Ben Steenson DOS Survival Game 1

What is this game?

A Retro-style DOS game with a focus on player-
built narrative, using brand new dialogue and
survival mechanics.

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What is anybody going to care?
This game is designed to give the player power
they've never had before to make decisions that
have massive effect on the game world. Players are
likely to enjoy this game for its open and
rewarding gameplay, its interesting and unique
style, or maybe even to learn how to speak to
people in new and exciting ways.

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Who is the game for?
Aside from other game developers interested in the
new concepts and code this game will feature,
people who retro games, challenge and/or <3
dialogue in RPGs are the main target audience, with
our audience aged around about 16+. The client for
this game is both Raffles College, as this game
will be built for assessment, and also for the
developer, as this is an interesting personal
challenge.
Ben Steenson DOS Survival Game 2
A Basic Player Narrative
You wake up in a ships medical bay. Your memory is
fuzzy, but it looks as though the room is in much
worse repair. Theres wires hanging everywhere and
you can see a few dead people killed by their own
medical equipment. Sparks are coming out of the
computers, and all the cupboards are open and
visibly have been hoarded of medical supplies.
You get up and kneel beside one of the bodies. You
remember this person. Jak. You take his ID card
off his body, and add it to your collection of
memory items, which has a photo of the medical
bay, your own passport and an empty bottle of
pills.
You start to move out of the room and notice
yourself limping. You need medical attention soon.
You walk through a few hallways that are visibly
damaged and have bodies lying all over, the floors
painted with blood, making sure to log everywhere
you go down on a piece of paper you found in your
pocket.
You walk past an escape pod, which is clearly the
most pristine object youve seen so far. You
briefly step in and take note of the stocked fridge
and comfy seats. You see that the computer is
blinking ready for immediate departure. As you
turn to collect medical supplies from the fridge, a
loud voice instructs you to stop.
You stay frozen in place, looking down at the
fridge, and take your time to construct a basic
Ben Steenson DOS Survival Game 3
What? As you say it, you push down and try pull
off an authoritative voice.
Nobody takes rations frem da emergency escape
pod! His thick Scottish accent reveals that your
attempt at being threatening didnt work. Instead,
you decide to try and persuade the guy. You pull
out the pill bottle and your passport, and
construct the phrase, My name is Address. Im hurt
badly. Can you get me pills? You make sure to put
inflections in your words, and point at your
injuries, hoping hell be sympathetic.
As it turns out, your persuasion abilities worked.
Ah, allright, las. Come here an Ill gettya
sumtan. He proceeds to move off towards another
hallway. Youre initially sceptical, staring at
that launch button for the escape pod, but you
decide to follow him. Knowing youll need to
remember this location for later, you try and find
something to scavenge. You end up breaking one of
the safety harnesses, and take the belt buckle.





Ben Steenson DOS Survival Game 4
Interface/Visual Style/Controls
The game will look
like a common Windows
application, with a
console window in the
top left for the
games ASCII
graphics, which
usually remain white
except in special
circumstances. This is to force players to focus
intently on the screen whenever dialogue/actions
are not appropriate, as this is a slower-paced
game. There is an inventory of cards to the right
and a tabbed browser of all actions and dialogue
phrases on the bottom. When a player clicks these,
they go to the preview line, so the player may
adjust their command. Audio will be limited to bit-
tune music.
Certain actions, like walking and inflections
(button prompts during dialogue) require constant
input. At the moment, the most appropriate way to
do this is to have a button which allows players to
manually walk and then a keyboard key used to end
this manual movement, and during dialogue for the
actions and card menus to disable, and all input to
feed directly to the engine. (Ed. Note: Forgot Map)
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Platform
This game is exclusively available for Windows Desktops,
but may potentially be ported to Mac and Linux.