Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Comedy RTS

I used to save specific game ideas so that I could maintain control over them in case I pursued a career in game design and eventually worked my way up high enough to be able to start projects. But now, I'm thinking I'd rather do as Pixiestyx does: lay out those ideas for anyone to evaluate and work on. So here's a concept I thought of some months ago.

CUTE MADE DEADLY
The movie Shrek did a great job taking serious tales and changing the characters into laughable parodies. This game would take laughable characters and place them into serious and violent warfare. The game would revolve around the same sort of humor behind the Black Knight scene in Monty Python's Holy Grail: violent but hilarious.

Take, for example, the Gingerbread Man from Shrek ("Not my gumdrop buttons!"). Gingerbread men like that would be a unit type in my RTS. They'd be a ranged unit that hurls gumdrop buttons. And, like the Black Knight, you can take them apart piece-by-piece. Damage them enough and arms will break off, forcing them into crazed melee charges and head-butting. If you take their hit points down all the way, their heads will break off. If you've played Battle for Middle Earth 2, you know how cave trolls will swing around in elaborate death throws. Take the head off a gingerbread man and his headless, armless body will wander aimless through the battle for a few seconds before toppling forward into the dirt.

That's the sort of lunacy that would saturate the entire game. It would be a depthful RTS, like BfME:2, that requires skill and strategy. But it would make you laugh at the same time.


What are some other unit types that might fit this sort of game?

Keep in mind, they're not going to be all fairy tale stuff, like in the Shrek film. They just have to be silly characters that don't belong in warfare. Try to stay away from IPs that would require a license, like famous cartoon characters (I think I could get away with gingerbread men, as long as I don't make their voices sound like the character in Shrek).


P.S. This is one of those posts that I realized I need to edit for typos after posting, so I had to republish the post. Does that make it show up more than once on anyone RSS feeds? If so, I won't do it again.

2 comments:

  1. Aye, the gingerbread man is a very old fairy tale, well pre-Shrek.

    I'd want to see a unit type of a very cute little blond girl that seemed all bubbly, innocent, and happy---but threw tantrums that did some sort of sonic damage or the like. Then, of course, she'd need a stuffed kitty cat accomplice that drowns people in leaking stuffing.

    Word association and insomnia would then prompt me to get truly bizarre---the roasted Thanksgiving turkey unit that mind-controls enemies, turning them into traditional side dishes like corn on the cob, roasted sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, stuffing... Huh, it must be almost breakfast time; I'm starved.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's awesome! Thanks.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.