Justice

I’ve decided that I want this game to be about Justice.

Some super-heroes are more centered around just protecting the weak and innocent, but a lot of others are in a situation or a location, where the corruption and crime is so bad, that it will take more than just the cops (who might be on the crime-lord’s dime) to stop things.

Something I really liked about The Dark Knight trilogy (based on the graphic novels by Frank Miller) was that Batman’s end goal wasn’t just to beat up bad guys. His ultimate goal was to get Gotham back to a place where they wouldn’t need Batman anymore.

In the first movie, you see Bruce Wayne come back to Gotham to start cleaning up the corruption and crime. Part of the problem was that the legal system in place was corrupted at various levels. So, Batman works on the corruption and the crime and stops the League of Shadows from destroying the city.

In the second movie, there is still crime, but the corruption is mostly under control (with a few key exceptions). Batman has been doing his thing, but he’s really starting to come down on copy-catters who are killing people. The movie climaxes with the people of Gotham showing a sign of goodwill, with the Joker being captured. Crime is largely under control and corruption is mostly taken care of.

In the third movie, Bruce is much older, and not really doing the Batman thing any more. The justice system is in place and functioning well. But an outside force comes in and tries to destroy the city any ways, not because it is corrupted, but just to finish the work of Raj. Batman saves the city one last time, but then leaves. The city no longer needs him.

While I like this idea thematically, I think it also provides a good motivation and end point for beating the game.

Gameplay

The main crux of gameplay will revolve around the managment of several in-game ‘meters.’ Namely, the Justice meter will have an inverse relationship to the Crime and Corruption meters. As those meters go down, the Justice meter goes up. The crime meter will be depleted as the player interacts with various crim events. The corruption meter will be depleted as the player interacts with various corruption events. The rate at which these meters are replenished will depend on various other city statistics that I haven’t determined yet. I want to start simple, get some basic gameplay in place and then go about expanding. The most basic place I want to start will probably just have a crime meter, and will go down as the player ‘kills’ NPCs with a criminal designation.

As the game gets more advanced however, and the task-system becomes more robust, I would love to get to a point where the rate at which the crime meter is replenished is dependant on things like poverty level, a ‘culture’ rating and the presence of tempting opportunities (tempting being a function of the amount of money for doing the job) which are supplied by crime-lord NPCs, as well as the level of corruption in the city.

Corruption would involve some sort of justice process, where police arrest knocked-out criminals, incarerate them, and then they are tried and convicted. A higher corruption level means a higher chance of failure at any of the points during the justice process. Corruption would have to be reduced by catching corrupt, non-criminal NPCs in an act of corruption, such as bribing a police officer, not arresting a criminal, or threatening a member of the jury, and then arresting the offender.

Mechanics

The mechanics of this system will involve a tiered system of meters. The first tier will be things like culture, poverty, employment, city-funds/revenue. These will have static values that can be increased or decreased based on the actions of the player and the NPCs. These stats will affect the replenish-rate of the crime and corruption meters. Additionally, there might be city ‘modules’ that the player can purchase or achieve. For instance, there might be a ‘welfare’ aspect of the city that the player can activate, which while activated will reduce the city’s income, but it will also lessen the poverty level. An increase in jobs can compensate for this. I want to also have a group of statistics that negatively affects the crime rate, like the number of active criminals, corrupt officials, illegal goods, poverty, etc.

The base tiers I’m thinking of are:

Positive Stats (increase these)

  • Culture
  • Employment
  • Revenue
  • Funds
  • Law Enforcement
  • probably more…

Negative Stats (decrease these)

  • Poverty
  • Corrupt Officials
  • Number of Criminals
  • Illegal Goods
  • probably more…

The second tier will be Crime and Corruption. These increase over time unless the first-tier things can be affected in such a way as to start reducing them on their own. This will be the ultimate goal of the game, to get enough of the first tier stuff taken care of that the city will start to correct itself. The lower the crime and corruption meters get however, the higher chance that a really tough and damaging NPC crime-lord will show up that will start to be a source of bad things. Higher motivation for crime events, can directly attack things like culture, jobs, poverty etc. so that even after the crime-lord is defeated, some repair work needs to be done.

Justice, which can’t be directly affected by the actions of the player, will increase as crime and corruption decrease, triggering winning the game when crime and corruption are 0 and the rate at which they replinish is also 0.

Just a work in progress and the finished product will be extremely complex (revolving around complex event-based task systems for entities), but I think a minimum game can start with a hero just running around beating up bad guys and trying not to die.