My Ideas: Dark Banner of Kylaria

As you already guessed, no, I didn't get a chance to make up for the "suffering from a horrible disease" missed entry. It turns out that my cold is actually a sinus infection, and while the normal cold symptoms have passed, I still have a horrible cough. But the show must go on! Any of my 1.3 or so readers can feel free to wish me well, health-wise, but I will continue to do these blogs either way. Besides, tonight's is my favorite subject, the old ideas I had. And, since my future looks to be full of unpleasant yellow substances and hacking noises, let's focus on the past, and a game idea of the genre classification. A game idea that was once, at least, three game ideas.

This is a response to a particular neurosis I have. I can never let an idea die. Well, I can, but it would have to be incredibly stupid first. Otherwise, even if a game idea itself never manages to get anywhere (creatively, obviously, since professionally none of them have yet to reach this achievement,) some of the characters, ideas, settings, or game play features are interesting enough to salvage. This game idea, known as the Dark Banner of Kylaria, is unique in that it was made of almost nothing but.

The concept had its base from an earlier "Me too!" genre idea. Specifically, it came from trying to make an idea for a real time simulator after being enchanted with Warcraft 2, and yet disappointed with its map-making features. I had elaborate plans in my head of maps involving massive slave revolts, hunts for hidden objects, quest to overthrow empires, and so on. But Warcraft 2 just wasn't at that level of complexity; it was kill the other side or be killed. Plus, it began my irritation with a common staple of the genre; anything you do on one map doesn't carry over to the next.

The Kylarian Campaign was my response to this. It was a ludicrously elaborate RTS with not two, not three, but TWELVE unique sides. This was also my "unnecessary overkill" period, I must admit. I assumed each would be less individually developed than a Warcraft race, at least. There would be four "good" races, like a good human kingdom, ye olde typicale elves and dwarves, and a pack of northern barbarians who used ice-based powers. There were four evil races, include ye juste ase typicale dark elves, an allegiance of evil humanoids like orcs, an undead horde, and an evil magic-hating human empire. The neutrals were pretty weird, though, and they included dragon-based lizard people, an allegiance of aquatic races, a force of intelligent nonhumanoid monsters, and magical space travelers. Ideally, you could select your level from a number of options, and your choices would affect which of the other 11 side would ally with yours and which would become enemies. This idea, while neat sounding, eventually faded due to lack of interest.

But it was brought to my attention again when I tried to rip off ANOTHER genre after playing Final Fantasy Tactics. It's the usual formula among designers. 1: See something we like. 2: Play/watch/read/etc. it until we become completely enchanted with it. 3: Figure out how to make it better. There wasn't much in this case, barring translation errors, but I tried anyway. Eventually, I needed backstory, and Kylaria came back to me.

This time, events occurred some 500 years after the RTS would have finished. Good won, but not completely. The evil humans were supposedly wiped out, the evil humanoids and undead formed their own empires and started a fantasy equivalent of the Cold War, and the neutral races mostly were retconned out of existence. This game began when the supposedly destroyed evil human empire returned, wiped out the northern barbarians in a traditional "look how evil we are" move, and then began a plan to destroy the other races.

But I needed more material. More importantly, I needed actual characters; RTSes at that stage were notoriously limited on that subject, but after Final Fantasy Tactic's brilliant if almost indecipherable plot, I had to do more. I responded as by salvaging even more ideas. For the protagonists, I reached deeper into the past into a game so old, I don't even know if it has a name. It involved a group of pale, attractive humanoids who lived underground and would dissolve instantly if exposed to the light of day. This version changed it to "damaged over time," and took the three leads, a mostly personality-free protagonist and his two female friends/potential love interests, as they had to leave their sheltered underground habitat to find help on the surface after their home was threatened by a magical rock elemental thingy.

As for villains, I reached even farther into the past. I utilized a game called The Black Flag, which came before I ever heard of the other things named after that. I think there was a band and a pesticide, but I'm not sure. Anyway, this idea was nothing but a hypothetical side-scrolling action game I created when imagining what sort of projects I would make when I went to Digipen. Well, if I went to Digipen, but I hoped at the time.

This is actually a bit of a sore subject, so we'll get to that in a later blog.

Anyway, the noteworthy thing was that Black Flag itself, or at least the boss enemies, were THEMSELVES salvaged from at least two other ideas I had for licensed projects. One of these was started about the time I was eight. That's a long history for a project I don't even work on much as of late.

But, hey, we finally have a semblance of a plot. The heroes are three outsiders thrust by crisis into the intrigue of a good nation forced into shaky ground with more dangerous empires, once sympathetic, one inherently evil (save for vampires and the occasional ghost, undead never get nice treatments.) And all three were being played by the new force, which included several mechanical and bio-engineered monsters from my older game designs (and you know that'll be another blog.) I just needed an explanation for the robots and such. I eventually figured that the evil empire, now known as the Dark Banner, spent those 500 years becoming a technologically advanced nation while the other empires were locked in magical advancement.

Even that was a stretch until I worked out the game's big climax. They gained this rapid advancement rate by creating a creature called Intellect. Intellect was a nation-wide social engineering program. They sought out the most brilliant scientists and overall geniuses, arrested them, and eventually merged all of them into one being. A decade later, I have to admit I have no idea how they started this process, but here we are. As the years passed, they continued this, sacrificing hundreds or thousands of super-geniuses into the collective mind of Intellect, which was forced to advanced technology several times faster than all of Earth's scattered intellects could. Of course, in the climax, Intellect goes insane, destroys its masters (or any left after the party killed most of them in boss fights,) and tries to conquer the world, so the party kills it. Hey, it's not a Jesus allegory, but it would do.

I actually was a little proud of this game. The villain's plot revolved around splitting its army into different combat units, each with its own theme. They would separately attack each empire but randomly spare certain parts, leading to accusations of treason between each nation and within as well. Meanwhile the Dark Banner itself was not unified, especially in the machinations of their spymistress. And there were even branching story paths, including if the party can return home and stop the earth elemental in time, and multiple possible new party members, which admittedly mostly came from the party I used to beat Final Fantasy Tactics the first time. There are ideas everywhere!

So what have I learned from this project? Well, I learned the sad truth that you can't write "this game has intrigue!" without getting in to more detail about how that intrigue will play out. I learned that interest is often difficult to maintain, though if I had this idea today, who knows how it would have played out? And nonetheless, I learned that every idea is a lead to another. Every past character or concept may very well be just what the next idea needs. And hell, if I ever get into a company that's looking for some new strategy-based IP, I know how that meeting will go (unless they read this blog, I guess.)