How about a TITANIA Design Contest where a "Special Ingredient" character must be used?

Design
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I was watching a cooking show with my girl, and then it hit me. The idea, not my girl.

MARTH and SIGURD are great contests where you have control over basically everything that goes into your game.

But what if your control wasn’t absolute?

What if there was another contest unrelated to the MARTH and SIGURD series to make the best single-chapter game with a unique twist:

You must make the best possible use of a ‘Special Ingredient’, a specific character complete with their own Personal Skill, PRF Weapon, and other quirks that flip traditional Fire Emblem game design on its head?

What if you had to build one chapter around a character someone else designed?

I’ve seen so many creative characters in Fire Emblem fangames, and the most memorable ones to me made you think about something beyond “how do I use this unit’s big numbers to kill or tank or heal?”

The more unusual the ingredient, the more designers have to rethink traditional Fire Emblem gameplay into new exciting forms to not just accommodate the character’s capabilities, but take advantage of them and showcase the most interesting ways they can be used.

One contest could reveal countless creative ways of designing for - and around - a single interesting idea.

Judges could rate the game based on Gameplay, Story, Presentation, Ingenuity (how cleverly the Special Ingredient is used), and Authenticity (how authentically the spirit of the special ingredient is captured).

I suggest we call this contest TITANIA:

Tactical Innovation Through Asymmetric Novel Integrated Assets.

10 Likes
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That… actually sounds cool.

2 Likes
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That sounds like a fun take on the MAPPY competition from last year, I’m into it! Would people have to be paired with a unit idea or would one idea be able to be used in different entries?

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Good question! We can tinker with other formats down the line, but to kick things off we’re streamlining it. Everyone builds around the same Special Ingredient, a character designed by one of the Judges (That’s me).

This simplicity nukes all the balance and pairing debates and “Judge, his Special Ingredient is easier to work with!” talk and keeps it a pure creative stress-test.

No biases or excuses, we all build from the same foundation. One unit precision-engineered to suplex traditional Fire Emblem design off a cliff. What innovative and inventive scenarios can rise from the ashes?

If this pilot works, we’ll open the floodgates. Player-submitted ingredients, randomized pairings, multiple Special Ingredients to include in the same chapter, there’s plenty of room to experiment. But for now let’s keep things tight and test the waters. If you’re interested in judging or contributing, let me know.

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Did people lose interest in this because if I’m one of the judges and the guy designing the first Special Ingredient this feels too much like it’s all about me? I’m open to letting other people judge and design Special Ingredients, I just figured designing Special Ingredients would be a lot of work so I should volunteer to make the first one.