Games that reflect Turkey

NOTE: You need to be familiar with some of the turkish words that will be mentioned in this article in order to fully understand it.

In recent years I had several ideas about games that would reflect Turkey and the turkish life style. Usually I combined them with already existing and worldwide reknown franchises. Here are some of them:

Need for Speed: Istanbul Dolmush Edition

In this game you are a dolmush driver and try to make your way up from the outskirts of the city to the best and most profitable dolmuş routes in the city of Istanbul. Your goal is to reach a high score which is a combination of reputation points, available cash and financial assets.

You compete with other dolmush drivers for passengers that wait to be collected from the streets. Competition is fierce and it is not easy to always have all seats in your vehicle filled with passengers. You might take more passengers than it is allowed by the administration and earn some extra bucks, but be careful, the police might wait just around the corner. The streets are not in the best conditions and you need to drive carefully if you want to avoid too high repair and maintenance costs.

Will you be able to pay the yearly fee in time and also make a profit to invest into a better route? Or will it be a far dream for you to serve in the nobler city districts?

As the game progresses you will unlock new dolmush models (vans and minibusses instead of the 1950′s Chevrolet’s), decals and stickers (“Atam Izindeyiz”, “Huzur Islamdadır”, “Liselim”, “Sollama Beni Sollarım Seni”, “Babam Aldı Sana Ne?”, Bismillahirrahmanirrahim”, “Sarı Kanarya”, “Cim Bom Bom”, “Kara Kartal”, “Rahmetli de Sollardı” etc), accessories (Nazarlık’s etc).

The game will also feature a variety of thematic radio channels: The arabesque channel, the turkish pop channel, the foreign pop channel, the patriot channel, the alternative music channel… Listen to Orhan Abi, Müslüm Baba, Ahmet Kaya, Neşet Ertaş or Duman.

Drive through the streets of a realistically modelled İstanbul and experience the day-by-day struggle of a Istanbul dolmush driver.

Sim Gecekondu

In Sim Gecekondu you are the major of one of the big cities in Turkey (Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Adana, Eskişehir, Bursa, Gaziantep etc). Your objective is to stay at the helm of the city as long as possible. With an interval of 5 years elections will be held and you got to please as many people as possible in your city to be re-elected. For this you have to do both, please the already settled upper and middle-classes as well as the migrating lower-classes that invade the city districts illegally.

You will also play through scenarios such as “Istanbul Olimpiyatları” in which your goal will be to bring the Olympic Games to Istanbul by fullfilling the criteria of the IOC within a certain time frame.

Hulki

His name is Mülayim and he is a calm guy. But if you scare him you wake up a giant in him: the green külhanbeyi Hulki, the Ottoman Hulk with the deadly Ottoman slap. ‘Nuff Said!

Do you have an idea for a game that would reflect Turkey or the turkish life style? Please share it here.

Game Idea #3

Game Idea #3 is based on Lebanese-French Author and Journalist Amin Maalouf ’s first book The Crusade According to the Arabs (published in 1983). Maalouf is also the writer of worldwide acknowledged novels such as Samarcande, Leo of Africa and The World in the First Century After Beatrice.

Game Idea #3

Crescent and Cross (C&C)

C&C is a war and diplomacy game in the settings of the Muslim world of the 11. and 12. centuries A.D. Each player will chose an Arab dynasty and struggle to survive one of the most complicated political era’s in Muslim history, the invasion of the christian Franks (also known as the Crusade).

Backstory

The culturally advanced but administratively scattered Muslim leaders are busy fighting each other for domination over the lands of Anatolia, the Middle East, Mesopotamia, the Arab Peninsula and Northern Africa. But their inner affairs will be soon interupted by some new actors that enter the political scene. First the Muslim Turks (known as the Seldjuks) have defeated the Byzanthine armies in 1071 and established a presence in Anatolia. Now these former Asiatic tribes try to expand their influence into the Arab world. On the other hands, Byzanthine wants to restore its borders and does not hesitate to ask for help from their otherwise rather disliked Catholic Christian “brothers” in Central and Northern Europe. It is an age of conspiracy, turmoil and war between an infinite number of religious sections, ethnic identities, lords, counts, emirs and generals. In midst of these already troubled waters, the Muslim world will hear of the arrival of a strange army in Constantinople (all of its soldiers are said to wear white shirts with red crosses). As these soldiers start to march into the Anatolian highlands, the fate of the Muslim world will change forever.

C&C will be a fun game to play, because no matter which dynasty you chose, you will find yourself in the heart of unimaginable conspiracies and tug of wars. Who can be trusted? Who smiles in your face while making plans behind your back? Maybe your very neighbor has already sent an assasin into your palace to get rid of you, who knows? If you cannot see through and understand the motives of everyone around you, not only will you lose your cities, but soon you will see the end of your dynasty.

On the hunt for game idea #3

Yesterday was in many regards a great day for me. It started very early but by the evening I had solved all of the issues at hand (some of them were plaguing me for years now). It was really really a remarkable day for me. I even think I should write it’s date down ;) On top of all, I met with my friends for dinner which meant that the finish was also perfect. When I went to bed I was completely happy and I slept like a baby.

Waking up this morning and happy with the release that came after yesterday, I realized that another weekend had come and that I had to do something about game idea #3. As I was looking for some inspiration I remembered some of the nice moments in the bookstores I had been yesterday. I visited the Yapı Kredi Bookstore in Alsancak and they had a great collection of books on arts and crafts. Especially two of the books I saw there were beautiful: One of them was on the Art of the Urartu Kingdom, the other one was on Kilims.

I have been to many museums and one of the best I have ever seen was the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations located in Ankara. This museum is very rich and exhibits amazing artefacts. However, my favorite section of this museum has always been the Urartu section. It’s difficult to explain, you must go and see it. You will see beautifully crafted iron artefacts, writings in cuneiform and lovely vase paintings and drawings. Both the style and the mythology behind the art is fascinating me. Especially the depiction of war scenes and religious rituals.

The thing is that I do not have a concrete game idea about it. All I know is that I want to use this art as a basis to play with something. I have a strange vision in which the ornaments that depict war scenes and religious rituals float through the air like chinese dragons or serpent-like flyers. They mix into each other, transform, synthesize,  constantly change their skins and create a layered stream of endlessly flowing patterns as we manipulate their flow and floating. Like the cubist painting of a kaleidoscope. It will sound strange to describe it this way, but in my vision they look like the a big continuos transition between hundreds and thousands of techno music tracks. None of the songs is able to establish itself: what rules is the transition itself. As we if see thousands of flowers continuosly blossoming. We are like the DJ’s of a visual Urartu art track and are carried away by the flow of transcending ornaments.

On the other hand I prefer Kilims over carpets (excepts the carpets of the Kars region with their large geometrical designs) because I find they feel more like “earth” (they’re rougher, simpler, often look outworn, they’re modest, functional, but still so beautiful). Beautiful colors meet with exciting graphic patterns. They make me think of tee, tobacco and stonehouses. Not sure how to do it yet, but I’d love to make a game built around a tile laying mechanism with kilim motifs being used as the tiles. It could be for example a struggle over the colors that will dominate the final layout of the kilim design.  What I imagine is that at the end of the game even the loser wins: She will see a beautiful Kilim design. I simply want players use their mobile phones or cameras to take pictures of the gameboard that they created during the game.