I’m planning a post-apocalyptic sci-fi game in the same vein as Neon Genesis Evangelion and its ilk: You’re fighting aliens out to destroy humanity. You’re woefully underprepared and underequipped, and you have no idea what you’re doing. But you’re one of the only people who can do it, so shut up, suit up, get out there, and fight.
At this point I have little more than notes and sketches and a few disjointed scenes; I’m hoping to mooch some advice off of the more experienced creators here before really diving in. See if any of my plans have big obvious holes, hear what suggestions any helpful folks might have.
There are two areas: “Facing the Enemy” and “Enjoying a moment of relative safety.”
During “Facing the Enemy” sequences, you have a goal (destroy the alien drones, scout that area, defend this building, etc.) and a countdown. Fairly straightforward: accumulate mission progress before time runs out.
While “Enjoying a moment of relative safety,” you can spend your time out of the cockpit recovering from your battles, getting to know the other people in your little resistance, training for the next mission, etc. Out of the cockpit, there’s a timer counting up—you have limited time until the next mission, but you don’t know how much or how little you have to spare.
During missions (and rarely during downtime), you accumulate Menace in one of three flavors. “Hurt” indicates actual physical injury. “Tired” is for mental and physical exhaustion. “Dreaming” measures how much you’ve been contaminated by your constant exposure to the aliens. Menaces make missions harder, and getting too high in any Menace forces you into the endgame. However, you usually won’t have enough time between missions to fully heal all your Menaces (or you will, but only at the cost of neglecting your relationships and training). The demands of the war are going to wear you down. It’s a matter of triage: what are you willing to sacrifice in order to win a little temporary safety? Who among the group is important enough to you that you’d risk danger to protect them?
The spiraling nature of Menaces is going to require some careful playtesting to pace right. I think it lends itself better to a shorter game—each extra point of Menace can really mean something. A longer game would, I think, either make each individual point of Menace hardly matter, or else make it exceedingly difficult to avoid an unpleasant demise. Also, since this is the first time I’m writing in this sort of medium, I think it’s probably wiser to start small.
(As for a title, I currently have “Angels of Flesh and Steel,” but I’m worried that it’s an overly weighty name for a relatively short game.)
Anything obvious I’m missing? Any serious flaws you see in this basic structure? Any cravings for content I should indulge?
edited by Green D on 1/25/2013