Games we Wish we Could Make, part XVI

[Amake]

It's been a while since we had one of these threads. Pity, since the collective mind of the chat came up with at least two really neat games in the past couple of days that went largely unrecorded. But we'll just have to see what we can remember.

First there was a game which despite liberal and vigorous brainstorming we could not come up with a better title than "A game with wizards who drive cars." Essentially, what this would be is GTA: San Andreas with all of the cars, the characters, the missions, the maps and the thuggery stripped out and replaced with different cars, characters, missions, maps and wizards. We'd have a sturdy RPG system in place for training your character in a variety of spellcaster classes, and let you engage in drive-by fireballs, thirty-car pileup spells of mass destruction, disintegrating cab drivers and making the highways twist and crumble under your cosmic power.

It would at least be a pretty original sandbox game.

And then someone mentioned making a game with Slenderman in it. That to me immediately sounds like potentially the most uncanny, disturbing and frightening game yet made. Here's what I'm picturing: A convincing reality simulation game possibly along the lines of Shenmue or Oblivion or even Harvest Moon, where you can go along with your daily life without even trigging what the game is about. You might catch an odd story in the newspaper or an unlikely rumor, or a friend may say something just a little bit off, or you may think you see something in the corner of your eye, but it doesn't have to go any further than that. You can still back away.

But there's something moving in the trees, in the dark, late at night. If you look the wrong way at the wrong time, you might see him. He becomes more real and more powerful the more you think about him, and you'll start seeing glimpses of faces everywhere. The world may slowly turn, gradually, into a paranoid nightmare and before you realize it you're halfway into the scary part of Silent Hill and your friends and family start looking at you funny and one time you swear you woke up in the middle of the night and saw something outside the window, though you live on the third floor. You get sucked in, sucked down into strange depths and no one can tell you that there's no way to win this game, no way to survive unless you remember that it's just make believe and put the controller down.

If you follow me.

[Kim]

I want to make a video game about a high school student playing a video game. While playing as the student, you'd go about their day-to-day life via gameplay-lite interactive story and dialogue choices. While the student plays the game, you'd play the game. Obviously the game the student is playing would be very video gamey. Probably an RPG where they get to name the character after themselves. Over the course of the student's story, life at both school and home would grow worse and worse for them, and they'd grow antisocial and cling to the world of the game more and more. As time progresses, the line between the two would grow blurred until it eventually vanished, with the student ultimately realizing that they themselves are just a character in somebody else's game. The story would conclude with the student deleting his/herself, including any and all save data for the game on the console.

[Amake]

I've got chills. :dance:

[Doc ock rokc]

I want to make a video game about a high school student playing a video game. While playing as the student, you'd go about their day-to-day life via gameplay-lite interactive story and dialogue choices. While the student plays the game, you'd play the game. Obviously the game the student is playing would be very video gamey. Probably an RPG where they get to name the character after themselves. Over the course of the student's story, life at both school and home would grow worse and worse for them, and they'd grow antisocial and cling to the world of the game more and more. As time progresses, the line between the two would grow blurred until it eventually vanished, with the student ultimately realizing that they themselves are just a character in somebody else's game. The story would conclude with the student deleting his/herself, including any and all save data for the game on the console.

I kinda had a idea like that for a while. a RPG game that's rather easy to beat but when you play though a second time The villain of the story realizes he is in a game and eventually starts breaking apart the game in a twisted way to escape the game. But i feel it's been done.

I also kinda had a idea like Amake's GTA. Except I settled for less power and more of a Super villain simulator. You play it like a normal GTA but as you go you get connections and you eventually tear down the cities Super villian league as they and the super hero league are in cahoots.
I haven't given the story much thought but i love this idea most of all. instead of just having a normal progression of more and more cops like you get in GTA I was thinking that if you break enough laws and do enough damage eventually you get a Super hero on your tail and they act like a Major boss.

[Amake]

That could work in A game with wizards who drive cars. You should be able to play wizards of different alignments, and that'd determine what kind of bosses you face. And why not a wizard with high charisma and leadership who ends up more of a gang leader than spell slinger. . .actually I'd love to see a GTA were you can lead entire crowds of people on GTA rampages and turn the city into a hole in the ground.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

I'll say it for the upteenth millionth time;

I want my Han Solo; Intergalactic Smuggler game!!

[Yumil]

I kinda had a idea like that for a while. a RPG game that's rather easy to beat but when you play though a second time The villain of the story realizes he is in a game and eventually starts breaking apart the game in a twisted way to escape the game. But i feel it's been done.

I think an rpg like that would be amazing if well written/programmed. Honestly would take to the extreme though. Have the first quest last like an hour, something simple like saving the Princess from Garland(we'll just use him as an example since this is NPF) kill Garland, game over, oh looky new game plus.

Garland is now stuck in basically groundhog's day. At first he thinks it so that he may succeed in his evil plans and changes them accordingly to how the player beat him the last play through. Heck during one play through he uses data on how the players been making their team to kill off the team members before the player can recruit them. Fun stuff, makes it seem like he's evolving.

Anywho, after a number of defeats he starts losing it, like Bill Murray did in Groundhogs day and player'll get a few playthroughs of decreasing amounts of time in which player'll be told that they win because he died in a number of humorous ways. Then finally the player'll get a game where there is no princess to be saved, no problems to be solved, and it be very peaceful.

This will be the first time that nothing happens, so the players natural reaction is to see why Garland is not out doing evil. He's found depressed asking if the player is going to kill him again and continue the cycle of hell that is his life. The player now has the choice to tell him it's just a game, which would lead to your ending, where instead of changes based on the mechanics of the world, his knowledge that the world is a game is like the knowledge that dreamer is in a dream and he gains some control over it.

Perhaps the end result would to be the only way for him to stay dead is to never use New Game+ at the end. Perhaps make every successive New Game+ after the player defeats the god Garland an automatic loss as you just resurrect a being that gets more powerful with every resurrection.

Yeah, tldr: I like your idea and think that it will make an awesome game. It'd be awesome to subvert the NG+ mechanic and heck could lead to some fun adventures if done right. Plus take enough player data and the enemy can oddly seem like he's playing against you.

[Bells]

tell me what you guys think of this...

Big non-historic Sandbox city on Late-Medieval times. Gothic constructions, lots of tall buildings, towers, that sort of thing... very london-esque too.

Your character is a Ranger, from a Order of Rangers that is like a independent branch of the government. you keep the city safe and you keep government in check, if either misbehave you deal with it. There are other groups like yours, some not as noble.

You die in a couple of hits, maybe if one if it's well done. Your character is mortal and it's not a Brickhouse of power. Actually, if someone were to slash you with a blade, depending on the severity of the hit, you would bleed to death unless you found a place to heal yourself wich could take a few seconds... so, no chugging potions...

to deal with the corrupt and the bad intentioned, you have 2 weapons that you were trained for by your order... Daggers. To throw or CQC against enemies. And a Bow and Arrow.

You can make and modify your own bow and arrow from a plethora of materials, and you can carry around 30 or so arrows with you of as many types as you like or can build depending on your funds.

The game world deals with realistic Arrows physics, dealing with Distance, gravity and wind properly. Due to your training you have "skills" like seeing most of the trajectory of your arrow and how the winds blow and effect it (at first you can only see 30% of the trajectory, by endgame, it's 80% ) you can also "tag" targets in your line of sight, and predict their patterns of motion (so, you can see a target through a wall after watching him for a while)

When you shoot your arrows, you have the option of using "arrow cam" just to see your awesome shot in slow mo and close by all the way through.

You can also use a grappling hook to dash up walls or simply parkour the shit out of everything (i imagine climbing is a bit too tedious to do)

Very narrow margin of error, lot of preparations, actual tactical situations, free roaming world, feeling like a bad ass medieval sniper.... that's the game i want my name on.

[Ryong]

Sounds like people want to play Half-Minute Hero Villain.

[rpgdemon]

Don't mind me, I'll be over here, taking notes.

Edit: Bells, it sounds a lot like your game is a much better Assassin's Creed. Which would be sweet.

[Satan's Onion]

Take one part Nostalgia (that mediocre steampunk-ish DS game I've only recently weaned off of). Add a large scoop of Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma (particularly in the sense of taking place not in Generic Fantasylandia, but something resembling our own world). Mix real-world archaeology with fantastical stuff for flavor. Drizzle liberally with Mystic Ark--hell, just do whatever the hell it was Enix did to make those games so good. Blend in a metric shit-ton of world-building and nicely-written dialogue that sounds like real people would conceivably say it at some point. Add woman characters and characters who aren't blindingly white--hell, even a protagonist--who aren't somehow painfully awful.

Basically, I want to run around the twisted labyrinths of Angkor Wat or Abu Simbel or Machu Picchu smacking monsters and solving puzzles and pew pew magicks to save the world. And while I'm dreaming, I also want a flying pony that eats sunshine and shits gold.

[EVILNess]

I really, really want to see a Steampunk 2d Zelda-ish game. WHY HASN'T THIS HAPPENED YET?

Shit, it would make it's budget back just being Steampunk. You know the internet eats that shit up!