This post forms part of my series on Story Ideas.

This idea was spawned from a collaborative effort with one of my friends, so I don’t claim full idea ownership.

In the not-so-distant future, there was a rather poor archipelago island country in the deep ocean. The poor people became disgruntled with their living circumstances, resorting to lives of crime to sustain their preferred lifestyles. The parliament of this country sat powerless to deal with the massive crime problem for a long time, the country coffers being too small for them to maintain a proper police force.

One of the right-winged members of the parliament then came up with an idea to not only address their crime problem, but at the same time address the country’s financial state. His plan: Reinstate the death penalty for all serious violent crimes. But instead of merely executing death row convicts, put them all on an island together and let them play an ongoing game of survival. A convict may stay alive as long as he kills the other inmates on the island. Every month, someone has to die, if none of the inmates murder each other, then one of the inmates will be executed by the government on a first-in-first-out bases – whoever was there the longest will die.

The final catch to this game of “Hunt”, was that the entire island will be rigged with cameras and surveillance, and the game will be broadcasted to the world. Herein lay the financial gain.

The idea was dismissed in parliament at first, but year after year it was brought up again and gain traction and public support, until finally, “The bill of Hunt” was signed into law and construction on the massive island jungle prison was started with excessive loans from investors and  world wide controversy. The controversy helped the game gain the traction it needed and soon after starting the game their online streamed program was the most watched on the internet.

The game was very lucrative to the government from the start, but the results in the country was not only a proper increase in the fiscal state of the nation, leading to a better quality of life for it’s people, but the country also saw a rapid decline in crime. Soon they reached a point where there were no more convicts to add to the game.

Now dependent on the flow of income that their game offered, the parliament came up with a way to keep the game going. The rules of the game was changed, and now they not only entered local death row convicts as its contestant, but they also let other countries send their death row inmates to the island. The game was so profitable that they could literally buy death row inmates from developing countries.

But the game evolved even more than it’s initial designers could imagine. Now that the killing of people who deserved it was a sport, it soon came about that the doors of the island were opened for “hunters”, non-convicts who could come in and live on the island as a hunter with the single purpose of killing one (or more) of the dangerous convicts. It was the ultimate hunt, the most sought after prize for violent men. Killing a convict known to be very dangerous would attribute to great fame for the hunter. Hunters would leave the island as a worldwide celebrity, or die in their attempt to hunt their prey.

Soon the island was a mix of convicts and hunters from all cultures and walks of life, all partaking in the bloody game of “Hunt”. By now, the rules of the game morphed yet even more, and no-one knew whether a contestant was a hunter or convict. The true identity of the contestants were only revealed on the show after their death, or departure, in the case of hunters.

It is with this backdrop that we meet some of the characters in our story.

• One man is a convict, but innocent man. He was framed for murder by conspirators who wanted his family fortune. Driven by his inner belief that he will still be proven innocent, and united with his loved ones, he adapts to the ruthless world he was thrown in, to survive, to live.
• Another man was a previous organized crimes boss, many have died by his hand, and his knowledge of the American criminal underworld was extensive. Due to his reputation he soon has a following inside the game. But there are many whom he has wronged over the years, and they now send countless hunters into the game to take him out.
• One of the men sent to get to the crime boss is not a hunter, but an undercover government agent who was sent to extract top secret information from the crime boss. The knowledge that the crime boss has is so important that the special agent’s life is put on the line so that he can attempt to retrieve the information by any means necessary.
• There is a hunter in the game that is there for just that, the hunt. His goal is to take out the most dangerous men on the planet in order to earn himself the status as the world’s best hunter. He has no interest in killing anyone who is not worthy of it. His sights are set on the dangerous murderers in the game, but over time, his scope starts shifting as he realizes how dangerous some of his fellow hunters are.
• Some men also arrive on the island as a group. Their only goal? To put an end to the game of hunt. These men follow their own moral code beyond anything else in life, and will do anything they can to make the games stop.

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The concept for this story is something that will probably work best in some form of ongoing episodic entertainment like comics, TV or manga. There will be a steady stream of characters coming in and out of the story and there won’t be a focus on any one of them per se – so not too sure if it will work as a novel.