Dumped, like the browser-based kart game, so that I may free up some synapses.
The Idea:
- A browser-based sidescroller
- Based on an inversion of Christina Rosetti’s “The Prince’s Progress”
- With high realism movement, ala Flashback: The Quest for Identity
- Built in SVG and JavaScript
- With zooming in-engine cutscenes
The Unusual Bit:
- The game can be ended at the end of each level
- Via branching dialogue
- With a woman one encounters there
- Triggering a cutscene showing the future
- The endings are better the earlier one stops playing
- Because no one will stop playing
- There is no woman at the end of the last level
The Story:
- Rosetti’s poem follows a prince’s voyage to meet his unknown beloved
- He dallies too much with wrong turns and mystical women
- When he gets to the castle, the princess has died
- I wrote (but never finished editing) a response
- This game is based on my version
- The prince meets a series of mystical women
- He could have (should have?) stayed with any one of them
- He doesn’t
- He journeys on to meet his perfect beloved
- He finds the castle at the edge of the world
- Inside, no one opposes him
- No one’s ever lived there
The Art:
- Animated vector graphics
- Multiple foregrounds and backgrounds
- Not quite a sidescroller
- Camera usually stationary
- Re-centers when the character reaches predetermined spots
- Foreground and background layers adjust
- Foregrounds and backgrounds less detailed than midground
- Expressive style
- 24 frame per second character animation
- Realistic motion
- Zoomed in in-engine cutscene
The Gameplay:
- A mix of platforming and combat
- Level passwords
- No HUD, health bars, or data overlays of any kind
- Character can’t do anything a reasonably fit person can’t do
- Can only fall so far
- No twenty foot vertical jumps
- No changing direction in midair
- Must leap, grasp and climb to reach higher ledges
- “Step based” movement
- No creeping one pixel at a time ever necessary
- One walking step the minimum distance a movement can take
- Running, leaping, climbing, swimming, etc. all in increments
Character Mechanics:
- No lives or continues
- Health recharges
- No “medkits”
- Short recovery period
- Character movement indicates health
- Extremely low health makes character weave back and forth
- Requires micro-correcting
- With left and right keys
- To keep character from falling down
Falling Down:
- Not “death” as such
- “If you want to teach players not to do something,
- you don’t need to smack them.
- You need to give them zero feedback.“
- Tile the player falls on stretches past edges of screen left and right
- Player must get up (weaving initially) and walk across flat ground
- Uninteresting expanse takes time to cross
- Long enough to dissuade
- Not long enough to ruin game
- Poem displayed in BG
- Expanse ends at portion of the game world just as it was
- Level resumes without break
- No real death, lives or continues — just the expanse to pass
Levels:
- The Ravine
- Mostly platforming
- Lush green riverside
- Moon maiden at end
- The Desert
- Black rocks
- Ground crawling with scorpions
- Character weakens as level goes on
- Heavy use of weaving mechanic
- Alchemist at end
- The Valley
- Rivers
- Final long swim
- Lose your armor, all but knife and gloves
- The Ariel Sisters at end
- The Edge of the World
- (Movement noticeably sprightlier without gear)
- Mountain slope
- Crags
- Endless field of white flowers
- Clouds
- Castle, overgrown by enormous tree
- Phantoms “attack” inside
- Vanish before they reach you
- Empty room at top
- Plaster tubs, drop cloths, uninstalled windows
- Overgrown with white flowers from window box
- No one’s ever lived there
- The Moon Maiden
- Milkmaid
- Starry cloak
- (Midevil milkmaids rarely got smallpox)
- (Exposure to milder cowpox virus vaccinated them)
- (Origin of the “clear/white faced milkmaid” literary meme)
- Best ending
- In-engine zoomed in cutscene of player with family
- Carefree young children
- Spreading the starry cloak on a hilltop at night
- Watching the stars wheel overhead together
- Older woman, works a forge, strength and wisdom
- Second best ending
- Zooms in for cutscene as a couple
- Lonely in the desert
- Always working forge
- The Ariel Sisters
- Three nymphlike sisters
- Rescue you from river in the valley
- Flighty, impossible to pin down
- Other two give you more attention the more you focus on one
- One you focus on colder toward you
- Always out of reach
- A lot of trouble for a neutral ending
- The Princess
- Doesn’t exist
- Cutscene shows only the unfinished state of the chamber
- No ending
- Level just leaves you to wander until you quit the game
- Engine would have to be built from scratch
- Lots of art assets
- Lots of animation
- Small potential of SVG drawing speed problems
- SVG a low priority in modern browsers
- Animation toolchain would have to be built from scratch
- No SVG drawing program does animation yet
- If one adds support, it will likely save as SMIL
- (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language)
- Despite being a standard, no browser supports SMIL
- Would have to use JavaScript for animation instead
- Animation would either have to use substitution
- (One unique SVG image every frame, 24 frames/second)
- Or morphing
- (SVG objects changed by JavaScript every frame)
- Even more complicated to develop toolchain for
- Morphing better, would allow some smoothing between actions
- Would allow some physics as well (cloaks, particle, etc.)
- No clear business plan beyond banner ads on the homepage
- Banner ads in-game would kill the mood
- Would also slow down the browser, in the real world
- Is it possible to sell access to a browser-based game?
- Game that subverts common mechanics of genre to ask questions
- Would be compared to Braid
- Would lose the comparison
The Women:
The Alchemist
Why It’s a Bad Idea: