...

train.

A dream, or maybe a nightmare, that I woke up gently from and committed to memory, and now to page.

Firstly, it's all in MSPaint, and rather shoddy looking. This is reminiscent of this one adventure game I can't quite remember where you played as some guy in the apocolypse, humor focused. or any numerous other titles (Baldie's math I guess also)

Anyway, the idea was for it to be an RPG/exploration horror game. You'd be a kid, with their dog and maybe toys, exploring a train in motion, car by car. Probably would be a point and click kind of venture. But then you'd get into encounters, an innocent one I can imagine would be against a grandma. Rather than a fight you'd have lots of options to take seemingly random actions: play yoyo, do a dance, watch the envir0onment go by, say hello, the dog can bark, etc.. Kinda like undertale I guess, but without fighting being an option at all. all whimsical and weird, not sure there's even be health.

For whatever reason I'm imagining like, the main play area, but with the combatants faces to the side with an ='s sign. like 4 squares aligned vertically, with a portrait for each of your players (your face, dog's face, toy's face. beside each is an equals sign, maybe a smiling face, some sort of math fun/speak and spell graphics stuff. and then to the right of the ='s, another 4 squares for the opponents. I think what works here is that you're not doing math at all? but it carries connotations or emotions of a learning game

But the bulk of the game takes up 3/4 of the screen. offset from all of what's going on in the game that the above encapsulates is a weird peripheral. again, like the speak and spell and other child games, you have big directional buttons for navigating around the room and eventually to other cars. Also imagining a text box at the bottom, again with adventure game/speak and spell vibes. If this is for PC like I imagine then you can just type the text, but you can also press a second directional interface, like with the cat feeder I have, and one character at a time increment the letters to get the input you want. Also imagining some hard coded actions, again like an adventure game, which pre-populate the text box (examine, speak, take)

so as you explore more, encounters get more fucked up. like you encounter the grandma again who gets red spirally eyes. also imagining encounters with starting cinematics, but each time they're a little more disjointed and deranged. but I want your interactions to continue to be calm and whimsical, calmly doing a little dance as this abomination is screeching at you

As the game progresses I also want some "real world" consequences. I'm imagining the view of the peripheral might even have your players hands visible, but they don't move, giving the impression that this is some weird detail added but that it's static. But I want one encounter to have like, a thing reach out of the screen and cover one of the buttons, and maybe the hands adjust, like in shock. maybe like in undertale it damages your cursor too, still not sure what damage even is here. But along these lines, at one point the cartridge pops out, and I want the camera to follow the person's POV, the one holding this peripheral, lean forward and plug the cartridge back in. This would look rotoscoped, as opposed to the rest of the game which will mostly be static images. thinking of the style of Joel Haver's animations. Might have the player suddenly be at the end of a battle against some huge dark being, your allies slain, with low items/resources and only one pitiful action left, then you die and then return to the place in the game that's familiar again

along these lines, maybe the intro cinematic is a view of the person who's playing the game, finding the cartridge, and plugging it in. meta stuff

Also along these lines, either a fail state or just another spook (also realizing now I havne't thought of hte soundscape, but probably keep it to beeps and boops), you head a very outside-the-room noise, thumping. Then the door would be kicked in and a foot would stomp on the periperal, again in the rotoscope form. the POV would look up, to a demon's screaming face, then the screen would go black. Maybe that's the end of the game?

last thought for now: want different kinds of stuff for different train cars. Not sure what order they'd be in, but different creepy encounters for the sleeper car, the food car, observation car, storage car, etc. would be interesting to play with