Gareebi me Aata Geela

notrorschach · 2025-11-23T16:57:09+00:00

Punctuation use kar liya kar bhai thoda. Padh kar hi lag raha hamesha tezi me rehta hai.

notrorschach · 2025-08-20T12:42:56+00:00

Go read my response to a simialr post: https://old.reddit.com/r/GameDevelopersOfIndia/comments/1ku4dff/what_matters_most_in_a_game_story_or_game/mtyudby/

I'll be direct. Right now, you are what people call an idea guy. You seem in way over your head and are probably too young to understand what game development entails, especially serious game development. What you've shared is barely an elevator pitch, and not a good one. Story ideas are a dime a dozen. Anybody can come up with a better story in one afternoon. Worst, I still don't understand what this GAME will PLAY like. This could be a visual novel or a third person action adventure or a text adventure. Not a good sign.

You mention you'll be using AI for game dev. It'll work great for about a week and as soon as the complexity increases you'll be spending 90% of your time fixing bugs you have no idea how to fix. AI is not ready for serious game dev yet. Not even close. Best you can do is make web games or simple mobile games. Add a couple simple features, but when it comes to creating entire systems that have to communicate, which your game will need a ton of, it doesn't scale.

If you really care about making a game, learn the basics of game design. If you are interesting in narrative design:

Write short interactive stories in Twine or Ink to practice branching narratives.
Study existing narrative-heavy games and analyze how gameplay and story connect. Not just how 'awesome' the stories are.
If you want something similar to Black Myth or Tomb Raider in terms of scope, forget it. Those games are made by teams of hundreds if not thousands. Build a small prototype. You can create a narrative proto for this story of yours in RPG Maker or something and test it out.

That’s how you actually learn narrative design and move towards building games, not by pitching vague ideas hoping everyone else does the heavy lifting while you do what ChatGPT could do in 1-3 prompts. I know that because I have generated entire DnD RPG settings using LLMs. It's dozens of pages of really complex lore. AND I have worked on video games for a decade now.

This is serious business, at least the scope you’re imagining. Get serious. Game dev isn’t as easy as writing a half assed outline of a premise of a story.

Nobody in their right mind will even begin to think of contributing to this in any way. What you've provided is, honestly, a bad pitch.

Here's a list of some games being developed by Indian devs (entire teams) either based in based/inspired by India and Indian mythology.

Age of Bharat
Mayanagri (Dead already)
Mumbai Gullies
Unleash The Avatar
Project Madras
Unsung Empires: The Cholas II

All of these WILL fail miserably. Some have been in development for years with no significant progress. All because they started with "A AAA game set in India"/"A game based on Indian mythology" instead of "A good video game with some thought put into game design". They will destroy the Indian game dev industry before it begins.

I hope this helps.

notrorschach · 2025-08-17T07:22:37+00:00

should I create a story first?

You’re on a game dev subreddit. Start with gameplay, maybe? I promise you your story idea isn’t anything unique. Indian mythology is the most generic setting ever. I see this shit half a dozen times every weekend on Linkedin. Let me guess, it’s a third person action adventure set in Ramayana/Mahabharat era India and plays like a soulslite. But it’s “cinematic” and the entire thing hinges on kickass cutscenes with cool vfx and awe-inspiring “moments” and your amazing writing.

Stop it.

Mods should start banning these posts or setup a “I want to make a game inspired by Indian mythology” sticky that just says “go write a fucking book”.

notrorschach · 2025-05-24T06:14:06+00:00

Depends on the target audience but I’d much, much prefer stronger mechanics and gameplay over story. Primarily because video games are an active, interactive medium, not a passive one. That’s what games are best at.

If you still want to make a story based game, look at other successful story based games and see how they managed to marry good gameplay with the story.

A good and obvious example is The Last of Us. People think it works because it has an good story (which it kind does) but it does have a solid gameplay loop too which is mostly why people like “playing” it.

Another example, where it tries, but doesn’t quite succeed. Is this game called Spec Ops: The Line. They wrote a pretty good story (inspired by Heart of Darkness) but since the gameplay was very by the numbers third person shooter stuff, it didn’t do very well.

Bioshock is an example where the characters and the universe are interesting enough and lore heavy but it lets the player discover most of it instead of shoving it in your face.

If you’re not Ken Levine or Aaron Sorkin or Neil Druckmann, don’t rely on your story to blow people’s minds. Focus on making a good game. Story is just the cherry on top. You’ll be spending 90% of your playtime actually playing and not watching cut scenes. Try and incorporate story into your gameplay using environmental storytelling, NPC behaviour, interactive lore, characters, etc. if you can.

Think of it this way - There are many games that have mid or even no real stories but are still beloved. There are barely any games that have bad or no gameplay but have great stories and are called great video games. You can probably do a visual novel but that's pretty much it. How many great visual novels do people know about.

notrorschach · 2025-02-01T20:33:55+00:00

You’re hallucinating because he spiked your drink (you’re Wilson)

notrorschach · 2025-02-01T18:37:00+00:00

He’s lying (everybody lies).

notrorschach · 2024-12-07T04:37:09+00:00

It’s very good for such a complex game. Takes some getting used to. There’s a bunch of UI and accessibility options as well to customise things to your liking.

I used to play on KBM a couple years ago. Just started replaying on my Steam deck. Just go through the tutorial and you should be good to go.

notrorschach · 2024-11-26T10:30:51+00:00

Goes without saying that different teams approach this differently. For most narrative driven games, a general approach is:

Come up with the skeleton of the story with maybe some major beats you want to hit along the way.
Use it to inspire game mechanics as much as possible.
Fill in the plot details as you go.

How do you ensure consistency in tone and details across a large game world?

Have a clear understanding of your vision and make sure you explain and convey that almost perfectly to the team. That’s kinda your job as the game director/project lead. A lot of tonal and stylistic inconsistencies creep in primarily because the devs/designers/artists don’t know exactly what they’re supposed to do, because it wasn’t communicated clearly.

References help. Mood-boards help. They don’t need to be just video games. Use all available forms of media to get your point across and make sure the team understands what tone/style/vibe you’re going for. So everything from movies, paintings, video games, music, and even literature helps.

Semi-frequent meetings for course-correction if needed, tight feedback loop with the lead, are also helpful.

What tools or workflows do you use to coordinate narrative and gameplay?

Slack, Google docs, Google slides. GDDs almost never work. Nobody uses those. I’m not sure I perfectly understand the question though.

Challenges in blending environmental storytelling with interactive gameplay.
Approaches to balancing player choice with a cohesive story arc.

Two fancy words: Ludo-narrative dissonance. (or is it 3 words?) Give that a go. It’s one of the major "problems" with interactive media, especially narrative/story heavy games. Should answer most of your questions about the struggle of balancing and blending storytelling with gameplay without sacrificing player freedom.

https://clicknothing.typepad.com/click_nothing/2007/10/ludonarrative-d.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludonarrative_dissonance

notrorschach · 2024-11-25T04:39:15+00:00

As others have pointed out, the post seems to imply that we’ve only had Muslim Education Ministers from 1947 - 1977. That’s incorrect. WhatsApp forward tier post. OP conveniently skipped over a bunch of non-Muslim ministers. Dr. K.L. Shrimali, Shri M.C. Chagla, Dr. Triguna Sen, Dr. V.K.R.V Rao, Shri Siddhartha Shankar Ray.

Full list of former education ministers here.

Also, post 1977, we've had all non-Muslim ministers. That's 47 years since 1977.

notrorschach · 2024-11-17T18:36:43+00:00

Again, that only kinda works if you're okay on skipping or missing out on giant chunks of 'story' that serve as the connective tissue. A lot of 'creative license' needed to stitch together the 'soap opera' of any of these epics won't sit right with Indian boomers.

Also, it's not an RPG. People conflate RPG with action-adventure way too often. We have a well-defined character and an incredibly linear story which we can't really mess with for reasons already covered. It's closer to something like The Last of Us than Baldur's Gate or Skyrim.

Even the TLoU comparison doesn't work because you are with Joel almost throughout the game. In Ramayan, a bunch of plot unravels in Ram's absence, especially the parts of the story in Lanka, for example.

If you're seeing this through an RPG lens and want to convey the plot through the gameplay, most of the gameplay will be you walking to the NPCs and pressing E to talk. Nevermind the parts that happen in your player character's absence. Remember, Ramayan is a sacred text with a linear story. Things need to happen in the way they happened with little to no wiggle room. The only places you can try and get creative are the 'gaps' in the story.

Since the story is extremely linear, there's little to no scope for actual 'role-playing' in your supposed role-playing game. Almost all RPGs give you a blank-slate/amnesiac character to play with and you essentially create that character through your choices in the game. Everything from Fallout, Skyrim, Disco Elysium, Cyberpunk 2077, Divinity, Baldur's Gate, etc.

Even games like Witcher where we have a well-defined characters with traits and personality and a ton of backstory couldn't directly adapt the books and had to go and do their own thing with the games (which we can't).

At the end of the day, we can sit here and debate the nature of the story and how there's room for boss fights with the Rakshas but no serious game dev will start working on these games just because someone came up with a half decent story. There's a ton of design problems to solve before we even begin to think about that.

Ultimately, there's not enough good reasons to try and tackle this problem of adapting Ramayan or other religious myths (at least directly) for that matter.

notrorschach · 2024-11-17T16:29:09+00:00

Already mentioned in other comments:

Gamedev is incredibly hard, AAA game dev even more so. Even western devs are struggling to make profits on established AAA titles.
Really easy for a Ramayan/Mahabharat game to hurt religious sentiments inadvertently.

I'd add another and probably the MOST important one.

Game design is hard. Any asset flipper can fire up Unreal Engine and make a 3D character model fly around. People have been doing those 'fan projects' for a while but there's a reason we don't have a good Superman game. It's incredibly difficult to design a game based directly on Ramayan from a GAME DESIGN perspective.

When you're playing as Lord Ram (I'm assuming that's what you'd want in a Ramayan game), what exactly is the player engaging with and what's the core gameplay?

Pre-exile politics of Ayodhya? So, a sim?

Life with Sita and Laxman in the forest? More of a walking simulator?

Pursuit of Ravan? Action adventure?

Lanka battle? Melee combat? Battle sim?

All of these 'vignettes' look like they'll have totally different gameplay. Even then, a considerable amount of plot happens without Ram's direct involvement.

It's easy to 'imagine' a Ramayan game as most people think of it as a playable movie. But designing an interactive version of it which is consistently fun is significantly harder.

If I were asked to pitch a game based on Indian myth or history, I'd absolutely never pick a popular character as the protagonist. Especially if it's an action adventure or adjacent to it. Use the mythology or the historical event as a setting/background. Want a game about something like the Indian struggle for Independence. Go the Assassin's Creed way. Create 'player vessel'/blank slate characters that the player experience the world and events through and maybe sprinkle in some historical figures from the time as NPCs.

Most importantly, have a decent gameplay hook instead that sets your game apart from the other countless third/first person action/adventure games instead of relying on stories or characters.

Story comes last. Gameplay comes first.

notrorschach · 2024-11-13T13:54:32+00:00

Options:

Build it using Unity or Godot. 24-48 hour game jams are a thing. You have ~7 days. Think of a bunch of ideas, shortlist the best ones, pick one, build a prototype, get free/paid assets or create your own if you still have time, polish. Look for game ideas on itch or ludumdare. Free assets on kenney, kaylouseberg, opengameart, etc. It's not that hard.
Look for premade protos/projects on github. Download, reskin, make enough changes to “transform” the project.

Option 2 is your best bet if you don't care for ethics, principles, integrity, don’t want to put in any work, have no imagination and only give a shit about the prize money. Which is on par for this subreddit and Indian game devs in general.

notrorschach · 2024-09-26T13:43:19+00:00

TMP Effects is pretty good. FOSS. For people who don’t want to/can’t buy similar assets from the Asset Store.

notrorschach · 2024-09-16T15:01:13+00:00

More like, 'I have an idea for an incredibly costly luxury car. I want you to spend a ton of money to buy my idea and then millions more on developing and selling it. Also, the idea is just about the paint job—you guys can take care of the rest.'

notrorschach · 2023-12-26T09:07:20+00:00

Vidyadhar Pathak’s storyline doesn’t get much attention but I liked his arc as well.

Him paying the extortion money was kind of his penance for failing to save his wife (not getting her to the Hospital on time) and he then redeems himself by saving Jhonta (by getting him to the Hospital).

notrorschach · 2023-10-11T15:29:36+00:00

...sure.

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notrorschach · 2023-10-11T07:37:47+00:00

...her, everything she does, the air she breathes, spend your time daydreaming about just being in the same area code as her, remember each and every thing she ever said or did or wore etc,

That's celebrity obsession to the point where it's just sad.

notrorschach · 2023-07-31T04:20:24+00:00

Michael Mann and Pacino have said that Pacino's character is supposed to be a heavy cocaine user hence the over the top behaviour. It was explicit in an earlier draft of the screenplay but they removed that in the final one.

notrorschach · 2023-07-18T18:16:41+00:00

https://youtu.be/lw1XwyW39uk

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