Games That Could Be: Virus - Concept

Out of the three game concepts I've played with most, this one has stolen the most hours from me when I should be sleeping. I don't have any real title for it, so for now, let's call it Virus.

The concept is that you are --in your own opinion-- an ancient, freshly awakening god. Your dominion is centered on sexual pleasure. Your opponent, however, sees you as a long-buried demon, an embodiment of sins of the flesh, that has been foolishly released from its prison. In practice, over the course of this game, you act as something closer to a psychic venereal disease.

The game begins with your waking, bodiless, to find a small team of miners that have broken into your sanctum. You choose one of them to possess-- not assuming direct control, but simply pouring your existence into his or her body. When they return to their secluded mining outpost, it becomes your goal to claim every last one of the miners, workers, and overseers as your worshipers. When the spring comes and the workers are free to leave, you will spread throughout the world once more, and all life shall be reunited in a glorious, everlasting orgy.

But first, you must find ways to spread your influence. You are very weak as you are at the beginning, but every follower you claim will be your eyes into the world, and by inflaming their lust and forcing them to pleasure themselves in worship to you, you will gain power to better influence your followers and awaken your many ancient and fearsome abilities. To spread your influence, though, one of your followers must join a non-believer in the holy ritual: shared orgasms, of course.

So depending on who you first infect, your follower might go home to his wife, and give you a second follower within a few days. From there, perhaps you could turn her temptation to cheat with the neighbor into a lustful passion, and you can spread to a third. Or if you first infect a great thug of a man, you might try going to the bar and scoring, or taking a rather more forceful approach. You must be careful, though-- if you're spotted acting strangely, others may grow suspicious. And when your opponent comes to hunt you down, suspicions will quickly become deadly. If all of your followers are cleansed, you will lose grasp on this world altogether and fall into oblivion.

Obviously, this theme would offer a lot of room for interpretation-- you could see yourself as a holy being, spreading enlightenment to a world that has become too stiff and distant from its own desires, or as a devil hungry to corrupt as many as possible, or simply as a creature trying to survive the only way it knows how. The people you manipulate would all have individual personalities, quirks, secret desires, and various relationships with those around them. How you interact with this social ecosystem could destroy lives or bring everyone together in a way they may never have thought possible. It's my hope that I could infuse these people with enough life that many of you would earnestly want to make their lives better, in a similar fashion to your affection for Lith.

That roughly covers the high concept of the game as a story. Next time, I'll talk about the gameplay that you'd be working with, exactly what sort of game you'd be playing. Hope this intrigues folks!