Published on: Thu May 22
This is going to be a blog post where I affirm some future ideas I have in mind. Thereโs a lot to do creatively, and I want to make sure I have in mind exactly what I want to do.
The main ideas that are coming to my head as of right now, are game ideas and story ideas. In terms of stories, there is work on short stories and a game story that I had come up with. The short stories I want to focus on as a way to build up my creative writing skills, which frankly are lacking quite a bit. There are two short stories written by me so far. The first involving an alocholic in a office full of people who want to help him, but he refueses to let them in. Also thereโs a giant alien who crash landed in the office hiding behind an illusionary door slowly eating up the entire office by enticing them into the room. The concept came to me in a dream, and while I donโt think I fully did it justice, Iโm glad I finished a very short story there. Would take a looooot of edits for me to post it, but for now itโs on my hard drive taunting me.
The second short story was actually a writing challenge by my favourite author currently, Steven Erikson! The idea was to write a story about two people in a room with a dead body. The rules involved not being able to have no questions directly answered by either character, and for the body not to be mentioned. That was a fun write up! I took my story in the mafia direction, with two goons having to work out why the trade went wrong and what to do about the body.
Now for the daunting part. My idea for a game! In the last few months of my life Iโve had two big interests. Malazan and Etrian Odyssey. Why not combine them right? Right??
So to give a bit of background on the two. Etrian Odyssey is a dungeon crawler turn based rpg, in the same vein as Wizardry from the 90s. Gameplay is generally in first person, and story is kept super minimal, with most games in the series being about climbing to the top of Yggdrasil, which is usually a giant tree, with floors inside of it being wayyy too big and convuluted. Love those games.
Malazan on the other hand, is a epic fantasy, spanning across 3 different continents, following more characters then anyone should be able to manage. Somehow, Steven Erikson manages it. The setting of these books I want to use is Raraku, the holy desert in which the second book, Deadhouse Gates, takes place. While there were 4 different story lines in that book, what I want to use as inspiration is the Whirlwind Goddess section of the book. Iโm not going to spoil anything specific about the book here other then setting which I will be talking about now!! Be warned!!
Raraku is presented as this cruel cruel place with many many different cultures. They range from brutal, to kind, to just a little bit silly. The desert often reveals buried architecture, reminiscent of an ancient long gone civilization, with the only remenants being that of where they lived. The Whirlwind Goddess causes a surprise surprise whirlwind to appear, that seems to never end.
So the game/story idea. I want to use a desert setting inspired by Raraku and its rich cultures, while using the Whirlwind Goddess as an antagonistic force. All this within a game that works as an Etrian Odyssey clone. The Etrian Odyssey aspects will cary over in the first person perspective, combat, and general game flow. I would rather have a cast of characters as opposed to custom made ones like Etrian Odyssey does, but I have yet to figure out what reason will bring them all together.
Honestly, itโs pretty daunting to me as someone whoโs never written anything more than a short story, and even then having only started on that recently. But I feel as if trying my best on this idea will leave me fulfilled creatively and I need that.
So, to make this a little less daunting, Iโm gonna write up a list of wants for the project, and come back to this in a few months and see what kind progress I manage to make :)
All in all not too crazy of a list, but just enough to give me goals to get started!
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