SirDavies

Dreaming a game

In a sunny morning of August, last year, I woke up with an idea in my head. For the past few hours I had been dreaming about a videogame I had never actually seen, but that was very clear in my head. I instantly sat in fornt of my laptop and started writing. It was one of those ideas I didn’t want to forget about.Two weeks ago I accidentally broke that laptop, and now what I wrote that day is gone forever (yes , I know, security copies and stuff, whatever). Luckily, I can still remember most of what i dreamed that day, so I’m going to do my best to put into words again.

Story
A 10 year old kid changes house because his parents are splitting up, so he now has to live with his dad. Something goes wrong with the pantech van so the house is still empty when they arrive there. Their stuff wont arrive until the next day, so the kid has to sleep on his almost empty room. He only has a bed and an empty shelving. As you can imagine, he’s pretty fucking depressed. His dad comes to the room and says good night. He seems depressed too. Then, the kid looks at the top of the shelving and he sees a few colorful books. He looks for a chair and uses it to get them. They are old children’s books. The kid is exited.He opens the first one and starts reading and looking at the pictures. Halfway through, he falls asleep and starts dreaming about the story in the book. That’s where the “game” starts. You play through his dream, which mixes concepts from the story the kid is reading, things that are going on in his life and his own imagination. When he finishes “playing” one of the dreams he suddenly wakes up and decides to read the next one. After he has finished the third one, he falls profoundly asleep.

Gameplay and style
It is a third person adventure-platforming game. Every book would be a different experience. Visually, because it would adapt to the style of the drawings in each book, and in terms of gameplay because depending on the setting it would use different mechanics ad environment. Also, the laws of physics wouldn’t necessarily be applicable. I mean, it’s a dream, so things would change inexplicably and suddenly, without it becoming a complete mess, obviously.The game would be divided in 4 acts. As I said, every book would have different gamplay mechanics and visual styles. When the kid finally went to sleep he would blend everything together. The visual style and setting would be a mix of the ones seen in the different books and the gameplay would put the gamer’s hability with all the different mechanics to the test, mixing them too.The cutescenes (or maybe short playable parts?) about the kid would be in first person, from the kid’s perspective.

Conclusion
So, reading this idea through you have probably noticed there are two main “holes” in it. The first and most relevant of them being what the game mechanics would be. Sadly, that is the thing I remember less about from my dream. I myself was thinking about a mix of all the mechanics I have played in platformers in the past. Also, I’m not sure what the story in every book would be or what could be told about the kid’s life. I have a few ideas about it, and I could perfectly explain these ideas, but this is a dreamed game where you play the dreams of a kid dreaming about books, so I will let you, the reader, fill the holes with your imagination.