So I’m basing my game on Kafka’s short story A Hunger Artist, a story which, on the surface, is about a performance artist and his hype man trying to build and maintain an audience at a time when interest in watching people not eat is starting to flag.

If you haven’t read this story, it’s in the public domain and available here, or if you are for some reason really busy developing a game this weekend or something, librivox has an audiobook version available on youtube.

Here’s what I have so far.

You play as the Hunger Artist (the red rectangle labled “HA”) and are joined by the Impresario (the green rectangle labled “IMP”) in entertaining the spectators (the rectangles of various colors labled “SP”).  Audience members will all have different personality traits that affect their behavior, including, most importantly, whether or not they come back to watch you later, and whether or not they bring friends. You will have 40 days to maximize your ticket sales.

If I have time, I’ll make a campaign mode where you travel around Europe circa 1909-1924 putting on performances until you slowly but surely drive away your only friend and advocate by showing a complete disregard for your own health. There’ll also be an endless play mode set in a circus, where you play until you get lost in the straw and replaced with a panther. I might also make the panther a playable character.