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[PogueSquadron]

Hey everyone.  So, while I'm trying to figure out how I fit in with the whole indie games thing, I thought that perhaps I should start by doing a mockup.  I figured that could get me in the hang of things, as far as making assets are concerned and how they fit together (if on a theoretical type level).

Art style wise, I have an idea of where I'm going, as the art would basically be a scaled down version of my vector art in my portfolio.

I have a character that I've had since I was about 13.  It's not the most original thing in the world, but it's a world that I'm planning on developing into a comic, and I thought that might be a cool place to start for a mockup (since I have a lot of passion for the character and his world).  Long story short, a young, 13 year old boy is granted a magical pencil when he sharpens his pencil during a thunderstorm.  A bolt of lightning strikes his house, and the lightning surges through the power lines, into his sharpener, and into the pencil it self.  The boy can draw anything he wants, and it comes to life (albeit, with limitations).  The story is kind of a mix of Green Lantern, Spider-Man, and Doug.

I'm having a little trouble trying to think of an interesting way this could work within a game environment though.  When Max and the Magic Marker was released last year, I was just like...damnit, haha.  That's something I thought would be really cool.  However, my character also has an eraser on his pencil, which could be interesting to work into a game.  I was trying to think of ways to make a game with the pencil and the eraser, but without it being too derivative of other games of its kind.

The easy way to do it, I suppose, would be to make a Mega Man esque shooter out of it, but I feel like that might be underwhelming and not very creative.  I mean, if a kid has a pencil that can draw things that come to life, would he really just be shooting laser beams?

I thought that maybe it could work like a weapon select of sorts...different 'weapons' would produce different results from his pencil, like boulders, hands, etc.

Keep in mind that this is all for a mockup.  I suppose I can be fairly ambitious with the ideas, since I won't be making a game out of this.  Any advice/tips?

[Chromanoid]

The story reminds me of

.
Maybe you can start the story with a dangerous drawing that has come to live. An evil pirate who abducts the boy's family or a dinosaur who attacks the city... Playing with guilt and  responsibility of the "heroe" might be interesting. Maybe fatalities as a result of the boy's drawings add an interesting perspective to the game.

[PogueSquadron]

Yeah, for the comic I did kind of borrow a bit from Max and the Magic Marker.  I like the idea of the character creating his own problems (which would be a central theme of the whole story of the comic in general).

At some point, I wanted to have him accidentally erase his girlfriend (a b****y girlfriend that no one likes), and he'd be guilt ridden over it.  He'd later find her in this land where all erased ideas go, and she would be corrputed and turned into a villain.

I was thinking that it might be cool, possibly, to do something with the eraser mechanic in a game mockup (even if it wouldn't show up in the mockup itself).  Maybe you can choose to draw things or erase enemies?  Erasing enemies would obviously be easier, but when you get to a point later in the game, everything you've erased comes back to haunt you (more enemies later in the game basically).  The idea would be that the character goes to this other dimension, where everything that anyone erases goes to (which I guess is kind of like chalkzone in a way).  The land would be full of unfinished great ideas, horrible ideas, mistakes that people made, etc....so maybe the things you erase would pop up here in this last level, and the end of the game would be more difficult depending on how many things you've erased.

[Raptor85]

Makes me think of comix zone a bit (not quite but some similarities made me think of it)