Quarantine thinking

Right now I'm working from home. It's nice to be in the IT industry where you can work remotely and don't have to worry as much about the job, you have VPN, Hangouts, Teamviewer, etc... So it's quarantine season because of the COVID-19 pandemic and it had me thinking.

Is it the right time to release a hospital themed video game? I mean release is far away, but if I manage to release it in 2 years people will think it was inspired by current events. And people will be more sensitive about subjects of healthcare... But that's not the point. I was more worried about finishing anything at all in the first place. You see, I have some experience in game desing, I'm a programmer for over 10 years now. But I have a lot to learn still to deliver a game. And I was thinking about scaling back to the original idea first. It lets me practice 3D modelling and Unity, meanwhile I set a smaller, more achievable scope for the game. If it turns out well enough I can go further with the expanded idea where you can walk around the hospital and solve the mysteries of the cases. For now I just want the medical-drama and digital novel feel of the Trauma Center games and we'll see where it goes.

Music

The main inspiration for music is Shoji Meguro. No big surprise here. I love the music of the Trauma Center games, Persona 3 and Maken Shao. His music was also inspired by the score of House. So I would like to have similar music. My idea is something that is somewhat jazzy, with a lot of mild piano, sometimes hard beats. I might be over ambitious, or simply crazy but christmas came early this year (it's a KORG nanoKEY Studio and I'm testing it with the demo version of Reason):

Planning Phase

I'm knee deep in planning. I have many ideas, snippets, morsels that can make the game great. But I have to form it into a working game loop. I have gameplay ideas and little details that can enhance the mood, deepen the characters but these little ideas don't add up to a complete game yet. I have to start prototyping soon so I can see if the ideas gonna work. I know I'll have to sacrifice some of them because I can't cram everything into just one game.

In the mean time, I'm playing Persona 3 to get a good feel of the JRPG side of things, the navigation and the interactions. Also I'm playing Trauma Center 2 on DS because I just remembered I beat both Wii games and the first DS game but I still haven't beaten TC2 on DS, also, I started to watch House from the first season. Damn, this series is phenomenal. I'm collecting experiences, ideas while I'm trying to plan my own game right now. I have to do some Blender learning and start working with Unity soon. Damn, I have a lot to learn, a lot to plan but I really want to make this game.

Source of inspiration

The chain of inspiration as follows:

Trauma Center

The very first game that started me thinking about making a game about a doctor and life in a hospital. I liked the frantic action of the operations, the serious tone of the story and the awesome music by Shoji Meguro.

Valkyria Chronicles II

After finishing the original game I bought the second one right away but I didn't play it at once. It was too much of a setback after the first game on a technical level so I had to leave some time between the two so the differences weren't as painful. What really grabbed me in the second game was the dialogues and cutscenes. As I played through the game I kept thinking of my abandoned hospital game idea like "I could do the dialogues with portraits but have them blink, maybe some lip movement". But overall the dialogues were like scenes from a simple yet effective graphic novel.

House

This is a no brainer. I bought the whole series of House and finished watching it last year. I loved the whole detective aspect of it and the luxurious private hospital feel. Everything was so modern and clean. I didn't understand much of the doctor-talk but I enjoyed it very much. Also, House had some influence on the Trauma Center series.

Persona 3

In the early brainstorming session my friend and I were talking about making the game a little more than Trauma Center. Have something more than just the operations, let the player have some branching paths based on decisions or maybe let the player walk around the hospital some on the down time. Or maybe let the player have an office where they can take a look at personal stuff. Then I found Persona 3. Yeah, I'm a late comer to the Persona series. The everyday life of a student looked charming, I liked how you have to balance your free time between building relationships and improving your stats. And just the free roaming of the game's world grabbed me and I knew at that moment I need to integrate this into my hospital game idea somehow.

Also, I uploaded a new photo to the 3D learning post, the donut tutorial is complete :)