MY FIRST GAME, STORY SUGGESTIONS?

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My game is called Kingdom Come The characters, are, in order of the picture, Crystal, Lora, Elaine Jacob, Teru, Raine, Serena, Selena(those two are twins), and the figure heads, Mia, and Johnathen. There is yet to be a story, but at the very beginning Johnathen's mother is killed by bandits, they were gonna um... steal her, she struggled, it's a bit of a Bambi moment to be honest... So give me suggestions for story please as seen from the pic there is a relationship, thx for any suggestions!
Here's my title screen, I scripted it so the title menu thingy is in the bottom right corner and has no window.

That's Johnathen and Mia holding hands, each with their best weapon.
I already mentioned it elsewhere, but you can't expect anyone to and think up and write out a complete story for you, give some general directions you want to go.
Having your mother killed does not lay the foundation for a specific story.
The bandits could be part of a larger organisation, possibly even ogre or so who kidnap women for their special purposes.
It could be about mercenaries, it could be a quest for revenge, it could not matter that much except the character grew up without her and it could as well be horror with that background.

What kind of world are the characters living in?
Classic medieval? More modern? (which seems to be likelier judging the character sprites)
What kind of characters are they?

Where lies the gamefocus? Hopefully not story. Is it battle-centered, adventure/travelling centered or other?
Is the story-focus on romance? Or is it supposed to be just one facet and the focus lies elsewhere?

Are you going to stay in a small area or travel the world?

Are there some supernatural phenomena involved? What kind of magic?

Are there some villains you think of implementing?

Is there a theme you would like the game to have? (y'know, finding the truth, romance, friendship, value of dreams, adventure, whatever)

If you have no answer for any of them, then I suggest you take some time to figure out which direction you want your game to go to and then await suggestions.
I think you should make the story yourself, because chances are you won't like any of the suggestions.

Create a 'rough sketch' of your plot first and then put it up for feedback. People here would be more than willing to help :)
SunflowerGames
The most beautiful user on RMN!
13323

Damn! Story is the easiest thing to do. I mean I have so many stories I want to do that I could never come up with enough games for them.

You need a prequel sequence in the game. I would suggest about an hour of gameplay at least where we get to know the two lovebirds individually before they know each other. You need to build a relationship with the girl and her mother. The male hero is more rebellious and decides to join a group of thieves. Yep, this guy is going to be responsible for killing the mother of the girl he falls in love with later. See now you have an interesting story dynamic to play with.
Don't write "um... steal her," it looks really dishonest. Either use the word rape or, if you don't feel it's appropriate, write "steal her" without an "um..." and without putting steal in italic. We can put two and two together from the context alone.

I have noticed that you have seven girls and three guys. Are you going for some sort of harem trope?

author=kory_toombs
You need a prequel sequence in the game. I would suggest about an hour of gameplay at least where we get to know the two lovebirds individually before they know each other. You need to build a relationship with the girl and her mother. The male hero is more rebellious and decides to join a group of thieves. Yep, this guy is going to be responsible for killing the mother of the girl he falls in love with later. See now you have an interesting story dynamic to play with.

Your suggestion is more interesting, but it's also harder to write. One of the best way to screw up a story is to attempt something above your writing skill.
author=Crystalgate
Your suggestion is more interesting, but it's also harder to write. One of the best way to screw up a story is to attempt something above your writing skill.

Crystalgate, this kinda came out as a slight insult, just so you know.

As for the game, I say you'd have to create a 'base' for your story. Refer to Kylaila's comment for a quick guide. From that 'base', you spiral out slowly. Constantly adding more interlocking details as you spin outwards. I also suggest you divide your story into 'vignettes', or sections, to give it more depth and make it more manageable at the same time. I write novels myself, and I think this is the best approach to this.
If there's anything that's bugging you, feel free to ask.
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
It seems a bit odd to me to have all the characters and title screen art before you even have a story, but if you have the characters all fleshed out and fully defined in your mind, then that can certainly work.

Just make sure to have the story all figured out before you start making the game. Or at the very least know the basic skeleton of the story and how it's going to end. Writing a point-by-point summary of how you want the plot to go could help you a lot.

As for the story in particular, Kylaila's absolutely right. You've kept things so vague that this could be high fantasy or sci-fi. Details are important. The name's important, too. You've titled it "Kingdom Come." You surely had some story-related reason for giving it that name, right?

author=kory_toombs
Damn! Story is the easiest thing to do. I mean I have so many stories I want to do that I could never come up with enough games for them.

I have the same problem XD I'm thinking up new stories for games all the time!
author=karins_soulkeeper
Crystalgate, this kinda came out as a slight insult, just so you know.

You're right, it was poorly worded.

The suggestion to make the hero responsible for the death of his girlfriend's mother is not just a little harder to write, it's much harder to write. It's so for a simple reason, Johnathen should not be able to get together with Mia if he's responsible for the death of a parent of her. Seriously, can you even imagine having a love relationship with a person who's responsible for the death of one of your parents? You need to add extraordinary circumstances to make such a relationship even plausible.

Attempting something like that is a high risk gamble. Even if you're a good writer and can pull it off, there's no guarantee that the audience really appreciates it more than they would a simpler love story.
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
If it were me, I would say that the mom was killed by bandits while they were attempting to kidnap her, and leave it at that. Which would call into question why they were trying to kidnap her in the first place. Is the situation more like, she's a merchant traveling the road when they accost her caravan? Is she a wealthy noble that they thought they could get a decent ransom for? Did she have something that, in their minds, belonged to them?

There's probably other possibilities out there, but, I wanted to give a sample of the kinds of things to think about.
What's the setting? The attire of your sprites look like they run the gamut from high fantasy armor to modern-day street clothes.
SunflowerGames
The most beautiful user on RMN!
13323

Yeah the sprites don't really match the game title in my opinion. And the "Kingdom Come" sounds like an old style rpg already with the title, but the artwork doesn't fit with that theme.

Unless "Kingdom Come" refers to the Lords Prayer. Then you could make it fit the modern times. Have a whole set of religious stuff. But then why would the main character have a sword?
As a writer at heart, here are my tips:

1) Keep it simple. Complexity will some on its own. Try to keep things as simple and easy to follow as possible and you'll ensure your game doesn't turn into a super-complicated mess.

2) If you're doing a relationship in your game, for the love of all things holy, KEEP. IT. SUBTLE. Relationships in real life don't have nonstop declarations of love (at least, not unless you're in the first week). Relationships are usually more of a "friendship Plus romance" thing in my experience. It's never 100% romance and feelings all the time.

Write a solid friendship and you'll have the perfect baseline for a relationship to layer on top of it.

3) When writing scenes out, subtle is usually best. Only go over the top when you MEAN it. Only when it will REALLY make a scene "work" and subtle isn't enough. Otherwise, subtle is best. I'm totally serious with this. With too much over the top, you get Dragon Ball Z, and then no one takes the story seriously anymore and you'll need to constantly raise the stakes to ludicrous levels. That's bad writing.

4) Avoid prophesies unless you're doing something really really clever with it. It's a crappy cliche for a reason.
author=Aegix_Drakan
1) Keep it simple. Complexity will some on its own. Try to keep things as simple and easy to follow as possible and you'll ensure your game doesn't turn into a super-complicated mess.

2) If you're doing a relationship in your game, for the love of all things holy, KEEP. IT. SUBTLE. Relationships in real life don't have nonstop declarations of love (at least, not unless you're in the first week). Relationships are usually more of a "friendship Plus romance" thing in my experience. It's never 100% romance and feelings all the time.

Write a solid friendship and you'll have the perfect baseline for a relationship to layer on top of it.

3) When writing scenes out, subtle is usually best. Only go over the top when you MEAN it. Only when it will REALLY make a scene "work" and subtle isn't enough. Otherwise, subtle is best. I'm totally serious with this. With too much over the top, you get Dragon Ball Z, and then no one takes the story seriously anymore and you'll need to constantly raise the stakes to ludicrous levels. That's bad writing.

4) Avoid prophesies unless you're doing something really really clever with it. It's a crappy cliche for a reason.


1: I think that some writers really shoot themselves in the foot aiming for complexity, but some writers really overdo simplicity as well. I think it's generally good to aim for some singularly interesting ideas- I've seen way too many amateur games that round off to "basically this game is a cliche but I hope it'll be fun anyway," but make sure that the progression of events is logical and coherent.

If I'm ever stuck working out a plot, the technique I've found most useful for working out the path ahead is to ask "what's the most obvious consequence of the events I've already set up here?" I think it's important to tackle this with your real-world reasoning skills, not genre savvy, otherwise you're just likely to end up with cliche. But looking at a situation you've already set up and simply asking what makes sense to happen sometimes leads to some powerful and surprising results (often surprising to the audience because they don't know as much about the situation as you do, sometimes surprising to the writer because sensible outcomes can deviate a lot from literary convention.)

2: This avoids one pitfall; having characters who're immediately and vocally in love for no clear reason doesn't make for very interesting relationships. But I think there's another pitfall which a whole lot of stories also fall into, and that's making "romantic" relationships that only consist of subtle hints that two characters are attracted to each other, which may progress suddenly to dramatic declarations of love, or flash forward to some point where the characters are happily together, without showing the relationship in any intervening space at any point. Some writers suffer from an inability to write subtlety in relationships, and some suffer from a refusal to write relationships that progress beyond subtlety. My advice would be "always keep in mind how your characters feel about each other as people, and why they feel that way. Don't let your character relationships be dictated by roles, where A treats B in a certain way because A is the Love Interest and has to show that kind of attention."

4: Total, unreserved agreement.


For the OP: Rather than having someone offer up story suggestions wholecloth based on the elements you've already described, I think you'd be better off describing what you want to accomplish with this story- what kind of tone, themes and such you have in mind, and asking for story advice. You're more likely to get a story you'll be satisfied with, and learn more in the process.
I will pay close attention to these comments.
author=Desertopa
1: I think that some writers really shoot themselves in the foot aiming for complexity, but some writers really overdo simplicity as well. I think it's generally good to aim for some singularly interesting ideas- I've seen way too many amateur games that round off to "basically this game is a cliche but I hope it'll be fun anyway," but make sure that the progression of events is logical and coherent.


Agreed. I just find that for me, complexity comes with time. Keeping a simple baseline prevent the project from spiraling into madness like that team project I was working on back in the day. Dear God that was a mess...

If I'm ever stuck working out a plot, the technique I've found most useful for working out the path ahead is to ask "what's the most obvious consequence of the events I've already set up here?" I think it's important to tackle this with your real-world reasoning skills, not genre savvy, otherwise you're just likely to end up with cliche. But looking at a situation you've already set up and simply asking what makes sense to happen sometimes leads to some powerful and surprising results (often surprising to the audience because they don't know as much about the situation as you do, sometimes surprising to the writer because sensible outcomes can deviate a lot from literary convention.)


"What's the NATURAL flow of events here" has kinda become my writing mantra. I try to picture what intelligent characters with the information at hand would do, and the results are usually excellent. It even works in reverse too.

I was thinking of how I wanted a game to end (It's on the back burner for now), and thought "ok, the world will be in THIS situation for the end. What would logically cause that. ...Oh! THAT. ...Oh wow, that's...That actually pretty good. I'll go with that."

2: This avoids one pitfall; having characters who're immediately and vocally in love for no clear reason doesn't make for very interesting relationships. But I think there's another pitfall which a whole lot of stories also fall into, and that's making "romantic" relationships that only consist of subtle hints that two characters are attracted to each other, which may progress suddenly to dramatic declarations of love, or flash forward to some point where the characters are happily together, without showing the relationship in any intervening space at any point. Some writers suffer from an inability to write subtlety in relationships, and some suffer from a refusal to write relationships that progress beyond subtlety. My advice would be "always keep in mind how your characters feel about each other as people, and why they feel that way. Don't let your character relationships be dictated by roles, where A treats B in a certain way because A is the Love Interest and has to show that kind of attention."


True enough.
I think I'm going to outline an actual story with the material we're given to show the problem.

The Johnathen's mother gets killed by bandits. He decides to destroy the bandits for the sake of revenge and to insure future safety. This gives him three objectives that in theory can be done in any order:

1) Get actual military equipment.
2) Get enough manpower (or womanpower since the girls by far outnumber the boys.)
3) Locate the bandits.

Once that's done, he has his final objective:

4) figure out an attack strategy and then wipe out the bandits.

During the campaign, Johnathen meets and fall in love with Mia. The campaign is ultimately successful and the bandits are wiped out. Then Johnathen starts a new family with Mia.

Let's see, what else do we have? Oh yeah, there's for some reason seven girls and only three guys. How about the girls originally did like good girls and let the men protect them? This didn't work out very well since the peasants had pitchforks and lumberjack axes while the bandits are soldiers who deserted and therefore have actual military equipment. The girls realized that the whole "be a good girl and wait in the kitchen (for the bandits to get them)" isn't a very good idea.

This is pretty much what you can do with what you've given us.

I do not know what Kingdom Come is supposed to mean, but I get the feeling that you want a grander adventure than just wiping out bandits. However, Johnathen's campaign against the bandits is all you've given us. Assuming you want the hero to eventually save the world or the kingdom, how is the bandit deal supposed to tie into that?

If you have a problem even making an outline of the story, how about you make a wish-list to start with? List things you want your story to contain.
Is Kingdomcome even reading all this?
Haven't seen him to give so much as a 'thanks' here.
hes been blasted to kingdom come
author=Darken
hes been blasted to kingdom come
Haha. Okay, that was a good one.

But seriously, where is he? He couldn't have just blew up, right?
I'm here, srry for no thx's i've been on vaction and my mom made me leave my computer, so thx for suggestions, im only 14 that's why id idnt want to write rape, and when I say suggestions i really mean like just a tidbit I can build off of, And after looking at all of ur statements I have that, ive changed them from bandits, to soldiers, who were raiding ur village during a war, you originally belong to the kingdom of Ferna, but after that raid, ur border fort to the east falls, and Cresini invades, I've made the title plot related in that the game is about you reviving your old kingdom, Ferna, most of the characters have story now, Mia is a childhood friend, the original reason for your mother's death still stands, to create a semisilent protagonist, after her death your character (Johnathen) doesn't speak for nine years, this eventually will become a scene where Mia is badly injured and Johnathen yells "MIA!" breaking the nine year silence, throughout the story you have "flashbacks" and can explore the past Ferna, this helps you fifure out puzzles in the present day, you can acess the "past" through save points, you can also find and hide items for your future self to pick up later, Elaine was the princess of Ferna before the war, while jacob is her current lover, they are both thieves, a majority of the game is searching for her, Teru is the Cresini prince who believes Ferna should be restored, Serena and Selena are his faithful attendants, he heads the rebellion against his own country, the game is obviously now that ive said all this, in medieval times, you guys are right, i need to add more boys, raine is a pirate and you need her to cross oceans, you find out later she is Mia's mom who "abandoned" her, she constantly teases Mia and Johnathen. Your dad was a general and was shunned because he tried to save your village, this allowed said fort to fall. Crystal and Lora are yet to have a story. Thx 4 ur comments! btw aegix, i agree with ur relationship subtleness
also im not good at story, im more of a title guy lik these
Tomorrow's Blade
Angel's Ruin
Midnight Alliance
Songs of the Midnight
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