The story of being in over my head, while making a game about someone else being in over their head.
So I made a game. Well, I tried to make a game. It’s called Space Situation!
It was initially going to be called Galaxy Quest, as an homage to the old Space Quest games that had inspired me, but then I found out that Galaxy Quest is already a thing. I made the working title Space Situation, because it’s about a precarious and awkward situation that takes place on a different planet… and it’s all I could come up with at the time. It’s awkward and obviously not what it was supposed to be, so it actually fits the game quite well.
The game itself follows a protagonist named Dan, an intern at a company that I forgot to make a name for. The company turns out to be funding the Independent Alliance of Unaligned Systems, a separatist alliance that sometimes fights against the Galactic Union. Because of this, Dan is now a wanted criminal and must escape the planet. I really liked the idea of ordinary people being thrown into extraordinary situations that the creators of Space Quest captured in their games.
As you play the game, you are often faced with the choice of following the rules or breaking them. This would play in during a scene in which Dan must escape from a Galactic Union Suspect Holding Facility. The more defiant you’ve been early in the game, the more accurate you are when fighting guards in your escape. The thought behind this was that if Dan is a goody two shoes who follows the rules, he’s not going to be quick to shoot a living human being with a firearm. However, if Dan is comfortable with being a dangerous renegade, he’s going to show more proficiency with the firearm. Additionally, as you score hits during this escape sequence, you become more proficient with your firearm.
The more I wrote, the more possibilities opened up, the more possibilities opened up, the more overwhelmed I became. I want to finish this at some point. I’ve been thinking about this game for months, and I’ve been building this universe in my head for two years, if not more. I need more time, and a better understanding of coding, maybe with the help of my friends with computer science degrees.
This is the proofing copy. Seventeen pages of fiction and code. 34,000 words. In all honesty, I’m only about halfway through the game at some points, depending on which choices you make. The more I think about it, the more I realize how much I tried to undertake.
Well… stay tuned for when I pull a George Lucas and release SPACE SITUATION: Episode VII: The Actually Complete Edition “NOW WITH MORE SPECIAL EFFECTS!”
You’ll either find it here or on my, new highly ambitious but incredibly rubbish, twitter, Star Strider Gaming.
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