Did I lose yet?

The short answer is "no". Yesterday, while helping that bastard SDHawk, I had a few ideas regarding character backstories and a particular minigame/sidequest that I've fleshed out a bit, and the connected nature of stories has inspired several other branching ideas. I haven't decided yet whether I want to spill the beans about all of my ideas on this blog, as it kind of ruins the surprise. The game will most likely heavily emphasize story and characters, so I don't want to compromise any twists or dramatic events or anything. It's probably safe to reveal the sidequest thing, so here goes:

Like I said, this is virtually a rejected idea from planning for SDHawk's game. My game takes place in the near future, (not super-sentient robots and hyperspace and aliens and all that nonsense, but the beginning of the space age. Think a Front Mission setting, but without the giant mechas (probably)) so computers and some kind of global network are a vital part of everyday living. The sidequest will be a sort of "online" cooperative puzzle game that virtually everyone plays, in which you move your avatar around a node-filled grid, opening doors/flipping switches/what have you, and winning real-life rewards. The idea is that, with computer technology burgeoning, the game's servers are capable of auto-generating an intelligent world for every player, and also connects them to the arenas of other players at various points. What you have to do is talk to NPCs in the game and convince them to help you in the puzzle by opening some switch only they have access to or something like that, in a sort of Lost Vikings way. Some people will do this simply by you asking them; others might do it as a quest reward or something. I haven't worked out the exact mechanics of it yet, but it will probably be pixelated, cute, and hopefully challenging.

I feel I've maybe dropped the ball a bit by not having any sort of tangible progress, but it's unrealistic to start working on the game's guts before I've planned them. There are a few things I could do, but planning is in such an early stage that those ideas could change easily, as there would be no consequence, and I don't want to waste time and effort on something that I won't keep anyway.

But now it's back to playing Legend of Mana. This game is a lot better than I remember it being.