My Ideas: A Game About Time, Which I Have So Little Of

I'm running out of my obvious ideas, but I won't stop this blog until at least I complete entries for all qualifying games of the original sixteen. Today we will cover Epoch, another game created in my college era and another of my "character" driven games, a classification more historical than accurate compared to my modern ideas.

Anyway, the concept itself is much easier to explain. The game revolves around time travel, though technically the main character travels back in time only once. The initial setting is an alternate Earth in the near future. Technology levels are actually all over the place. There are space stations, but space exploration is otherwise minimal, robotics technology is little better than it is for us, and society itself is mostly unchanged. On the other hand, government-run bio-engineering is the standard for some careers, including the use of biological energy weapons. Oh, and they created a prototype time machine.

The last one becomes useful immediately when aliens invade the planet. Their invasion force is overwhelming, but the people of this world had a chance at least of repelling it until it was discovered that more of the aliens lived under the surface of the planet, breeding and developing for millions of years. The combined force of the two armies attacking from opposite sides proved too much, and the planet was doomed immediately.

Fortunately, they had the time machine. Unfortunately, it was currently in a space station under attack by the aliens, and the entire original crew for the ship was dead. Instead, the only person who reached the machine without mortal wounds is Aurora "Aurie" Oliverio, a bio-engineered cop turned police detective. She readily agreed to the mission to save her planet, but her C+ level knowledge of history won't help, especially as the history books she took with her were blasted out of the time machine just as she left, causing them to be lost throughout the past.

Aurie's mission is two-fold and initially simple. The machine will take her to nine distinct time periods, including the one she just left, and spend two years in each one. In those two years, she has to use whatever help she can get from the locals to find any underground alien strongholds and destroy them. The time machine is immobile in the first three dimensions, so she will have to rely on each time period's transportation; thus, each later time period gives her a wider range she can explore. On the other hand, the strongholds get stronger with time, so the earlier she can find ways to destroy them, the better.

But that's the easy part of her mission, and her I have to make a convession about my design methodology; I have a strong tendency to overkill my concepts. This game is the best example of this. In addition to the alien strongholds, Aurie has to worry about the time stream itself. Due to a convenient quirk in quantum mechanics, Aurie, the time machine, and everything else in it are "paradox-proof" and thus can't be rendered nonexistent should Aurie, for example, kill her own grandparents. Everything else can be affected, so Aurie could alter the course of history, setting it back millennia or advancing it so the world she ends up with is advanced beyond her own comprehension. It's up to her to determine if she should make the world more advanced, even if it means unmaking everything and everyone she knows. Making matters worse are the risks of her screwing up due to her own ignorance and the aliens, should they learn of Aurie's success in destroying their bases, and their own plans to drive that civilization back.

So you can see why it would be a tough game to make. Even with the limitations I set, like limiting each era to only two or three major variants and using a reincarnation system that lets some playable characters potentially exist in multiple eras and circumstances, that's a lot of planning. It gets even worse when it factors in game play. There are obvious ramifications; for example, available weapons and armor changes based on the technology level Aurie helps civilization reach. I introduced other complexities as well, though. For example, Aurie can choose to invite people into her time machine and jump to later eras, which will remove them from their earlier historical roles, or even become romantically attached to some of them. Aurie and other time machine users get power ever era from satellites she launched at the start of her journey. The satellites absorb power for thousands of years and let these users, who synchronize with their power over the years, use special attacks at times. However, if she lets people stay behind, they can leave descendents with all the powers of their ancestors, plus enhancements due to generations of development. It makes for a tough decision for every character.

And the character focus is what makes this game qualify for the "character" category. Part of that is thanks to Aurie herself, which I arguably consider my first character with a real voice. Sarcastic, cynical beyond her years, and pragmatic even when casual, she remains well aware that the mission well out of her league, but she perseveres anyway. I planned on giving the player many ways to develop her, from chances for her to mature as she ages (remember, she gets 18 years older by the end of the game; when's the last time you saw a video game character, or at least an adult female, age?) There are even amusing quirks; she starts out a heavy smoker well aware that she'll spend years in time periods before her addiction of choice wasn't even invented, and she can either grow manic trying to speed the process along or learn to cut back or quit.

I could even imagine the ads. Many of them were "what if she had to fix our world" hypotheticals, where she would suddenly appear at, say, the Gettysburg address or next to Genghis Khan, and she would either completely ignore them while preparing to attack a nearby alien den or calm recite a list of instructions to the legends of the past, happily apathetic to their growing outrage or terror. It would have been beautiful.

The other characters were less developed, at least by the time when I stopped working on the design document, but it inspired me to grow up thematically at the least. Potential storylines included a years long, Columbus-style voyage by sea where Aurie traveled with one of the few historical figures she both admired and knew about, only to watch her disappointment as she learned of his faults. It explored the consequences of war and its aftermath, and it offered countless versions of the idealism versus realism moral debate, like whether it was right to let an evil tyrant rise to power if it meant preserving history. It featured my first gay and bisexual characters. Hell, the game even featured an alternate-planet version of Jesus! This was an old idea, and it's definitely one that that needs revision before I even could get started again, but I'd love to give it the treatment it deserved one day. All I would need is time.