I´ve just been reading an article over on Gamasutra, and it has gotten me to thinking about a game I would love to be involved in making.

The article is about the 20 most underutilized licenses out there. Movie licenses that would make great games and old games that would be awesome as a remake.

One of their suggestions is to turn the widely known movie “Groundhog Day” into a game. The movie has a reputation amongst people who study the movie sciences. It was one of the first movies I was forced into watching (swiftly followed by Robbert Bressons french “Un condamné à mort s est échappé “) as part of my movie studies at the Copenhagen University. Of course I had seen the movie before but I still found it great – and still do. What makes it unique is that it just repeats the same storyline again and again. This hadn’t been seen in many movies before that.

This movie would really have a lot of potential if it got converted to a game. Here´s how:

• Completely open world where the player can interact with everyone.
• A ton (literally hundreds) of NPC’s with actual storylines that criss-cross with each other.
• When the player “fails” either by the day ending or him dying, he will be returned to start.
• Engaging dialog and each NPC designed to be very engaging.
• Possibilities of making NPC’s fall in love with you.
• Possibility of having sex, as well as violence in the game.
• Each NPC should have their own “quest line” so the player can do different “missions” each day.
• Scripted events. There needs to be a lot of scripted events. Cars driving by at the same time each day, people being the same places at the same time each day, people walking certain routes each day etc.
• Subtle clues to how you can get out of the never-ending day loop.

The thing that would make this game interesting is the vast amounts of combinations of personal stories you would be able to live in this game. Just like no The Sims game is never the same, a game like this could be an ongoing simulation of a town and the player could affect key points on each day that would make the entire town react in new ways. It would mean a game with unending versatile experiences.

It would be a HUGE job to do – but hopefully Peter Molyneux or Will Wright will pick up on the idea after having read my blog

This entry was posted on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 12:06 pm and is filed under Game Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.