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.