Thoughts on a Quicksand Video Game?

[Mukraken]

Before I go any further, I want to quell any elated hopes by noting that this topic is purely theoretical. To the best of my knowledge, no quicksand-centric video game currently exists (if anyone can prove me wrong, though, by all means please feel free!)

In any case, I've had this idea floating around in my head for a couple days now. Even though I'm fairly new to this forum, it seems like a pretty cool place with lots of awesome people, so I'm really curious to see what you guys think of the basic concept.

In this theoretical game, you would play as a quicksand pit, and the object of the game is to try to pull down as many women (in my mind it's women, but there's no reason we couldn't include men too) as possible. Throughout the game, women would stumble into your pit at a more-or-less constant rate, to keep the game going. There could be a multi-player option, where a second player could then play as the women.

As a woman steps in, she can stay still, struggle, or call for help on each turn. Staying still reduces rate of sinking to a minimum, struggling has a risk of getting in deeper but may also allow her to partially escape, and calling for help attracts other women who may (attempt to) rescue the first one (which has effects similar to struggling but more likely to be beneficial), or possibly get stuck themselves.

As you pull down more women, you earn points, which can be spent on various attributes to make your quicksand pit more powerful. The attributes I've thought of so far are:

Suction: Lessens the beneficial effect of a 'successful' struggle attempt

Liquidity: Increases rate of sinking while standing still

Appearance: Increases the likelihood of random passersby wandering into the pit (IE, if the pit looks like normal ground, more people wander into it)

Aeration: Increases maximum depth of final sink (while standing still)

Adhesion: Increases the depth sunk with each failed struggle

Size: Increases likelihood of rescuers also becoming stuck

Isolation: Decreases likelihood of rescuers being beneficial (IE, if a rescuer does find you in the middle of nowhere, they probably aren't going to have equipment readily available to rescue you with)

Arousal: Decreases the likelihood of a struggle attempt to succeed (IE, you're more likely to wiggle yourself in deeper instead of getting out)

So, your thoughts? Good idea, bad idea? Any insights on what it would take to program such a game, or animate/illustrate it? Any additional ideas for gameplay?

[Quicksand_Hex]

Sounds like it would make a fun flash game. I don't have any coding experience, but I'd be interested in playing if someone ever made this.

[Vandercat]

This seems like a pretty good idea for a flash game. I can't code yet, or animate or illustrate but the least I can do is suggest some additional ideas, I'm good at that at least :p

You can also make several types of pits, quicksand, mud, tar, slime, etc. They could all have different starting stats or special properties belonging to them at the start. Quicksand could suck women down faster when they stand still, Mud could less obvious, making it have a better appearance than the others, Tar would be stickier and more resistant to struggling and Slime could perhaps have tentacles that could grab rescuers, but with a long cool-down between uses?

[Mukraken]

Thanks for the feedback!

I really like the idea of having different pits with different possible starting stats. Let's see, quicksand would probably have a high liquidity and appearance with low aeration, tar would have a high adhesion and suction with a low appearance, mud would have a high suction and appearance with low liquidity, and slime could have a high aeration and liquidity with low adhesion. I'll try and balance them out with some slightly more exact stats later.

It occurs to me, though, that giving only one of the starting pits a unique ability, will tend to make that one overpowered. However, I absolutely love the idea of abilities with cool-down periods! I was looking for a way to make the game feel more interactive, and that would work wonderfully.

If we do abilities that come with a pit from the start, we'd need to give one to each pit, to make it fair. It may be somewhat safer to allow them to purchase them later, just because that would be simpler and easier in terms of game-balance. But either way, I think we should make all abilities purchase-able by all pits, although they should be much more expensive in terms of points than the attributes are.

Tentacles (Slime): Automatically causes one rescue to fail, and rescuer to be ensnared

Bubble (Quicksand): Pulls down one woman by one 'stage'

That's all I've got so far for possible starting abilities, but if you guys have ideas for mud and tar, let me know.

Anyway, that actually helps me figure out how to implement a few things that I had already been trying to work out, since these other ideas wouldn't have worked well as attributes. Making them into abilities, with cool-down periods, will be perfect!

Terror: Causes a woman to struggle for a turn

Despair: Causes a woman to stand still for a turn

Loneliness: Causes a woman to call for help for a turn

[Fred588]

I do remember a very simple game that circulated within the community a while back. As I recall, and it was some time back, it involved several female characters sitting on a branch above a mud pit. One could shoot mud balls at them and they fell off if hit.

I would love to see a somewhat more complicated, but still simple game based on a story I did, also a while back. The story took place in psychic world and revolved around a climbing wall game. The story title was "The Climbing Wall" and it is something I intend to film at some point. In the story game, characters came upon a climbing wall with an attendant to explain the rules, which are to try to climb to the top without safety gear. The top is only 6 feet up or so but there is quicksand below if you fall. In the original story there are already several previous climbers in various stages of sinking in the pit. I suppose a game would involve determining the moves executed by the climber. Difficulty might be adjusted by making it rain or removing some of the hand or foot holds, and i suppose some of the holds could be randomly programmed to fail if used. That would be rigging the game but it would sink more climbers. I would offer to publish such a game if it worked well.

Other simple games might be built round the hangman idea except involving sinking, Jeopardy in which the loser sinks (this one has already been filmed), Sink Poker, or many others. I have seen (once was enough) a TV show in which contestants answer questions and fall through a hole when eliminated - that could be into mud.

[quickbeard]

I have long thought that I would pay for such a game. I think that options should include choices of dress/undress. Shoes and clothes would increase suction. If you were one who preferred less clothing, there would be an increased likelihood of escaping.

[Vandercat]

It occurs to me, though, that giving only one of the starting pits a unique ability, will tend to make that one overpowered. However, I absolutely love the idea of abilities with cool-down periods! I was looking for a way to make the game feel more interactive, and that would work wonderfully.

Well, I was thinking that you would offset the slime by making its stats very poor to start with, rather than adding abilities to all the pit types.

[Aiko]

I like the idea and have in fact thought about making a game plenty of times though my ideas were usually based on controlling the sinker/rescuer rather than the quicksand. My two reasons for not having done it yet are, a) lack of spare time (committed to too many other projects already) and b) lack of talent to create the artwork (someone else would have to fill that role). Even so, I can at least provide you with some input/advice:

1. Keep it simple - or at least try to. Start with one pit, one sinker and some basic interaction (just two or three possible actions for the player). Add everything else later when the simple stuff works.

2. Gameplay matters. Yes, even if it's a game about quicksand. Don't make it too hard or too easy. It should become more challenging as time progresses. If you merely upgrade the pit(s), you will have the opposite effect. Rather think about "upgrading" the sinkers.

3. Keep at it and share the vision. You may not immediately find somebody to program it, but keep the idea floating around. Tell us more about how you envision the game mechanics. Maybe even draw a screen to show what you want it to look like.

Hope this helps increase the chances to make your "theoretical" game into a real one someday.

[Mukraken]

Fred588- Knocking women into a mud pit sounds like a fun game, I don't suppose you have a link to it? And your other idea sounds interesting, too. I will have to read that story of yours. I wonder if we could find a pre-existing climbing game and reverse-engineer it somehow, and then add the quicksand mechanics to it?

quickbeard- Hmm, having customizable characters, that's a neat concept. With the clothes/no clothes choice, keep in mind that a woman with no clothes will sink faster but be able to escape more easily, whereas one with clothes will sink slower but have more difficulty escaping. In terms of the game attributes, clothes would increase suction but decrease liquidity, whereas no clothes would increase liquidity but decrease suction. That way there isn't a bias one way or the other and it stays fair.

Vandercat- Apologies if it seems like I'm shooting down your ideas, but I'd like to make the designing of this game no more complicated than it needs to be. Good game balance can be a deceptively tricky thing. It's going to be harder than you might think, even as it is, just to keep the four pits approximately equal to one another with different stats, especially given that one stat may or may not be 'as good' as another stat (it really depends on how people play the game, and how the stats 'combo' with one another, and we might not be able to fully predict a lot of that). And it's going to be hard, too, to make the stats themselves all equally useful, so that one stat doesn't become overpowered compared to another. And of course if the game gets too unbalanced, everyone would simply put all their points into one or two stats, and then where would the fun be?

When you take all that into account, then if you give one pit an ability that the others don't have, it's going to be very difficult to balance the stats so that they can compensate without becoming over- or under-powered. If you want to spend the time beta-testing and balancing it, I won't argue with you, but as far as I can tell, it just doesn't seem to be worth the extra headache. It's a good idea in theory, but quite a bit more complicated than it would seem.

Sorry if I came off as rude or anything, because I do like your thoughts. I was just explaining why I'm so hesitant about what would otherwise be a neat idea.

Aiko- That's all very good advice. As to the first point, I'll just leave that up to whoever ends up programming the code for all this, because in the end they're going to be the one who decides how simple or complicated they want that task to be.

The second one is a good point. Hmm, how about if we could make the stat-levels increase in price as you upgraded your pit, and then had upgraded sinkers that were worth more points but harder to sink? That way, you'd have to go for the more difficult sinkers as you leveled up, in order to have enough points to keep buying up your stats. And then as you bought higher stats you could sink more and more difficult sinkers.

Wouldn't it be neat if some of the highest-leveled characters were based off of professional quicksand models? Nessie, Star, Darby, Kristine, etc.? Of course we'd have to get permission to use their likenesses, but I figure they'd make good 'bosses' in the game, if they'd be okay with that.

As for the third point, about drawing a screen, I was thinking I may end up doing some art for this game anyhow, if we can't find a better artist. I've done some basic spriting and animation before, but I'm just not all that good.

[Fred588]

I do not. It stopped working when I upgraded computers about four computers back. The story "The Climbing Wall" will be posted some time in the psychicworldjungleland.com reading room, but the story is as described, more or less. I am not a game player myself so I would have no idea of any pre-existing game. In any case the flowchart would be fairly simple. From any given position there would be a small number of choices for the next move. Probably something like one possible move for each hand and each foot. After each move there would be two possibilities; a change of position or a fall. More or less.

Fred588- Knocking women into a mud pit sounds like a fun game, I don't suppose you have a link to it? And your other idea sounds interesting, too. I will have to read that story of yours. I wonder if we could find a pre-existing climbing game and reverse-engineer it somehow, and then add the quicksand mechanics to it?

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