Thank you for another imaginative giveaway chevkoch. I'm not in this time to celebrate all your generosity and wish the best luck to all the participants. Someone told me Pinocchio directed the Tick Tack Puppet game as he wanted to innovate his own life moving from the analog controls to the digital ones. My silly short story. I needed something to say.

Thank for this game pitch :)

I will give it a try if I still can ;)

Devs: Yo man, we got this weird idea...
Manago: Yeah..?
Devs: We want to make game about heroes!
Manago: That's your creative idea?
Devs: More than than that - multiple heroes!
Manago: No shit... I've seen that many time - booooring
Devs: But what if we told - there is going to be Rambo? James Bond? Blues Brothers? Conan? Bruce Lee? Robocop? MAchete? Many more!
Manago: WTF?
Devs: Yeah and we are going to add explosion!
Manago: oO
Devs: Nazis!
Manago: What?
Devs: Team work, weird shit zombies, aliens
Manago: Wait, what?
Devs: A lots of f... hard bosses, weird shit everywhere...
Manago: Ok, you got me... but what about...
Devs: It's all about bros man...

Devs: Brooooooooo force :)
Manago: Damn, I'm in!

"No piss, just a hard fight!" – Odin thundered, striking the table with his fist.
"Fighting?" – winced, dodging spilled beer, Freyja.
"No, no brute force" – Odin huffed. – "Norse gods need leaders among the people, smart tacticians."
"Just people?" asked Loki, as usual, inscrutable. "The world of Midgard is much richer, not only is it ravaged by mindless beasts."
"What do you mean?" – Bragi interjected.
“Let there be four races: Human, Elf, Troll and Dwarf. Let them fight for your recognition Odin, completes the quest of You."
"Cool! Let's make this game!" – Thor was enthusiastic.
“It was a good meeting. Next time we will also do cosplay” – summed up Odin.

So the gods created Hammer of the Gods, but I'm here for a Ruiner.

Thanks for the ingenious GA :)

How did this thread fly under my radar?!  Interesting giveaway idea, chevkoch! :)

I'm in! Want to take my creative juices for a test run. So, here goes:

The untold story of how Everdream Valley truly came to be... ;)

Producer arrives late at the Developer's Monthly Pitch meeting, smartphone in hand, not once making eye contact with any of the devs. There's a water cooler in the corner of the boardroom that someone filled with Red Bull and rhum. Some devs were asleep, heads resting in a collective pool of drool. One dev was remotely hacking the lobby's vending machine using his Raspberry Pi badge. Another had hijacked the wall projector and was busy exterminating noobs in Diabolo. There was also a dazed dev who was sat there in the nude, dead silent, unaware of time and space. All windows had their blinds down to keep the sunlight out.

Producer, addressing the clan of unlively devs: I almost cancelled this meeting when I learned I was being pitched yet another farming sim.

dev_troll: But this game is different! It's in 3D!

dev_raspPihackz: You play as a child exploited to work on a farm by an elderly couple who fake to be your grandparents and thus, find a loophole in the current child labor laws.

dev_javab33ns: We're calling it Neverdream Valley, because you play as this overworked child farmer who never gets the chance to sleep! Hence, never dreams.

Producer: I see. Carry on...

dev_c0d3rk1d: As a child farmer, you are sent out into the scary wilderness to complete quests, such as finding the lost farm animals.

dev_k1LL3r: Armed with a laughable wooden sword, you must protect yourself from the very beasts you are trying to gather. Like chickens that use their beaks to gouge your eyeballs out or goats that rip open your stomach with their horns! Even horses that crush your skull with the kick of their hind legs or honey bees that ambush you into their swarm and sting you to death!

Producer: What are the incentives to complete these dangerous quests?

dev_fr331oot: Once the found animals are returned to the farm, they poop everywhere and all of the time. Your child farner is then rewarded by collecting all this endless poop! Don't worry, we've included a generous inventory slot for the player.

dev_420: Also, this poop unlocks the ability to pimp the vegetable garden, so your child farmer is given more work to do! Like plant vegetables and "weed" to help generate cash for your overlord fake grandparents to sell!

dev_ur.mum: Oh, and did we mention that all of the farm animals have very visible, anatomically-correct genitalia?

Producer: I don't know. Sounds too risky, this game concept.

Chief Editor, who was hiding beneath the boardroom table this whole time and now suddenly springs up into sight, much to everyone's shock: I love it! Great idea! Now that's a game that will sell! Just need to edit some changes. Remove all the violent stuff. Keep things wholesome. Make grandparents genuine and farm animals non threatening. No in-game dying either. We'll even integrate an adorable dream mode for the player, in which case we'll need to rename the game to reflect this. How about Everdream rather than Neverdream?

dev_wtf123: So, like make the game more like a normal farming sim?

Chief Editor: You bet.

dev_3ndg4m3r: Are all of our ideas being rejected? Can't you at least keep one of our ideas, so that we devs can pretend we had a say in this discussion?

Producer: Sure. We'll keep the poop part.

Thanks for the opportunity to come up with something fun and imaginative, chevkoch. I love the idea so here's my silly addition to your creative ponderings:

This is the story of the genesis of Fallout 76.

10 am. The office's coffee machine broke down a couple of minutes ago and, as per usual when something of the sort happens, half of the team has already divorced their spouses and the other half is researching local sanatoriums on google maps.

10:05 am. I discovered the culprit. It had to be Sam, there's no way he didn't do it. By the way, Sam is that guy from Manchester we hired a week ago, that same guy who hasn't stopped complaining that American coffee is "technical-leh" sewage water rebranded as a Colombian delicacy. Not that I know where 'Columbia' is, but I can't say that I blame the guy for this coarse act of culinary terrorism, not even when it has swirled the office into one of their recurrent spirals of madness. Perks of the crunch culture, I guess. Anyway, I've decided not to report him because his accent makes me laugh.

10:15 am: The scheduled super-urgent meeting has been postponed 15 minutes until the bouncer team has finished restraining everyone and has carried them to their allocated seats in conference room. It really makes me proud to see how everyone is wielding their cardboard swords and shields in an act of open defiance against coffee-less mornings. Of course, I include myself amongst them, the soon-to-be restrainees and, if that's not a word I really don't care much because I'm on my way to Fus-Ro-Dah one of these giant motherfuck—...

10:30 am: Ok, we are all now in the conference room, waiting for Todd.

11 am: Todd enters the room and says he's sorry for being late and also says that he couldn't help it because the coffee machine was broken and had to fly his private jet to the shopping mall to buy an expresso. Everyone nods in understanding. He also said he couldn't bring any coffee for us because we were already late for the meeting and we couldn't possibly wait until all our coffees were made.

10:30 am: Todd leaves the room and heads back to his cryogenic chamber. The bouncer team comes back and finally removes the duck tape covering our mouths. Apparently, we're supposed to produce a new Fallout game which won't be 5 but 76. None of us remember why that is so or anything at all for that matter. After all, mostly everyone had fainted for the lack of caffeine and the odd anxiety attack triggered after having heard the word "multiplayer". Talks begin to spread along the corridors, we are all trying to figure out how many times the detail the game is supposed to have, but since nobody remembers, we've decided to forget about it until the coffee machine is repaired.

11:30 am: I check my phone and hear the automated speech of my voice mail saying I got one message from 10 am. It's from my wife, she says she's divorcing me. She works two desks away from mine. I take a mental note to thank Sam before heading home.

16 am: The morale of the team is sound. I've chatted with a few people here and there and there're lots of ideas bouncing around. One amongst them seems to have grown quite the roots, it's about NPCs. The pervasive thought is that humans are horrible and that we're much better off if we substitute them all with machines. This game will give us the opportunity to test our upcoming way of life!

16:05 am: I find Sam sitting at his desk and I ask him why he isn't playing Overwatch like everyone else. He tells me he was thinking about Fallout 2076 and wanted to play some space games for inspiration. I was going to thank him for destroying the coffee machine and for my recent break-up, but he seems quite concentrated on hoarding some space materials and, I also don't feel like telling him anymore even though I can't quite figure out why. I take a mental note to think about the issue once the crunch year is over.

20:30 am: Before finishing my report and archiving it, I check my voice mail once last time. I've got no unread nor unheard messages and that strikes me as odd. I consider if it'd be a good idea to change my name to Odd Howard, just to keep the man real, just so he knows he's but a T away from real competition.

20:34 am: Feeling proud of my accomplishments and creativity I say goodbye to everyone before shutting my computer off. Everyone's busy with their work, and nobody replies.

It's time to give a 30 minute warning before the giveaway ends.

Friends and I once joked about a first-person shooter where those abominations would've been the unfriendly encounters to deal with, haha.
Appreciate you checking in, altosy. And thanks for your story.
Weird shit seems like an ingredient that makes any game have a prototype requested by the producer. When they're not immediately convinced, just say it a couple more times.
Cosplay dates back to the old pantheon? Oy.
Yeah, they tend to leave the relevant stuff in. Fun names, and the part about the dev sitting in the nude I found very realistic.
I admit, I guessed it. Whoa. Proper entry.
This was a fun read, and the above is one of my favorite lines of your story. You can't but forgive Todd though, he was in the chess club, remember? And who's laughing now?

The giveaway is closed now. Please give me a moment while I head over to random.org to find us a winner.

And we have a winner: LegoDnD. Will send a PM shortly.

Thanks so much for anyone participitating or commenting, I hope you had some fun. Loved to read your contributions, there were lots of hilarious ones, and many clever ideas. Absolutely great turnout. As almost always with events like this, I'm also learning something: the stories about Godus and Disco Elysium (the real background there) were new to me.

Thank you on top for the kind words some of you left. And: I appreciate you all.

Congrats LegoDnD :) Thanks for the funny giveaway, chevkoch!

+10 to the lucky winner LegoDnD and x10 to the organizer chevkoch for rewarding this meeting full of laughs.

Typing out that story was every bit as valuable to me as winning, and I deeply appreciate the inspiration. As a bonus, after I picked my prize, it suddenly became half-priced and Chevkoch was nice enough to let me fill the difference.

Many thanks for the GA chevkoch & to all the participants
Congratulations LegoDnD!

Congrats to you, LegoDnD! It was fun reading everyone's contributions. ;) And thank you, chevkoch, for allowing us to express ourselves openly and wildly. Nice giveaway! :)