I recently made a game, called Getting Out and I actually made a design document(sort of). Anyhow, I just thought I’d share it with you. Maybe I’ll use the ideas for something else, but for right now Ill just sit back, relax, and play some computer games. By the way Getting Out is on pretty much everything so play it if you have like 10-14 minutes.

Getting Out

game design ideas

The player walks around a street in the middle of nowhere, and cars pass by. The player can click on the cars and hitch hike with that person. Each person has their own perspectives, believes, and art styles.

THE PLAYER CLICKS ON THE FIRST CAR TO PASS BY

Person 1: Have you ever felt like your life whatever it may be is nothing more than your own minds creation? A movie perhaps in playback mode, where recurring experiences, feelings, senses, memories are subtle, yet noticeable. The world evolves around you and when you close your eyes it all stops, or maybe you are in someone else’s world and are merely a part in their dream movies? This could explain the reason for your emptiness, because you are only made up of what the dreamer needs from you and your sense of freedom and individuality is nothing more than some illusion, some sick joke that your own rationalizations in thinking are playing on you.

Player: Uhh…

Person 1: Exactly! In fact, have I seen you before?

Player: I don’t think so…

Person 1: Now I remember, you where the one who was riding in that black canoe with , and you gave me some advice on how to prepare for my awakening. Ah yes, how I’m excited for my time to come when I stop rejecting death and give into life, because after all: this shattered perception of reality is all fake; we are trapped in nothingness where are bodies are made up of useless matter that never collides with anything really, it only gets pushed away like magnets near each other.

Player: Awakening? What do you mean by… Are we already dead?

Bright head lights appear and collides with the car making a crash like sound, and loads the original level.

THE PLAYER CLICKS ON THE SECOND CAR TO PASS BY

Person 2: People always build up existentialism as a bad thing, but actually its quite good! We always associate it with those dark thoughts of “Who am I, What is my life’s purpose?, “What is there after this?”, and “If there is nothing afterword this life, no rewards, no heaven, then what is the purpose of even living?”. I think those are the most liberating thoughts a person can have, because I don’t personally believe in a man in the sky who made us, because that was the old way of thinking. We now have logic, science, and reasoning to know why we are here, how we came here, and what we can do here. The big bang happened, our ape like ancestors reproduced and had some less ape like children who became what we are today, and since nothing lasts forever or very long we can’t really leave anything behind, no imprint of ourselves and our achievements, nothing.

Player: Then why do anything? If nothing in this god forsaken world matters, then why live?

Person2: You either have to accept this truth and move on, or find reassurance in the facts of life that temporarily hide these thoughts and feelings of nothingness, or else you will surely lose all that, that does matter.

Player: Does matter?! You just told me how nothing really matters, and now there is something that matters?

Person2: It varies from person to person, this purpose of our lives. It usually consists of having a good life, getting an education, finding love, having kids, making a family, working hard, raising those kids, retiring, then being able to have a few years left to enjoy, then dying. Doesn’t sound so pretty, but that is usually the goal, the purpose. If that is not the purpose it may be to find purpose, to find meaning in things that mean nothing at all, or to discover how to live. The only thing every human shares in common is to know more, see more, do more than their previous successors too in a way find out what they know nothing of. Curiosity is what killed the cat, what freed the cat of his prison that we call life.

Player: Prison?

Person2: Of course a prison, because if everything happens the way it happened before, and everything is pre-written, and we have no real choices besides life or death, then what is in this negative space of illusions that make us think our small, yet meaningless choices do matter; this veil of believability that immerses us into our own world which we have made for ourselves; these conversations that can go anywhere, but stay still. The only way out is in, the only exit is an entrance, and all you can do is sit and listen, or maybe it isn’t a prison? Because a prison isn’t a prison if you have the key to the cell door.

Player: …

Person2: Don’t kill yourself though, just enjoy the now. The only thing you can really do is be a passive listener, and live every day the way you can, and be present in midst of it all.

There is a silence

Person2: Where is it you are going, exactly?

Player: …

Person2: I apologize, some people can’t handle this truth. That’s why they created religion, art, and had those children so they would have a chance in finding out their role in this expansive universe full with doubt, temptation, exhaustion, greed, curiosity, anger, sorrow, and joy. This is the way it has been, and this is the way it will always be. I never asked… you, but… How do you like this canoe?

Player: I need to wake up.

Person2: Check the time.

Player looks to see the clock morphing numbers. Original level loads.

THE PLAYER CLICKS ON THE THIRD CAR TO PASS BY

Person3: You know I once heard someone say that there is never a right or a wrong, never a black or white situation, only different confused shades of Grey; I don’t think that’s correct though, because that may have once been true, but since authority, expectation, and other factors are involved that make up their own solid color, you will get Grey with different hues or whats all right and what isn’t all right morally, so you don’t have right and wrong, but rather right, left, forward, and back. And what really makes me think is that colors can’t be well described to someone who theoretically hasn’t seen it and drawn a connection yet, or what if there are colors that don’t exist yet, colors that we can’t see; we are but colorblind, and can only see certain shades of color, and if that’s the case our mistakes are the light. So stranger, what is your light.

Player: My mistakes?

Person3: Blue, or was it purple… Anyway its correct, or is it? Newton’s law is that everything has an equal or opposite reaction, so do colors, so does light, so does matter. What I see, hear, think, and experience is different than anyone else’s, so how do we come to the same terms if we are all mixed up in a kaleidoscope?

Player: We don’t.

Person3: Purple, for sure. Your stop is here.

THE PLAYER CLICKS ON THE FOURTH CAR TO PASS BY

Person4: I had this dream the other night, and I know how awful of a time you are in when someone says that, but hear me out. I was in a world where things started to fade away and disappear, but then I realized that they were disappearing only after they served their purpose, much like a body disappears in a video game once that character has fulfilled their role in the story. And I was trying so hard to cling onto my own sim like life, because I noticed was self aware. I went to this fading gas station and took a bite out of all the food I could find and this started to work well at keeping me rendered, but when the gas station lost its purpose and faded anyone associated with that gas station started to fade as well, until almost everyone and everything was gone. This was my time, and I knew it was coming yet I tried my best with my own expendable new found willpower, which was to much for the program to handle and I was now the source. I was now the one who’s life was the center that fed on the other AI until I didn’t need them anymore; this was a depressing thought. I didn’t want anyone to die. I couldn’t live with that on my shoulders. I wondered how much memory does this universe computer have, and how much cpu, gpu, and what it can handle. So instead of living my perfect life as the protagonist of my own video game world with my own video game eyes and video game hands I decided to render everything at once, to think of as much plot devices, as much characters, and as much props as I could to overheat this graphics card. Then I woke up. I escaped that reality which I consider real and fell into another program on a separate computer that can handle more things on the screen at once than the average home computer, and then I realized this game was still optimized. People die at the ages of 60-100, and the fact that they still fade away after they have served their role in this story means we are all still in a video game whether you like it or not. Natural selection: only the strong survive to go onto what is after this life, so make this your story. I’ve served my purpose now to let you know what your purpose is, and now I must fade as well, because I already have lived many lives; now it is time for someone else to do the same. And so the cycle repeats.

The original level loads again.

THE PLAYER CLICKS ON THE FIFTH CAR TO PASS BY

Person5: Do you believe in reincarnation?

Player: No/Yes.

Person5: Personally I think it makes sense, except for one thing that makes me afraid. I keep wondering on how our population is growing exponential, and how originally there wasn’t many people to start off, therefore does that mean that all these new souls are just empty? And that all of the original ones, the real ones are all in bison, elk, pigs, cows, so all the animals we use and kill for personal gain are all the last full souls, and maybe thats why we enjoy eating them to feel a sense of fulfillment spiritually. I can’t say “Stop eating meat!” and become a vegetarian, because I too want to feel alive. Don’t you agree?

Player: Uh I don’t…

Person5: We are just lost souls in hollow bodies, and this explains our emptiness in life how we confuse our roles and responsibilities with who we are, because those are two different things; we think to ourselves “you are what you do”, but we aren’t or are, because since we are empty we might as well be just “what we do or what we eat”. My reasoning isn’t capacious it is only fact. Believe it or not, it is the way of the future; out of my hands, and out of yours. Just like the wheel, just kidding.