For some reason, I had convinced myself that the theme was going to be “End of the World”. Surely, given the year, people wouldn’t pick any other, right? I had it all planned out: a space epic about the struggles of the last remaining human against a cold and uncaring universe. It was going to be awesome. Then I woke up the morning of, and to my surprise the theme was instead “You are the Villain”.

This, being the only theme that I hadn’t thought of any good ideas about yet, came as something of a shock. However it soon struck me that there was one brand of villain that gaming had yet to cover. How, I thought, could we possibly be taken seriously as an artform if we did not tackle this issue head-on?

These are villains worse that murderers, worse than terrorists, worse even that Republican voters. Yes, that’s right, queue bargers! Sure, they have been a common staple in many games as the antagonist – who can’t remember the infamous ‘No Russian’ level of Modern Warfare 2, in which you must intimidate civilians in an airport into waiting their turn checking their baggage – but no game has ever tried to go to the heart of what makes these vile beasts tick, put you in their head, made you think like a queue barger.

So today, with a hot cup of tea and neglecting to clean my teeth just to get into the British mood, I set out creating the EQS, or Extendible Queueing Simulator. This highly powerful piece of software is capable of simulating not one, not two, but up to three distinct queues at once. People may join the queues, leave the queues, and most importantly each individual member of the queue can both tut and steal your place in the queue. I also added our villain, who for reasons unknown must reach the end of the queue in a very limited amount of time.

In order to achieve his sinister, might I say even dastardly goal, this barger must seamlessly blend in and out of queues without being seen by the queue matron, who ensures that only those who wait can get inside wherever it is you actually are. But there’s more! British politeness can only be stretched so far, and should you push the people behind you from not just tutting, but to perhaps writing a strongly worded letter, that too shall mean the end of your malevolent game!

Tomorrow I will work on getting the sounds appropriately malefic, the graphics a proper shade of blood red, and the gameplay as fun as stealing tea from a baby.

Tags: game, ld48, stealth

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 15th, 2012 at 4:01 pm and is filed under LD #25. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.