Chrono Trigger Meet Bill Murray!

So Chrono Trigger is being released on the DS and aside from wetting my appetite it has me wondering what made the game so good great fantastic. Now aside from the fact that the game was designed by a dream team it also told a very compelling story that included time travel as an important theme.

I am also wondering how time travel could be incorporated into a game as an interesting gameplay mechanic. I'm sure a lot of games explore it but how many actually use it to make the game fun and how many have it as a central theme?

This also got me thinking of Groundhog Day (brilliant movie by the way). Obviously this spawned a game idea but I'm not sure how well I could execute it. Essentially the player would relive the same day over and over again like Bill Murray does in Groundhog Day but every time he accomplishes a goal that has a significant impact on the time line it creates a "time scar" (if you will).

This time scar would make it so this event happens (or happened, semantics with time travel are so confusing) through every iteration of the day. The goal of the player would be to place enough time scars throughout the day to break free of the loop and live the rest of his life.

Though the premise of the game is vague enough it is also clearly an idea that would allow the player to explore various aspect of the world without ever being punished. Say he decides to get shot by a police officer; he would only wake up at the beginning of the day again with all his previous achievements still accomplished. It would be a game about exploration and experimentation.

I used a violent example, possibly to compliment Bill Murray's failed suicide attempt in Groundhog Day, but non violent experiments could take center stage like trying to hook up two strangers or helping a cat stuck in a tree. Heck this could be a lot like Quantum Leap, man what a sweet show.

Ramblings of a Bored Fool

A friend and I were discussing his data driven architecture he's coding for his game he is programming. He got to the point where he had a working system when he realized that he had no idea as to what to make with it.

The most obvious choice was pong. He kind of grunted at the idea but we started talking about different takes on the game. There are a millions flavours of pong including (but not limited to) plasma pong, pong RPG, all flavours of battle pongs, etc but how were we to make a new pong that is still interesting?

One of the good ideas we had spawned from a joke. I hate kid's TV shows about kids with cards who duel using said cards and take their game very seriously. I'm takling about winning or losing a match is the difference between life or death (it's a freakin' card game!). So hence card game pong was born!

Essentially the game starts as a regular pong match. Every time the ball hits a paddle the player draws a card. The player can hold five cards in his hand. These cards would have effects in the game whenever they are put into play. An example of this would be a ball split card or a temporary paddle extension card.

What's interesting about the ball split card is that it could be used strategically for the owner of the card by using it against himself. Since the player draws a card whenever the ball hits his paddle if he used the split card just before it hits he would have the right to draw three cards (assuming the ball splits into three balls).

I guess the controls would use the arrow keys or wasd to move the paddle and the mouse to choose cards. My only concern is whether the player will have trouble keeping track of the cards he has while the ball is in play. It would be an interesting experiment nonetheless.

So what are other cool ideas?