In my culture, there’s this popular saying/advice: “you have to kill a lion per day”, which means one should focus in solving a problem at a time. I would like to make a game from it.

It would be a fantasy fight game. Each day, a different fight, but only one fight per day. It wouldn’t simulate realistically anything; for me a rich symbolism in a game is way more interesting than a high-tech constructed landscape or scene.

The symbolism would be used to create each fight or each day, using some sort of combinations of those wicked non western calendars like the Chinese and Balinese, where the cycles have a symbolic meaning. In the Balinese calendar, for example, each day has a symbolic meaning. (says Clifford Geertz and Norbert Elias in their coolest texts).

The game would be steadily different: everyday a little surprise from the opponent. Your character would be always the same, but it would have a thousand abilities. Each time you win a fight, you would understand a bit more of your character. It would not be based on progression (yikes!) of any kind (linear temporality, leveling, etc.). It would be based on difference and morphing.

But you wouldn’t be able to do more than one fight per day, neither to choose a day. The whole ingame activity would  take no more than 45 mins, just like a tv series, which nicely fits the leisure time of anyone. I am a strong defender of reduction of play duration in the game structure. To embed alarm clocks in games is not enough in my opinion. Nobody wants films as long as Gone with the Wind, and I belong to the group that doesn’t want games as long as forever.