Another silly game design meme
This seemed amusing, especially since I am barely blogging and need content. 😉
Hi Raph! 🙂
Inspired by “#backflick” on Twitter, I’ve started #backgames:
http://justonemoregame.wordpress.com/2009/02/24/backgames-videogame-plots-in-reverse/
I’ve written 15. Here are a few, to whet your appetite….
*Cave Story* A traveller lands on a floating island, helps the Doctor enslave the Mimigas, then falls asleep & forgets everything.
*Katamari Damacy* A prince must hide the stars, by rolling them across the earth’s surface, until they break into small everyday objects.
*Asteroids* A spaceship tends a galactic garden, growing tiny rocks into huge boulders.
Thought your visitors might like to submit a few of their own?
— Gabe aka Mr_Staypuft JustOneMoreGame
19 Responses to “Another silly game design meme”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Call of Duty 4 – Imperialist westerners leave 3rd world nations, restoring infrastructure and distributing medicines as they go.
Pac Man – Strange pizza-like creature goes around vomiting up small pellets until he’s so dehydrated he starts seeing ghosts.
Lemmings – They do the same thing they were doing except in reverse.
Glad to save you from a ‘slow news day’ Raph! 🙂
Nice work Todd!
I’d written a Pacman one of my own, but your invention of WHY the ghosts appear (dehydration) is just great. Well done.
World of Warcraft: You start out with unbelievable epic loot and screencaps of yourself standing over the massive corpses of dead monsters. Gradually, these things all vanish, but your actual lifespan doubles.
Bionic Commando: A man with a metal hand is gradually rescued from a military complex through the use of a clever relay of magnetic induction devices.
Charades: Your friend points at you. You shout out something at random and then he has to pantomime it. Your other friends yell random things in the background. Everyone sobers and leaves.
Spy vs Spy – two spies arrive at a tropical island in a submarine, wave goodbye to the girl they leave behind in the sub, then run around on the island helping one another to avoid lethal traps while dropping torpedo parts at random locations on the island.
The Settlers – lots of small computer people cooperate to very slowly dismantle an entire town, bringing all the building materials back to the castle then somehow turn the wooden planks back into trees in the wilderness, bricks back into raw stone in quarries and then proceed to hide valuable minerals deep underground.
^ Everyone sobers up and leaves. D’oh.
I also absolutely had to add this one.
Metroid: A woman carefully disguises herself in a combat suit, sets up an AI to manage the planet, and leaves in a spaceship.
SimCity: Godzilla strides through the wasteland, constructing a thriving metropolis.
Spore: A spacefaring archaeologist uncovers the histories of ancient civilizations.
You Have to Burn the Rope: a devastated mad scientist rebuilds his monstrous creation, and then repairs his chandelier.
Tetris: Groups of blocks are slowly pulled out out of a single large pile of blocks until they have all been neatly sorted and categorised.
Transport Tycoon: You play as Dr. Richard Beeching during the 1950s in Britain as he slowly dismantles the rail network.
Worms: [removed] That one’s a bit too crude for me I think.
The Sims: Manage a house full of successful and wealthy socialites as they slowly lose their worldly possessions, and are kicked down the social ladder rung by rung, until they are left with no job, no friends, and no place to live.
Wow… welcome to the real world.
Civilization: Take over a mighty empire as it shuts down its space program, lets its science and technology languish, watches its infrastructure decay, and slowly dwindles into nothing more than a roving band of ignorant savages.
Super mario brothers: A plumber delivers his girlfriend to a monstrous king, and returns home via treacherous wildlife preserve, spreading life as he goes, and informing other monstrous barons that his girlfriend went to someone else
Elite Beat Agents: A hit dance group re-unites, their performances becoming more simplistic as they perform
Pheonix Wright: Innocent people are put through the trauma of court and everyone is left suspecting that they really did commit some crime whilst evidence suddenly appears at key locations for the case.
Left 4 Dead: A team of paramedics tend to a goth riot, leaving medicines lying around as they go
Unreal Tournament: An fighter is demoted through the ranks until they retire to live on a mining colony
Uplink: A lone hacker removes viruses from the internet and leaves it cyber-crime free
And a somewhat meta one –
Bejeweled: You have free time – lots of it 😛
Braid: save the girl, or uh … or maybe chase her, then go back (forward?) in time, and uh … i dunno. Read some pretentious and badly-written prose about the atomic bomb? i don’t think it’s very coherent in either direction.
@Michelle D’israeli,
Oh no no no, you’ve got it all wrong.
Super Mario Brothers: A potential king and hero to the people discovers his princess-girlfriend has been cheating on him with a much larger, stronger and more turtlier sorcerer-king-dude. After narrowly avoiding getting his butt kicked by said new beau, he gets as far away as frikkin’ possible from her castle and kingdom, eventually crashing at his brother’s place and apprenticing under him to become a plumber.
(Seriously Mario! The signs are there! SHE LETS HIM IN!!!)
@Ryan Henderson Creighton,
If it helps, Braid would be:
Braid: Drop out of college before finishing your physics degree to spend more time with your girlfriend. Whether it works out or not, you stay sane and happy, meaning that time never goes all foldy-like.
Oh, and my own:
Pong: Dodgeball.
Freespace 2: A massive fleet of benevolent robot aliens create a new solar system just in time for a joint Human-Vasudan fleet to open up a jump gate to it. The allies then wages a massive invasion against the robots, defeating them on every front despite being heavily outnumbered. After pushing the robots out of the region and colonizing all the planets, the alliance is immediately pulled into a civil war with a racist branch of the militia who are now supported from the shadows by the robots. Your pilot is summarily trounced through the ranks as they keep getting fewer and fewer kills with every passing mission.
Lego backwards is taking things appart into miscellaneous sized blocks, placing them back in the box in neat, orderly rows.
i.e. Lego backwards is Tetris!
On the other hand, Tetris backward is not Lego, thus game design is not cummutative 🙂
Diablo II: A man travels westwards, slowly becomes less possessed by a ruling demon, clears out infestations of evil, until he reaches a place where he is celebrated as the killer of the ruling demon that terrorised a village by sending minions out into the world through a church.
Sonic: A blue hedgehog closes up woodland creatures in capsules, and runs across an area dropping rings around the place and fixing robots. Oh and hides emeralds in various places around the place.
Overlord: A guy goes around bringing the 7 deadly sinners to life and placing them in positions of power, removes his minions from the land, and goes for a nap in the crypt below his tower.
I really want to try reverse Tetris now!