As you probly know, I am working with OoMMMoO on a side-scroller right now. Currently, the one thing I fear that lacks, is the story. As you migh have read(if any of you game-writing peeps ever go to the design forum) is that this game''s main character is a female, whose uncle is killed by a vampire-cult. Later on in the story, though, it is revealed that all is not right, and the uncle was actually PART of the cult. everything in the middle and after isn''t figured out. I envision this game being quite plot-driven. And I was just wondering.... a.)What could possible pre-middle-post story be? and b.)how to include a story into a side-scrolling game w/out ''stupider than drek'' results.... I promise i won''t flame..... -Run_The_Shadows -Run_The_Shadows@excite.com

Oh yeah... Delphine, the company that did Flashback was the best at making story-driven side-scrollers. They also did Out of This World (IMHO better than FlashBack) and (I think) Fade to Black (which I have never played). Like Landfish said... most of the story exposition occured in cutscenes between (or sometimes in) the levels...

As far as the story... keep it pretty mysterious from the first and have each scene reveal a little more each time to the player... then every so often have a real plot twist which blows away or reverses some of the knowledge that the player thought they had about the plot... something like...

Intro:
introduce heroine
explain that uncle was killed
heroine wants revenge
heroine must go to informant to find out who killed her uncle
(or have her find some clue as to murderer(s) identities at the scene)

After Level 1:
have informant tell heroine that killers are some kind of cult, but not much more...
Maybe don''t reveal the vampire part yet... or maybe even better if he says something like that the cult "thinks they are vampires". Or have all this revealed by a cult member the heroine has tracked down, and he reveals this before she offs him, or he escapes.
Heroine now needs to find out more about cult (location/members/etc.)

Through the next couple of levels have the heroine get closer and closer to the cult (Infiltrate big businesses owned by cult members or govt. buildings to get info, track down and kill members, etc...)

Finally get to the cult... here''s where you flip the story... have the main cult leader as a boss character or something... when you "defeat" him he falls... then in cutscene have him revive... have some appropriate dialog/actions to prove that the cult really *are* vampires (possibly could have heroine actually *turned into* a vampire at this point... that would be a little cliched, but still kinda cool)... at this point you could do lots of stuff have the heroine still keep fighting the vampires as a vampire... Find out that there are nasties of some kind out there that are worse than the vampires (Cthulu like beings or something) that she now has to fight... another really cool plot twist would be to find out that her father or mother (as to why she was with her uncle) is the actual leader of the vampire clan...

Anyway... I''m gonna stop now... I''m tired of rambling on, and I''m starting to sound like a freak... and I''m giving away all my good ideas! I don''t know if any of these ideas fit in with your story... but just pick and choose... there are plenty of good movies/books like this to give you plot ideas... Watch out though... I watched/read too many of them, and you can tell how screwed up I am now!!!

-Nate