Enchanted Lands : 100 hour challenge!
Okay I’ve decided to challenge myself. When thinking, discussing, and writing about Enchanted Lands I asked myself, how long should it realistically take to make an epic game such as this. Of course the answer is like years. Then I asked myself, well what takes so long, and the answer came to me ‘content’.
Yep, content. All the animations or full motion video, the sound, the music, everything else but the game itself. Sure the game can take a long time. But take all of that extraneous stuff away, and you realize it shouldn’t take that long at all. That is if you’re into telling stories of any kind.
So i’m thinking, okay, if I could belt out a big epic game, on a small time frame how long would I take. And it comes back to me, 100 hours! I know doesn’t seem like alot. However I can write up a storm in a hundred hours. I bet I could finish a novel. Of course that’s just a simple linear narrative, compared to the interactiveness of a game!
So this is the challenge. I will spend 100 hours, I will make all the stories for all the characters, all the puzzles, the maps, and implement it in an adventure game creation engine. Herculean you say? definately, Impossible? Maybe not. I’ll have a completely working game in the crudest of fashions. Relatively little-to-no art. Just enough to tell the story I want to tell. This is the sort of challenge that motivates me. If I don’t finish it, no frets because I will have done more than I ever dreamt I could do. Then all I will have to do is content. Only with the game done i’ll have a roadmap by which to create the content, for the ultimate adventure gameplaying experience!
What do you think?
Previously: Enchanted Lands : Enchanted writers block.
Keith
February 5th, 2006 at 8:30 am
I think it’s doable, but realize that you’ll end up with only a *first draft* of the game/story. Which is still a great achievement. And if you don’t pull it off in the 100 hours, then at least you’ll be well underway.
I’m currently hosting an event called The Screenwriting Fortnight, where the challenge is to write a 120-page screenplay in 14 days. Maybe the participants won’t end up with a script that is awesome, but at least they’ll have *something* to build on further.
So I definitively think it’s possible to do what you want, although you’ll probably be fine-tuning the story and the puzzles for quite a bit afterwards. And you’re right about the order: story first, graphics and sound later.
A tip: write, write, write and don’t look back too much. Don’t edit. Don’t worry if a puzzle or scene seems cliche or ends up being crap. The trick is to keep the momentum going and finish the narrative. Later you can always go back and improve it. Good luck!
February 5th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
And, of course, if you will be using 3D assets, feel free to download the free content from our site. A lot of it is still raw, but that should fit with the nature of what you are doing.
Scott
February 9th, 2006 at 10:08 pm
[…] Previously: Enchanted Lands : 100 hour challenge! […]
April 26th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
[…] I’ve decided to start up the 100 Hour Challenge again, but i’m not including today or even tomorrows “catching up” as part of the challenge. […]