Here is my concept for a game based on Sluggy. It would be an "action adventure RPG". Just the genre is not very descriptive, so I will describe it below.

The entire game would be seen from the same side-on perspective as most strips. The plot would follow the major events of the strip, though some things may happen differently. In between those major events, the game would take a slightly different pace, and be more free form.

These major events include things like the Storm Breaker Saga, Love Potion, The Bug the witch and the Robot, The Sci-fi Adventure, GOFOTRON, That Which Redeems, Dangerous Days and so on. During the major events, the game moves foward as the player completes tasks, such as solving puzzles and defeating enemies.

The free form segments between major events last for a certain amount of time in each case, during which the player can complete tasks that will make future events easier, such as researching Oasis's history, building a robot, defeating vroomba and studying for exams. They may have to balance these things with working and sleeping and eating, like in The Sims (I'm not sure this would suit the rest of the game). The player has a set amount of time to complete all the tasks for each character before external events force the story forward (say, Alt Bun-Bun arrives, Aylee's cocoon bursts, Demon Gywnn returns, and so on).

Speaking of each character, the player can, at almost any time, switch control between major characters. That would be largely Torg, Riff, Zoe, Gywnn and Sasha. Sometimes, the player can also play as Aylee, Bun-bun and Oasis (and perhaps Kiki).

Sasha would only be availiable from the Halloween party where she was introduced until she leaves. Zoe would probably not be availiable when she moves back home (except for Fire and Rain). Other than these two major restrictions the 5 (Torg, Riff, Gwynn, Zoe and Sasha) can be used at any almost any time. For example, switching to Gywnn after Love Potion would let you walk down the path, and maybe see the Oasis Vision and avoid turning around. When characters are not being controlled, they wonder around doing generic things or otherwise taking care of themselves.

General gameplay would be like like Prince of Persia (the original) meets Zelda meets Day of the Tentacle meets (maybe) The Sims. It would be a beast. From Prince of Persia, the control scheme: realistic and compelling. From Zelda, the inventory: collecting gadgets and abilities. From Day of the Tentacle, the puzzle solving: adventure game elements. And from The Sims, need meters: the management of daily lives. With your powers combined, this is Sluggy Freelance!

Characters would have access to different items and abilities and would be differently able physically. In other words, Oasis could easily jump a gap that Zoe or Torg could not, for instance.

Well, that's my idea. It's probably way too ambitious. Questions? Comments? Flames?

Do a 'proof of concept' demo. Send that off to him. If he likes it, then you can negotiate permissions/rights/storyline etc.
On the downside, if he doesn't like it, you'd never be able to release your demo to the public.

I think a 'Broken Sword' style game would work really well: putting it in 2D wouldn't bother most people, and the Sluggyverse would really lend itself to that kind of adventure storytelling. THe character would have to be Torg, though; I don't think it would work as well with someone else.

But it would be awesome, right?

Still, it would be a lot of content no doubt. In theory, the simple graphics and gratuitous reusing of backgrounds would ease the burden somewhat, but it'd still be a ton of work. The alternative is to:

a) split the archives into chunks to release separately

b) take only a section of the archives.

I think the 2nd one is probably the better option. Not only would the game be more focused, it would be more possible.

Which part? Maybe one of the following:

Love potion thru The Bug, the Witch and the Robot, cutting out stuff that is too far removed from the main thread of Gwynn wigging out.

A Beige Horn Mist and parts of chapter 34. In other words, the whole haunted house thing. Once again, cut the chaff.

IMO, the best would be chapters 10 thru 14, K'Z'K's introduction and eventual defeat in the war of the Bug Squishers. Less relevant bits should be cut.

For an even more focused game, maybe just one of the stand alones. TWR, Sci-fi adventure, GOFOTRON, Isle of Dr. Steve?

Well, actually, I started work on a non-Sluggy adventure game after that, so I'm not too worried about it now. Still, the advantage of a Sluggy fangame would have been that I could have got help from Sluggites on making the game. As it is, I've got one writer (me) and one programmer (who actually introduced me to Sluggy in the first place), which has kind of hampered work on it. Still, I expect we'll get it done one day. It'll just take a while, that's all.

Pretty cool idea, if people with the skills have the free time. I'm still plugging away to try and help get the sluggy tabletop RPG out soon. :)

I like the idea of following just one of the major story lines. War of the bug squishers or TWR would be really cool. The downside is that those stories only featured Torg and Zoe predominately. If I had to pick one that involved all of them it would have to be a continuous Oasis saga. Where the whole game is her storyline played out completely and not broken up by her long absences in the actual story. A close second would be to do Aylee's story the same way. That way all the major characters would be included.

Hmmm... Those early K'Z'K arcs did kinda focus on Torg and Zoe. Riff did have some important roles to play, however, especially earlier when K'Z'K was out to kill him.

If we are considering something as long as the Oasis story (as an aside, how much of Hereti-Corp and Dangerous Days... and Fire and Rain would that include? She was pretty tied to each of them, and there are some bigger plots related), I would recommend doing the whole K'Z'K plot from Chapter 10: K'Z'K all the way to Chapter 22: The Bug the Witch and the Robot. Just the K'Z'K bits. The whole thing is reasonably self contained, unlike Oasis' story, which was tied into Hereti-Corp and an even bigger can of worms, Clonee. Possibly, Clonee would have to be cut.

I wonder why no one has mentioned it but... What about a Kitten 1st person shooter? Like Resident Evil only with cute kittens instead of the undead?

If this game ever gets made I would help as much as I could. I have absolutely no coding skills but I can storyboard halfway decently and I would be able to beta test it.

Ah, dreams....

I think you'd get the project done a lot faster as a series of palatte swaps. Instead of creating a Riff and Torg vs. hC chapter to the game, just get one of the old Contra ports and swap out the red guy and blue guy for Torg and Riff. Remap a couple of the bosses, maybe cut out a couple chapters, done.

For the Kiki portion of the game, all you'd really need to do is remap a Pacman board to look like Torg's living room, Pacman to Kiki and the ghosts to Torg, Riff, Zoe and Bun-Bun... the dots can be various keys and shiny objects and the power pills can be pixie sticks. Done.

Bunbun in timeless space? Galaga.

Figure out a few other ports and release it as arcade's greatest hits, Sluggy style.

Part of me wants to scream "blasphemy" and reject that idea as an insult to original gaming... and another part of me would totally wanna play that game.

I've thought about this before...

Just now, I thought of doing it as a 2-d RTS.

Imagine that your battle ground is the comic strip itself.

On one side, you have your forces--Torg, to start with.

On the far end, you have the forces of evil--KZK, perhaps.

You can control your character's movement, but the enemy will generally move forward. In order to prevent him getting to you before you can defeat him, you use the "Pencil Ability" to draw new panels in between--thereby filling in more of the story. What was once one strip is now a week's worth, now a month's, now a year's...

As you defeat old enemies, new ones arise; as you add in panels, new story elements arise (example: Aylee comes out of her cocoon and joins your side) which affect you when you're in or past those panels.

You cannot (normally) go backwards, but each time you enter the next panel, your energy/funds increase, allowing you to buy equipment or perform actions.

Like any good RTS, this would make a kick-ass board game, as well. But it works best as a fast-paced video game.

Not to mention, it wouldn't have to be horizontal all the time; you could find new areas in the panels--a whole sky above in which Kiki could fly, or the Dimension of Pain far underneath whence demons come.

Best of all, thanks to modern gaming tech, the game doesn't have to end. Every day will provide a new strip which can be added to the end of the game.

You're not just playing a game based on the strip--you're playing the strip.

What do you think?

The unfortunate thing about a 2-D RTS, is that when both sides meet in the middle you either have the first guy to get there on each side hacking at each other while everyone else queues up behind them or all of them overlapping, in which case you get this big blur of sprites, where only the guy in the foreground is visible.

More important, though, is the question of how exactly the game is played because this may alleviate the concern I mentioned above. Ok, so you add panels. Do you move your characters around like a regular RTS? Do you control them directly, like in a platformer? How do characters fight? Maybe fights are turn-based Final Fantasy-esque bouts between the characters in the panel? I just can't see the RTS dynamic corresponding to the sorts of battles seen in the comic. For example, how would Clonee's defeat be handled? Or Gywnn's poker game against the bug?

I guess what I'm looking for is more details on your idea.

You could take care of the queing/overlapping problem a couple of ways... The best one I can think of would be to make use of that extra space I mentioned. You could only have one attacker on the ground, one in the air, and one underground/water; all others would play subsidiary roles. (Example: Torg is your attacker on the ground, Aylee in the air. Riff could attack on the ground, but there's no room; instead he stays back and provides Torg with advanced weaponry.)

Also, the game would be set up so that you wouldn't just hit the middle and spar; a major element of battle would be pushing each other back and forth--sort of like a sumo wrestling match. KZK pushes Kiki back to a panel where there's something shiny, thus distracting her; Torg pushes an HC employee forward to a panel with an "Override: B-1" Oasis moment.

You'd move your characters around like a regular RTS--well, depending on the system. On a computer you could probably use the mouse to control other things and the arrow keys to fight. Really a major innovation is that, like comics, time has now become equal to space. Rather than zipping around the screen, your character goes from panel to panel as he goes from moment to moment.

The fights would be, not like turn-based FF, but like time-limited FF. Tell Torg to attack, and he'll attack at a set rate; after an attack, he won't be able to attack again or perform a different action until his action-bar has run out again. (Or, you could possibly tie this time to space as well and posit one attack per panel.) (Or, you could forget attacks to damage an enemy and simply make panel progression the goal. You don't want to destroy KZK; you want to push him forward in time until he is destroyed by something else.)

All Sluggy games are going to interpret the events somewhat less than exactly. By pairing time and space, it gets more exact than ever before. Clonee would be pushed back until Aylee arrived to help; Gwynn would draw one card for every panel until the bug arrived at the vortex and could be shoved inside.

My game is, I think, as close as you're going to get to playing the actual comic, every last bit of it, and on into the future.