My Gaming Ideas

So we have to create our own 'anti-Shoot-em-up' game in the next Couple of months based on 'I hung my head' by Johnny Cash. The inspirations to this are very vague, so I've not really been able to come up with anything I'm certain to go for just yet, although I have had a few ideas.

The first idea would be that you play as a Doctor in a Hospital armed with a Rifle loaded with Vaccines of anti-bird flu. Why is he armed with this you ask? Because his hospital is being infested with Bird-flu infected Grannies that are mutating into birds as they come in! You have to vaccinate as many derranged Grannies as possible whilst they try to attack you. If you don't vaccinate them quick enough, then they begin to mutate into Bird Hybrids which are much faster and can attack you from the air. If you shoot the granny in the head, then they die and lose points but if you shoot them enough times in the body, then they become vaccinated and walk away - awarding you with points. I really like this idea as it just sounds so crazy and sounds pretty fun to play on. Only problem really is that it's not necessarily 'anti-shoot-em-up' as you're still shooting people - whether it for the better or not.

I then also briefly came up with a horror idea (inspired from the PS2 game Clock Tower 3) where you're constantly being stalked along a 2D level, trying to avoid all the obstacles without being attacked from the stalker. I liked this idea, because it works quite well with my overall Horror Portfolio/research but the only problem really is once again, it's not really anti-shoot-em-up and the stalkers are actually attacking you, so violence is still involved.

The most recent idea I've come up with would fit in pretty well with anti-shoot-em-up but it's gonna be pretty damn hard to develop. Simply put - you'd play as Johnny Cash (or a similar character) in Texas or a similar country and the game is pretty much based on decisions like the choice whether to steal or not, whether to do a certain task or not and the main point of the game is derived from the lyrics of 'Hung my Head' where you're sitting up on a hill with a rifle and a rider on a horse comes along. The story then goes into first-person mode and you aim the rifle. The gamer has the choice whether to shoot the rider or not. If you don't shoot the rider, then the game ends and congratulates you for doing the right thing. If you try to shoot the rider and miss, the rider shoots you and the game tells you that you're greed or curiosity got the best of you. If you do shoot the rider, the game continues on in a side scroller with you playing as the character, running from the authority.

Obviously, this game will be VERY complex to create, but really it's the only relevant idea I can come up with at the moment.

Using Macromedia Flash would probably be the best ideas as I've had no experience with Game maker as we haven't been shown how to use it but still. Flash is quite easy to draw in and I know to import a lot of the work I'd need such as images, audio and perhaps videos. Also creating buttons and using the interactive features shouldn't be too hard as I've had a go before, but I'd still need quite a bit of training. There's not many other programmes that have caught my eye for me to be intrested, especially with the amount of time we have to do it so unless Game Maker ends up being very simple and perfect for my idea, I expect I'll use Flash. That said, I've not been using Flash for very long so it's still going to be a very hard and complicated task to complete either.