/The-Adventure-of-Rick

Rick went to grad school

The Adventure of Rick : Grad School

A tale of grad school inspired by Rick and Morty and my own PhD life. This is a JRPG style PhD student simulator game.

This was a submission for GBJAM7 made with GBStudio.

Ideas

Learn from great RPG games like Pokemon, Zelda, Earthbound, Undertale, etc.

The story is about Rick when he went to grad school. The background of Rick and Morty allows any blizzard ideas. The goal of the game is to get PhD degree. To do that, Rick needs to complete various quests, such as selecting supervisor, passing qualifying exams, publishing papers, etc. Each of these quests can be a combat, WarioWare-like mini-game, side scrolling platformer or puzzle.

Perhaps I can make it a Zelda like open world adventure where you can challenge the final boss any time but you won’t be able to defeat so easily at the beginning. Rick gains experience, strength and superpower in the quests and he will finally be able to defeat the final boss: his supervisor.

The basic gameplay can be like this:

Do experiment to gain experience Once you gather enough experience, try to publish a paper Depending on the amount of experience, you will publish on different journals But you still have chances to fail, the process is risky, and it takes time Each paper you publish is going to be a super attack.

In addition, you need to complete your PhD degree within 4 years. I can introduce a calendar system where, for example, there is only 2 weeks in each month, 2 months in each year.

Average time to beat the game should be about an hour.

Quests

Brainstorming for various quests

  1. Apply for grad school
  2. Select supervisor Similar to select Pokemon 3 different kinds of supervisor, give you different specs
  3. Graduate courses
  4. Learn to do experiment Superconducting qubits A few Puzzle game Gain experience and strength
  5. Write QE report
  6. Qualifying exam: mini boss RPG combat
  7. Attending conference
  8. Publish papers: publish and perish Put the papers as badges like Pokemon
  9. Write thesis
  10. Defense: final boss RPG combat

Rick's stats

Health Motivation Stamina Experience Papers: Each paper is an super attack.

Paper stats:

Impact factor (strength multiplier) Citations (add strength) Attack accuracy

Tools

GBStudio: for making GB RPG games without programming.

Aseprite: making sprites

Tiled: making maps