What would you like to see in a video game about taking psychedelic drugs?

[supereumel]

Hey there!

I teamed up with 2 other guys and we have money for the next couple of months and plan to build a video game about being a native medicine man in South America who gathers resources and makes new drugs. I dont want to talk too much about it to shape your ideas so would just love to hear some stuff you would like to see in this game.

I have some experiences with LSD, peyote, DMT, mushrooms and salvia so we will build on this but my other two team members aren't into this at all so some creative input from you would be really appreciated.

 

[Solipsis]

I'd probably want to see

- different resources adding different aspects to the psychedelic potential when combined in a brew, like spiritual or visionary or delusional
- unexpected synergies, expected adverse interactions and potentiation like enzyme inhibitors
- missions requiring a brew to have certain quality standards, very flexible generation of visual effects like tracers, frank hallucinations, fractal patterning and many more things that preferably are not repetitive but blend relatively uniquely involving some random variables and of course no brews being identical...
- Then also visionary quests that make sense, partially from a tripsitter perspective protecting a tripper from accidentally walking in traps or getting hurt by entities
- And also trip missions from the tripper's perspective to battle through personal issues and ego hangups to reach a mystical state. >> boss level? - I guess it would be good to have to make special brews for each goal, like adding iboga for addiction, and later on more complex requirements like a combination of addiction treatment plus other intentions.
- The possibility to tend to your own ethnobotanical garden to grow your own resources (maybe a difference between wild and homegrown resources)
- Possibility to travel to other places in the world to hunt for wild resources there and bring them back? South-America is great and they have a number of things there like chacruna, chaliponga etc but globally its so much more varied. I'd make him a resident of S-America and first keep the missions there, but then expand options to travel. An excellent way to make different levels and different settings and explore psychedelics.
- The choice to go into a more neoshamanic direction and allow semisynthetics like LSD, or even full synthetics, or more novel drugs with more unknown potential (positive and negative) vs. very traditional

 

[Clocktower]

At least some accurate references to good science and harm reduction.

 

[One Thousand Words]

Puzzles that involve solving complex mathematical algorithm while deep inside a heavy trip

Having to clean up puddles of vomit once you are sober similar to when your Sim pisses their pants

To be honest it doesn't sound very interesting theme for a video game. Why play a game pretending to escape reality when you could just take an actual trip?

 

[Cream Gravy?]

^This. Farcry 3 had drug trips, and they were just kinda meh... I wanted to get back to the action, not have a trip that was nothing like actually tripping.

When it comes down to it, the primary aspect of a psychedelic experience is completely mental. How can you simulate the wonder, awe, fear and confusion of an acid trip unless you actually take the drug?

 

[Catodion]

Plus the novelty of visual hallucinations no matter how brilliantly recreated, would wear of significantlly after an minutes.

-There would certainly need to be a storyline (which i personally really dislike, because open-world is superior to story-based in every single way imaginable, but i can't envision it otherwise)
-Harm reduction as mentioned in previous replies is a good idea. Simulating bad trips when taking the drugs in wrong situations.
-Some testing to be done before taking the drugs. "You have died of nBOME" splash-screen, if the player doesn't identify substance before injecting it.
DMT would be really hard to put in a game.. dunno.

 

[szuko000]

I do enjoy games that have a slight intoxicant added to it. Like MMORPG where you can get drunk and it decreases some stats increases others makes your vision different. Or like in the saints row series (like grand theft auto but more gang related) you can smoke blunts and drink 40s until you cough and puke respectively. Thats not bad but when they try to go too far with it, it only comes out complicated and only takes away from the game.

 

[Cream Gravy?]

^I love getting ripped in saints row, putting on the raggae station, and speeding down the sidewalk with a bunch of cheat codes on hahah

 

[MSK]

I'm also a developer, and believe me, I dreamed about a drug themed game for years... But it's not really a good theme for a game. Like someone said, why I would play any game about tripping or drug dealing when I just can take drugs? I don't see the attraction on it. But hey, maybe you will have success. A lot of people are playing Pro Evolution Soccer or FIFA instead of actually playing football.... I like my videogames to provide me experiences I can't easily have on real life. Would play a painball or airsoft match instead of Call of Duty any day.

 

[Ziiirp]

Should be an ultra complex RPG. Are 3 guys enough ? Hell no. Please proof me wrong.

 

[LucidSDreamr]

it should be a RPG, or first/third person shooter.....then just have the drugs be a part of the game but mostly you are shooting at enemies. You can really incorporate the visuals into the different levels....and other levels can be like a full blown saliva trips in some psychedelic landscape.

 

[supereumel]

Thanks guys! Yes making this fun and engaging is definitely the hardest part. Part of the game will be within a trip. So imagine you are tripping or maybe you had a trip in which you were in some sort of game. Thats kinda where we want to go. Just like you sometimes interact with "beings" on DMT or you loose some part of yourself. So let me rephrase this:

If you could shape a trip however you wanted, what would you do?

 

[supereumel]

I'd probably want to see

- different resources adding different aspects to the psychedelic potential when combined in a brew, like spiritual or visionary or delusional
- unexpected synergies, expected adverse interactions and potentiation like enzyme inhibitors
- missions requiring a brew to have certain quality standards, very flexible generation of visual effects like tracers, frank hallucinations, fractal patterning and many more things that preferably are not repetitive but blend relatively uniquely involving some random variables and of course no brews being identical...
- Then also visionary quests that make sense, partially from a tripsitter perspective protecting a tripper from accidentally walking in traps or getting hurt by entities
- And also trip missions from the tripper's perspective to battle through personal issues and ego hangups to reach a mystical state. >> boss level? - I guess it would be good to have to make special brews for each goal, like adding iboga for addiction, and later on more complex requirements like a combination of addiction treatment plus other intentions.
- The possibility to tend to your own ethnobotanical garden to grow your own resources (maybe a difference between wild and homegrown resources)
- Possibility to travel to other places in the world to hunt for wild resources there and bring them back? South-America is great and they have a number of things there like chacruna, chaliponga etc but globally its so much more varied. I'd make him a resident of S-America and first keep the missions there, but then expand options to travel. An excellent way to make different levels and different settings and explore psychedelics.
- The choice to go into a more neoshamanic direction and allow semisynthetics like LSD, or even full synthetics, or more novel drugs with more unknown potential (positive and negative) vs. very traditional

Brilliant! Will send you a free Steam code once we are ready.

 

[noone1]

A secret ending where the shaman goes on a final vision quest and realizes they're selling their heritage and culture to fleece gullible westerners. The final scene is the shaman walking away from his tribe with the sun setting behind him and the village in ruins. We then open to a skyscraper at dawn the sun illuminated above it, the shaman is now an uptight businessman dressed in a suit, sitting in an office with a job in marketing.

 

[Solipsis]

To be honest it doesn't sound very interesting theme for a video game. Why play a game pretending to escape reality when you could just take an actual trip?

Are you kidding? That visual drug effect in the classic Carmageddon is where I got my whole ambitions from..

No but seriously: I get your point but I won't bash the relatively novel idea for a game before I see it. A lot would depend on whether there is interesting, challenging gameplay and not a boring game that wants an excuse to involve psychedelic effects. Could potentially have nice eye-candy if the effects are generated in a smart way somewhat akin to music visualization (perhaps allowing music import would help for that reason, if you don't want RNG), but it would do psychedelics very little justice if it's just noticeably the same static repetitive 'video', rather than being pretty much unique every time plus interactive depending on what you do and the exact surroundings.

Potential interactive effect could make for a lot of creative surprises, like geometric shapes making fractals while other objects have more of a tendency to 'come to life' and get faces or eyes on them - or even move around like I once saw two entire flat buildings turn into gingerbread men and do jaunty breakdances, on DMT. Something like that could be combined to make it both hard to see through the visual soup, and vanquish threatening entities (morphed from objects, arriving from wormholes, etc).
I'd definitely make an extensive list of types of visual effects (tracers, flanging, morphing, patterning, glowing, melting, as many as you can..) and write corresponding algorithms. They can each serve their own purpose, like obscuring visual, just eyecandy, making entities to 'fight' or befriend/communicate with, changing the environment (which opens up to puzzles like alluded to above, where one has to achieve particular changes by utilizing the right psychedelic effects, or if not changes: to reveal hidden objects >> bonus or easter egg).

Personally I'd also try getting inspired by some of the DMT art on the DMT-nexus forum. Some of the patterning, vistas and entities I have seen depicted there were strikingly similar in style to what I see on DMT and its analogues.

Sound distortion would be a whole chapter of its own..

Also, nobody would force you to choose between actual tripping and the game and I do hope it is not meant as a substitute for a trip.. just judge it on its merits as a game, plenty of other games simulate 'exciting' or intense experiences although usually more "objective" and less immersive which makes this quite the challenge for the developers. IMO the idea doesn't ruin anything in advance, it will all just depend on whether it's any fun in general.
If it's not just farmville with ethnobotanics, but utilizes a lot of creative elements like ideas I am only beginning to suggest, it could be pretty original involving some out-of-the-box thinking to solve certain things. Like games that allow you to mess with time, or god games that allow you to modify whole worlds. I happen to love god games like From Dust . I mean... it seems like you would really need to use your imagination to solve certain puzzles you could come up with.

Brilliant! Will send you a free Steam code once we are ready.

Cool, thanks! Good luck. Let me know if you want contact / more input, I'd be happy to help..

 

[TheBlackPirate]

Jerry Garcia!

 

[s0nic]

A secret ending where the shaman goes on a final vision quest and realizes they're selling their heritage and culture to fleece gullible westerners. The final scene is the shaman walking away from his tribe with the sun setting behind him and the village in ruins. We then open to a skyscraper at dawn the sun illuminated above it, the shaman is now an uptight businessman dressed in a suit, sitting in an office with a job in marketing.

This gives me an idea. What about a game about a shaman who discovers that his jungle is being cut and burned down and all its resources being sucked out by a mysterious force. The game will focus on the shaman and his quest to find who is responsible for all the carnage. Here's a short summary of what the game's plot might look like;

"A shaman in the amazon jungle wakes up to find his jungle is being torn apart by invaders with big machinery. After he eats of the fruit of the sacred tree of knowledge he has a vision and is told by his ancestors that the jungle is being destroyed by big corporations run by evil sorcerers who are bent on world domination. The shaman must use his magical powers to fight off the evil sorcerers magic in order to restore the jungle and all of mankind as we know it."

The Shaman's Revenge