I want to be a writer,not a game developer BUT I often have ideas for games that I would like to be made and would love to play and this is the most well thought out idea I've ever had so I wanted to share it with anyone I could. If someone actually took the idea, I'd expect no credit... just a free copy
. But in all seriousness I of course don't expect anyone to actually make this but I just wanted to get it out of my brain so if you read the whole thing, thank you and id love to hear your opinion. Also sorry I hope this doesn't break any rules as far as what you can post in this thread, If so delete away!
Project RoninBackStory: The setting is nearing the end of pseudo-feudal Japan. A great war has just ended between the warring states, Tensions are fading and samurai warriors are becoming a rarity. You play as one such warrior; a soldier returning home from the war. You find that things are not as they used to be. Advancements have been made, societal values are not what they were and jobs are hard to come by for a man who's only been trained to fight his entire life.
While working for scraps as a day laborer, you over hear your boss speak of a new settlement to the north where the wealthy are gathering to distance themselves from the slums. However this endeavor has only manage to invite the boldest of thieves as well as those who blame the aristocracy for the death of their loved ones during the war. So in order to protect themselves they offer jobs as bodyguards to any man worth his salt.
With limited options and an opportunity to use the only skills you've ever learned again, you set off to this new settlement and the game begins.
Mechanics: Project Ronin at its base would be a side scrolling 2d brawler a la "Street of Rage" or "Double Dragon", preferably with an 8-bit art style. However the game will not just consist of levels. Infact during certain sections of the game you will be allowed to freely roam the same streets on which the combat takes place. The games world consist of one very large town with slum area, rural housing, shopping areas, governmental buildings and a district in which only the wealthy live and it can all be traveled to freely.
The game will be broken into 2 main Phases which for now we'll call Free Roam and Escort.
Free Roam: This is the phase the game starts and in this phase you have complete run of the world. You begin the game in the slums living in a small hut. Over the course of the game as earn currency you will eventually be able to rent housing and at some point own your own home so yes the game does have a progression system. Your home will act as your storage area for your weapons, armor, clothing, items and excess money. It will be used as the game's primary save point and rest area and can be upgraded with passive status effects that will be applied to your character every time he rest there and activate during the Escort phase.
In free roam you will be traveling around town to purchase necessary resources, conversing with the townspeople, and MOST IMPORTANTLY... looking for job offers as a bodyguard. In the game there will be certain npc's whose primary purpose is to offer bodyguarding positions for their masters. However these npc's will not have quest markers over their head. There will be a jobs posting board that have fliers describing a time and place to meet with whoever is offering the job. Also by talking to the npcs you will hear rumors of possible jobs and places where you can find them.
Once you have found someone offering body guard position you will speak to them and see if they would be willing to hire you. Yes that's right, the person has to be WILLING to hire you. You will not be able to just take on every job. There are those who are only looking for a thug to scare the riff raff away, but there will be others who only offer jobs to those with a certain level and type of reputation (i will go into reputation level and type later). These job offers are a little bit harder to find, and have a higher difficulty. You will have to earn the right to take on these jobs by completing smaller ones and building your reputation. Once you have taken on a job the will immediately shift to the second phase.
Escort: This is the combat phase. The combat at its core will work like most 2d brawlers although instead of kicking, punching and throwing items you only have one weapon and that is a sword. Your main attack will of course just be a simple slash but you but there will be a attack animation to hit enemies with the hilt of the blade to stun them and attack multiple times. You will also have the ability to block attacks, as will the enemies, and you can even parry attacks which if you are to attack them right after words you will get a quick kill on lesser enemies and do massive damage on stronger ones. There will be a few things that will set this brawler apart from others aside from the “Free Roam” phase that comes before and these things all happen in the Escort Phase.
The first thing being that while in the escort phase you will be escorting your client from point A to point B. Which means he will be on screen the entire time while you are fighting, and he will be your enemies main target. You must protect your client from harm and deliver him to point b in order to complete a job. Most clients will not immediately die if attacked. Like you, they will have their own health bar, but regardless of the client the bar will always be small in comparison. Some will have bars that are very small at higher difficulty jobs and there will be some that will only allow one hit before death. You and the client can be healed with items but it may behove you to prioritize the client for many reasons. The main one being that you always want to meet Client “Standards”.
Every client has
“standards”, meaning they expect a certain level of service and protection. If a client is ever damaged this can and most often will affect their opinion of of you even if you were to heal then back to full health. Healing the client can help shift their opinion back in your favor but it’s less likely. If you are able to escort the client to their destination how much damage they did and did not take will factor into their opinion and you will be rewarded accordingly. Of course you primary compensation will be currency but more importantly a good opinion of you will help increase your reputation making it possible to get higher paying jobs and netting you better rewards from the jobs you take. However on the flip side a bad opinion of your service can damage your reputation making it difficult to get the better jobs and decreasing the reward you get in that job AND any future jobs that are still willing to hire you. But there is one other way to affect the client's opinion of you during the escort phase and that's Through
“Conversation”While you escort your client from point A to B, the escort phase itself will be broken into 2 phases, happening more than the other depending on the job, both possibly happening multiple times within the same job. One of those phases is what was discussed before and the other is the conversation phase. In this section there will be no fighting, only walking and talking. Some clients may not have this phase at all, but those that do will ask you questions. Those questions can be about anything ranging from “how do you feel about the weather” to “what are you thoughts on the current political structure. Once the question is asked you will be given 3 dialogue options, one of which will always be to remain silent, the other 2 will be clearly indicated as positive and negative reactions HOWEVER depending on the client anyone of these can be the correct or wrong choice. Answering correctly will of course shift your client opinion of you in your favor and vice versa, affecting your reputation and rewards.
Reputation Type: Now I’d like to go back to something I mention earlier, reputation type. It should be clear by now that increasing your reputation is one of your main objectives but there are three types of reputation. The first and most important is we’ll just refer to as “social standing”. This reputation types is what allows you to take on higher difficulty jobs. The other two however affect how people perceive you. For lack of imagination we’ll call them
“peaceful” and
“brutal”. Which one increases depends how you perform your job in the escort phase. Your peaceful reputation can increase by healing your client if needed, having good conversation skills, and most importantly choosing whether or not to kill your enemies. Like you the enemies have health bars but unlike you once that bar reaches zero an action prompt will appear above their bodies giving you the option to kill them. If you do nothing eventually the enemy will just fade away. The choice to not kill may seem like the most popular one but there will many some client that see mercy as a sign of weakness which can affect your reputation and your ability to get jobs and better rewards. Brutal reputation can also be affected by how much your client is hurt how much you prioritize your own healing over theirs and bad conversational skills. Some client may want someone who is dedicated to protecting by abstains from killing because contextually they don't want to be known as the person who hired a killer. Others want someone who is will to do whatever its takes to protect them or just genuinely don't care about others lives. If you cat in a way that fits their personalities it will effect it will o Having one reputation be higher than the other does not necessarily block you from certain jobs but it can affect the jobs available to you and it can affect your rewards at the end of the jobs.
As you complete jobs you can be rewarded with currency, weapons, and armor. You can use currency to by better living spaces which provide more storage and helps increase your reputation, you can buy more clothes which lets you customize your character's look and of course better weapons and armor.
Job types: The game will have 2 types of jobs. Story jobs and side jobs. Story jobs are unlocked the higher reputation “social standing” reputation you get. All story jobs are set but the other two reputation types can affect their difficulty and rewards obtained. Every story job has a Boss at the end who will have to be fought while still protecting your client. Side jobs can have mini bosses but many won't.
Goal: Since the game has story jobs that does mean there is a story, and with a story comes a goal. In the story jobs the Bosses will be either Thief group leader, highly skilled assassins, or other wealthy people with a grudge against the client you're protecting. The end game will be to take a job from the town leader and protect him on one final job in order to gain a permanent position on his entourage.
AND THAT’S IT… mostly >_>. There are a few other ideas that I’ve had but some of them may make the game more complicated than it needs to be and some just aren't thought out as well. This is what I want the game to be at its core.
So what do you think?