Blog:A Video Game I'm Going To Make One Day

If any of you guys have read my userpage or social profile, you may know that I have always wanted to be a game designer. In an attempt to garner some criticisms for my idea so I can improve, I will tell you guys all of my current ideas for my video game. In the comments below, you can tell me what you think could be better for my designs or what you would like to see.

So a long time ago, back when I was 10 or something like that, I had come up with a game idea about a JRPG-style game with Game Boy-like graphics about three heroes (A thief, a knight, and a mage) on a quest to kill a dragon, and would have similar time and day mechanics like Majora's Mask, having only three days to save the world and special events occurring only on certain days. Over the years, my idea has changed form multiple times, such as dropping the monochrome graphic style, adding three other protagonists, introducing time travel at a later point in the game, and making the game much more emotional (This change occurred after playing through Mother 3). Finally, I think everything has come together, and I want to show you guys my concept so you can critique it and tell me how I can improve it.

Game Title
The title of my game is Lightning Soul.

Plot
The plot of the game is still a work in progress, I plan for it to be in two parts, one part about a dragon attempting the destroy the world, and a second part that takes place ten years after the first about restoring balance to the world after the dragon's reign of terror, which involves the time travel idea I said before.

Party Members

 * Charlie: The main character in the game and the main player character, Charlie is a very flawed hero. His species is chicken. He was born with a soul of lightning, giving him extreme speed and power at the cost of his health and stamina. He is good natured at heart, but is easily influenced by the power of money. He also has used his special powers of lightning unwisely, and is a thief that steals a sorts of material possessions in the beginning of the game, before he is caught up with Max and Bill to save the world after the prologue. He becomes more mature as the game progresses and isn't meant to be an instantly likable character, and is made to grow on the players over time.
 * Max: Charlie's childhood best friend and supporter even in his adult life. This character's species is a tiger and he is a mage and has some anxiety when it comes to being around people, and usually messes up what he wants to say, but one thing he is skilled at is magic. While one of the weakest mages in the world, he is one of the few that is able to perform magic all elements of offensive magic, something only the most powerful mages possess, and also is one of two that can combine the four elements in one spell. He grows closer to Charlie as the game progresses and will gladly send himself out into harms way to protect him.
 * Bill: This duck character is one of the royal knights of the kingdom, he has had no experience with the other protagonists at the beginning. Easily distracted, he is one of the lower ranked guards, but is respected for preventing an assassination on the king, even though what he did was entirely accidental. He is the most powerful party member in terms of physical power and defensive strength, but is horrible at avoiding hits and has no magical experience. In the beginning, he captures Charlie and puts him in the royal jail, but upon the dragon's arrival, Charlie escapes and ends up saving Bill's life. They have some uneasy trust at the game's first half, but they soon become great friends.
 * Blake: This character, inspired by my fursona, is a fox ranger. He is the only party member that can perform standard attacks flying enemies, which is something only magic users are able to do, and has some cool moves such as attacking every enemy on the battlefield and an aimed shot that does quadruple damage that takes two turns to fire. In terms of personality, he is incredibly hard at starting and carrying along conversations and can be very crazy and tiring at times (And is well known for making terrible jokes that don't help the situation), but is generally fun to be around and is a very mature person in terms of understanding. He has a huge crush on Kitrina, and as the game progresses, they grow closer together as "special friends" and depending on choices, they either remain friends or become married at the game's conclusion.
 * Kitrina: A priest character, Kitrina is one of the most dedicated religious figures in the kingdom and is seen as perfect to all who don't know her well. Due to her religious codes, she is unable to perform attacks against enemies, and is only able to perform restorative and defensive magic. However, as a trade-off for not being able to do attacks, she is able to freely restore a very small amount of health to a single party member at no cost, which doesn't sound much at first, but can be a life-saver due to the gameplay which will be described later. As the game progresses, her darker side begins to unravel and she isn't seen as a perfect character, but is instead incredibly broken person who is trying to hide her pain behind trying to be as positive as possible. She has PTSD from an incident from her childhood and has a twisted view of how the world is, and blames herself for many things. Her character reaches the breaking point near the end, where she snaps and breaks her religious code to attack enemies, but is put somewhat back together in the conclusion, depending on the choices the player makes for Blake.
 * Marie: Marie, a bard, is the last party member gained in the story. While she does deal a decent amount of damage in battle, her real skill comes from her bard songs. As the game continues, she gains new songs that do different effects for a brief period of time, such as increasing damage, minor healing to everyone per turn, and slowing down notes for the player to time (See "Gameplay"). She decides to keep to herself most of the time, and is the "emo girl" of the team. She gets into an odd friendship with Bill in the game, as she both supports and makes fun of him throughout, and they both gain some respect for each other. However, she meets a sad fate at the end of the game, although I will not say what.

Supporting

 * King Phillip: The king of the kingdom, Phillip is a duck who is one of the kindest kings who ever lived. Under his rule, poverty and homelessness was abolished, and he has been around for over four decades (In this kingdom, it is similar to presidency, but terms are ten years and kings are much more powerful). He is Bill's grandfather, and had persuaded Bill into joining the royal guard in the first place. Along with the rest of the kingdom, he is evacuated when the heroes confront the dragon, and loses a leg after saving Bill from being crushed to death.
 * The Four Guardians: These characters are not exactly villains or heroes, but are obstacles that stand in the player's way. At each of the sword piece's locations, there is a Guardian that stands in the way of the sword piece and must be defeated as a test of strength to see if the party is worthy of earning the piece. Each of the Guardians has their own unique design and will appear at the end of the game the defend the town from Gore's wrath.
 * TBA

Villains

 * Gore: The three-headed dragon that is reigning terror on the kingdom, Gore sits on top of the castle that is in the center of the kingdom. It came from another dimension, after being banished into the kingdom by a wizard from a different one, who essentially made the dragon someone else's problem. The dragon itself is invincible, but after collecting the four sword parts and crafting the Bane of Wyrms, the dragons are able to be killed by the sword itself, but attacking them is futile under any other weapon or any kind of magic.
 * James: Back in Charlie's childhood, James was a bully who would frequently harm little kids and occasionally Charlie and Max themselves. Even though they are older now, he is still a frequent blight to Charlie, and his torture has extended to the rest of the party. In the story, James believes that he can cheat out of the prophecy of the Bane of Wyrms. While it states that only a person with an elemental soul can wield the sword, James and his band of friends have created a spell that gives James his own, albeit artificial and less powerful, soul of fire and allows him to wield the Bane of Wyrms. The reason for him wanting to wield the sword is so that he can become famous and get all of the girls. Throughout the story at random points, he and his "save the world" party, he will stop the player and fight them for their sword pieces. At the near end where the Bane of Wyrms is crafted, he steals the sword from Charlie and wields it against the players for a while, but soon the sword rejects his soul and James is turned into a demon, and kills two of his friends in the process. James is eventually stopped and turns back into normal and in a coma, and cannot be interacted with for the rest of the game.
 * Gore's Minions: Brought into the player's world along with the dragon, these are enemies encountered throughout the game and are Gore's servants, and most of them are common enemies for the player to fight, although a few are mini-bosses and bosses, including an optional special boss, for the player to fight as they progress through the story.
 * TBA

Exploration
Between combat encounters, the player will explore the overworld, which will be a small assortment of different locations. All of them can be explored at any time, although all five major locales will each play a role in the story. Each locale will contain a few small areas, with one being a town in the area, and the rest being a couple of areas to connect the other locales, areas, towns, and the dungeon together. Players can talk to towns people and interact with the world by clicking the action button when near. Conversations will be simple, with an NPC saying a few lines of dialogue and the occasional choice for the player, but all of the NPCs will have something important to say or be there just for comedic purposes. Players can also purchase items from NPCs. Outside of world exploration, the player also has a menu to read journal entries on what to do next, use items on the party members or on the world, and check the map for reference.

Combat
I like to think of the gameplay for this small idea as a combination between Final Fantasy, Deltarune, and Friday Night Funkin'. The player will encounter enemies on the overworld, similar to the Mother games, and will battle them after reaching them. The party will consist of up to three party members, and who they will be and how many are in battle will be determined by where you are in the story. When doing any action such as attacking, using magic, or lowering damage on the players, the music will change and the player will have to do a five to ten second beat hitting microgame, similar to rhythm games, with hitting notes and/or executing them perfectly will make the effect of the battle stronger or weaker depending on what is happening, while missing them will be a penalty on the overall effect of the action. As the game continues, hitting the beats will be much harder, but more rewarding. In addition, party members can combine two or three of their moves together for much more powerful attacks or spells, and hitting the beats in these segments will be Dark Souls hard, but incredibly rewarding, and can even lead to instant victory if done perfectly.

Structure
In terms of progressing through the story, this game will be done in a similar way to the first two Paper Mario games, where the goal of the game is to retrieve a certain number of items and then confront the final boss, and on each attempt to gain the item, the player will go through a different situation than the last, making the structure repetitive, but also done so in a way that it's easy to get into and keeps the player invested into what situation they will get into next to gain the quest items.

Tone
In terms of the game's overall tone, I am planning to make it somewhat of a balance between a serious tone and a light-hearted and comedic tone, in a way similar to how Mother 3 managed to tell a serious and dark story, but had its own funny and oddball moments. I know this tone is kind of hard to do well, as it's either going to make your game excellent or make your story a disaster. I think I may have done a way to balance this, as most of the humor is done in some of the cutscenes and the strange and humorous characters that will appear and their dialogue. Heck, the story is literally about a wizard banishing a dragon into another dimension to make it someone else's problem, and you happen to be the one who has to clean up their mess. However, the game will be full of serious moments as well, as the characters will have deep conversations with each other and there will be a lot of dark and hopeless moments. I even want to make an ending that will make the player cry.

The Problem
I will likely never be able to make this at my age, since I have little programming or music making experience, although I am great as an artist. My goal for making this game will be to get a degree in game design and art in college (I'm in 9th grade currently, so that will take a while), and either hire a programmer or two, as well as a composer to create the music, and I will provide how the game will work, the ideas behind everything, and provide reference art and make my own pixel art for the project. I think that would work, and having healthy relationships with my future design team will also help.

The End
So what do you guys think so far? This is all I'm willing to share for now, but I hope you like this idea, and make sure to give me some constructive feedback too if you want.