Game Idea: Wife RPG

Willy Elektrix · Post by **Willy Elektrix** » Sat Jan 30, 2016 2:46 pm

Here's a great idea I had for a game. I will probably never make it, so anybody is welcome to take this and run with it.

The game (codenamed Wife RPG) is a fairly straightforward JRPG in the Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy vein. However, your wife is an adventurer who left one year ago on an epic quest to kill an evil wizard. You stayed at home to look after the house.

Your wife comes home and she is level 50 and has all of the best equipment in the game. She killed the evil wizard but was cursed. She will age in reverse until she eventually turns into a baby. She needs you to join her on an epic quest to find a cure.

As the game progresses, you gain experience and level up, while your wife gets increasingly younger and levels down. About midway through the game, she will be too weak to wear her awesome equipment, but you will be strong enough.

In other words, your party is you and your wife. She starts out awesome, and you are pathetic. As the game progresses, she gets younger and weaker, as you gain strength.

If the game needed another party member, you could have child that grows up during the adventure. Or maybe a dog.

The story has a lot of room for humor, drama, romance, and tragedy.

Is this idea gold or what?

kylekrack · Post by **kylekrack** » Sat Jan 30, 2016 6:17 pm

I think this sounds like a hilarious idea. The only issue I have is with the balancing of the beginning of the game. If the wife is still super strong when you go off on the quest, then she should theoretically have a ton of abilities and stuff. Throwing that all at the player at once would kind of go against the gradual growth element of most RPGs.

Although, I suppose what you could do is have some initial incident weaken her significantly, which would be the sign that she is cursed in the first place. For the sake of balancing, it might be better for her to fall really quickly from strong to average near the beginning of the game, and then have the decrease slow down once she's at a decent level.

Either way, it'd be difficult to balance the game. Regardless, I think it's a really neat idea, and like you say, there's a lot of room for comedy and drama. Because the emphasis is more on the characters, it gives a great opportunity for character development, which a lot of RPGs lack. For example, the entire quest your wife goes on occurs before the game even starts. It's exposition, it's glossed over. Sure it was glorious and amazing blah blah blah, but the real quest is much less epic.

The more I think about this the more I love it. I would love to make this game someday.

kylekrack · Post by **kylekrack** » Wed Feb 03, 2016 7:48 pm

I'd like to follow up and say that I've been working with this idea, and it's growing into something I think will work really well and stay faithful to the original idea. I'm not going to commit to anything yet, but I think I might actually continue with this project. I'll keep you updated.

Willy Elektrix · Post by **Willy Elektrix** » Thu Feb 04, 2016 12:51 am

kylekrack wrote:I'd like to follow up and say that I've been working with this idea, and it's growing into something I think will work really well and stay faithful to the original idea. I'm not going to commit to anything yet, but I think I might actually continue with this project. I'll keep you updated.

Lovely to hear. I agree. It will be very challenging to balance the stat growth of the 2 characters. However, I do not think it will be impossible.

WeirdoYYY · Post by **WeirdoYYY** » Tue Mar 01, 2016 1:55 pm

I actually really like this idea of a "reverse RPG". Beginning with an incredibly strong player would help ease players into the game and they would breeze through the start quite fast but the real challenge would be later when you have to shift tactics in order to make up for your weakening wife.

Spoonweaver · Post by **Spoonweaver** » Tue Mar 01, 2016 2:58 pm

Wilthawiya

Willy Elektrix · Post by **Willy Elektrix** » Wed Mar 02, 2016 10:33 pm

WeirdoYYY wrote:I actually really like this idea of a "reverse RPG". Beginning with an incredibly strong player would help ease players into the game and they would breeze through the start quite fast but the real challenge would be later when you have to shift tactics in order to make up for your weakening wife.

I think Bloodlust (another OHR game) also had a hero that got weaker. Am I mistaken?

Foxley · Post by **Foxley** » Wed Mar 02, 2016 11:29 pm

Indeed, the main character's stats went down as they levelled up. I forget what the renamed stats for "Level" and "Experience" were but it was something negative, so you were accumulating something negative as you fought more battles and becoming weaker. I thought that was pretty clever.

kylekrack · Post by **kylekrack** » Thu Mar 03, 2016 5:39 am

Writing for wife.rpg is 1/3 done.

The reverse leveling will be strange, but I think I might handle it by not having random battles. Maybe something more like Earthbound or even Pokémon, where enemies are somewhat scripted.

Enemy encounters also include bounty hunters after your wife, Elena for now, when you visit new towns and inns, etc.

I have a lot of conspiracy and lunacy planned for this story. It's gettin' crazy already.

Soule X · Post by **Soule X** » Tue Mar 22, 2016 11:13 pm

One way to handle the balance could potentially be to use the weakness of the main character to balance combat in the beginning. The level 1 husband with no combat experience is the weakness.
Yes, the wife could trample through the low level enemies effortlessly, but if she has to constantly protect her weak husband it may not be so easy. This could include defending, healing, or maybe trying to kill enemies quickly so they don't get to him.
You could have strong penalties for death or maybe even a game over so the player would need to focus on keeping him alive. Then the games difficulty would even out as the characters level evened out, then of course get hard again later.
Really an interesting concept.

kylekrack · Post by **kylekrack** » Wed Mar 23, 2016 8:01 am

Soule X wrote:One way to handle the balance could potentially be to use the weakness of the main character to balance combat in the beginning. The level 1 husband with no combat experience is the weakness.
Yes, the wife could trample through the low level enemies effortlessly, but if she has to constantly protect her weak husband it may not be so easy. This could include defending, healing, or maybe trying to kill enemies quickly so they don't get to him.
You could have strong penalties for death or maybe even a game over so the player would need to focus on keeping him alive. Then the games difficulty would even out as the characters level evened out, then of course get hard again later.
Really an interesting concept.

Good thought here. I have some moves like this planned, but I will look more into it so that it does not become too one sided too early in the game. Compensation abilities from the wife will be my next focus. Thank you for the ideas.