Writing Prompts inspired by Video Games: Part 3
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We’re back with more writing prompts inspired by some of my favourite video games! Quick intro: this is my way of shedding some light on some of my favourite video games, as well as hopefully spreading some inspiration to any fellow storytellers and writers out there. Make sure you check out the previous parts as well for more story inspiration!
Also, quick disclaimer, my previous posts on this subject were specifically talking about indie video games. However, I’ve decided to expand my scope to just any video games I like, whether they’re technically indie or not. I just love video games too much to NOT include some of my faves just because they were made by a bigger studio.
Anyway, with that out of the way, let’s begin!
1. Doggone Hungry & I Am Fish
Doggone Hungry is a short and sweet game (only 30 mins of gameplay) developed by Dana Speiser, Kristin Mays, Ina Tomecek, Cassidy Elem, William Alexander Berryhill, Carson Hall, and Paige Collins, and published by SCAD Games Studio. You play as a cute Labrador Retriever puppy, trying to save his favourite toy duck, Quackerjack, from constantly being stolen. And believe it or not, the best way to save your beloved duck is to get big and fat! So, you run around eating as much food as you can, while trying to avoid being caught by your owners or other specific humans. It’s free to play and just a really fun, silly little game.
I Am Fish is a physics-based game developed by Bossa Studios and published by Curve Games. You play as 4 different fish in different chapters of the game, who all got taken from the ocean and sold off in a pet store. Now, they’re all trying to get back home to the ocean, so they have to swim, fly, roll and chomp their way to freedom. This game can be very frustrating at times due to the many obstacles you have to face, while also trying to keep your fish in water as much as possible so they don’t die! But it’s also hilarious!
So, here’s my prompt for what could be a hilarious story! – A goldfish ends up snatched away from the ocean and sold in a pet store to a family who already have a small puppy. The goldfish desperately wants to get back home, so makes a deal with the puppy; if the puppy can help them get back home, the fish will help them find all the food they could ever want! The deal is struck, and the puppy helps the fish into a hamster ball with water, so they can roll around. The fish immediately pushes food and snacks off the tables in the house so the puppy can reach them as payback. Then the two go on an adventure into the city to find the ocean. Along the way, they must do their best to avoid humans, while also stealing food for themselves, and befriending other animal friends so they can find the fish’s home.
This would make a pretty funny, young kids’ story in my mind. I can imagine the unlikely pair would end up in a lot of hijinks as they try and help each other!
2. Far from Noise & What Remains of Edith Finch
Far from Noise is a narrative-driven game developed and published by George Batchelor. You play as a person who has accidentally driven their car off the road and is now stuck in the car while it teeters on the edge of a cliff into the sea. While trapped in the car, with no one coming to help you, you ponder about your life and your relationship with the world, life and death.
What Remains of Edith Finch is a first-person exploration game developed by Giant Sparrow and published by Annapurna Interactive. As Edith, you explore your old, abandoned family home, discovering the different stories about how every single other family member died, except for you. Along the way, Edith chronicles all these tales into her journal. It’s an incredibly moving game as you experience the deaths of each family member through their own eyes as you play.
Considering the themes around death in both games, they seemed like a perfect fit for this writing prompt – A woman wakes up in her car, and realises she’s accidentally been run off the road and now her car is hanging over the edge of a cliff. She sees the ocean at the bottom of the cliff and sharp rocks. She realises this will probably be her end, so she takes her journal and writes about her misfortune, how she ended up where she is now, and contemplates on the ways her other family members died. After all, her other family members all died in similar accidents over the years…it’s very mysterious that it keeps happening. Why does this happen to her and her family? Is it a curse? She writes down all her theories, and decides she’ll throw the journal out the car window and onto the cliff if the car starts to actually fall, just so someone might find out what happened to her if she dies.
I think it would be interesting to write the story as if we’re reading her journal chronicling her final thoughts. Also, if she wrote near the beginning of the journal her plan to throw her book onto the cliff if she’s about to fall, it would make it a rather tense read, since it suggests that we’re reading this because she did, in fact, die…or did she?
3. The Novelist & Forgotten Fields
The Novelist is a game about Dan Kaplan, a novelist struggling to write the most important book of his entire career. It was developed and published by Orthogonal Games. Dan and his family have rented a remote coastal house for the summer, so he can try and finish his book. However, Dan’s decision to focus on his writing could end up destroying his relationships with his wife and child. You play as a ghostly presence in the rented house, observing the Kaplans’ lives and discovering their wants and desires. You help influence Dan to make decisions that will affect his career and his relationships. As a writer myself, this game is one of my favourites as it explores the struggles of balancing work life with your home life.
Forgotten Fields is a game where you play as Sid, a struggling writer who travels back to his childhood home one last time before it’s sold off. It was developed by Frostwood Interactive and published by Dino Digital. As Sid relives old memories and sees old friends, he slowly begins to figure out the plot of his next fantasy novel, as his friends and old home inspire him. Again, I’m very biased about this game because I too am a writer. Plus, you get to play out some of the scenarios from Sid’s fantasy book, which is really fun. I also appreciate that the game is set in the developer’s hometown, Goa in India, which I just think is cool because I haven’t played a lot of games set in India before.
The fact that both these games centre on struggling writers gave me this idea for a writing prompt – A struggling writer decides to travel abroad to India to try and feel inspired and finish his book. He rents out this old home, and meets the adult son of the owner, who also happens to be a writer. They become friends and talk to each other about their books. One of them is writing a young adult book about drama at school and dealing with young love and relationships. The other is also writing a young adult book but set in a fantasy world with dragons and magic and a big quest for the heroes to go on. As the two exchange ideas, they both begin to realise that they would be much happier writing the other one’s book!
This kinda feels a little like the Prince and the Pauper story, where the two characters swap roles. This idea was actually inspired by an episode of Bojack Horseman, an adult animated tv show. In one of the episodes, Diane starts writing a book about her life and how tragic it was/has been, but instead realises she finds it more fun to write about a teenage girl who solves crimes at her local mall. I like the idea that sometimes the book we think we want to write isn’t actually the book we’d be best at writing, or that we’d have the most fun with. But, with this writing prompt, maybe there’s a problem with the two writers wanting to swap book ideas. Maybe their agents/publishers are expecting them to stick with the type of books they’ve written before, and push back when they say they want to write for an entirely different genre? There could a lot of potential drama there.
But anyway, those are a few more of my story ideas, inspired by video games! Let me know what other writing prompts you can think of from these games, or if there are any video games you like that would make good writing prompts. Thanks for reading and have a lovely day!
Sources:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1563490/Doggone_Hungry/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1472560/I_Am_Fish/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/706130/Far_from_Noise/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/501300/What_Remains_of_Edith_Finch/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/245150/The_Novelist/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1296980/Forgotten_Fields/