/gameideas/reborn.txt

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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Jill (?) » Tue Oct 02, 2018 10:43 am


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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by West Filly (?) » Wed Oct 03, 2018 4:19 pm

It'd just become a pong farm where you play vs your friend and then agree to take dives on alternate rounds.
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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Jill (?) » Thu Oct 04, 2018 12:17 pm

that might be a little hard if you can't choose who you get matched up against

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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by West Filly (?) » Thu Oct 04, 2018 2:39 pm

yeah that'd work
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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Pocket (?) » Tue Oct 16, 2018 8:42 pm

Screw it. I've had this one in my head for ages, and there's no chance it'll ever get made because I don't know the first thing about puzzle design. The idea is, you have a bunch of these little people with mind-control helmets on, and you're trying to get them somewhere. Trouble is, you only have one controller, and it makes them all move in unison. So if one has to jump over an obstacle, they all have to jump, etc. You can do things to mess with the pattern like have one of them continually walk into a wall while the others keep moving, but it's very limited. So the game is like a cross between a platformer and a block-pushing puzzle.

It would have been called Hivemind, and the little helmets looked like bees' butts:

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And originally the premise was that you were an alien abducting people, but then I decided to go for a more generic eastern-European dystopian theme because then I could call the mind-control device a Brain Kontrol Electronic Pulse Relay, or B-KEPR for short.
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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Thu Oct 25, 2018 1:26 pm

The Swapper covers some of that gameplay ground, but god damn B-KEPR and that character design is great and deserve a game of their own. :allears:
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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Quanta (?) » Wed Nov 14, 2018 6:48 pm

Had an idea for a Metroid game:

- Game is a 3rd-person open-world action-adventure game
- Setting is a Galactic Federation colony on the fringes of their territory that's been taken over by Space Pirates for the last 10 years (they came because the planet is actually a Chozo Science World and has a bunch of advanced technology to plunder); colonists live in a totalitarian police state performing forced labour for the Pirates; Samus arrives after getting a distress signal from the planet and is subsequently shot down
- Game would be post-Fusion for story reasons
- Gameplay involves a generous mix of exploration, fast-paced third-person combat that involves swiftly dealing with enemies w/ little/no cover shooting), and stealth to navigate the main cities and worksites that she'll have to infiltrate
- Powerups would include Grapple, Speed Booster, and a powerup that increases her reaction speed (bullet-time effect). High-Jump Boots would also be included, but would have a charging ability that would act as sort of a mini-Shinespark, and can synergize with the Grapple Beam to allow her to vault off of walls and into enemies
- Samus is locked out of Fusion Suit at the start of the game by a Chozo AI; the same AI sent the distress signal that brought her there. It doesn't trust her despite her possessing Chozo blood due to the presence of Metroid DNA and her "knock-off" Power Suit
- Tutorial involves building a minimum level of trust with the AI, and eventually unlocks Morph Ball, Bombs, Missiles, and eventually, control over the Suit itself
- Once suit control is acquired, Samus can freely change between her Power Suit and civilian attire. She can also go instant Morph Ball from her unarmored state.
- Civilian attire is needed to be able to access settlements, especially the main city where security is through the roof. It's also needed for infiltration into many areas.
- Settlements will have energy modules (to restore health) and fabricator modules (to restore missiles) for purchase, as well as different clothes and uniforms to help her move around inconspicuously in various locations
- A rebel faction also exists in the colony proper, working to overthrow the Space Pirates
- End goal is to acquire all needed powerups and rally the colonists to trigger an insurrection to assault the final area at the center of the main city
- There's probably Metroids involved somewhere. Probably.
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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Jill (?) » Thu Nov 22, 2018 1:26 pm

imagining 3D Dot Game Heroes-esque adventure game centered around a mechanic of developing your character visually in tandem with statistically

you start off as an "unidentified spirit", which is a single pixel bloated to the size of a game tile. in the game's intro, you're just square-ing around looking for a purpose until you meet a bunny who says they "used to be like you" and guides you to your first Shrine of Identification. for each unique shrine you visit, you can double your character's sprite resolution if you have enough pixels (a form of currency and a literal resource) to fill a quadrant of your upgraded resolution (for instance, to upgrade from 8x8 to 16x16 you would need 64)

when your sprite has a complexity of 2x2 or greater, you can visit any shrine to edit it. your character's color palette is associated with each stat they have, and you can choose any color to represent each stat. for instance, if STR is represented by red pixels, your character has 1 STR for each red pixel their sprite uses. there would probably be some limitation to this which prevents total pixel barf from becoming optimal, such as: you can only save a sprite that uses between 25% and 75% of its total area, and there may be some effective cap where enough pixels of the same color will stop counting toward a stat

otherwise, there would probably be a few aesthetic tickbox options like:
  • floaty - enabled by default, makes your sprite hover above the ground a little
  • directional - your sprite will be rotated to match the direction you're facing (editor assumes you're facing down)
  • mirror - your sprite will be mirrored when facing right
  • flip - your sprite will be flipped when facing up
  • mirrorflip - assumes the above two options with a slight distinction: your sprite can be flipped and mirrored at the same time if you last moved in any combination of up/right
  • complex - overrides all of the above except floaty and mirror. gives your sprite 8 zelda 1-style walking animation frames to work with: two frames for each direction
  • supercomplex - overrides all of the above except floaty and mirror. gives your sprite 12 LttP-style walking animation frames to work with: each direction has an "idle" frame it will default to when you're not moving, as well as two frames for stepping forward on either foot
animation frames would of course not influence the character's stats, but your character's base sprite will always be used as one of the down-facing frames. if mirror is checked, your character's right-facing animation will be made from mirroring the left-facing one, leaving you with only 6 or 9 frames to create in total

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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Thu Nov 22, 2018 3:57 pm

This sounds like a concept with rich metaphorical possibility. Growing up, personality coming into focus, etc.
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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Pocket (?) » Tue Dec 18, 2018 6:05 pm

Last night I had a dream about some kind of shadow monster that could be defeated by ducking into a dark place because it basically dissolves into the surrounding darkness. So now I want that to be a thing in a video game.
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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Jill (?) » Fri Jan 04, 2019 2:52 am

i just had a dream about some mythical stage-based top-down action-RPG for the Game Boy Color which had this odd joint compatibility with the SNES that let you play co-op between multiple cartridges

essentially the GBC version followed a more comprehensive single-player RPG format, where you'd get a big ol' menu between each stage that lets you do stuff like take on sidequests, craft items, recruit playable characters and so on

playing the game on a SNES made it more like a beat-em-up where each of the main stages just leads straight into the next one, and you have to manage your chosen character's selected weapon and spell and stuff on the fly. anything you did in a SNES play session was reflected on your GBC save file, but EXP/loot were not universally shared, so each enemy defeated only gave back to each player based on what that player put toward defeating it

anyway, believe it or not the cross-cartridge/system functionality isn't what interests me about this game, but how it seemed to have an almost roguelike variation per-playthrough. you didn't really have an opportunity to grind or farm because whatever progress you made mid-stage was undone if you wiped, and you also couldn't just replay a cleared stage. yet there also wasn't any sort of permadeath mechanic, despite there being a huge amount of variance in what cards the game might deal to you on each save file. i mean that literally; there was a system where you collected cards by achieving certain feats throughout a stage, and at the end of that stage you'd draw the number of cards you collected from a "deck" which represents the game's pool of item shops, sidequests and the like. whatever became available to you between each stage was based on the cards you drew

it was ultimately a game that pushed you to be resourceful by the playthrough, but still introduced a dose of chaos to prevent things from becoming solved and stale. sounds a lot like a game i'd want to make someday

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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Pocket (?) » Thu Feb 14, 2019 12:12 am

So there's checkpoints between levels and it rerolls the current level when you die? I like it. Takes the term "roguelite" to its logical conclusion.

I've been thinking about turn-based RPGs lately, and how no matter how "fast" some characters are supposed to be compared to others, they all still get exactly one turn each per go-around. Some games try to deal with this by putting everyone on visible cooldown timers, but this introduces a real-time element where enemies' timers are still ticking down while you poke through the menu deciding what to do. And if the game just pauses whenever it's one of your party members' turns, you lose the ability to tell whose turn is next. So here's my solution: Running across the screen just above the menu is a timeline. Each move takes a certain number of "ticks" to execute, which can sometimes include discrete windup, followthrough, and cooldown subtimers. This is key, because if your next turn happens to come during an enemy's followthrough, that's how you can do counters. Anyway, spread across the timeline are pips representing when each character will be able to make their next move. When you choose your move, it will show a preview of how long each possible move will take, as a bar. You can also cue up multiple moves all the way up to where the timeline ends at the right edge of the screen, and you can only get combo/juggling bonuses if you chain moves ahead of time rather than wait until your next turn, but some enemies may be able to counter you during this and it adds considerably to your cooldown time. (And yes, this means you can cue up combos that will continue on after your teammates start their turns. Presumably the first character's attack animation will be frozen in place as you choose the second character's move.) Adding to the fun is that you eventually end up with a party member who can foresee when enemies' next turns will come up, but either this will only be visible when it's their turn or they'll have to waste a turn of their own to do it. That'll have to be ironed out in testing.
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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Pocket (?) » Sun Mar 31, 2019 10:05 pm

Addendum: I think instead of a specific party member being able to foresee the timing of enemy moves, you just eventually gain this ability on a per-enemy basis after fighting the same enemy enough times. Observant players would likely learn to guess it anyway, so might as well make it an official mechanic.
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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Durandal (?) » Sat Jun 01, 2019 10:18 pm

Okay here's my pitch: Combine Fallout with 12 Monkeys.

You are a survivor of a global cataclysm whose cause is a mystery to the survivors in your timeline. However, your character has access to some kind of time travel magic / technology. Basically, with access to the physical remains of a person, you can travel back in time to a point maybe a few days before their death (pre-cataclysm), and can do whatever you want there so long as you remain "anchored" to that person (I feel some kind of restriction is necessary here but I'm not sure what form it might take). Your job is to figure out what caused the cataclysm. Initially you are led to believe that you cannot change past events, but halfway through the game you realize there is a way to change things, so you set out to prevent the end of the world entirely.

The gameplay loop would involve searching the ruined world for the remains of important people (and of course they will be found in some messed up dangerous places), going back in time, learning what they know, and then figuring out how / what you can change to aid yourself in the future without coming across as a crazy person / criminal.

If you've read End of Ponies it's basically 100% that minus the ponies.

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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Durandal (?) » Sat Jun 01, 2019 10:27 pm

Also I haven't seen the old thread but I assume Cool Games Inc. was one of the first things mentioned there?


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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Jill (?) » Fri Aug 02, 2019 8:05 pm

Another "inspired by a dream i just had" concept.

It is the year 2000. A fairly well-off family has just finished moving in to their dream house; a large and quiet place atop a hill, with sparse neighboring houses in the vicinity.

Shortly after settling in, they awaken to an unusual morning. A look through the window reveals the clouds have overtaken the sky, wringing out much of the sun's light. Thick snow coats the ground as far as the eye can see. Their new pool has frozen over. They attempt to find any news stories about this phenomenon, but their phone, TV, and internet services have stopped working. Before long someone opens the front door to take a look outside, but doesn't make it off the front porch before they have to rush back inside. It became immediately apparent that the temperature outside wasn't merely freezing, but something akin to life-draining. Even the most warmly-dressed person would only last a matter of minutes out there.

It becomes apparent that even with their electricity still going somehow, their house cannot keep itself survivable for long. The temperature inside the house will steadily drop to unlivable levels if nothing is done to prevent it. This is where the gameplay unfolds. The house has a furnace that can be used to generate heat, but in order to fuel it, you must take control of a family member to send them on a salvaging trip outside. An abundance of untapped energy remains scattered throughout the frozen remains of the neighborhood; it's only a matter of retrieving it before the reaper catches up. It will be too cold to even step outside after dark, so you will need to stock up.

You can switch between any of the family members at any time, and even give simple orders to those you aren't controlling directly. If one of them spends too long out in the cold, however, their movement slows and the countdown of them freezing to death begins. In this state they will most likely need to be retrieved by another family member in order to make it back to the house and recover.

The rooms of the house can be used for storing tools and resources. In order to make the house more energy-efficient, you can dedicate some resources to downsizing by sealing off unused rooms. This cuts those rooms off from air circulation entirely, slowing the fuel consumption of your furnace but also making those rooms inaccessible until the seal is demolished.

Throughout the course of the game you might pick up objectives that go beyond merely surviving. Perhaps you will find a means of fighting back against the cold instead of just enduring it.

Nobody knows if this cold can be escaped or brought to an end, but human nature dictates that we make the most of it regardless.

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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Pocket (?) » Sat Aug 31, 2019 9:28 pm

This is more of a question: You know how some games have boss fights where the enemy throws projectiles at you and you can either swat them back or absorb them and throw them back? Has there ever been a game where your melee weapon can absorb those attacks and now it's imbued with that power? For example, enemy is throwing fireballs, you block one with your comically huge sword, now it's a flaming comically-huge sword and your next hit on them does burning damage.
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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Thu Sep 12, 2019 1:43 pm

A shooter called Cover Me! where your job isn’t to kill anyone but to lay down suppressing fire so your buddies can run for it.
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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Jill (?) » Sat Oct 05, 2019 3:00 am

A piece of copper was once found by someone so poor, they could not even afford a name for themselves. They knew a single piece would not be enough to cover their next meal, so it was cast into a nearby well on a superstitious whim.

"Wealth."

"Wealth?" A voice replied. A stranger clad in white and gold robes stood up from behind the other side of the well.

"I think I have something that can help you."

"Who are you?"

Seemingly ignoring the question, she took out a knife sheathed in leather and presented it to the nameless one.

"I'm not important. But this is."

The nameless one took the knife and brought it partway out of its sheath. It looked to have been made for combat, but was rusted beyond use.

"How will this worthless knife help me?"

"It won't. Not by itself, anyway. I'm going to teach you how to imbue objects like this with strong, valuable properties. To be an enchanter."
This is a roguelike that takes the item world from the Disgaea games to its natural conclusion.

You start with a rusty knife that cannot be equipped or discarded in any fashion. The basis of your grind begins when you "sync" with the knife, entering the realm inside it to clear bite-sized dungeons. Your character does not have any innate stats or skills; they're determined by the items you have equipped and the item you are currently synced with. When you defeat an enemy, the item gains experience. When it levels up, its stats, value, and difficulty rating increase. In the case of the rusty knife, you will not be able to sell it even after it becomes more valuable, but you can use the miscellaneous loot from its monsters to sell for money and buy other items, or directly use it to craft other items, or even sync with the loot to improve its quality for either of the aforementioned purposes.

Here's where I start to twist the concept a bit: The difficulty scaling is more exponential than that of the item's stats or value, and so, if you're just leveling up one gear to press further in another, your grind may eventually come to a standstill until you make use of other mechanics.

One potential option is chaining, which is the act of clearing several mini-dungeons consecutively without breaking sync with the item or dying. You don't get an opportunity to heal up between floors this way, but you also get a stat/value bonus the further you go. Chaining takes the progression back to lower-tier items by giving your higher-tier gear the potential to breeze through several floors and rack up a chain bonus. The bonus is not hugely exponential and will eventually fall off as higher-tier chains become more viable, but nonetheless your ever-growing survivability throughout multiple dungeon floors will determine how far you can skew a lower tier item's stats above a higher one. Ultimately the key to chaining upward is to balance the number of floors you can chain with the base stats and difficulty rating of the item.

Another possibility involves socketing one item within another, influencing the host item's attributes. This kind of system would probably have to be made with some kind of limitation regarding sockets-within-sockets, as I don't want to end up with some insane recursion of "equipment wearing equipment wearing equipment". It's plausible that such a system would end up something like the Magic Circle system from Cladun, with the value of socketed items determining how much they can influence the host item's growth rates or difficulty rating or whatever. I'm thinking the actual augmentation potency of a socketed item would be based on how valuable it is compared to the host item. Other stats may or may not be relevant depending on what you're enhancing.

Ultimately, the point of the game is to strategically make your numbers go up forever. :-I

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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Jill (?) » Sun Oct 06, 2019 2:20 am

Imagining Pokemon but without all the convoluted and arbitrary stat rolls, and less of a focus on battling.

Instead, the game revolves around traits. Each species might have a set of fixed traits that determine how that species generally operates. Beyond that, most traits have to do with your monster's personal interests, their AI patterns, and their fitness regarding certain tasks.

Traits are highly flexible but lowly manipulable. As a general rule, the more personal the trait, the less it can be tampered with. Monsters remember the last action they took and any traits that correlate with it, so you can use the opportunity to respond positively or negatively to their actions and influence how their behavior develops. For instance, a small monster might have a habit of trying to climb onto its trainer's head to get a better view of things, but their trainer may not want them going any higher than their shoulders. If the trainer were to respond by moving them down to their shoulder each time, the monster would begin to see the "head climber" trait in a negative light and "shoulder climber" in a positive light. Basically, your monster does not just do things based on their traits, but they pay attention to anything you do in response and make their own judgements on what is the "better" way to act. Monsters can also make these same judgements in their interactions with one-another. Although, if they are entrenched enough in one of their traits that they're not willing to give it up, then anything attempting to discourage it will just make them upset. The player might focus on befriending monsters that share in their personal interests, or they might try raising them indiscriminately and just rolling with whatever the monster likes to do.

The ultimate goal would be to have a game inspired by the Pokemon universe and not the Pokemon games themselves. One that uses complex AI to go beyond the scope of RPG battling mechanics and make its monsters seem more real. Battling would probably still be a thing but other activities involving other skills like playing games, racing, dress-up, or even just relaxing should be of equal validity. It's not even about creating the best performer you can at any given task, but enjoying the simple nuances of companionship.

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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Jill (?) » Mon Nov 04, 2019 5:02 am

A game that inverts your usual role as the adventurer who goes around looting treasure.

You are a dragon lord. The source of your power is the amount of wealth you have stashed in various dungeons around the world. In order to effectively become a powerful dragon, you must start by guarding one simple hoard. Adventurers will come to challenge you for it, and by their demise you will reap any valuables they had on their person. Stash or sell them off by donning a human disguise, accumulating ever more wealth to grow ever stronger.

However... the more valuable the stash, the more powerful the group of adventurers sent to claim it. To leave all of your eggs in one basket is to invite death at the hands of an army. And so, you must invest some of that wealth into building and fortifying treasure-filled dungeons across the realm. A stash with more defenses than wealth might be more self-sufficient in the long term, as you will only need to stop by to keep it from becoming too valuable. On the other hand, a stash with more wealth than defenses will probably be more lucrative, but it can only delay intruders. You will need to show up in person to seal their fate.

As you go through this process, the intricacies of wealth management begin to unravel. You might hold off on selling common equipment to make your stash appear less gaudy and lucrative, but what isn't valuable to a human may still appeal to some other creature... You might find that hoarding specific items confers specific benefits to you as a dragon lord. You might uncover the secrets of alchemy to maximize and mold your wealth as the situation demands, or perhaps you will turn to darker arts and punish raiders with cursed loot.

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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Jill (?) » Thu Jan 30, 2020 1:34 pm

concept: An MMO based around the "chosen one" trope, except in gameplay. Every once in a while, a force of evil overtakes the world and a random eligible player is granted the power of the chosen one in order to stop them. This power temporarily places them at the center of the game's world. While a chosen one is active, all players are able to uncover items and information that can assist their chosen one in defeating the force of evil. They might find resources used in forging a sacred weapon to strike down the Big Bad, or they might learn of a ritual or something required to draw them out. In one case they need to find or meet up with the chosen one in order to hand over items, and in the other case they need to communicate with them on a player-to-player basis. In the end, the performance between the chosen one and the rest of the world determines which perks the world at large will receive when evil is vanquished. Detailed records of this achievement are made, so if a chosen one defaults on fulfilling their destiny altogether, they may suffer a terrible reputation as their duty is fulfilled by the rest of the playerbase chipping away at the bad guy. The speed at which evil is vanquished is the most decisive factor in the benefits received for doing so, and a cooperative chosen one speeds things up a lot.

There could be another side to this: The force of evil may coax players to sabotage the chosen one's progress in exchange for perks that benefit them at the expense of everyone else. If the chosen one acts on a false clue for instance, the Evil One grows stronger and the person who uncovered the false clue is given some immediate perks as a reward. Only the original finder knows for a fact if their findings are to the benefit of everyone or just themselves, and everyone else would have to scrutinize them based on the way they're conveyed. For instance, a clue's legitimacy might be invalidated if it contains words like "destroy" where "vanquish" might be, and so on. Ultimately it is on the judgement of the chosen one and their counsel to be vigilant and sort out the truth for themselves, or suffer the consequences.

Ultimately this would aim to create a game where the standard Dragon Quest story unfolds itself organically. The majority of the player base acts as those "NPCs" that provide guidance for their chosen one, working out and deciphering the language of the evil one's downfall. Others may serve to stall that downfall for their own benefit, but the good in this world always perseveres.

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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Pocket (?) » Mon Mar 02, 2020 7:14 pm

Imagine if, instead of skipping a cutscene entirely, you can fast forward it like you would in a movie. And because games can detect that you're doing that, they could play with how it behaves. So instead of having either no captions, or the usual captions sped up to match the video to the point of being unreadable, you could have normal-speed captions that sum up the plot points being presented. And if you really wanted to be a smartass, you could actually make it read like "Blah blah blah pet headcrab" "Blah blah blah upgraded HEV suit" "tl;dr we built a teleporter and we're going to email you and Alyx to her dad's lab. Get in, loser, we're going sciencing."
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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Strangething (?) » Tue Mar 17, 2020 6:03 pm

I keep thinking of a multiplayer game that flips the usual power curve. There's mission-based micro-game, and a macro-game with crafting and shit. Like Warframe or Destiny.

But instead of just building better stuff to fight harder missions, the macro-game just gives you options, many of which are downgrades to the starting gear. Your progress (in the macro-game) is based on the load-out you choose in the micro game. So if you wan to unlock the cool stuff, you need to win missions with wimpy stuff.

So there's a built-in handicapping system. The new players are using the cool weapons, and the hardened vets are using the nerf bats.
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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Jill (?) » Thu Aug 13, 2020 2:29 pm

Jill wrote:
Fri Jan 04, 2019 2:52 am
i just had a dream about some mythical stage-based top-down action-RPG for the Game Boy Color which had this odd joint compatibility with the SNES that let you play co-op between multiple cartridges

essentially the GBC version followed a more comprehensive single-player RPG format, where you'd get a big ol' menu between each stage that lets you do stuff like take on sidequests, craft items, recruit playable characters and so on

playing the game on a SNES made it more like a beat-em-up where each of the main stages just leads straight into the next one, and you have to manage your chosen character's selected weapon and spell and stuff on the fly. anything you did in a SNES play session was reflected on your GBC save file, but EXP/loot were not universally shared, so each enemy defeated only gave back to each player based on what that player put toward defeating it

anyway, believe it or not the cross-cartridge/system functionality isn't what interests me about this game, but how it seemed to have an almost roguelike variation per-playthrough. you didn't really have an opportunity to grind or farm because whatever progress you made mid-stage was undone if you wiped, and you also couldn't just replay a cleared stage. yet there also wasn't any sort of permadeath mechanic, despite there being a huge amount of variance in what cards the game might deal to you on each save file. i mean that literally; there was a system where you collected cards by achieving certain feats throughout a stage, and at the end of that stage you'd draw the number of cards you collected from a "deck" which represents the game's pool of item shops, sidequests and the like. whatever became available to you between each stage was based on the cards you drew

it was ultimately a game that pushed you to be resourceful by the playthrough, but still introduced a dose of chaos to prevent things from becoming solved and stale. sounds a lot like a game i'd want to make someday
somehow this concept re-entered my mind as i was waking up this morning so i put some more thought into how it might work

i'd probably have the stages laid out using light procedural generation. something like binding of isaac floors but bigger and more open. there'd be a few specific variations (forest, mountain, cave, village, castle, chasm, etc.) which determine how the level generates and ideally affect how sightlines and attacks might behave (e.g. enemies can't see/attack through walls or up cliffs, but they can across chasms and down cliffs, and they might be able to see better through trees/windows but have to pathfind around them to attack, etc.) each stage would no doubt have its own boss and that boss would have its own drop pool. i would probably want each stage to have at least one other point of interest that is unique to that stage, like the forest might have a cabin or something where you can pick up a random weapon for your class.

you'd always get one card for beating a stage, and another if you beat it without taking damage, and perhaps another if you cleared out every enemy. as mentioned, you can play cards between stages to invoke shops or side quests (bonus stages), but i'm thinking some of the more beneficial cards may come with an extra cost. a side quest for instance is potentially a net gain in gold/items/stats, so you might have to discard one or two of your other cards in order to play specific side quests, particularly those that might reward you with a linear stat upgrade

part of the reason cards may come with their own costs is another idea i've had floating around in my head: deckbuilding. think of how a game like The Binding of Isaac throws a metric fuckton of unlocks into its item pool that can show up in future runs. imagine if those unlocks could be curated in some fasion. if the cards in your deck are customizable, you can control which shops and side quests are actually available during any given playthrough, and by extension the rewards you are likely to receive during that playthrough. but for the sake of variety there is still the possibility that say, a stage's boss might drop some item that isn't part of your deck

on to character classes. basically they each have a category for their main weapon, sub weapon, and one or two unique perks. sub weapons play by looser rules than main weapons and may have limited/varying ammo and whatnot. here's the handful of classes i've come up with thus far:
  • knight uses swords and shields. higher max HP and HP regenerates between stages. shields would probably work much like they do in a soulslike - perhaps even Dead Cells - encouraging you to take some risks to activate their perks
  • warrior uses axes and javelins. probably has some perk related to damage output. javelins do not vary in type but may take on certain properties from the equipped axe
  • thief uses daggers and shurikens. they gain slightly more gold from all sources and draw an extra card at the end of each stage. shurikens come in a few varieties, each with their own ammo count
  • merchant uses spears and bombs. every time they clear a stage, their total gold is increased by a certain percentage, allowing them to take big risks by saving up money for the late game. bombs are powerful and would probably come in just two varieties: the kind you collect as ammo, and the "emergency" bomb that sacrifices some gold. you'd probably also be able to push them around with your spear just to ensure they don't miss their mark when they explode
  • ranger uses bows and traps. enemies have a harder time detecting them. traps are acquired like shurikens and require some AI manipulation to use effectively, which is made easier by the reduced detection range
  • samurai uses katanas and guns. perks would likely be related to speed/mobility. guns are equipped like main weapons but their ammo can still vary like shurikens, allowing for some mixing and matching
  • wizard uses rods and scrolls. scrolls are unconventional among sub weapons and basically serve as a variety of class-specific consumables that don't use standard inventory slots
in the end you should end up building decks around each class, though i also don't plan on making any cards which are class-specific. for instance, each weapon shop card is unique and has an entire table of what it will offer to each class for which price. in the case of the merchant or warrior, every sub weapon shop will only offer you more bombs or javelins, but the amount in stock and their price would vary based on the specific shop card played

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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Pocket (?) » Thu Aug 20, 2020 9:58 pm

I was reminded today that Zelda randomizers exist, and now I want somebody to make a 2D action-adventure game that is essentially its own randomizer. And we're talking full randomization—not just the item and enemy placements but the layout of each interior building and the overworld map would be procedurally generated not unlike a roguelike. And also like any good roguelike, there are more items, enemies, and rooms in the pool than you could find in one run, so it's less like playing a specific Zelda game's randomizer and more like if you could take all the 2D Zeldas at once and put them in a blender.

And just like how randomizers have ways of preventing softlocks or even unfair difficulty spikes, the game would be designed from the ground up to maintain a fair difficulty curve (which even action roguelikes try to do) and maintain a level of backtracking that's similar to a good metroidvania, though this would also be adjustable in the options menu.
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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Jill (?) » Fri Aug 21, 2020 8:40 pm

Pocket wrote:
Thu Aug 20, 2020 9:58 pm
I was reminded today that Zelda randomizers exist, and now I want somebody to make a 2D action-adventure game that is essentially its own randomizer. And we're talking full randomization—not just the item and enemy placements but the layout of each interior building and the overworld map would be procedurally generated not unlike a roguelike. And also like any good roguelike, there are more items, enemies, and rooms in the pool than you could find in one run, so it's less like playing a specific Zelda game's randomizer and more like if you could take all the 2D Zeldas at once and put them in a blender.

And just like how randomizers have ways of preventing softlocks or even unfair difficulty spikes, the game would be designed from the ground up to maintain a fair difficulty curve (which even action roguelikes try to do) and maintain a level of backtracking that's similar to a good metroidvania, though this would also be adjustable in the options menu.
you've nearly described Cadence of Hyrule, as it's quite literally a mashup of Crypt of the Necrodancer with a typical Zelda game and thus effectively its own Zelda randomizer

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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Jill (?) » Sat Sep 12, 2020 2:09 am

i started playing Arknights not too long ago and it has got me thinking about possible ways to do something fresh with the tower defense genre. Arknights itself already has some cool ideas, and the biggest of which is giving each unit a 'Block' stat which determines how melee engagements play out. like an operator with 2 block holds back up to two enemies at a time, but those enemies will start attacking the operator who has them blocked. if further enemies reach an operator who is at their block limit, they will just walk right on through the scuffle without engaging

this seems like such a minor difference compared to what your average TD game might do, but it makes such a huge difference in strategic options. when TD games implement blockades of any kind they're usually just an all-or-nothing affair where enemies have to go around them or pile up on them until they're destroyed (such as walnuts in PvZ). by simply including a block stat that distributes enemies and their attacks in a more reasonable fashion, they've elegantly managed to restore the importance of tanking and healing to a genre that is traditionally all about nuking and stalling. as much as Arknights is a grindy gacha game it's still very challenging and stays true to some of the best habits of the SRPG genre (and for what it's worth it's the single most f2p-friendly one of these anime mobile games i've played yet)

setting the praise aside, i'm not yet sure of ways to iterate on this other than divorcing it from its gacha elements, but i've had one concept floating around in my head: each stage has you carve the path(s) yourself sort of like you would in a Badman game, and your options for carving this path are based around the environment as well as how much of your starting resources you're willing to spend on it. so you've got this semi-flexible setup phase where you can set the stage as you see fit without time constraints, followed by the actual tower defense phase where you work with said stage and deploy your party to fend off invaders from reaching the thingy at the end of your path

the way carving a path works mechanically can vary between stages. if it's a forest, you might be clearing out a path through the trees where squishy ranged units are only safe from melee if they have side paths to stand in. if you need to you might be able to just deploy them on treetops by spending more resources than it would have cost to clear the trees out in the setup phase. maybe there's water on some spaces and you can't do anything but work around it. maybe there's some muddy tiles you want to be part of your path because they'll help slow down enemies and potentially create a strong AoE setup point. basically i just think some of the rarely-used special tiles in Arknights are fun to build strategy around and i definitely want to explore that with stages that can play out in a variety of ways

as of now that's basically as far as i've really thought about it and i feel like i'm only scratching the surface here :-I

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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Pocket (?) » Thu Dec 03, 2020 11:38 pm

A game where you have no weapons but your enemies are trigger-happy and very much not immune to friendly fire, so your goal is to bait them into killing each other. My initial thought was for it to be a first-person shooter with a vaguely DOOM-inspired feel, but it could work as third person or top-down 2D. In the latter case, it could even be a sort of bullet-hell where you die in one hit, although bullet-hell is a niche enough genre already that it might not feel like a unique enough spin.
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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by diribigal (?) » Fri Dec 04, 2020 3:48 pm

Pocket wrote:
Thu Dec 03, 2020 11:38 pm
A game where you have no weapons but your enemies are trigger-happy and very much not immune to friendly fire, so your goal is to bait them into killing each other. My initial thought was for it to be a first-person shooter with a vaguely DOOM-inspired feel, but it could work as third person or top-down 2D. In the latter case, it could even be a sort of bullet-hell where you die in one hit, although bullet-hell is a niche enough genre already that it might not feel like a unique enough spin.
I know of shmups where you don't have anything like a conventional weapon, and other shmups where friendly fire is an issue (but on your side), but a shmup (ideally non-bullet-hell) withthat mechanic sounds interesting and possibly new.
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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Pocket (?) » Tue Dec 29, 2020 2:14 pm

You know the "Bearer— Seek— Seek— Lest—" meme? I'd love to see a game make its version of that purposely form an intelligible phrase, and have that phrase turn out to be a legit clue for unlocking some significant optional content. Kind of like the old trick of making the first letter of every sentence spell a message.
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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Pocket (?) » Sun Jan 17, 2021 9:06 pm

Someone should make an FPS for the Valve Index controllers where you make the finger-gun gesture and mime shooting it and that's how you shoot.
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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Pocket (?) » Wed Jun 02, 2021 4:53 am

I can't be remotely the first person to suggest this, but you know how modern retro games generally have more generous ways of punishing failure than in the old days? I feel like a Kid Icarus style vertically-scrolling platformer would be really easy to do this with: just get rid of the ratchet scrolling so falling down literally just sends you down to whatever's below you.
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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Pocket (?) » Sat Jul 17, 2021 4:34 am

A third-person action game where your character is actually a decoy; you, the one controlling the camera, can be shot and will die in one hit if you are.
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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Wed Sep 15, 2021 3:08 pm

A game where you are a RPG vendor specifically in the vendor trash business. Your job is to repurpose all the broken scabbards, minotaur horns and rat scalps into useful items (it would basically be a crafting game). Per the bylaws of the Vendor’s Guild you are required to buy everything heroes sell.
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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by DaikatunaRevengeance (?) » Wed Sep 15, 2021 5:41 pm

You know, there's life games like stardew valley and there's sim games like farming sim.

But there's really no games like simfarm.
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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Durandal (?) » Wed Sep 15, 2021 7:29 pm

Yeah I miss that generation of games in the 90s before genres were really set in stone, and you'd have a bunch of fun oddball games with no real modern equivalent. The classic Macintosh was full of these: stuff like Total Distortion and Glider and Spelunx and yeah, SimFarm too. SimAnt while we're at it.

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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Wed Sep 15, 2021 7:52 pm

I keep thinking about SimAnt even decades later. Mostly what I remember was playing it very intensely on the first day, then realizing I’d done everything the program had to offer, and returning it to the store. So ultimately disappointing but while it was going on, man, I was having fun. And so I think occasionally that maybe the concept deserves a fresh try.

One thing that needs to be in a SimAnt 2021 (or Ants: Skylines if that’s your speed) is a modeling of the gigantic variety of ant species. They’re found all over the world and have so many different ways of making a living; from the honeypot ants that act as living snack bags for the rest of the colony, to the ants that enslave other ants, to ants that farm fungus in their own nests. Maybe design a species that does all these things!

E: could even have a simple programming aspect where you write behavioral rules for your various ant castes, then see what kind of colony they make or hilariously fail to make.
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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Jill (?) » Wed Sep 15, 2021 8:48 pm

Mechanical Ape wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 7:52 pm
I keep thinking about SimAnt even decades later. Mostly what I remember was playing it very intensely on the first day, then realizing I’d done everything the program had to offer, and returning it to the store. So ultimately disappointing but while it was going on, man, I was having fun. And so I think occasionally that maybe the concept deserves a fresh try.

One thing that needs to be in a SimAnt 2021 (or Ants: Skylines if that’s your speed) is a modeling of the gigantic variety of ant species. They’re found all over the world and have so many different ways of making a living; from the honeypot ants that act as living snack bags for the rest of the colony, to the ants that enslave other ants, to ants that farm fungus in their own nests. Maybe design a species that does all these things!

E: could even have a simple programming aspect where you write behavioral rules for your various ant castes, then see what kind of colony they make or hilariously fail to make.
this would rule. i could see the game starting you with a colony of household black ants that get to "evolve" whenever you migrate a queen to a new colony, effectively letting your ants develop into one (or more) of the aforementioned species and allowing them to survive in a wider variety of environments. it's hardly scientific, but it's fun

the way sim ant has you manage several colonies at once is neat but it kinda doesn't make for fun gameplay at all, so i'd consider having you play just one colony at a time. your prior colonies are still there, but having evolved makes them a hostile threat if you ever try to migrate back to where you've been before. in that sense, re-using the same region for evolution purposes is possible, but it's super risky to start a colony next to an already-developed one and should only be viable when you have a significant evolution advantage

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Re: /gameideas/reborn.txt

Post by Pocket (?) » Tue Apr 05, 2022 5:28 pm

A first-person action game where there are no movement controls at all; you just have a hookshot and have to get around that way.
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