Game Idea - Old Roads

Old Roads

Gameplay

The game will be third person game with a focus on melee combat. It will use a system similar to most fighting games, countering, blocking and parrying foes, dodging and waiting for the perfect opportunity to attack. Gun use will be present but limited to keep with the theme of survival. These will function as standard third person shooter weapons, utilising the standard, stick-to-over  cover system similar to Gears of war and Mass Effect, as well as most other popular third person franchises. Mechanics will focus on personal resource management and survival. Choosing food over bullets may be crucial to your survival. You will be forced to choose what weapons you repair, the gear you take with you. You will regulate food and drink to survive.

Planning your journey across the apocalypse-ravaged East is equally important. One location might reward you with more weapons, but be dangerous and take to long. A different route may give you no reward, but be safer and quicker to cut back on resources. Will you travel by day, risk dehydration but avoid the creatures of the night. Or will you go by night and hope your luck and stealth will serve you enough to avoid the dangers

A key plot point is that your body is physically mutating. You have contracted the Phage 25 virus that will corrupt you, twisting you into a monstrous beast. and you are looking for a healer in the east.  As the game progresses, you will be forced to take medicine and other items to reduce the build up of Phage. However, you will also eventually be able to initiate phage state, a mode where you allow the virus to change your physical form for a short time, becoming a formidable beast for a short duration. While this aids you in combat, it will also accelerate the build up of phage.

There are many ways of failing the game. There will be a constant meter in the corner of the screen that will very, very slowly fill up. As it goes up, you will notice your character physically changing. At different points effects will begin to take place, hallucinations, damage modifiers etc. Once the bar fills, phage will consume you and you will fail the game, resulting in a permanent death and having to start the whole game over. This will slowly increase over time, and increase a larger amount whenever phage mode is initiated. There are ways of slowing this by use of items.

 You will start the game with 5 lives. Once these are gone, its game over.  There are few checkpoints throughout where you can sacrifice a life to save your character. When all your lives are used up, you will respawn here, rather than restarting the game.

The game makes use of a levelling up system. These consist of health upgrades, decreasing the phage bar, and adding extra lives to your overall pool of lives. These upgrades can be crucial to completing the game, so it becomes a key choice.

Healing, eating, sleeping are all crucial to survival and success. The games layout is simple. You are travelling from the east, a nameless, ruined continent of old Earth, to the far west.  You will move from location to location, the majority of the game will consist of the travelling between these locations, battling men, monsters and the elements as you go. The locations you are travelling to can be used as checkpoints, places to sleep safely, to purchase food, items and weapons, as well as upgrades, repairs and other crucial mechanics before moving on to the next location. There will be no fast travel or jump system, if you decide to backtrack the phage meter will continue to increase and you will still need to use your resources.

The whole game is against a clock. Your mission is to rid yourself of your disease. The phage will continue to spread during the entire game, with the exception of nights. While there will be side quests on your journey, you don’t necessarily have to complete them, though the rewards they yield may be key to continuing your journey unimpeded.  You have 20 hours of time allotted to you. This takes place over 10 days of time within the game, 1 hour of daylight and one hour of night per day.

RPG elements play a factor as well. While the game uses 3^rd person shooter combat, it uses RPG elements for overall mechanics. A classic RPG style inventory to hold weapons and items, however this is limited to match the survival themes. Weapons and armour decay with use, repairable in the field using equipment, or by locating a weponsmith to repair it for you.

Target audience

Old Roads is a mature game, aimed at older audiences. But it is also aimed at the more mature audience. You don’t necessarily have to be older to be more mature.  The game is designed to be on the more difficult side of thing, inventory and resource management playing a huge role, as well as time. You cannot just blast through this game without thought, like many modern shooters. You will have to plan to succeed, not just in combat but out of it as well, as you traverse the world. Prolonging your inevitable demise is key to success, forcing you to really think about how you play the game.

Plot synopsis

You play as Slate, a man with little left in this world. But then again, no one has anything these days. Set in a bleak and far off future, the earth fell to a great war. Damerus, the warlord, and his vast military force, the Arctic guard, swept the world with a wave of fire. In retaliation, drastic steps were taken to erase him. And now the east is but dust. A shallow wasteland inhabited by cities built from the scraps of the old world. What happened to the rest f the world is unknown to you, and honestly it doesn’t matter. Life nowadays is more of a struggle than a blessing. You live in the ruins of the old city, the ruins of what is believed to be Moscow. You have lost your family to the world, consumed alive by the chaos round you. People fight and kill on the streets for the simplest things, and hundreds die out in the wasteland between the cities every day. And to cap it all of is the Phage-25 virus. A virus that infects humans, corrupting their mind and slowly transforming them into the terrifying monsters known as the Phage men. These men are huge, towering above average humans. Jet-black scales coat their body, their faces twisted into wolf-like snouts, great scythe like appendages protrude from their backs. They are horrific, powerful and deadly. They stalk the world, sometimes in numbers great enough to overrun entire cities. And soon, you will become one of them. A black vein appeared on the back of your hand but a few days ago. Black blood. The mark of the Phage. Exiled from Moscow, you are left to die in the wastelands of the East. You are escorted out by the city guard, who close the great gates of Moscow behind you. But they slip you one last piece of advice. They tell you that you have about 10 days left before the phage completely consumes you. It may seem hopeless, but there may ne a way to stop the transformation, sparing you from a life of hunting the people you once loved. Seek the ancient healer to the west. Armed with but a sliver of hope, you depart on your doomed quest.

Placement within the market

The game Old Roads is a difficult, deep RPG experience. In a Market where cut-and-paste shooters are the norm, it is a refreshing change to have a game like this. These already exist, games like The Last of Us and Dark Soul 2 stand as shining examples of games like this that already exist in the market. A game like Old Roads appeals to a smaller audience, but assures sales by appealing to this select group.

Character ideas

Player Character: Slate

Slate is no one special. The world ended long before he was born, and shall remain this way long after he is dead. Slate has come to terms with his existence. He is one of many thousands of survivors of the age, a no one.

Slate is a medium height, light skinned man with stark white hair, a defect of being born in the world today. A scar on his cheek reminds him of the dangers in the world beyond the walls of Moscow, where he resides. His light beard is bright white as well, but the dirt of world around him has dulled it to a grey.

He lives in Moscow, one of the last safe places in the world. A gigantic wall seals the city from the horrors of the Eastlands, a barren, bleak area filled with the darkest, most horrific things a man could imagine. It is not completely empty, several cities and countless scraped together settlements populate it’s vast expanse.

This is the world Slate lives in. it is a bleak, crushing place with little hope. Slate himself has very little back-story, allowing the player to speculate. But ultimately, his story takes place within the game itself.

Slate’s only real back-story is that he is alone after loosing his wife and daughter to an unknown disaster.  Now, diagnosed with the dreaded Phage-25 virus, Slate sets out into the East on last time. A man without hope, without family, but determined to rid himself of the plague that courses through his veins.