GameIdeas.org

My other site got Digged earlier this week, so I spent yesterday tweaking that site and writing a new article for it, rather than updating this site. So that explains the absence of update yesterday.

Today, I’ve listed the missions of the Pancho Villa game. All of these missions are based on Villa’s life — or the wikipedia version of it anyway. His life required surprisingly little adaptation to make fit in a game format, so this game could be fairly historically accurate.

So, here’s the mission sequence. A few years usually pass between each mission as the game doesn’t cover every single even in Pancho Villa’s life.

1. Tutorial. Doroteo Arango, a young peasant, returns to his native village to avenge her sister who was abused by an hacienda owner’s son. As you control Doroteo, you must find and kill that man, then steal a horse to escape the pursuing police. The mission ends when you reach the mountains, where you become one of the bandits living there.
2. Now a well established bandit, Doroteo participates in a raid where the band leader gets killed by the police. You must lead the charge with what remains of the gang to return to the camp, where you become the new chief of the gang. That’s when young Doroteo changes his name for Francisco “Pancho” Villa.
3. Pancho Villa meets Abraham Gonzalez, who becomes his mentor and convinces Villa and his gang to fight in the Mexican Revolution, against the dictator Diaz at Juarez. This mission is the first military battle mission, with large numbers of troops fighting each other.
4. Victoriano Huerta, another general in the revolution, is getting jealous of Villa’s success and falsely accuses him of stealing a horse. Villa is sentenced to execution. As he is standing in front of the firing squad, waiting to be shot, a telegram arrives changing the sentence to imprisonment. Your mission: escape from prison.
5. The revolution is a success: Diaz is defeated. General Huerta sees this as an opportunity to seize power — he kills the new president and Gonzalez, Villa’s mentor. Villa joins the revolt against Huerta, led by Venustiano Carranza. But he needs money to fund his army. In this mission you steal a train containing 122 silver ingots.
6. Searching for more funds, Villa makes a deal with Hollywood to appear in a few movies. Your goal in this mission is to lead an attack while looking good for the camera. You have a certain amount of money to accumulate and each nice move you do give you a bit more.
7. Villa now has enough money for his army, but Carranza wants the honor of occupying Mexico City for himself. Pancho Villa is ordered not to attack the capital. Instead, he attacks Zacatecas, a strategic mountainous city considered nearly impregnable. Zacatecas was the source of much of Mexico’s silver, and thus a supply of funds for whomever held it.
8. Huerta is defeated and Carranza is in Mexico City, but he must soon leave the city. Villa takes the opportunity to take over the capital.
9. Pancho Villa’s stay there isn’t without trouble, however. After problems with the local population and Carranza’s return with an army equipped with modern machine gun, he’s forced to leave. Your mission is to get out of Mexico city alive under the attack of Carranza’s troops.
10. The USA support Carranza, seeing him as the quickest path to a stable Mexican government. They refuse to send weapons to Villa. In retaliation, Villa attacks Columbus, New Mexico — inside American territory.
11. The USA send thousands of troops to search after Villa. Your mission is to avoid capture and return safely to your home.

The game ends as a semi-retired Pancho Villa gets assassinated. His last words: “Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something.”

Wrapping Up

So, that finishes this week’s “Mexico” challenge. I think this Pancho Villa game could be cool and with a different feel than the typical post-apocalyptic setting we see so much of these days. Nevertheless, I feel this game lacks a little je ne sais quoi, it’s just not as creative as the result of the previous challenges. It may just be that it was the easiest challenge so far, though.

I’ll probably be using my now finely honed pitching skills at the great Canadian video game competition. As such, I’ll probably spend less time on this site than I have so far. I’ll try to keep updating it regularly, but the updates may be shorter and simpler.

In any case, return next week to see the next challenge and don’t hesitate to tell what you think of this one in the comments!

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