Far Out There: I want a gaaaaaame! (Patreon)

Okay, so my computer's still up on blocks, but while my old laptop may be woefully incapable of running my art programs (you'll notice a conspicuous lack of a picture with this blog) it IS still capable of basic typing, so i figured go ahead and post a blog post I'd been toying with.  Or, to be more precise, frantically try to rewrite a blog I'd been toying with for a while  ENTIRELY from memory... so, sorry if this one's even more sloppy and typo-riddled than usual.

Anyway, I used to really love video games.  I mean, I still do, but I don't get around to playing anywhere near as much as i used to, and what I DO play is rooted pretty firmly in the 80s/90s retro era.  For example, at Anime Weekend Atlanta I worked my way down a row of Pc Engine games like a fat guy at a Chinese buffet (...oh, who am I kidding? Like ME at a Chinese buffet).  And with a steady stream of old school indie games coming out every day, I can't help occasionally thinking: wouldn't a Far Out There video game be awesome?

Long time readers will know this isn't a complete pipe dream.  Remember the Avatar dress-up game?  All those little Far Out There flash game cameos are among the coolest fan-works I've ever seen, and are proof that you don't need a million-dollar company and a world-famous IP to make a game... they may help, but you don't NEED them (Ya hear that, Homestuck?  YOU'RE NOT INTIMIDATING ANYBODY!)  So suppose I suddenly had a handful of sufficiently talented game makers willing to do whatever I told them.  What kind of Far Out There games would I demand they produce for my amusement?

The answers can easily be divided up into two groups: the actually possible ones, and the rest.  I mean, yes, ANY video game would be in the "not possible" category if it were up to me on my own to program from the ground up, but ASIDE from that.  Like, the genres that have idiot-proof do-it-yourself game makers out there, or that can be easily produced by amateurs with more enthusiasm than professional experience.  It would be well within the realms of possibility to do RPG Maker Game no. 2,523,836,706 just with Far Out There characters, for example.  It'd probably suck, though, even if it wasn't just dumb ol' me making it myself.  It's a bit hard to imagine a situation to justify Trigger and Layla casting thunderbolts at slimes in knock-off Dragon Quest dungeon crawls, and that IS what this time of game is basically about.  Well, okay, there's also a strongly realized plot to drive the quest forward... but Far Out There isn't exactly known for its tight plotting and brisk forward momentum, either.  A traditional Far Out There RPG would probably boil down to MILES AND MILES of scrolling boxes of text while boxy, big-headed sprites just stand there facing each other.  Even a diehard fan would probably find that boring, while a casual player would straight up hate it.

And that's the thing: ideally a Far Out There game would need to be as much an advertisement for the series as a treat to the pre-existing fanbase, and to be an effective advertisement it really would need to be GOOD.  Consider the gold standard of tie-in games; Goldeneye.  90% of the people who love that game DON'T love it because of their pre-existing passion for the James bond franchise, but because it's really fun!  Blocky Pierce Brosnan shooting post-communist Russians is just the icing on the cake.  Now, it's unlikely that any Far Out There game would just happen to be a revolutionary masterpiece that changes the way the world views its respective genre.  However, it WOULD need to be good enough that the Far Out There trappings serve to work WITH the gameplay, not cover up the flaws with personality... that would just be lost on a player without a prior attachment to the series.  and it DEFINITELY shouldn't be a game where the Far Out There content actually gets in the way of the gameplay.  If Goldeneye's mechanics had been applied to a tie-in game for, say, Tommy Boy or Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, it probably wouldn't have turned out as well.

So then, what kind of games would be feasible by amateur creators, naturally incorporate Far Out There material, and turn out well enough to entertain non-fans?  There's a decent number of possibilities, though a lot of them are a bit weak on at least one of those points.  I've seen a lot of games out there that are basically standard puzzle games with recognizable characters slapped on.  You know, half the screen is taken up with the cards or movable colored tiles or totally-not-Tetris falling blocks, while the rest is a window with a character reacting to what you do.  That sort of thing would be relatively easy to just slap Far Out There characters onto, especially since nobody really expects any kind of story from that kind of game.  And you know you'd like to see Layla angrily fuming because you're lining up the cascading colored gem sprites faster than her.  Unfortunately, the challenge of actually MAKING that kind of game is a bit high... at least, if you don't want to get in trouble for blatantly ripping another game off.  If you don't want your game to blatantly be That Other Game Just With These Characters In It, you basically need to invent a whole new gameplay mechanism from scratch.  And let's face it, the failure rate for that sort of thing is pretty darn high.  

On the other hand, a side-scrolling platformer has a much lower bar to clear where originality is concerned.  Most people don't really mind of your side scroller is same basic jumping as Mario or shooting as Mega Man, so long as the levels and presentation are unique.  Buuuuuut then there's the issue of making a platformer work with Far Out There.  Nobody plays Sonic the Hedgehog for the dialog and worldbuiling (YOU HEAR ME, SEGA???) and it's kind of hard to imagine Trigger spin dashing through swarms of robot monsters.  It's not insurmountable, though.  Playing through a side-scrolling brawler as Bridget could actually be a really natural fit, and dialog wouldn't even be an issue!   But then there's the practical mater of making the thing.  I dunno what's out there in the way of Make Your Own Side Scroller programs, but I DO know that it wouldn't get around the matter of doing a MOUNTAIN of sprite animation.  Every single, solitary punch would take... well, I don't even know how many individual frames, but it'd be a LOT, and the nicer and more fluid the gameplay, the more frames of animation it would demand.

The same problem would confront a Far Out There vertical shooter... which probably needs a bit of explanation.  You'd THINK animation in a genre where you generally play as a tiny spaceship constantly traveling in one direction would be fairly simple, except that's not really the kind of idea that'd work with Far Out There anyway.  We don't normally see The Exposition frantically weaving its way through bullet hell swarms, after all.  however, I DO think it'd pretty pretty darn cool to play a shooter where your "ship" is actually a top-down view of Stilez blasting her way through advancing armies.  I forget the name, but I've actually seen games like that: you played as a ninja constantly running forward, so it played like the standard flying spaceship game despite LOOKING totally different.  Replace "ninja" with "gun-wielding catgirl" and you've got a ready made idea for a Far Out There game!  There'd be comically huge guns and constant explosions and occasionally Tax would swoop in on a rocket to drop items, fun for the whole family.  And who wouldn't want to play a game where a catgirl shoots everything ever?  But, again, the execution would be a real challenge, what with the need to show a character actually RUNNING at all times instead of just sliding around and calling it "flying."  And that's not even getting into how elaborate all the explosions would need to be in a Stilez game.  You are NOT allowed to just have the same one stock explosion in a game where Stilez is the star, you gotta have ALL the explosions, lovingly rendered across the entire screen.  There's just no point otherwise.

What does that leave?  Well, in terms of pure do-ability, the most realistic possibility for a Far Out There game would be a Visual Novel.  I know there's make-your-own programs for that sort of thing, and people pretty much expect them all to have the same basic interface.  It's a dialog-based genre by nature, so being super text heavy isn't an obstacle AND it'd be a good showcase for Far Out There's sense of humor.  Also, the art would be less animation and more stationary character art with different expressions, which is pretty much all I'm "good" at drawing anyway.  So, can we count on a Far Out There visual novel in the future?  ...well, I dunno.  It's something I'd be interested in dabbling in, but there's still some major problems.  First and foremost: I DON'T KNOW DIDDLY ABOUT VISUAL NOVELS.  How am I supposed to know what makes a good one?  And then there's finding the time to write a whole extra story for the thing -SEVERAL extra stories if I do the whole branching plot line thing right- while already trying to find the time to LEARN HOW TO MAKE VIDEO GAMES.  And then there's the question of whether or not it would actually be effective as a means of getting the Far Out There brand out to the masses.  I mean, I know there's a pre-existing audience for the genre... but there's also plenty of people who'd just automatically think "Oh, it's a Dating Simulator' and walk away.  Actually, that could be a dual problem.  I'm sure there'd be a non-insignificant number of people who would WANT that, on the assumption that it'd be one of THOSE dating simulators.  I'm not sure of the advertising value in attracting the interest of people who'll just walk away annoyed that they never got a single glimpse of Layla's boobs.  Sorry kids, you'll have to make your OWN dang Far Out There game for that.

There's one other option... but first, let's take a little break from anything resembling reality.  Remember how I said there were basically two kinds of Far Out There game ideas?  Well, there's also the ones that would be straight up AWESOME but will absolutely never happen.  The games that pretty much require a full team of professionals if they're going to be anything other than terrible.  You'd better believe I've got a few pie in the sky ideas in that department.  Like what, you ask?  A giant MMORPG in the Far Out There universe with over-elaborate Minecraft trappings?  A full body virtual reality attraction?  A hyper-violent Mortal Kombat clone with digitized sprites of actors in Far Out There costumes?  Hardly.  Would you believe *drumroll* A KART RACER???

...okay, yeah, that's kind of a silly dream to have.  Still, remember the era that I'm a product of.  Time was that EVERYBODY wanted to be the next Mario Kart, all the big franchises had their random racing games.  Sonic had one, Mega Man had one, Crash Bandicoot had one, I'm sure Aero the Acro-bat and Zool would have had them if they could.  If you wanted to be considered a "real" multimedia franchise, you got yourself a kart racer.  And, darn it, I want Far Out There to have one!  I want to see cell shaded characters in improbably ticked out go-karts hurling weapons at each other while tearing through inexplicably track-shaped locations from the comic.  Barrelling down the halls of The Exposition, dodging monsters on the Caligari's home planet, knocking robots out of the way on The killer Station of Deadly Doom, that sort of thing!  And it's the kid of game where audiences are conditioned to not even worry about the plot, so making it an effective showcase for Far Out There isn't really an issue.  Just drop all the characters into the thing and give them some distinctive win quotes, and you're golden!  It's doesn't have to make sense.  Heck, I could even throw in unlockable character cameos like Becky & Gilb or the Conventional Wisdom mascots!  Wouldn't that be awesome?  Of course it would!  ...it'd also be waaaaaaay too much for a small-time operation like me to ever even hope of having.  But I can dream, right?

Actually, there's two Never Even Remotely Gonna Happen game ideas I still think would be great, the other being a Mario Party-type game.  You know, two to six players pick characters to wander around a board, play minigames at the end of each turn, rack up as many points as they can, and generally destroy their friendships when cop-out special items and traps totally change who's in the lead without warning.  Fun for the whole family!  Like the Kart racer idea, you don't really need to worry about a plot to justify what's happening, there's plenty of opportunities for characters to show their personality via reactions and win screens, and it'd be fun!  At least, it COULD be fun, assuming a full team of talented professionals brought their A-game to the thing.  After all, the "board game" aspect of Mario Party is really a minor aspect of the game (in later installments, even more so), it lives or dies on the strength of the mini-games.  So, instead of trying to make ONE fun video game, you're really trying to make FIFTY!  That's juuuuust a bit beyond what I could ever hope to make happen.

But there IS one other idea.  One that I THINK manages to straddle the line between "Hey, wouldn't this be amazing" and "There's even the slightest chance of this actually happening."  One that's not exactly The Hip Current Thing, but has enough of a cult fanbase that, done well, MIGHT attract an audience beyond pre-existing Far Out There readers.  One that could actually be produced without an entire department of programmers and artists working round the clock.  That idea *even bigger drumroll*.... is a Point-and-Click Adventure.  you know, like one of the old Sierra games, something like Space Quest.  Heck, Space Quest is a perfect example of why it'd be a perfect fit for Far Out There, and not just because of the Sci-Fi aspect.  Those games are HILARIOUS, they're perfect vehicles for a comedic property like Far Out There!  Everyone knows they aren't fast games, so you wouldn't have to worry about bugging down the gameplay with comic stuff.  And they're wildly text-based anyway, so reams and reams of dialog wouldn't bother anybody.  Oh, and since you're expected to poke around every corner and investigate every little thing, Far Out There's trademark worldbuilding would actually be a strength.  I always complaining about how there's little details and side characters I don't get to do enough with in the comic, right?  This would be the perfect way to get that out in the open!  And since it's not really an action-based genre, it avoids the issue of having to explain why somebody's suddenly doing things the character would never do in the comic.  Ichabod wandering around talking to people in order to solve a mystery in his latest nitpicking job, or Layla collecting a series of weird items as part of some scheme to rip off a local crime boss or something, stuff like this would be a perfect fit in an actual Far Out There comic.  And best of all, there's plenty of historical precedent for these types of games being made by just a handful of people with minimal funding!

Granted, that's not to say it'd be EASY, there's still the matter of, you know, actually MAKING A GAME.  A game where a character leisurely strolls over to an item and looks at it isn't inherently easier to program than an action game just because it moves more slowly.  It's still a craft I don't know the first thing about, and even if i stumbled across a Make Your Own Point and Click program somewhere, it's still be a LOT of work.  And that's just building the game's foundation.  There's still the need for a plot and dialog and flavor text and all the little details that make a world worth adventuring through.  All that stuff has to come from somewhere, which means lots and lots more writing on top of the stuff I'm already always running behind on.  And, well, there's also the fact that I haven't actually PLAYED an adventure game in yeeeeeaaaaaars.  Watching a Space Quest playthrough on Game Grumps is hardly the kind of hands-on experience that reminds a person what makes a for a pleasant gaming experience.  Still, even with all that, a Point & Click Far Out There is a lot more likely than most of the things on this list.  

So, yeah, Far Out There video games.  Really, the odds of anything every happening along those lines are slim to nil, not unless the comic can become popular enough for people to do an awful lot of work on it for no money.  Lord knows that's the only way this comic gets drawn in the first place.  That is, unless I can convince my cosplayer friends to act out that digitized Mortal Kombat game. maybe I should get on that...