I've been thinking about this for the couple of days, and have been just compiling the attributes of my dream game to a notepad file. (Which is big for me, I hate writing ahead of time.) Also, because of this, it's kind of become convoluted, big time. Apologies.

Now, before I start, I will warn you all that I will be drawing a lot of parallels to the podcast Welcome to Night Vale. I'm not trying to rip off the podcast, just the vibe of the podcast. No, not the 'everything's creepy' vibe, just the small town vibe. The closeness of it all.

Aesthetics:

This is the hardest to explain about my dream game. I sorta want to have it feel like seeing a photo with a certain bad filter applied to it, as I have described in a previous submission. I haven't found any picture so far that captures the feel of what I want. There was a photo in a thrift shop that sorta got it right, found it on a thursday and declined to get it that day. I went back on saturday to pick it up, but someone else got to it. So have this picture that is largely irrelevant. I found it while looking for the certain type of photo and I thought someone else should see it.

Gameplay:

Have I mentioned that I don't think that this project can ever be possible, ever? It's too convoluted, too messy, too much of a cluster of a game, but dammit, I want it made.

Anyways, this has changed a bit from my last post.

The game would feature integrating into this small town where everyone knows everyon else. You go down to the diner and you'll expect to see Gloria to serve because she's always there. And hey, there's John Peters, you know, the farmer, chatting it up with Gloria. (yes, I should stop shoehorning those references). If you choose to join in on that conversation, you might catch a tidbit of gossip or something. Just things to immerse yourself into the town.

Now to backtrack a bit, you start out the game by moving into this town. You go onto finding a job somewhere, to sustain yourself. The jobs would provide a chance to intermingle with the townsfolk and get to know everyone! You could catch up with people while being a cashier, might get all the hottest gossip by working down at the diner with gloria, or even go work as a plumber and go to different areas each day.

Now, remember how this is a game? Games have goals, and the goal here is to intermingle with the town as realistically as possible. Now this will be hard to score, as I said, this would be next to impossible to program. There will be a server set time to the program to enforce a time that the town evolves and provides for emersion. Every once in a while the player is graded on how well they are fitting in with the town. If you go around and fling obsceneties to everyone, you're gonna get a low score.

Get a consistantly high enough score, and you'll unlock the second town. Now, the second town is a bit... different. It harbors a sort of secret. Not Night Vale level of different, but just... different.

Other than the secret, the second town plays out very differently. This is the bread and butter of the game, as it were. This is probably the part that will change the most if I ever get around to making it. (as if I'd ever do something productive, HA!)

But I digress (again), the second town plays out similarly to the first town. The main difference is that you have to keep your high score consistant, otherwise you're gonna lose the ability to play in the second town until you raise your score again in the first town.

It's like a "hard mode", if there could ever be a hard mode in a simulation game without end goal like this. The other characters will be much more nuanced in a way. It deals with the secret.

The Secret of the Second Town:

The player is encouraged to figure out the secret and email to see if they're right or not. If the player is correct they will recieve and email stating that (spoilers for spoiling the secret) the secret is that the second town is multiplayer mode and that the player should keep it a secret and keep the magic alive for everyone trying to figure it out

Kinda of a lame secret, eh?

Oh well.

Anyways, here's a link to my kickstarter and patreon so I can start work on this project posthaste and hire like 5 programmers and artists so I don't actually have to do any of the actual work.