New Game Proposal

At MakeHands.

Ilya Ilych Oblomov in “Mid-Morning of the Living Dead”

In Ilya Ilych Oblomov in “Mid-Morning of the Living Dead” the player takes control of the title character, a lackadaisical 19th-century Russian nobleman, and guides him through a hellish day in St. Petersburg. The dead have returned to walk the earth and feast upon the flesh of the living, and it is up to Oblomov to get on as best he can.

The game is divided into three acts, two of which take place in Oblomov’s dusty, disordered bedroom. After waking at eight o’clock, he has tea, argues with his manservant, Zakhar, and speaks to a succession of traumatised visitors, all of whom urge him to flee while he still can. However, he is determined not to act rashly, but to give the situation due consideration, which he does while drinking more tea in bed.

In the second act, Zakhar’s failure to return from a minor errand forces Oblomov to rise and confront the hordes of flesh-eating abominations that now surround his home. After bathing in lukewarm water for half an hour, dressing and taking a little lunch, he is finally ready to exit his apartment, thereby marking the beginning of the third act.

The conclusion of Ilya Ilych Oblomov in “Mid-Morning of the Living Dead” takes place on the streets of St. Petersburg during the early evening. The city is now totally overrun by zombies, and Oblomov must walk rather more quickly than he would prefer in order to evade their dread embrace. Disaster strikes when he sits down on a public bench to rest: he briefly nods off, initiating an action-packed finale in which the player must wrestle to awaken his charge before he is torn apart and devoured.

Sadly, this task proves impossible, and the game ends with a prolonged sequence of graphic dismemberment, followed by a screen saying “You Have Won” and a credit roll.

Ilya Ilych Oblomov in “Mid-Morning of the Living Dead” is a next-generation point-and-click adventure, partially based on the classic novel Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov. It is distinguished from its antiquated peers by virtue of the groundbreaking InDifrenz™ interface, which avoids the gameplay limitations associated with the genre by preventing the player from interacting with the environment in any way.

Twilight of the Idle

So I’m feeling pretty inspired by this game I’ve come across that’s named after a Nietzsche book: Beyond Good and Evil. The synopsis says that it’s about a reporter on an alien planet who “discovers…a horrific government conspiracy and is forced to battle an evil she cannot possibly fathom [presumably because it’s so, like, beyond],” which leaves me wondering where old Friedrich comes into it…maybe he’s an NPC. It was conceived by a man with a French-sounding name.

Anyway, now I’m thinking about philosophical works with titles that have good crossover potential: Being and Time, Dreams of a Spirit Seer, No Exit, Death and the Labyrinth… Then again, why stray any further than other Nietzsche texts: Twilight of the Idols, The Birth of Tragedy, Human, All Too Human (actually, someone’s already nicked that one for a game where cybernetically-enhanced Norse gods fight each other with laser cannons). Or how about The Gay Science. I would love to make a The Gay Science game. Hot damn.


The Gay Science
Game Proposal

The Gay Science is a first-person, isometric, top-down action-strategy-shooter in which the player must lead a team of cartoon soldier ants across the naked body of a sleeping male prostitute in a simulation of Nazi-occupied Paris being generated by a supercomputer on board a zombie-infested Ancient Greek space station in the year 11358. The objective is to obtain as much of the honey that is being poured on the sleeping male prostitute’s body by his time-travelling, sex-tourist robot companion as possible before glitches, caused by zombie-inflicted damage to the Ancient Greek mainframe, which was designed by wise albino sharks, desynchronise the simulation and return the player to the antiquated future, where it (the honey) may be traded for zombie-repelling weaponry and Xbox LIVE™ credit.

The Gay Science makes use of the revolutionary MONK™ peripheral for the Nintendo Wii, which consists of a touch-sensitive tablet, quill, lectern and uncomfortable wooden chair (with optional “Broken” upgrade). This is an exclusive feature of The Gay Science, and the game may not be operated by any other means. The player controls the on-screen action by using the quill to write haiku instructions on the tablet in a mixture of Sanskrit and Gregg shorthand. If the player fails to complete any instructions in the time allotted his warranty will become invalid.