Inspirations

02/02/2023

Inspiration is hard to come by, I rarely feel like I have ideas for things let alone good ones. I think I’ve always been better at the ‘after’, building off a kernel of inspiration given to me by someone else. Which is probably good if I do contract work at some point, but hard for my solo projects. I’m going to try to be better and trust my own opinions, which will hopefully help with the whole ‘ideas’ thing. So, for the game narrative that I’m working on I’ve decided to look at these specific medias for some ideas as to how their stories are told, and for games, how the narrative ties into the gameplay. These are vaguely all thematically similar to what I’d like to write, but hopefully diverse enough that I’m not completely shutting out any concepts and drawing from a wide range of sources and stories.

Doki Doki Literature Club

I liked the way this game involved meddling with the game files, and I’d really like to include that in this game. I think the concept is cool and could work well for other text adventure style games, particularly for looking up or editing information within the files could work well from the perspective of the player in the game.

Stories Untold

A spooky horror text adventure that I really like the vibes of, I love that it’s set in a 3D space with spooky surround sound. A good starting point for text adventure ideas I think, it was popular back when it came out.

Outer Wilds

My beloved, masterpiece of a game. Good story telling, told all through texts/messages and environments. It’s also set in space and could give some general space ideas (black holes, quantum shit).

Tacoma

More Space! Similar to Outer Wilds where its story is told through texts and conversation, and also has space ideas. Which pretty similar to Unnamed Space Text Adventure.

HP Lovecraft

This game will likely have some horror, or scary elements. We haven’t quite explored these ideas yet, or how the horror will take form, but I particularly enjoy eldritch horror I’ve found myself drawn to it and its concepts over the past few years and would love to write my own version of those horrors!

The Martian

A good base point for space survival that, I believe, is great from a believable standpoint but also knows where to bend the rules for the sake of the story. It’s something I aim to be as a writer, allowing myself to let things that might not be realistic happen for a story’s sake, but sticking as close to the truth as possible. Don’t let real life physics get in the way of a fun story.

Interstellar

This is basically a horror movie to be honest. Cool ideas, potential concepts that can be played with, space but also theoretical and experimental, it’d be cool to write some of these concepts into a plot. The idea of gravity and endless space remind me a lot of eldritch horror, almost beyond comprehension and humanity is entirely at the mercy of it.

I think I have a lot to draw from with these inspirations, and NEXT TIME I’m going to talk about how I did that and what I’m taking away from it all/ if anything changed during my research. Looking forward to checking back in soon!