Plot & Game Theme Idea

[jess8liu]

Since I was rereading The Divine Comedy again, I think it would be interesting if we based the levels on the levels of 'hell' presented in Dante's Inferno. There would be a total of 9 (we can only do 3, so whichever anyone thinks is important?) distinct levels with different themes and (potentially) enemies/bosses. It may be a bit difficult to finish within the given time, but I think the project would benefit having some ideas of themes that are more specific to build off on, art and writing-wise.

Levels:

1. Limbo: Boring and generic office space (In the book, there is King Minos, (notably the stepfather of the Minotaur in Greek mythos) who passes judgment on all souls to determine what level of hell they go to; not sure if we'd like to add him, but it would be funny to add him as a manager who sends people to different 'departments')
2. Lust: Office gossip; I personally prefer we could deviate from the 'lust' aspect, but the concept art with the demonic eyes feels fitting towards this particular idea!
3. Gluttony: Office snacks, vending machines
4. Greed: Self-explanatory for a corporate office!
5. Wrath: Perhaps also self-explanatory and overlaps with violence; angry manager or colleagues perhaps?
6. Heresy: This one is a little more difficult for me to think of similar things, but maybe a level of the office where lighting is limited?
7. Violence
8. Fraud
9. Treachery

I don't think it's feasible to achieve all levels described in the book, but I think it's a fun coincidence that the project and the book I'm reading have similar ideas. However, having some baseline for the story structure and levels may help coordinate the artwork and story down the line.

[jamesouy]

Eyy fellow Divine Comedy reader! Thinking about the time we have, an idea would be to condense the circles of hell down to just 3 overall levels:

1. Combination of Limbo, lust, gluttony, and greed. These level could have a gloomy atmosphere, as these levels had a bit of a rainy/stormy weather. Maybe the different themes happen in order by the rooms you progress through, or they're just scattered about (like a bunch of vending machines throughout the level)
2. Combination of wrath, heresy, violence, and fraud. In the Inferno these were the lower levels of hell and were hot and fiery. We could have a similar design in the game
3. Treachery. The 9th level of hell was an icy cold landscape, bringing a stark contrast to the previous circles.

I think taking inspiration from Dante's Inferno would be a great way to narrow down the themes and story!

[AnonymousAmalgrams]

possible explanation for how things ended up like this and just overall tie-up (note heavily fgo inspired, am playing through seraphix rn): unnamed primordial being that just so happened to have gone dormant at this exact location in ancient times has awoken and locally distorted spacetime to bring about his resurgence, so you're not only going downwards as some others have suggested but also backwards in time to the latest point said being was last active OP was chosen as the instrument to complete the conceptual framework and connect the modern world with being's last moments so that he can bring his main body final boss fight is potentially the CEO of OP's company who has been possessed so that the idea of his authority over the company can be leveraged to create this system and as such he is the source of these distortions, after defeating him things go back to normal with nobody else being the wiser each floor is similarly a dungeon stage with a boss at the end evoking the true speedrun feel, and defeating the boss will unlock the next stage with the first boss being OP's direct superior, could also lead to some comedic dialogue about him finally being promoted into a management role

[Cashman0604]

Going to repost this here, since the original post was closed.

There's a giant corporate building; half is above Earth's surface, and the other half is below. The top half is the offices of Heaven, and the bottom half is Hell. You are an angel at the bottom of the totem pole, not even having earned wings. Tired of being bottom of the barrel, our character decides to kill Satan, located at the very bottom of the tower. This task would be enough to promote anyone to Archangel, the highest position nigh of God. With it comes the comfort of respect and luxury, a reward tempting enough for anyone if not for the fear of death. Along the journey, you find both Angelic and Demonic powerups (these could be just thematic powers, or they could be used as a system where they interact with each other in certain ways [i.e. the more Angelic powers you have the less powerful the Demonic ones are, and vice versa {This is probably too much and doesn't fit well with the genre, but it's just an idea}]). The reason Angelic powerups appear in the Hell offices is that other Angels have tried to kill Satan, but have failed, leaving their powers behind for others to reclaim. For the Demonic, obviously, they are there since it's the Hell offices.

As far as death, I think it would be fun if it were canonical. So every time you die, your character is respawned in the Heaven offices and had actually died, so Angels upon death are reborn in Heaven offices. Or we could say the character has some item of personal significance that pulls them out of death situations but strips them of their abilities when doing so. This would also allow for a shop to be at the very beginning of the game without it being strange, so if someone had a certain currency, they could go in with an ability already. Otherwise, we just do non-canonical death, but I think it would be really easy to explain in the game a canonical reason.

For transitioning between floors, it becomes more corrupted because you are descending deeper into Hell. On that note as well, a reason for the shifting floor plans could be that Satan caused them to be constantly changing to deter Angels from crusading into Hell.

Also for all the designs, enemy or friendly, an explanation for more human-looking people is that the closer your assigned floor is to Earth's surface, the more you look like a normal human. That would be another explanation for why the main character doesn't look like an angel, they just work on a really down to Earth floor.

I think this covers most of the topics, but if there are any questions about this lmk.

[dangertimmy]

I think these ideas are going in a really cool direction!

Since we're planning on having levels procedurally chosen from a list, I feel like it's not out of scope to build 9 levels and have 3 of them randomly chosen each time. If we had 3 for each circle of hell and one of the three is chosen for each circle of hell you pass through, that would give us 27 different combinations.

I'm not an expert on scope management though so I could be wrong! But that feels pretty manageable.