Game Design Foundations (Wordware Game and Graphics Library)

Here is another one pager example.

Years ago I met a student studying to become a medical doctor who was addicted to Mortal Kombat. He wanted to design a game where the player would be inside the human body combating real life diseases like cancer. The cancer cells would invade the body and the player would gather his super force of red and white blood cells, the Chemo Team, and Radiation Sensations, using their martial art techniques to fight and destroy the disease. This game would not only be fun for the fighting genre fans but would also teach people about diseases (what the disease does, where it attacks the human body, symptoms, and what to look for as it progresses) and their treatments (the latest cures, various treatment options, and length of time needed to destroy a disease or put it in remission).

We worked together to expand this concept by including the entire human life (from infant to old age). We called this game Medical Kombat and felt that it would appeal to all ages, especially children 13 to 18 as well as medical students like my co-designer.

Several films have been made on this subject, such as Fantastic Voyage and Osmosis Jones.

Medical Kombat

Medical Kombat is a third-person POV martial arts/first-person shooter that takes place in a real human body from birth to death as the good side combats disease and viruses. The player or players in multiplayer mode, as the good side, will learn all about many diseases and their symptoms and causes, as well as the past and latest medical treatments.

The player will select an age range to play from, such as an infant, young child, or young adult to adulthood. The infant diseases will include jaundice, convulsions, seizures, asthma, hernia, and so on. The young children diseases will include viruses and ailments like mumps, measles (rubeola and rubella or German measles), chicken pox, polio, allergies, acne, bee stings, hiccups, splinters, epilepsy, broken arms and legs, and so on. Other diseases will include bacterial diseases (like scarlet fever, whooping cough, typhoid fever, diphtheria, gangrene, cholera, conjunctivitis, and tuberculosis), viruses (like smallpox, influenza, anthrax, pneumonia, herpes, hepatitis, trachoma, and yellow fever), fungal diseases (like thrush and athlete’s foot), nutritional diseases (like beriberi, rickets, and scurvy) and parasitic diseases (like malaria and bubonic plague). The adult diseases will include leukemia, cancer (lung, skin, breast, and bone), tumors, gallstones, kidney stones, AIDs, heart problems, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, arthritis, osteoporosis, ALS, muscular dystrophy, and emphysema.

Besides the aforementioned good guy teams, there will be vaccine and drug-injected super heroes like penicillin, insulin, and other medications. Some super heroes can fight an enemy one on one, some spin medicated webs trying to capture and destroy the unsuspecting enemies, and others shoot medication into the human body, blocking the pathways or locking the enemy inside a region. The super team uses the human body’s blood transit system to travel through arteries away from the heart and veins and back to their headquarters (the heart). The object of each mission is to survive, and the player(s) will have several medical gauges and monitors that will give up-to-date tracking of the patient’s progress.

Medical Kombat has unique cross-genre appeal since it is a martial arts fighting game, an FPS, and an educational game all in one. Parents will appreciate its educational benefit, and the males and females 8 to 16 will be enthusiastic about the realistic and intense fighting and destruction of their enemies. Each year 15,000 to 19,000 high school students apply to medical colleges throughout the U.S.

The platform for this game will be the Windows XP as the first release (Windows 2000, 98, Me, and XP compatible) with Microsoft’s Xbox, PlayStation 2, and the Nintendo Game Cube to follow. Similar fighting games like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon sell for $49.95 on the Nintendo Game Cube, PSX 2, and Xbox and $32.95 for the Gameboy Advance. Mortal Combat Deadly Alliance sells for $49.95 on the Nintendo Game Cube, PSX 2, and Xbox and $39.95 for the Gameboy Advance.

Medical Kombat simulates the first war that man ever fought, the first war you have ever fought, and the last war you will someday lose. The players will enjoy the thrill of real-life search and destroy as they battle their way through each mission and learn about life and death in the process.