Day 8 - **Ben Hur as a game**

Last year I discussed making Ben-Hur, A Tale of the Christ, into a puppet show. I love Ben-Hur, and it’s Ben Them’s namesake, albeit with a different pronoun, but I have no real intention of making a puppet show, not in the near future. But one thing I never considered is making it into a game, a computer game! Something remarkably puppet-show adjacent. Let me explain.

Three things.

One, what is Ben-Hur? It’s a New Testament fan-fiction novel-slash-movie, bout meeting Jesus on a riches-to-rags-to-riches revenge adventure, and then the hero beats his enemy, but has become almost as twisted as that enemy. For the real enemy is no human, but Rome! Around about the crucifixion he comes to faith and hope, and forgiveness for others. There, I’ve saved you three and a half hours. I love Ben-Hur, as it’s the thing that let me realise the crucifixion was success, not a fall or a failing.

Two, why a computer game. Well I accidentally learned how to make those. RPGs. I made one last year and won an award, which was a huge surprise to me. Games where you go and talk to people, and do myriad quests and maybe tussle, when occasion calls.

Three, how is a game like a puppet show? Well, they just are. You control the central puppet. The stages, the sets, characters and decor are all waiting for you to flounce in and interact. The exchanges are all scripted, with some wiggle-room and choice around the order.

Ben-Hur would play across a number of acts. I’d build first Century Jerusalem from a square tileset, a Roman garrison, a desert, the galley of a trireme in a sea battle, a raft in the sea, me, albeit briefly, and at some point the chariots.

The chariots are the major problem. The chariots are, in fact, the major problem with this game because

1. I don’t know how to make a chariot bit of a game. I can do a person walking up down, left and right, but a chariot race goes far beyond what I can do as a mini-game. The one existing Ben-Hur game is 100% chariots, no story or Jesus.
2. If I cut the chariots, I lose the most famous bit of Ben-Hur from popular culture. If I include them, I intercut two games from fundamentally different genres. The main chariot sequence is eighteen minutes of the film, and amazingly it isn’t the film’s climax.

There’s no good way. It could be done, but only in a parodic way that loses the dramatic core of the character’s struggle. The story would also be derailed if you accidentally lost, but that’s an issue in almost any story game.

That aside, I can see it working. Have Judah able to meet everyone, do little side-missions for everyone, ride horses and camels, but the chariots - and perhaps the lack of an active climax - mar the prospect. I plotted out the game in Autumn and fell on that hurdle. I would love to make a Christian game, but can’t quite make this one work.

My only other real concern is that the best Jesus bits, at the climax of the story were invented for the 50s movie. The novel is out of copyright. The film isn’t. I might be able to work with similar versions from the 1925 movie, but if I do this I’d like it to be good, fun, exciting, sincere, and releasable. A real adventure with some real Jesus.

It returns to my shelf of what-ifs. Instead I shall make my feverish gender western, Trans Theft Horso. But one day, I hope Ben-Hur will ride again!