In Times Of Life Or Death, I Choose Death
I've mentioned in the past that sometimes I have incredibly vivid dreams.I saw a story about the disaster survival game "I Am Alive" last week (coming to XBLA and PSN), and I was struck by what a good idea it seemed for a game. Here's a description (from the press release):
I Am Alive follows an everyman’s journey to find his wife and daughter, who were lost during the “Event.” A year later, he finds Haventon, his hometown, in shambles. Buildings are destroyed, toxic ash fills the streets, and society has been torn, causing inhabitants to take all necessary actions to survive.
That seems 100 times more interesting than "shoot, move, shoot, repeat one million times." I would particularly like to see this idea used in a strategy game.
I'm quite sure that seeing this press release influenced my dream, because in the dream, I was in a park area with small parking lots and roads weaving through. People were jogging by, women pushed babies in strollers, and I felt a strong sense of well-being. It was all lovely and pastoral--warm and green--until I turned and saw a wall of water in the distance, so tall that it blocked the sky.
It was a beautiful, vivid blue, almost electric, stretched across the horizon, and I asked someone nearby how it was that water could be suspended like that.
"It can't," he said. Then he explained that, due to some disaster I can no longer remember, the water was actually headed our way, and would arrive in only a few minutes.
A few seconds later, my lifetime failure to develop a foolproof method for locating my car in parking lots would finally come back to haunt me. I couldn't find the damn car, of course, and even if I had, I don't know where I would have driven.
There was general panic around me, as people ran to take cover or simply fled. I ran past the parking lot, through a small stand of trees, and came to a cliff overlooking a small lake. I scrambled down the cliff face and discovered that carved into the red face of the cliff was a lattice-like structure, very precise, and some of the openings had been extended into the cliff itself. Highly geometric burrows, as it were, and I found one about twenty feet above the water level, pushing back into the cliff as far as I could.
I remember thinking how clever I was, and how I was going to survive in my safe, snug little hole.
Then I woke up, and when I remembered the dream I started laughing. As soon as the water reached the lake, the lake level would have gone to the top of the cliff and beyond, drowning me immediately. Absolutely no chance for survival.
Even in my dreams, I'm clutch.
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