Ideas

Non-Gameplay

The game is about identity and construction of the self. It's also about gender, in a way that I haven't figured out yet -- but for some reason I'm stuck on that idea, maybe because other people are stuck on that idea and the job of a game designer is to get people stuck on an idea. So it's about gender somehow, maybe in a way that's more tacked on. But here's how it's about identity: players are trying to align their self -- their constructed self and perceived self -- with who they "really" are. And that's kind of what people are doing in real life all the time. But who the hell are you really, if not your constructed self? I guess the answer to that is that people have certain innate things for seemingly no reason -- they want to do ballet or puppeteering, and it makes them happy to do those things in a way that is inexplicable, or is explicable only if you use words like "innate." But, as a person, I feel like you often don't even know what those things are until you try things. And you learn those things from other people as much as yourself. You learn what you want to believe in and what "clicks" with you -- and the you there is the you you, which makes sense to me for some reason.

Gameplay

So the idea is pretty basic, you're trying to align your identity and self and gender with what you understand to be  your innate self. Except it's hard, because you don't know who you are innately, really. You have no way of knowing. So you do things -- actions, unions -- and you see how you feel about them. Most of all, you see how you feel about other people and you define yourself with them and help them to define themselves.

So add a Helix knock-off idea on top of this. There needs to be a juicy hook, because shit is always cooler when you have some sort of hook to grab people at the beginning and this game also needs another layer. Here's one idea: at the beginning of a game, you answer a short 6 or 7 question survey on sort of "core" issues, and that creates your "strand" or "code." Because it's what you do every day. You try to understand yourself and construct an identity that is sympatico with that understanding, but the only way to understand yourself is through the lens of your current constructed identity. You have to reverse-engineer your innate self through your constructed self and then construct a new self that is more aligned with your innate self.

Other gameplay ideas: players start out with all of one color. Players start out with two goals, and must discard one at 5 turns in. Players construct their own identity with three cards: red, blue, green, and use one to  show like "when I would get a blue stone I instead get red/green."