I keep getting sick

Since ive arrived in Japan, I cant help but get sick. So today I was kind of brainstorming how could i make this into a game? I thought, you know escaping virii and bacteria kind of reminds me of a survival horror game. I mean obviously youre running away from something scary and stuff, but then i thought, well in order for this to work id have to have some big story and puzzles and blah blah blah blah. So that wont work. Which led me to this concept.


Premise: You just move into a new apartment and you find that you keep getting sick. In order to stay healthy you have to inspect your house for germs and visit the doctor regularly. On top of this you have to live your life as a normal person.

Gameplay: Similar to shenmue in the respect that alot of your time will be spent inspecting things and living a "normal" life. Perhaps your character starts to feel a little sick, his throat hurts or something, you guide your character around looking for stuff that could be infecting you.

Actually, this doesnt sound fun at all. I guess if you hate it in real life it probably wont make that much of a game. So how could you make protecting yourself from sickness fun?

Maybe we could change the story to the main character was a normal guy but then he got infected with a virus that nearly crippled him. After surviving the virus he vows to defeat germs and bacteria before they can kill anyone else. So he invents this all purpose sick smasher spray. And the game begins when you don your sick smasher suit for the first time and take to the streets with your sick smasher spray. The spray isnt just any normal spray though the mist when it comes into contact with germs it turns into a living being that you can control and you can use the being to uh...rampage the streets and get points and combos and yeah thats pretty stupid too.

You know, Dr. mario wasnt a bad idea. It has nothing to do with getting sick though. I think the guy was just obsessed with color coding his medication.(miyamoto?)

I'm at a lost, maybe i need to think about that first idea again. It just needs a little something extra to keep it from being a bore fest. Maybe i need a better story. "a writer on vacation in a really big house" or "a guy bored in japan" hmmmm

How about this. "a guy just moves in to a new town and is all alone". Atleast that would be the starting premise. Instead of the game being about avoiding sickness it could be an RPG about learning to live in a new city. As the story progresses you get friends, your sickness goes away and life becomes good. Then it gets bad again, but then it gets good again and the game ends. I dont know what you could do with the battle system though. I keep going to the classic turn based style but i dont see where that would fit at all. Perhaps instead of battles this game should rely heavy on conversation trees. You could treat every encounter as if it were a battle.

The space between this paragraph and the last paragraph used to be a big thing about how these conversation battles would work but then i realized my idea just turned into abioware game and i wasnt happy with that. So i give up on the conversation battles.

I'm stumped. What could I do to make this game fun in its current state? I dont want to add any fantasy elements or grand story. no saving the world or anything, i just want to make friends.

I guess i shouldnt make making friends the key gameplay element. That should be the result of the things i do in the game.

But what should i do? What kind of gameplay would suit this storyline and still be fun and not derivitive?

Anyway ill think more, in the meantime if anyone is reading id appreciate some ideas.