After a few days thought, the game i'm going to make

So i've got myself on pretty solid ground now, and i'm working up an outline/story web thing to organize my thoughts. My notes are all in a paper notebook, so maybe i'll scan those, maybe i won't. I'll try to bullet point and explain out my direction here, mostly as an exercise for myself to get in a writing mood.

PREMISE:
You are a 32 year old working professional. After only 8 months of marriage you lost your husband in the WTC attacks on Sept 11th. It's been 8 years. You've moved on, changed apartments leaving Manhattan for the wilds of Brooklyn. You've grown out of your grief, and for the most part lead a normal –although often lonely– life. This time of year still gets to you, and this week in particular is going to be hell to get through.

On wednessday morning Sept 9th, 2009 you had a strange dream. In it a mysterious woman told you to leave town for the week, to talk to no one, to just get away from NYC.

Waking from this ominous dream you hear your neighbor weeping next door. You walk over to his apartment, hoping he's alright, where he reveals to you an amazing discovery that has brought him to his current state. The day earlier he purchased a standard commercial lightbulb, 40 watt, but upon screwing it in and turning it on it produced a strange effect: Within the range of light cast by the bulb the calendar is thrown back exactly 8 years, to the year 2001. Outside of the bulb's soft light it's still 2009, but within it's hazy glow a person can move back in time, though in a very limited (and frustrating) way.

That's where your story begins. What will you do with the opportunity to relive the worst day of your life, but not to be able to easily change them. How hard will you push? To what lengths will you go? How will you spend the next 3 days of your life?

FORMAT:
First of all it's only going to exist on the web. The game is a flash based pictorial text adventure. You choose paths for the story to go. You can work with a group or play solo. It's sort of like a choose your own adventure, but it's got some interesting and creative (in the sense you create story) twists to the format. I thought up the method in the early stages of development for Sweet Agatha, but abandoned it as unwieldy within the confines of a printed book. But on the web it'll really sing.

The look of the thing will be reminiscent of Sweet Agatha only as far as it's photography and type driven layout, with a female lead character. The visual similarities end there though. I want to really separate this work from my previous efforts. Clearly it's grown from a similar place, but i REALLY DON'T WANT IT TO LOOK LIKE A SEQUAL. It'll be an interesting challenge. It's very easy to do the things that i know worked well for that game's look, so avoiding them will be venturing into difficult territory. But we do not do these things because they are easy, we do them because they are hard.

GAME CHEF STUFF:
So i'm way more inspired by the optional constraints of the secondary medals than the main ones, here's my goals:
• two week time frame. This might prove simply impossible from the standpoint of having to shoot a few thousand photos, and build an intricate flash framework. But that's my goal, and right now i'm on schedule. But i wouldn't be surprised if i instead get this out at the 1 month marker.
• Clearly the "game set in 2001" medal spoke to me.
• As did the "playable only on the web or cell phones" constraint
• Intrigue is a vague word. In gaming and genre fiction it's very loaded. For some this game will be dripping intrigue, from other's point of view it will be totally devoid. Such is life.
• This game is playable by 1- i don't know how many people. I would probably cap the upper limit at 4 but that's just me and there's no mechanical constraint on play group size. The game will work quite well with 3 participants. This was initially a big concern for me and now i care less about it.
• The "rules" are totally unwritten. There isn't rules, just user experience. I guess if you wrote out a description of what to do it would fill about a business card worth of type. But that's not how this thing works. It's about designing an interface that is so basic and obvious that it requires no explanation.

ONE LAST THING:
The title of the game. It's totally my favorite title yet...

"In Light of Recent Events"

First post, first thoughts

Hello.

I'm Kevin Allen Jr. I am a designer and photographer living in Montclair NJ, USA. I am starting this blog as a work diary as i go through the iterative design process of making a new game. This new game is specifically an entry into the fabulous Game Chef 2009 contest. I am hoping to write up a post a day for about a week and a half. After that time i imagine this blog will be very rarely if ever updated, only really posting bits of reviews, updates, and ephemera about whatever game ends up getting designed for this contest. It will then serve as a fossil record of the way I designed games at the end of the summer of 2009.

Some context about where i'm coming from in working on this context:

• I am currently reading "Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals" by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman. A fantastic textbook about the theory of game design. A must read, if i am to be trusted with the matter.
• I am currently between steady regular games. I have a very stable weekly gaming group that has as of late played a number of very good games. This isn't a problem or a concern. We'll start playing a game regularly when one makes sense.
• I do not have a steady full time job. I pay my rent by being a freelance graphic designer, and thus i make my own hours. I'm working a few contracts right now, but all have flexible schedules. This doesn't mean i'm going to be working on game design 12 hours a day. It does mean i've got time to think about games.
• The last game I published was Sweet Agatha. It will no doubt inspire this next project in some way. The new crops grow in last years soil, ya know?

One last bit before we get on to real posts about the contest and game design process:
This is not my main blog. My real blog is about advertising and media criticism. That blog can be found at advertingdisaster.blogspot.com/. My website is www.kevinallenjr.com. I got a twitter, a flickr, and loads of other social networking BS, just search for "kevin allen jr."