As a video game developer, you inevitably must tell people about the game(s) you are creating. Usually, it starts with friends and family, followed by coworkers (if you have a day job), and eventually you must explain to your stakeholders: investors, artists, musicians, voice actors, media and your potential user base.
Often detailing a game is straightforward and easy, such as the case of 3Z Incursion. 3Z Incursion is a first-person shooter game for Google Cardboard that takes place in a multilevel building where you progress down hallways and kill zombies. Bam. Done and done. Nice little elevator pitch that covers the game. Usually that is all the time you get to tell someone about your game. At least to draw them in enough so they can decide whether to ask questions or not.
Omega Connection is not so simple. I have tried. Really I have. When I start explaining I hear things like “Roguelike” (which I honestly had to Google) or “oh that’s like [insert random game name here].” I’ve tried to be concise. I’ve tried to use terms that people (at least gamers) are most familiar with. I have even gone so far as to draw out a table of the features and aspects of Omega Connection so that I could come up with some sort of elevator pitch. No luck.
I figured the best place to start would be in picking the proper genre. Seeing as most people relate it to one role-playing game or another (Roguelike apparently being a sub-genre for RPG) that should fit the bill. It’s usually the first genre that pops into a gamer’s mind when the word “quest” is thrown about. Only role-playing is about taking on the persona of someone else and that is not Omega Connection at all.
The very basis for OC is to play as yourself, which has influence from the original Omega Connection (table-top) game by Tom Truman, as well as more recent influences from shows like Sword Art Online (SAO). It is difficult to call something role-playing when you are supposed to be doing the opposite of that. I imagine this would place OC into the category of simulation, particularly life simulation on another planet.
Were that all I guess I would have a genre, except there are many qualities in OC that correspond to the Action genre, particularly first person fighting and shooter styles, influenced by many of the games I have played throughout my life. However, that is not quite enough because OC is designed to have a rich story-filled world where you are encouraged to explore and solve challenges pushing it into the Adventure or Action-Adventure genre.
Of course, if it were just about fighting monsters within a story-line that would be one thing, but OC takes that many steps further by creating immersive, strategic enemies that will often require tactics and guile to defeat (or not die to). At the very least this would be considered Strategy genre overtones, particularly the real-time strategy (RTS) sub-genre. And then we are back to Omega Connection having quests, which has its foundation in the RPG genre, except it is an Open world style because you are not locked in to any of the quests, which gives it a Sandbox Action-Adventure feel.
Effectively, Omega Connection is a 3D First Person Interactive Self-Role-Playing Action-Adventure Real-Time Strategy Life Simulation Open-World/Sandbox video game set on a procedurally generated world during the Order-Chaos wars. How’s that for an elevator pitch?
In all reality, Omega Connection has been influenced by so many stories I have read, games I have played, shows and movies I have seen that to relate it to one or two things just insults the idea. Unfortunately, I need to be able to call it something and as we can all agree it is a video game, I will just compare it to my first video game experience. Omega Connection: Just Like Pong But With Wombats.
Edit: Apparently, the wombats were causing too much damage to the in-game cars and had to be removed.