A game about conspiracy theories?

I really like conspiracy theories. I thought it would be a cool idea to make a game about them. It would maybe have random cards like this:

Code (CSharp):

1. Instigators = "The Royal Family|The Deep State|The President|The New World Order|WiFi"
2. Topic = "are lizards|are turning the frogs gay|are the Iluminati|have been abducted by aliens"
3.  

But that's as far as I got with ideas. How to make this into a cool game I wonder?

 

I though title should be, conspiracy theory about games

Regarding your post, from description, I have no clue what you try to achieve.

Unless you want simple pairing game. Or something like classic domino game.

 

Here's my 2 pennies:

1. Don't make a card game. Most new card games breach into the market using already existing products. Shovel Knight came out with a card game and they are banking on you knowing what shovel knight is. Otherwise, you will fall behind what the big companies pump out without heavy marketing.

2. Conspiracy theories can either be used as memes/punchlines or mini quests, but definitely not as an actual permeating theme. Otherwise, your game is about paranoia, not conspiracies.

3. Your ideas are almost similar to cards against humanity. Not that great outside a party scene.

The only game that comes to mind is illuminati which uses the theme very well but has a very good gameplay to it.

 

Make a simple linear shooter about a crazed conspiracy theorist who decides to take matters in his own hands (like the guy who tried to bust pizza-gate), but it turns out all of his conspiracies are true.

So start out with the simpler conspiracies and build from there until you are within the reptilian mothership itself and got to blast your way to the final boss -- Hillary in full reptilian form.

Simple gameplay (one main character with a shotgun, only variety is in enemy types and environments), just needs decent art and fun writing. Obviously the more you know about conspiracy theories the better job you can do at it. Besides that, I don't think plot needs to be super tight. Just needs a likeable/enjoyable protagonist.

I think games that people define as "simple", like card games or strategy games, aren't actually simple at all. No doubt they are simpler to program, but as far as game balance I think they are some of the most complicated.

A shooter or platformer you can just playtest and if it feels right, it's right.

That's my speculation anyway.

 

A conspiracy theory card game? Wow! Now that is an interesting idea.

 

Hmm.. I like the idea of a paranoid person who thinks all conspiracy theories are real. I think there should be a section where you link together names in newspapers with pieces of string (or even pipes or paths or something).
And then your aim is to increase your paranoia.

Or your a talk show host and your task is to create conspiracy theories on a daily basis.

Can't make it too realistic otherwise there will be a conspiracy theory that my game is part of the Deep State.

 

That's an awesome idea. I'd play that for sure! It'd make a cool movie too.

 

So is you gonna make it or what then dawg?

you make a progress thread and tag my name once you got a playable prototype, I'll make character, weapon, and at least one enemy type. Either ps1 era graphics style or low-poly.

 

My first thought is: have you played the original Deus Ex? That game is pretty much exactly "what if all the popular conspiracies are true?" and it managed to do that fairly well. It was a pretty decent light RPG in its own right, which just used conspiracy theories as a major thematic element.

My second thought is: have you read The Illuminatus trilogy? It's a short series of books written by a couple of journalists who challenged themselves to write books where all of the conspiracy theories their magazine received in the mail were true. Many of the theories were contradictory, so large portions are nonsensical.

My third thought is: have you played a card game called Nefarious by Donald X Vaccarino? Also a card game, but about mad scientists rather than conspiracy theories. I wouldn't reuse mechanics from there, but examining them to see how they fit together and also make use of the theme would be a good exercise. Then think about things like: are players trying to fulfil a conspiracy, or defeat one? Do players work together or compete? Does each player have their own conspiracy? Do players know the conspiracy at the start of the game, or must they discover it?

Loads of fodder in there for cool gameplay.

 

Same with The Secret World, which is based entirely around every bathshit theory being completely true.

 

I must play those games!!!!

 

You could make the game cover silly conspiracy theories, such as fake moon landing, flat earth, lizard people, etc. Might make for a fun party game.

The game could be about current hot button political topics. Though you'll need to continually update the game to stay relevant.

The game could be about past conspiracy theory's proven true. Maybe you have to decide between conspiracy theory's whether they were proven or disproven.

An action game set inside a popular conspiracy theory would be the start of a good story people could relate to.

 

I'm kind of like the idea of the player slowly descending into madness believing all the consipracy theories. Like in a Beautiful Mind. Maybe your mission would be to gather evidence either you would prove yourself that consipracy theories are true or false and either go back to reality or descend further spirally down into madness.

 

Writing while listening to Carpenter OST:

The game can start like this.

Your main character works in the military complex on a secret mission.

He travels 50 years in the future.

In that world, this character needs to steal a Jewel to travel back to earth again. He meets
an NPC that gives him this mission, called Alexandrius. Alexandrius was prepared from
his grand father to meet the player 50 years in the future in a Coffe Shop.

So, Alexandrius explains to the player, how to come back to present time and what he has to acomplish in his secret mission.

So, this character finds the world had a cataclysm based on an Asteroid that almost killed all life, including lizards. That leaded the illuminati leaders to nuke all world for survival. He learns this from old newspapers keep in the Bunkers and from Alexandrius mesages.

You can keep writing the rest.

There's no good conspiracy theory without time travel, Asteroids, nuclear war, military and of course jewels.

 

A random idea for a roguelike game: make a dec of cards, each representing a popular conspiracy theory. Each "run" several cards are drawn, these are the theories that are "true" and the others are all false. Together they create a context of sorts, which affects the game world.

For example, when the Aliens in Area 51 card is drawn, the game contains aliens and UFO's. When the card Goverment Is Snake People is drawn, normally ambient clerck NPCs might turn into hostile Snakemen.

If you pull these two cards together the Aliens and Snakemen will be at war with each other, because if both conspiracies are true it must mean the Snakemen captured the Aliens! The streets are overrun with both factions trying to kill each other... with the player caught in the crossfire.

Same could be done for urban lengends and myths. The Vampires Exist, Sewer Alligators and Lycanthropic Outbreak cards combined could do similar things.

 

I like this idea. If you built some simple automatic rules for how cards interact, this could allow for a high amount of replayability since no two games would be alike. You could also have a custom game mode where the player chooses the active cards.