I'm going to ask if this is a good idea.

Alright, I’ve come up with the idea of a game, no title, and is kinda bare bones, but I’ll work on it if you like the idea, I’ve never seen a fallout style weight gain game. I’m thinking of making a game surrounding the idea of you being a scavenger, you somehow find an old vault. You are able to enter it but the vault door locks behind you, soon you discover that the test that was decided by Vault-Tec was for the richest of the rich, the test is designed to answer the hypothesis, “Can humans adapt to increased weight?” The vault was finished but never used, now you’re trapped in a vault with Mr. Handies that want to feed you, “Vault-Tec Approved Nutritional Supplement.” A high caloric “food” that all residents must eat. There’ll be a couple of endings that have to do with weight gain, slob, immobility, etc. But I just want to ask if this is an idea worth pursuing after finishing my other game.

14 Likes

Honestly sounds great. I can imagine finding out about the experiment after a week of eating and then finding out that the component that allows the gain to be safe needs to be fixed before you become immobile or something.

Vaults often have some narrow corridors which can lead to obvious results. Excercise room? Certainly, just through that slim corridor. Here is cake for the journey!

4 Likes

Lorewise, this falls under what Vault Tech might’ve actually done given the nature of some of the other vaults shown in the series and it would be very interesting to see this implemented.

Suggestion

I see that you’re aiming for choose your own adventure game, but if I may, I’d like to propose an alternative idea in terms of the gameplay: upon entering the vault, player character is automatically elected as its overseer and now your mission is to bring other people from the wasteland and let Mr. Handies and Mrs. Nannies do their job. This would be more of a management game where you’d have to grow/synthesize food and make sure everyone is well-sated. Granted, this is much more complicated, but would bring a lot of replay value with a greater character cast and various upgrades you could acquire. I believe it should be possible to develop a text based management sim like that using Twine that you already have experience in.

Overall, sounds like a great idea and would love to see what comes of it later on.
Good luck with your current project and hopefully we’ll hear about this one in the future too!

2 Likes

I read a DA story like that once, it’s always a fun concept to explore

1 Like

I’d say it’s a good idea :slightly_smiling_face:. Depending on what genre of game, how long you would want it to be and engine your working with, there are some things I’d recommend considering. If you don’t mind, I would like to offer some ideas.

The main decision with this setting I consider is whether you want to have the character enter the vault after the war as a scavenger, or right after the bombs dropped and then weigh the pros and cons of each (or just pick the one you personally prefer).

The original idea works better if the game is going to be shorter due to the lead being either alone or in a small group of characters that finds the vault. This setting caters well to focusing more the player’s character specifically and could have an easier time achieving a more lonely tone. Could also have a group of people enter the vault with you, giving more options for any side content, endings, or ways to complete the story. Discovering what Vault-Tec had in mind could easily be missed with this setting if you wanted make it that way due to how it would have to be told through terminals, notes, and robots. I’d say this scenario works best with RPG maker (although it should be more of an adventure game rather than RPG), as a text based game, or even as a mod for fallout 4 or New Vegas.

Alternatively, you could have a scenario where the player character is one of the people who enter the vault right after the bombs drop. The benefit of this scenario would be that it plays well with a longer game focusing on the characters of the vault (both from a character building perspective and what happens to them over the course of the game) and that you get to experience the experiment as the intended victim. If discovering the mystery is part of the plot, this setting has the benefit of having people involved instead of just robots and computer terminals. So if uncovering the mystery involves intrigue, this would be easier to achieve in this scenario. This version should also have a larger focus on why the experiment is being conducted, since the player already has quite a good idea of what is happening. I feel like RPG maker or being a mod for an existing fallout would work best with this scenario.

Wait will this be a Fallout “themed” game or a Fallout “style” game, with the former being just set in the Fallout universe and the latter entailing turn based movement, skill checks, etc. ?