CYBERLOUS'S PROFILE

author=Ratty524

author=LockeZ
Also, selling a game "so no one else can claim it" is a sentence with literally no meaning. That isn't a thing.

Yeah, you aren't technically selling anything so your project doesn't even qualify as commercial in that regard.

What it sounds like you are looking for is copyright protection and... Yeah you might need to make an effort to ask someone else about it because I'm not entirely familiar with the process myself.

author=kory_toombs
Where are going to sell it? What country do you live in? Is the country you live in the sort of place that has laws and what not?

author=pianotm
Well, what's your story about? Ever seen the movie, "The Great Escape" starring Steve McQueen? The whole movie was about escaping...obviously. How important is that escape to your story? With what is described here, it sounds like "escape" is the motif that is going to define the entire story. Personally, I would drop the player cold-turkey into the escape. No intro, no text dump. Just Title screen, start game, automatically in dungeon with pursuers on your ass. Don't tell the players why they're there. Don't let them get their bearings. Give them tunnels and rooms of enemies and certain death with no clear direction or understanding of where they're going. Then, when they finally get out of the dungeon, face the boss, whatevs, you can introduce the player to what's going on. Let the PC ask her questions. Don't give answers; let the player fumble. She makes it to a town/village/shanty and their are guards asking about her. Let her ask why. What did she do to deserve this. Why won't they let her go.

With this, the escape never ends, and no matter where you go, there's always the threat of being discovered and recaptured. So, as you can see, the escape encompasses the entire game.

author=LockeZ
I definitely agree that you need to hook the player quickly at the beginning of your game. However... an escape scene does just that. It's an action-oriented segment that involves navigating through an area and fighting enemies that are blocking your path... so why not make this the first dungeon? People want to get to the gameplay quickly, but that doesn't mean you need to end the scene ASAP; it means you need to put gameplay in it instead of just leaving it as a cut scene. "I need to get out of here, everyone's trying to kill me!" is more than good enough as an initial motivation for the player to engage in the game, and as the escape goes on you can give the player a vague idea of what got the hero into this mess, by having the enemies shout at the hero about why she needs to stop.