The "General Games Chat" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.
This was an idea I came up with when watching Survivor. It's sort of a mix of the show, Half-Life and slightly Tomb Raider.
You have been involved in a plane crash. Just a crash, no political conspiracy, just a plain and simple mistake. Naturally, you think you are the only survivor. And of course, you have crashed on a tropical island in the middle of nowhere. You wake on a beach. From the looks of things, the plane exploded and split in two while crashing into the sea and sinking. It was sheer luck that you survived, but you can't survive in just your shorts, t-shirt and sunglasses can you?
So where first? Go into the jungle and find some food? Dive down into the ocean and find the plane (a hard task, as you can't hold your breath forever)? Or maybe try and go to the smoke signals coming from the forest? To survive you don't just need your wit, you need food and water. A lack of both will cause the player to be disoriented, with distorted noise and images leading to hallucinations and eventually death.
Your goal is just to survive, and if you're lucky enough to get home. Maybe you might find someone or something that'll help you, perhaps the smoke signals are a village?
The game is played in a first-person perspective, switching to third-person when underwater (swimming and first-person don't really mix). The game has one minute as one hour of game time, but the time isn't the main factor (think GTA3). Food you get is stored and taken back to camp. You can set up camp in a number of places. Enemies include snakes, tigers, fish and insect-bites.
Each game would probably be different, but set-pieces and story events prevent the game from having no conclusion. When you eventually find the village, you realize the island is under attack by other humans, and you end up being caught up in a war between two islands.
Only problem I can see would be the fact that it appears to offer little in the way of empowering the gamer in an obvious way - to explain, mainstream audiences want a gun, or at least a crowbar, and a clear 'baddie' to hit. The empowerment in your title would come from using your head to think yourself out of danger rather than using weapons to defeat danger. Personally, I'd love to play a game like this - I just doubt it would have mainstream appeal.
UNLESS! They nabbed the official license from ITV! Fools with no clue love a license, even if the game has little to do with it (as the game clearly wouldn't - tv contestants aren't in mortal danger, unfortunately).
Firstly, finding food and water. Very important, but would your character have to find food and water every single day? Or, once you'd found a suitable source of food and water, would your character be assumed to feed him/herself automatically, without the player having to tell them to?
Say you want to make a bonfire on the beach. Would the game engine recognise that rubbing two sticks together/focusing the sun using a salvaged bit of glass/etc produces heat? If the player decided to cut down trees and arrange them in the shape of the word "S.O.S" on the beach, would this be recognised as a man-made message by passing ships? If you want to fashion a stick into a spear so you can hunt some wildlife, would the game let you?
Thanks for reading,
SB.
You have been involved in a plane crash. Just a crash, no political conspiracy, just a plain and simple mistake. Naturally, you think you are the only survivor. And of course, you have crashed on a tropical island in the middle of nowhere. You wake on a beach. From the looks of things, the plane exploded and split in two while crashing into the sea and sinking. It was sheer luck that you survived, but you can't survive in just your shorts, t-shirt and sunglasses can you?
So where first? Go into the jungle and find some food? Dive down into the ocean and find the plane (a hard task, as you can't hold your breath forever)? Or maybe try and go to the smoke signals coming from the forest? To survive you don't just need your wit, you need food and water. A lack of both will cause the player to be disoriented, with distorted noise and images leading to hallucinations and eventually death.
Your goal is just to survive, and if you're lucky enough to get home. Maybe you might find someone or something that'll help you, perhaps the smoke signals are a village?
The game is played in a first-person perspective, switching to third-person when underwater (swimming and first-person don't really mix). The game has one minute as one hour of game time, but the time isn't the main factor (think GTA3). Food you get is stored and taken back to camp. You can set up camp in a number of places. Enemies include snakes, tigers, fish and insect-bites.
Each game would probably be different, but set-pieces and story events prevent the game from having no conclusion. When you eventually find the village, you realize the island is under attack by other humans, and you end up being caught up in a war between two islands.
Only problem I can see would be the fact that it appears to offer little in the way of empowering the gamer in an obvious way - to explain, mainstream audiences want a gun, or at least a crowbar, and a clear 'baddie' to hit. The empowerment in your title would come from using your head to think yourself out of danger rather than using weapons to defeat danger. Personally, I'd love to play a game like this - I just doubt it would have mainstream appeal.
UNLESS! They nabbed the official license from ITV! Fools with no clue love a license, even if the game has little to do with it (as the game clearly wouldn't - tv contestants aren't in mortal danger, unfortunately).
Firstly, finding food and water. Very important, but would your character have to find food and water every single day? Or, once you'd found a suitable source of food and water, would your character be assumed to feed him/herself automatically, without the player having to tell them to?
Say you want to make a bonfire on the beach. Would the game engine recognise that rubbing two sticks together/focusing the sun using a salvaged bit of glass/etc produces heat? If the player decided to cut down trees and arrange them in the shape of the word "S.O.S" on the beach, would this be recognised as a man-made message by passing ships? If you want to fashion a stick into a spear so you can hunt some wildlife, would the game let you?
Thanks for reading,
SB.
There have been no replies to this thread yet.
This was an idea I came up with when watching Survivor. It's sort of a mix of the show, Half-Life and slightly Tomb Raider.
You have been involved in a plane crash. Just a crash, no political conspiracy, just a plain and simple mistake. Naturally, you think you are the only survivor. And of course, you have crashed on a tropical island in the middle of nowhere. You wake on a beach. From the looks of things, the plane exploded and split in two while crashing into the sea and sinking. It was sheer luck that you survived, but you can't survive in just your shorts, t-shirt and sunglasses can you?
So where first? Go into the jungle and find some food? Dive down into the ocean and find the plane (a hard task, as you can't hold your breath forever)? Or maybe try and go to the smoke signals coming from the forest? To survive you don't just need your wit, you need food and water. A lack of both will cause the player to be disoriented, with distorted noise and images leading to hallucinations and eventually death.
Your goal is just to survive, and if you're lucky enough to get home. Maybe you might find someone or something that'll help you, perhaps the smoke signals are a village?
The game is played in a first-person perspective, switching to third-person when underwater (swimming and first-person don't really mix). The game has one minute as one hour of game time, but the time isn't the main factor (think GTA3). Food you get is stored and taken back to camp. You can set up camp in a number of places. Enemies include snakes, tigers, fish and insect-bites.
Each game would probably be different, but set-pieces and story events prevent the game from having no conclusion. When you eventually find the village, you realize the island is under attack by other humans, and you end up being caught up in a war between two islands.
Only problem I can see would be the fact that it appears to offer little in the way of empowering the gamer in an obvious way - to explain, mainstream audiences want a gun, or at least a crowbar, and a clear 'baddie' to hit. The empowerment in your title would come from using your head to think yourself out of danger rather than using weapons to defeat danger. Personally, I'd love to play a game like this - I just doubt it would have mainstream appeal.
UNLESS! They nabbed the official license from ITV! Fools with no clue love a license, even if the game has little to do with it (as the game clearly wouldn't - tv contestants aren't in mortal danger, unfortunately).
Firstly, finding food and water. Very important, but would your character have to find food and water every single day? Or, once you'd found a suitable source of food and water, would your character be assumed to feed him/herself automatically, without the player having to tell them to?
Say you want to make a bonfire on the beach. Would the game engine recognise that rubbing two sticks together/focusing the sun using a salvaged bit of glass/etc produces heat? If the player decided to cut down trees and arrange them in the shape of the word "S.O.S" on the beach, would this be recognised as a man-made message by passing ships? If you want to fashion a stick into a spear so you can hunt some wildlife, would the game let you?
Thanks for reading,
SB.
You have been involved in a plane crash. Just a crash, no political conspiracy, just a plain and simple mistake. Naturally, you think you are the only survivor. And of course, you have crashed on a tropical island in the middle of nowhere. You wake on a beach. From the looks of things, the plane exploded and split in two while crashing into the sea and sinking. It was sheer luck that you survived, but you can't survive in just your shorts, t-shirt and sunglasses can you?
So where first? Go into the jungle and find some food? Dive down into the ocean and find the plane (a hard task, as you can't hold your breath forever)? Or maybe try and go to the smoke signals coming from the forest? To survive you don't just need your wit, you need food and water. A lack of both will cause the player to be disoriented, with distorted noise and images leading to hallucinations and eventually death.
Your goal is just to survive, and if you're lucky enough to get home. Maybe you might find someone or something that'll help you, perhaps the smoke signals are a village?
The game is played in a first-person perspective, switching to third-person when underwater (swimming and first-person don't really mix). The game has one minute as one hour of game time, but the time isn't the main factor (think GTA3). Food you get is stored and taken back to camp. You can set up camp in a number of places. Enemies include snakes, tigers, fish and insect-bites.
Each game would probably be different, but set-pieces and story events prevent the game from having no conclusion. When you eventually find the village, you realize the island is under attack by other humans, and you end up being caught up in a war between two islands.
Only problem I can see would be the fact that it appears to offer little in the way of empowering the gamer in an obvious way - to explain, mainstream audiences want a gun, or at least a crowbar, and a clear 'baddie' to hit. The empowerment in your title would come from using your head to think yourself out of danger rather than using weapons to defeat danger. Personally, I'd love to play a game like this - I just doubt it would have mainstream appeal.
UNLESS! They nabbed the official license from ITV! Fools with no clue love a license, even if the game has little to do with it (as the game clearly wouldn't - tv contestants aren't in mortal danger, unfortunately).
Firstly, finding food and water. Very important, but would your character have to find food and water every single day? Or, once you'd found a suitable source of food and water, would your character be assumed to feed him/herself automatically, without the player having to tell them to?
Say you want to make a bonfire on the beach. Would the game engine recognise that rubbing two sticks together/focusing the sun using a salvaged bit of glass/etc produces heat? If the player decided to cut down trees and arrange them in the shape of the word "S.O.S" on the beach, would this be recognised as a man-made message by passing ships? If you want to fashion a stick into a spear so you can hunt some wildlife, would the game let you?
Thanks for reading,
SB.