But I promise you.
This is worth it.
If I can pull this blog entry off...it'll be worth all the trouble, worth all the inevitable errors.
Basically.
Yesterday, I had a game idea. The game idea wasn't anything particularly special. I've, many times, had a game idea along these lines. A turn-based RPG game, where every single sound effect is done by a person. As in.
When an attack misses, an audio cue of someone saying "miss" plays.
When someone tries to shoot a gun, audio clips along the lines of someone saying "bang", "blam", and the like.
When someone tries to shoot a bow, audio clips along the lines of someone saying "shoot" "twang" and the like play.
When someone tries to stab, audio clips along the lines of someone saying "stab", "jab", and the like play.
When someone tries to cut, audio clips along the lines of someone saying "hack" "slash" "cut" "slice" "dice" and the like play.
The battle music would be a person basically doing a live recreation of music. To give you an example of how that sounds, know the FFVII victory tune?
A person trying to recreate it would go something along the lines of "Da dadadada da da da da da!". Now imagine an entire battle music tune to be nothing but a person doing that. Basically. Every possible sound you'd normally have in an RPG would be a person manually making the noise for it.
Usually it's an RPG with stick art and this is no exception.
You might think that is already a reasonably unique concept. Not something totally unique, I know it's been done. But it's something which I've thrown around game concepts of for a very long time.
The difference with this one is just how amazingly awesome it is.
Hear me out.
The name of the game is The (erased out) Discount (badly lettered on top of it) MIGHTIEST Hero RPG.
Our hero, (normal lettering) Dud(stickynoted up with bad lettering)e (normal lettering) Bro(crossed out)ken, has been called upon to save the princess, save the kingdom, and save the world.
This is more or less the sort of thing I had in mind for how he looks and the sort of aesthetic for the title screen:
This is a turn-based RPG, as I mentioned previously.
There would be encounters.
The types of encounters would be:
Random Encounters which are random fights walking around,
Repeating Encounters which are fights that are visible on the map triggered by getting too close,
One-time Encounters which are fights that are visible on the map but never respawn and occur only once (normally can't be run from, but Boots of Cowardice allow to flee from them, retreating to the area you were in before triggering the encounter),
Surprise Encounters which are invisible one-time encounters (and also can't be fleed from unless using Boots of Cowardice),
And Boss Encounters (which can't be fleed from no matter what).
There would be different item slots:
Boots
Armor
Glasses
Right Hand
and Left Hand
The game would feature six stats--every 10 levels starting at level 9, five points are added to each stat. Every time you level up, you can assign 1 point to any stat of your choice; every 10 levels, this is instead 2 points.
Those six stats are:
Machoness: Increases your HP. (At 99 points, HP is 9900, so each point is 100 HP; you start with 1 point at level 1 and thus start with 100 HP.)
Moodiness: Increases your maximum MP (MP in this game stands for Manly Points). At 99 points, MP is 990.
Manliness: Increases your Manly Moves power (basically, the power/strength of your magical attacks).
Suaveness: Increases your chance of fleeing from Random/Repeating encounters; increases your priority in turn order in battle; if sufficiently high allows you to take double the number of turns; if even higher, allows you to take triple the number of turns. (Basically, if you have a significant Suaveness advantage, instead of attacking once then having all the enemies attack, you attack, one enemy attacks, then you attack, a second enemy attacks, you attack a third time, and then an enemy attacks, then you get to attack again. This does work the other way tho; having a significant Suaveness disadvantage allows the enemy to attack you more often.)
Superness: Increases your Strength, affecting basic attack power (and any MM moves which use Superness instead of Manliness).
Style: Does nothing but make you look good. (No, seriously. This stat does literally nothing; it is a complete and total waste of points to invest in Style.)
The natural cap of these points is 99, but items can raise this to above the maximum.
In battle, there might end up being more commands than this, but the ones that I've thought of are, so far:
Attack: Use your equipped weapon(s) to deliver a basic attack.
(I've thought of at least a few weapons. Sword, Ax, Club/Mace, Spear, Throwing Dagger, Gun, Bow, Bare Hands. Might be more than those, but that's what I've thought of.)
Manly Moves: Use Manly Points to cast attacks. Some Manly Moves require specific types of weapons to be equipped.
Items: Use consumable items. (Nothing unusual about this, this works exactly as you'd think it would.)
Reposition: Change battle positioning. On the frontline, you deal 150% damage with melee weapons but receive 150% damage from melee weapons. On the backline, you deal 75% damage with melee weapons but receive 75% damage from melee weapons. In the middle, it's 100% for both.
Flex: Generously allow the enemy a free turn to attack you by showing off. (Does nothing. No, literally. This command does absolutely nothing and is worthless. No defense, no intimidation, just wastes your turn doing nothing.)
Flee: Attempts to flee from combat. Has a chance of failure, unless wearing Boots of Cowardice; can only be done on Random/Repeating encounters unless wearing Boots of Cowardice.
There's a few battle lines that I've thought out.
Stuff like when the enemy misses, "Ha! You missed!"; when you miss, "I didn't miss! That was a warning!", and the like.
But mostly, I thought of lines for fleeing, death, critical strikes being received (didn't think of what lines Dude Bro would give when dealing them), and Flexing.
When fleeing from battle, one of these lines would randomly play if successful. (If failing, it'd be something like "I've got no need to run! I've got this!" or the like.)
"Activate Backwards-moving battlecry! AAAAAAAA!!!!"
"Umm...Err...Hold please! I think I left the oven on." *zing* (remember, as all sound effects are spoken by a person, ZING is actually said by someone as he flees)
"My father taught me that in these situations, there's only one appropriate action: AAAAAAAA!!!"
"I never flee! This does seem like it calls for tactically moving away rapidly though. Taaaaaaaactiiics!"
"Wait! I left my gear at home. I'll, uh...be right back. Yeah. SEE YAAA!!!" (given that this is an RPG, this one might actually be true!)
"I'm not running away! I'm choosing to forcefully spare your lives! (weakly, pitifully, screaming) Merrrcyyyyy!!!"
When Dude Bro is killed in battle, he'd get to play one of these death lines or things similar along these lines:
"Gram-gram, is that you? It's me, your little Dudey!" (Given the other death lines, this paints an...interesting...picture about his granny. And if you think about what 'little Dudey' sounds like it's a euphemism for, an equally...interesting picture about what she thought of Dude Bro.)
"I'm going to heaven! Didn't know the sun was so hot though."
"That staircase wasn't here a minute ago. I should head down it!"
"I see God...my, what magnificent horns you have! And that tail! Love the trident, too."
"Wait! Think of my children! They haven't been born yet!"
"I'm too handsome to diiiiieee..." (This line is a shoutout to the inspiration that sparked this idea--if you get the reference, then you can also perfectly imagine the voice I imagine to be associated with Dude Bro.)
Battles feature critical strikes--things which deal massive damage. Usually, critical strikes are portrayed as, if hitting a particular body part, being headshots. I had a...different...body part in mind for the crits in this game. See if you can guess them off of Dude Bro's lines when an enemy delivers a crit strike to him:
"Not my children-makers!"
"OI NUTTA!"
"That...was...a...low...blow..."
"Not my mega-dude!"
"Sopran-noooooo"
"Fight...fair...you...cheater..."
Then there's the lines which play during his flex animations.
"(shuffles forward) Oonts oonts oonts, (shuffles back) oonts oonts oonts, Take a look at (flips around to face backwards, and if I can get away with it in the stick art, with a visible shake) dis BOOTEH!"
"Flex! Flex! Watch the maximum FLEX!"
"I am a MANLY man, doing MANLY things."
"(takes out a mirror) Oh MAMA I look handsome today."
"Uh huh uh huh uh huh Ohhh...YEAH! (*click* noise as he winks his eye--yes, this wink is visible in spite of him wearing sunglasses, the sunglasses literally have one half fold as part of the wink)"
"Are you jealous that I can do THIS? Yeah, bet that's why you're attacking me now."
(I don't have all of these animations worked out, but you can get a good idea of what I'm aiming for there.)
Basically, Dude Bro (totally not Dud Broken) is our substitute, pardon, MIGHTIEST hero. He was selected to save the princess, save the kingdom, save the world, because The Hero was...indisposed. Lacking any other options, the King and his Adviser turned to Dude Bro to go on the epic quest, a grand adventure to span the whole world.
He is a complete and total utter moron. A macho man of macho manliness, as full of himself as you can get. Dumb as a brick, but still somehow in spite of being utterly stupid, the one and only hope of the kingdom, their last chance at having a hero to save them.
I am quite certain I covered everything, though I feel like there's a lot which I was planning to cover in more detail that I ended up shortening up.
But yeah.
This was the idea I had back on Friday, started typing up on Saturday, and have been working on posting as a blog entry for days.
The game mechanics are solid. You can see how the map would work, how the items would work, how the combat would work, how the menu would work. You can see how easy it'd be to make. It's stick art! All the enemies would be stick figures; the hero would be a stick figure; the NPCs would be stick figures; the world would be MSPaint art; the noises made would be a person audibly sounding them out; the battle music would be a person audibly sounding out a tune.
You can visualize it, you can imagine it, and through the lines I've given, through the name of the hero and the game, through the image I've given depicting him...you know basically everything there is to know about Dude Bro, the lines he'd deliver throughout the game, his personality, how he acts to everything.
The plot is simple and easy to grasp.
It's a ridiculously easy game to make and it is a ridiculously funny concept and it is a game with a ridiculous number of good mechanics and I really want it to be made but I don't have the skills to make it.
Alas.