A Simple Idea
Okay, so I've decided to join the Lisp Game Jam Fall 2017, and now I'm sitting here with my morning coffee trying to come up with an idea for a game. The theme for this jam is darkness, which actually not that dull and generic of a theme as it sounds. Indeed the word 'dark' has several distinct but closely related meaning (taken from Merriam-Webster):
- devoid or partially devoid of light
- wholly or partially black
- a) arising from or showing evil traits or desires b) dismal, gloomy c) lacking knowledge or culture
- a) not clear to the understanding b) not known or explored because of remoteness
The esoteric wisdom preserved in this semantic cluster is that evil can only exist in darkness, i.e. in a state of ignorance, and that light (consciouness) dissolves darkness. Further, 4b) points to the fact that to gain awareness of ourselves means exploring ourselves, for our behaviour is ruled for the most part not by the processes of 'conscious' thoughts (thoughts are often automatic and not conscious) but by other, more obscure forces.
This actually connects with an idea for a game I had a while ago, which revolved around making the player's consciousness the main focus of the game. In the above terms, the idea was to let the player bring light into a dark unenlightened world, whose inhabitants are suffering under their actions they inflict upon themselves in their ignorance. So, it would be some kind of 'god game' where the goal is not to rule but to enlighten and heal people. Such a game might even just focus on one person (e.g. someone suffering from depression/addiction), and in a sense, such a game already exists with Depression Quest.
Unfortunately, this idea seems too vague and certainly too ambitious for a game dev n00b taking part in a ten day game jam in an obscure ancient programming language. Or is it? Anyway, I guess it's more productive if I try coming up with the gameplay first.
Well whadda ya know, one shower later and I've come up with some barebones gameplay and a tentative title for the game, which embodies the principle upon which said gameplay rests: Hidden Variables. The idea is that you're controlling but not really controlling the actions of the protagonist, through multiple choice selection screens, each choice triggering a pre-defined 'cut scene' sequence. More precisely, the player selects a choice he would like to make, but which choice the protagonist realizes depends upon his inner mental and emotional states (the 'hidden variables' aluded to in the title). The player starts out with little control over his character, and must make the right decisions that lead his character on a healthier path and out of the slavery of unconscious emotions, out of the 'realms of dark forces', so that he gains more and more free will, disproving the saying that 'man can do what he wants but not want what he wants'.
In a nutshell, Hidden Variables should be the move Groundhog Day turned into a roguelike. What I need to do next is come up with a functional system of hidden variables, i.e. emotional/mental dimensions like irritation<->concentration, discontent<->pleasure, etc. that at least somewhat faithfully reflects human behaviour, make some kind of 'hello world' demonstrating this idea. Even though my idea is that this should be a top-down 2d game, if worst comes to worst I could simply turn this into a text adventure.
Enough talking, let's code!
First Problems
Okay, a few hours later and I still haven't made any headway at all. I planned on using borodust's engine, but I couldn't get it to work on either windows (SBCL and CCL) or Debian (SBCL). Luckily, borodust offered quick and generous help on #lispgames, and even updated his quicklisp dist the very same evening, so I'm hopeful this will be sorted out soon. Anyway, I should probably concentrate on getting done a prototype demonstrating the core gameplay. This will have to wait till tomorrow however.