted to, but, you know, I thought something different would be fun.)

It's called If the World Was Ending You'd Come Over Right? and it's about how the world is literally going to end in a few days and when you were young/younger you made a pact with your best friend/crush/lover about how if the world ever ended you'd spend your last day together, in that jokey way people do, and you decided to honor that. So you go to their last known address and get into their apartment.

And I was thinking, maybe two-player? Or you spend your last days with them as an NPC? But then I thought — no, you get there and they're gone. And the game is you and your friend's apartment and all their stuff at the end of the world. So the game is you remembering the times you had and what could have been (if things hadn't gone wrong between you and/or if the world wasn't ending) and going through their stuff and smelling their clothes and pillow because who cares the world is ending.

The tower represents the air quality going to shit and you suffocating. The Kings are going to be random things like another bomb going off, the building collapsing, idk I'll think of a few more. I'm going to write the Aces like the Kings, where if you draw all four, your friend comes home, and the last Ace you draw determines how they react to you!!! I'm really excited about that idea.

I definitely want to balance out the existential crisis impending doom feeling of this game with the feeling of being on a sort of treasure hunt, discovering things about your friend you never knew, and things that have happened to them since you parted ways. And part of that will be labeling stuff on the map, like the lock box you found under the bed, the violin in the corner ("do they play now?"), the tuna sandwich in the fridge ("but they hate tuna???"), stuff like that.

The hearts suite is going to be an optional NSFW portion of the game that you can remove if you don't want to use it. So if you're in a safe environment and feel comfortable, you can turn it into a very sexy game of pretending to be in your ex-lover's bed pretending they're there with you (and maybe drawing the Ace of Hearts if you're REALLY lucky). (;

UPDATE: I've decided to do TWO Hearts tables! One NSFW and one SFW, so removing cards from the deck isn't necessary, and people who don't want to engage in sexual content can still experience the fun of questions like "what do they smell like?" and "did you ever crawl into their bed to be comforted during a thunderstorm?" Also I couldn't think of a fourth topic so both Spades AND Clubs are "Stuff." HUZZAH.

Still reading through everything but I just wanted to say that as someone who woke up from a dream in the middle of the night today and then immediately made an entire card game based on it I identify so much with the ADHD kid sentiment here.

I just got done reading and omg this just drips with longing and painful nostalgia. I love the feelings it evokes.

Submitted

I'm so looking forward to this one, please make it happen

Submitted

Would any of y'all be up for a quick read-through of Hope is not a Plan, my personal horror take on project management? I've added a New Game + feature to encourage replay, but also an imbalanced side-roll (contract Change Requests) to make things harder. I'd love to get some feedback, if you have time for it.

Submitted(+2)

I added a New Game+ mode to Hope is not a Plan in order to make each subsequent game easier. With some feedback from Matt (thank you Matt!), decided to remove one card from the deck for each previous game, make the token die roll easier each time, and starting on your third game, you begin with Ace of Hearts in play automatically.


This is really interesting I like it a lot.

Submitted(+1)

Thanks! There's not much hope to win the first game, but chances are not so bad on game number 3. :)

(+1)

I just discovered this engine and game jam with the Racial Justice bundle, and I immediately have a idea, but I don't know that I'll be able to get a full polished game ready in time for the jam to be over - is it acceptable to submit a game in early alpha state, with the intent to go back to it afterwards?

Anyways, this idea just popped into my head over the weekend. It's part Norse Mythology (heavily inspired by the Poetic Edda  and Joanne Harris' Gospel of Loki) and part also about living a life where you feel you have to suppress part of yourself in order to avoid angering people who you rely on for your well being, and finally giving in to that wild desire to scream and rail at them and rub your identity in their faces, consequences be damned. Haven't written any mechanics yet, but this is what I wrote when I was nailing down the idea:

It was never going to last...
You were too different, too strange, too wild.
Only tolerated as long as you were useful, as long as they could pretend you were tamed
But you are wildfire, and you could never hide your true nature for long.

Tonight, you overstepped
Revealed too much truth
Stripped away the pretty picture they had painted of you
Forced them to come to terms with the messy whole of you

FUCK THEIR EXPECTATIONS

You saw it in their eyes the moment it happened
Saw the fury that burned their tenuous goodwill to ashes

They'll never forgive you
So now you run, hoping that you can gather enough scraps of good will to build a shelter against the storm of their rage.

Because you will not like what they have in mind for you if they catch you...




Jam HostSubmitted

Yeah, that's fine. The SRD will still exist after the jam so you'll always be able to make games with the system. If you don't get it in the jam before the deadline, let me know when you do release it and I'll add it to the collection of all Wretched & Alone games I know about. 

Thanks! Unfortunately, I'm essential services during the COVID, so my days are actually busier than normal, and when I get home, I just need to unwind. And I want to get a chance to look at how people write their prompts for the cards, and get more familiar with the rules in general.

Thanks for coming up with such an amazing game engine!

Jam HostSubmitted

No worries. Once you've got the time and your game is in progress, feel free to DM me on Twitter if you need help. I'm planning some updates to the SRD and it's useful to me to speak to others developing for it. 

Submitted(+1)

omg that sounds freaking awesome!!!!

Thanks! I will definitely be making use of your amazing template :)

Submitted

ahh thank you!! let me know if you have any formatting issues!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

My contribution will be “Below 459”. It takes place on a West German submarine in 1968 that drifts in the Baltic Sea. The boat is severely damaged, so the player has to wait for a rescue team. What they don’t know is if they have already crossed the Iron Curtain or not.

I really loved the mechanic in Disco Elysium where the player character is defined by their choice of thoughts and want to implement something similar. Some cards will prompt the player to come up with pro communist or pro capitalist thoughts, thus shaping the mind of the character being rescued. If you survive, you have to flip one last card. A red suit indicates a communist rescue team, a black one a capitalist one. If the player’s choice of alignment matches those of the rescue team they won, otherwise they will be imprisoned. This doesn’t really count as winning the game, does it?

Submitted

I think that's a cool addition to the mix!

Submitted

Hey all! Getting to this thread a bit late for it, but I'm just putting out my Mars-based W&A game today. I have a few other random ideas kicking around, but nothing has sprung up as "a project" yet. The only thing I had put any thought into was creating a game for both the Wretched Jam as well as the Fucked Up Guy Jam. Not sure what that looks like yet, but I feel like the two jams go hand-in-hand. 

Submitted(+1)

that sounds awesome! i can't wait to see what you come up with!!!

So I haven’t even finished my first game due to just getting done with work for the year, but since the jam has extended I actually have two more ideas that I want to make as well

Returning to Lydd: The Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani wrote the story Returning To Haifa, which details the journey of a Palestinian mother who was forced to leaves her child behind during the Nakba where she and many Palestinians like her were ethnically cleansed the newly formed Israeli military and militant Jewish factions that went around committing massacres and terrorizing Palestinians, both of these groups eventually joined together to form the IDF. The story follows the mother as she is eventually able to return to Haifa after 19 years and desperately searches for her son, only to find him living in the same house that had been her house before the ethnic cleansing. A Jewish family lived there now and they had adopted her son and he was now a young man in the IDF.

The underlying theme of the story is that you can never go home again, not the home you remember at least because it doesn’t exist anymore.

Returning to lydd, named for my families home town in Palestine, is a story about returning to a place that should be your home and finding it to be completely alien to you.

The main mechanic will be the tumbling tower as you will be required to pull from it until it eventually collapsed symbolizing your absolute acceptance of loss and that the past will not return. Then you start to build it up again, symbolizing making a new home out of this now alien one.

Jinn Hunters: Name is a work in progress. I like it but I may want to use it for a different game. I was honestly inspired for this game by watching YUYU hakashu on Netflix these past few days haha.

The game takes place in a middle eastern fantasy setting, one of a series of different games with different mechanics I am wiring to fit into this setting. You are the main character, and you are dead. When you realize you are dead you are confronted by the angel of death, which for you is your Qareen, a jinn that has been paired with you since birth and has been acting as both the angel and the devil on hour shoulder depending on its mood.

The theme of the game will be centered on the choice to return to the living world or to pass on to the next one, all the while your Qareen is trying to influence your decision. When the game is finished if the tumbling tower is still standing then the player is presented with the option, push it over and head to Jannah, or leave it standing and awaken in the world again as a Jinn hunter.