A religiously themed game...

[Dash Balderson]

First off, this is not a game currently in existence, it's something I have been kicking around the idea of making for a while, and the more ideas I get, the more fun it seems... well... to me anyway. The idea may offend some, or everyone (I don't know) but this being a religiously-dedicated forum site, that's actually what I was hoping I could gauge. Anyway... the idea:

The full pantheon of gods exists because within a certain (fictitious!) realm, ideas that garner enough human belief exist. This includes gods, the spirits of prophets and saints, etc. So, these beings' livelihood in this realm is predicated on their being able to sustain a certain level of following (i.e. believers) here on Earth.

The beings don't have much to do in their realm, so they have organized regular card-parties, where they gamble using funds relative to the wealth of their current, respective following(s) on Earth. The game occurs as a flash forward (and even contemporarily this idea works) wherein Christianity is seeing a stark fall in number of faithful members. [God/Jesus/Holy-Spirit], feeling the crunch and fearing its own possible demise, comes up with a way that Jesus can return to Earth, and convert people simply by touching them... however this can only work if they have a mega-heavy dose of belief-power already behind them. So Jesus has to go to his card-game buddies - who are comprised of the various deities and relevant/famous personages of world-wide religions - and ask for their help "powering" the expedition.

These other gods, realizing that, within their regular card games, Jesus always brings quite a bit of money to the table, decide that they will help him in his quest.

The graphics would be retro/old-school, somewhat pixelated like 16-bit. The game-play would consist of walking around as Jesus, touching or otherwise "attacking" (innocuously or peacefully obviously, hence the quotes) people walking around on the streets (some engaged in various sordid activities and trying to run away, of course) with various themes from The Bible present and accounted for (see sample animation below). You would also have "supers" that would allow you to call on or conjure up the deities and figures from various religions and their denominations. Some of them, admittedly, gibes... but all in fun (like summoning "Joseph Smith" , decked in Napoleonic/Victorian era clothing, to call forth his "Power of Obfuscation!"), most of them simply stunning or otherwise detaining the ranks of pedestrians on the streets so that Jesus can easily walk up and give them the conversion touch.

All comments, critiques, rants and explanations of why this is a bad idea are welcome.

 

[Father Heathen]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/449040/Jesus_Christ_RPG_Trilogy/

 

[Sanzbir]

The graphics would be retro/old-school, somewhat pixelated like 16-bit.

View attachment 21863

If this is an example of the actual animation... I think the way you are rotating and expanding the fish sprites ruins the aesthetic you are going for.

If you're going to go for a pixelated feel, I think ideally everything needs to retain the same, consistent resolution. To achieve this, you'd need to make sure everything scales proportionally and should never rotate a sprite except at 90, 180, or 270 degree angles. Otherwise the way the sprites will seem to smoothly rotate will be a jarring contrast to the 16-bit look you are going for.

Unless, of course, this image isn't connected to the actual development you are doing and is just an image you pulled from somewhere else to demonstrate the concept, in which case disregard the above.

The full pantheon of gods exists because within a certain (fictitious!) realm, ideas that garner enough human belief exist. This includes gods, the spirits of prophets and saints, etc. So, these beings' livelihood in this realm is predicated on their being able to sustain a certain level of following (i.e. believers) here on Earth.

The beings don't have much to do in their realm, so they have organized regular card-parties, where they gamble using funds relative to the wealth of their current, respective following(s) on Earth. The game occurs as a flash forward (and even contemporarily this idea works) wherein Christianity is seeing a stark fall in number of faithful members. [God/Jesus/Holy-Spirit], feeling the crunch and fearing its own possible demise, comes up with a way that Jesus can return to Earth, and convert people simply by touching them... however this can only work if they have a mega-heavy dose of belief-power already behind them. So Jesus has to go to his card-game buddies - who are comprised of the various deities and relevant/famous personages of world-wide religions - and ask for their help "powering" the expedition.

These other gods, realizing that, within their regular card games, Jesus always brings quite a bit of money to the table, decide that they will help him in his quest.

To critique the world-building a bit:

The setting seems derivative of Pratchett to me. Though admittedly I'm not sure if Pratchett was the first to do the idea, the "setting where believers power gods" has been done so many times that it's not really a concept I find interesting anymore.

Also I'm not sure the setting proposed has internal consistency. You say it's a "fictitious" world, but it's clearly a satire of our own world, so I'd assume demographics are proportional to our own. In which case why would the most popular beings (in a world where their popularity translates to strength) need help from less popular figures??

Why would less popular gods aid in a quest to help Jesus convert their followers to Christianity, since doing so would kill them?? The way you describe it, human belief is necessary for the continued existence of a god, so why would, say, Krishna suicidally help Jesus in converting Hindus to Christianity?? You say the motive of the other gods to help is money, but what's Krishna going to spend the cash on if he's dead because he has no more believers??

Also, is it belief or worship that translates into power?? Because if I can see someone, I generally believe in them, so why would touching be necessary to make someone a believer?? Not a lot of settings that incorporate the "belief equals existence" idea seek to explain why any given god doesn't just poof down to earth in a grand display and go "Hey guys, I exist, look at me!!".

The game-play would consist of walking around as Jesus, touching or otherwise "attacking" (innocuously or peacefully obviously, hence the quotes) people walking around on the streets (some engaged in various sordid activities and trying to run away, of course) with various themes from The Bible present and accounted for (see sample animation below).

So basically a side scrolling brawler??

But a brawler where you're just chasing people down, they're not putting up a full resistance in many ways??

It's a tried and true set of mechanics, so as described it should be easy enough to make a game with that formula, but I'd recommend thinking about how to make the gameplay itself fun with the mechanics you have to work with. If you aren't going to have anyone resist Jesus other than running away from him (as you seem to imply) you'll need to find a way to make that challenging and fun, rather than just a tedious collect-a-thon.

The importance of game design is that you've got to have good gameplay. Everything else is secondary. If you implement a brawler as described in a fun-to-play manner you're good to go. If you implement it in such a way where it feels like a chore to chase people down just to touch them, then it doesn't matter if the setting is interesting or the satire is amazing and deep, it won't be fun to play.

You would also have "supers" that would allow you to call on or conjure up the deities and figures from various religions and their denominations. Some of them, admittedly, gibes... but all in fun (like summoning "Joseph Smith" , decked in Napoleonic/Victorian era clothing, to call forth his "Power of Obfuscation!"), most of them simply stunning or otherwise detaining the ranks of pedestrians on the streets so that Jesus can easily walk up and give them the conversion touch.

That makes things a bit more interesting (though I don't get the joke described above, maybe I don't know enough about Mormonism), but make sure the core gameplay is fun too. If it's not fun to play up until the point you get to use a super, people won't play to that point no matter how awesome that super may be.

All comments, critiques, rants and explanations of why this is a bad idea are welcome.

Eh, just the general advice on hobby game design. If this is your first time doing this, "take whatever you're planning to do and halve it" is a good rule of thumb. Start small, build up experience, etc.

 

[Katzpur]

That makes things a bit more interesting (though I don't get the joke described above, maybe I don't know enough about Mormonism), but make sure the core gameplay is fun too

As a lifelong Mormon, I don't get it either. So maybe it was just a stupid joke.

 

[Cacotopia]

Check out Sacrifice, it's sort of a game themed on religion.

 

[Twilight Hue]

I think among the best so far is God of War. I've enjoyed Populous originally from Bullfrog of which I wish they would have a remaster of.

Personally I would love to see something themed on other mythologies someday.

How cool would it be reliving Zeus or Thor Apollo any other of the pantheon of ancient gods. Even Baal might be Kick-*** if done right.

 

[Cacotopia]

This sounds like the most boring game ever, worse than Sneak King the burgerking game where you had to hid in various places and surprise npc's with with free food.

 

[RaXz]

Try the Gabriel Knight and Broken Sword series if you like adventure games with religious and occult Freemason themes.

Check out Sacrifice, it's sort of a game themed on religion.

Played that one a lot back in the day, one of my favorite classic games.

 

[RaXz]

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