Submissions by austinobrien tagged death

Your dungeon is pitiful; pilfer-able by peasants and pheasants alike, and it's time that that changed. No more shall you be an understudy and a failure - you shall show the world why they must clamber to reach your lofty entrances, and more so, why they will burn and perish in the hellish underworld you have constructed. Take on the role of a dungeon master, and craft an intricate world for plunderers to explore - filled with all the treasure they could desire. But plan carefully, so that for every man or woman that leaves with an ounce of your gold, one thousand more are buried amongst your bone-littered pits. Create and lay out pathways for the knights and adventurers, and sit back and enjoy as you rake in their hard-earned gold and money, and develop an even more grandiose and intricate castle to crush them!

Game Features:

  • An idle game with heavy strategical elements (Set up your castle and watch those adventurers bring in cash in real-time!)
  • Build a fantasy that you enjoy (Want a lair of dragons? A coven of witches? Or just a never-ending line of spikes? Go for it!)
  • Upgrade those old-timey traps to keep them as relevant as your adventurers are
  • Move on up in the world! (Orphans may be the first to perish at your doorstep, but they'll soon learn to stay away - super ambitious adventurers? Not so much)

Unique Selling Points:

  • Strategy-based tower defense with idling mechanics makes for some mega-fun!
  • Make your world unique - you choose the traps, you choose the pathways, you choose their deaths!
  • Watch an idle game in real-time! Don't just see numbers go up, see the gold pour in when your dragon toasts an entire raid party!

Image Source: http://img13.deviantart.net/a152/i/2013/221/f/5/demo_pixel_dungeon_04_assembly_by_bitgem-d6hcw13.jpg

Note: This game deals with heavy themes of suicide and depression.

Sometimes, the shortest breaks from our own mind can feel the longest. In Fall, you take on the role of a depressed office worker, and after extenuating circumstances, you've decided that this will be your final day. Brought to the rooftop, you are left standing on the edge, contemplating the fall beneath you. But when you step out and plummet, rather than disappearing past the ashen fog forever, you reappear at the top of the world and merely drop down again - this time landing squarely on a platform that wasn't there before. A broken, dilapidated bridge leads off into the distance, and you follow it to explore a dream-like reality. Jumping from building to building and using your new found ability, you solve puzzle after puzzle, climbing higher into the clouds above. Finally, the clouds break as you ascend the final staircase, and you stride onto a building; the very building you began from. With your otherworldly entrance crumbling behind you, you're stranded at the beginning again – alone and cold on a rooftop with a horrible decision. The door leading downstairs is wide open, but the ledge is still there, as open and inviting as it was before. But this time - if you so choose - your fall will end.

Game Features:

  • Basic platforming mechanics with added complexity of teleportation from falling
  • Simplistic puzzles involving pushing and pulling blocks; with deathly traps
  • Short gameplay length – this isn't intended to be a long, or a mechanically intensive game

Unique Selling Points:

  • Engage with the thought process of suicide in a new, unique, and less direct manner
  • Strong reinforcement of narrative themes through gameplay mechanics
  • Sympathise and rationalise with the struggle of attempting to escape harmful lines of reasoning

Image Source: Austin O'Brien

Saviour is a sidescroller platformer that follows the descent of an innocent, hopeful, saviour into their own worst nightmare - something unrecognisable - something they never intended or planned on becoming - a cold, heartless monster. Awakening to find yourself stuck in a rotten, broken-down cell – you are released from your chamber, only to clamber out and realise you've been stranded in a testing facility. Exploring the dangerous ruins is no easy task, and you soon find and free prisoners like yourself: innocents caught up in the maddening events transpiring. However the world takes a turn for the sinister when it becomes clear that sometimes not everyone gets to continue on. Confronted by the awful choice of choosing a victim for execution, you must come to grips with your own internal questions of morality as you send hapless prisoners to their death, to forge a route onwards for the others. All may be permitted in the name of survival, but who are we truly saving?

Game Features:

  • Basic platforming mechanics (jumping, running, climbing), with potential for more complex inter-character mechanical interactions (giving another character a leg up, etc.)
  • Multiple character control (swap what character is being controlled to choose their fate!)
  • Dialogue based character interaction and narrative exposition (those characters aren't going to talk for themselves!)

Unique Selling Points:

  • Subverting common tropes of heroism to explore a unique moral quandary in a personal light
  • Explore the grey morality of choosing a sacrifice, and dealing with the fallout from that decision

Image Source: Bedrich Narcis