Subject: You want comments?
Author:
Posted on: 2014-11-04 03:24:00 UTC

So my first thought is that this project might be a bit overambitious. I'm not sure this is something the kinds of studios that make XBOX One or PS4 games would pick up - but then, Hotline Miami is going to be on at least the PS3, so anything can happen I suppose. This isn't just about distribution, though, but the fact that your game feels like it's trying to do far too many things at once - you're familiar with the idea of too many cooks working on a soup? An open world FPS RPG dating sim that tries to be Halo and Higurashi at the same time is going to lack any real focus and at best confuse your player - at worst it'll be an unplayable mess; I wouldn't call Halo low-tech either, all things considered. These are not all necessarily good tastes that go well together. And when you say "space you can explore", that's kind of a nothing field unless you mean the ability to go into outer space - which again, show me some damn focus in this thing. Also, TV Tropes has no idea what the hell deconstruction is, so don't use their definition of it in a professional game design document (and really, nobody's going to care about 1990s shonen anime - not everything has to be anime!). Lastly, I'm not sure you should be talking about art style, music, etc. in the present tense when the game does not currently exist.

Second: For the love of God, learn how to use capital letters! Tomorrow I'm going to go over this with a finer comb and point out to you where you need to sharpen up the grammar - I'm not saying this to be mean, vindictive, anything like that, but it looks unprofessional and if you give this to a studio or an agent with this presentation they'll laugh you out the of the room.

Third: Stop all the references to Stargazer unless you plan to submit both simultaneously or something. Nobody is going to have any clue what you're talking about - and none of them will care. Also, when you get to describing the gameplay it really comes off as Halo meets Skyrim meets Mass Effect - this is not something new, no matter how you try to spin it. I'm also not sure how you intend the branching paths to go re: choices, few games manage to do this right so you might want to tread carefully. You might want to be careful about throwing around terms only mentioned later in the document, too - either move your setting info up or rephrase. Magnums and pistols seem unnecessary as different weapon classes, as well - pick one.

Fourthly: The PC waking up to start the game is cliché, do something else. Your game design document probably doesn't need a whole lot of info on plot, either, though I should stress that's the gut feeling of someone who's never built a game from scratch before. I'd have to talk to my game designer friend to get into much more detail than these initial feelings of mine.

OR:

We're not talking about the plot here, that is in how you describe the gameplay (in fact, it's questionable how relevant plot is at all at this stage, because your audience right now isn't the player - it's the studio and the tired programmer who will be having to put this thing together at 3 AM). Those are very different types of game and thus won't necessarily work as well all mashed together. You specifically asked me to read this over and give you my honest opinion, going "well my brain works differently from yours so whatever" is defeating the entire purpose of the exercise.

As for how it's unfocussed, I thought I was quite clear about that. Action RPGs (think Skyrim or Mass Effect), first person shooters and visual novels all play very differently, it's inherent to the design of each type of game. Even within the same genre you need to have some kind of concrete idea of what the player can do - while they are both action RPGs, Mass Effect and Skyrim are both different in how play unfolds and what situations they're designed around handling, and just because you can go from first to third person and back in Skyrim doesn't mean it would be a good FPS (compare shooting a bow in Skyrim to say, firing your rifle in one of the eight billion military FPSes out there already - they feel and operate quite differently due to the design philosophy behind both games). To be fair I'm almost certain there are some FPSes where you can switch from first to second person (ARMA lets you do that, I know), but you still need to be careful not to load the player down with too much stuff, or to make switches in gameplay too jarring. A shooter/RPG suddenly turning into a dating sim or visual novel is not a smooth transition, and those types of games are trying to do very different things in the end.

(Also, on the note of clutter, you have too many weapon types all taking up the same space. No player is going to want to waste time micromanaging whether they're using a submachine gun or a PDW, or a sniper rifle or marksman rifle. Streamline it.)

or finally:

Quite frankly, if you're going to argue so much with everybody who offers even the slightest bit of criticism, nobody is going to want to work with you long enough to buy your concept, no matter how polished. I'm trying to help you but remember that you came to me asking for me to look this over and critique it - for free, I must add. I think the issue in re: dating sims is the examples you give are too widespread to illustrate a clear design, and also imply elements that don't mix well together. I should also caution you that Bioware kind of has the "action RPG with dialogue trees and branching plots" market covered, though they're by no means the only people doing it. There is more between "bizarre flop" and "soulless cash grab" than you seem to think, but keep in mind that "Mass Effect with a few other bits stuck on" won't exactly knock people's socks off.

(Also, keep in mind that a good melee engine and a good shooting one are fairly different animals - I'd think about which aspect of combat you want to prioritise, and keep in mind a lot of shooters have some melee mechanics already. Not in a "this has been done" sense but in a "you probably don't need to do the sudden switch in perspectives".)

Sorry if you did not find these insulting, but he was basically complaining about how the game wouldn't work the way I envisioned it. I would have to completely butcher the concept to make it work in his eyes, so why should I do what he says if all he's saying is "Do as I say or fail miserably"

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