What would you play?
 

NonCon and I were talking about game mechanics last night, which got me to wondering, just what is there a market for that a small-timer could fill?

To put it this way, things like 3D shooters are pretty much dominated by the professionals, as is pretty much anything else in 3D of any note. That's not really what I'm asking about.

What I am asking about is stuff like first-person and top-down RPGs, point-and-click adventure games, side-scrolling platformers and fighting games, etc. Basically the stuff of yesteryear that's been making a tentative comeback lately. What would you like to see? How retro do you want it to look and sound?

This is just to sate my own curiosity, because I know what I want and I'm making it in my spare time. I'm just curious as to what (an albeit small sample of) the rest of the population is interested in that the indie market could offer.

I want more on-rails arcadey shooters like Sin and Punishment: Star Successor. But none of this on-rails-no-avatar-on-screen bullshit from lightgun games.

We could start by having a new StarFox. Preferably developed by Treasure. Now that would be swell.

Vertical scrolling shooters! I'll accept side scrolling ones too, but I prefer the vertical ones, for some reason. And I don't care too much about what it looks like, but something along the realms of the fantasy genre for it would be unique. I haven't heard of too many that aren't Sci-fi in that type of game.

We need another god damn planetside.
We need a game designed for gamers.

No million dollar graphics, no BROWN, no hours spent on putting in bloom coding.

Game. Cooperative. Massive Scale. Axis vs. Axis.

This is what we need, a WAR game, not just skirmishes, not arenas, actual large scale combat where the fuel station outpost, the hacker, the driver, everyone helps, everyone's job goes towards a tangible goal of total world victory.

----

On the other hand, micro-transfer games are really coming up for the small scalers, tons of spoiled kids are willing to pay upwards of $20 to get silly items in online games, get enough of them together and you can justify a 6 person dev team over 4 months easily.
Look at games like gunbound or mabinogi, micro-tranfer games to unlock certain features.

Now look how Facebook has done that, Farmville has like 150mil/day users... and its a crappy browser game, a terrible ripoff of a GBA game!

It's not really about the game as it is about the way you spread it, and how it's networked, and how people can spend money on it.

I want a game where I investigate crime scenes, looking for clues, and some of the investigations are to find normal murderers. Others are to find out what monster in the bestiary killed the villagers and if you do well you get bonus info and/or damage during the boss fight against said monster.

But none of you get to make that game.

That's my game.

Shit Yes.

hmmm. I..can't really think of anything else :ohdear:

Planetside?

Me when I get the skills to make something like that solo -> :dance:

Until then, let's stick to something indie. ;)


Edit: Ninja'd so hard! DX

Something along the lines of Iji or Return to Sector 9.

Was playing Super Metroid the other day. I WANT A NEW 2D SIDESCROLLER METROID. Other M doesn't count. I'll still play it, but it doesn't count.

I always loves me a good adventure game. Of course, designing them can be tricky & I've seen more than one attempt fail.

I would suggest you look here, if you consider this route. The basic software to make adventure games & plenty of examples of fan-made games. Not sure how much programming is involved, but it does at least require a little ability from what I've heard.

SWB

Planetside was the best large-scale coop pvp game ever, it was the first game where instead of being in a 20-100 person guild like WoW you could be in a 500-1000 person guild split up into 5-10 sections further split into 3-10 task squads each.

AGS is a nifty little piece of software. I actually looked into it a while ago. The syntax is a lot like Javascript, so even a beginning programmer could make something with it given a bit of time, effort, and possibly resources just to speed it up. I actually suggested it to my teacher (who has a lot of pull) for the intro to game-making course he teaches, but apparently the powers that be are set on starting students off on Visual Basic in every area.

Put simply, VB is not ideal for making games. Well, you CAN, but there are better options.


While that's impressive, and the game looks awesome (seriously, when did this come out?), this thread is about parts of the market indie developers could fill. ;)

We need more games like FFTactics that isn't grinding-fuck-all-hell like Disgaea.

I mean, the series is funny as hell, but there's just so much time where you do nothing but grind, and it's annoying as fuck.

Side scrolling shooters, side scrolling platformers, and side scrolling brawlers--preferably in the style of River City Ransom/Double Dragon/Battle Toads.

There are not enough of those three things out, and they'd all be easy for a small independent studio to produce.

every good cartoon should have a side scrolling beatemup.

For Indie fighting games, MUGEN is a really good engine. it just sucks that people mostly use it to copy established characters rather then make their own original work. *cries over corrupted Original sprite sheets*

I miss the good old fashion side scroller platformer and the old school Action game ala Link to the Past.

2003. Yeah, really. And there hasn't been anything to replace it in the mean time, too bad the game is more or less dead now, due to Sony's horrible mismanagement of the game, and time causing the playerbase to dwindle to nearly nothing.

Actual strategy games. No, I don't want excessive complexity. I don't want to be able to select individual units. I don't want good graphics. I don't want a top-down view of my town center. I don't want to micromanage.

All I want is good AI and a gameplay mechanic that involves abstract resource allocation.

Sony has a bad habit of making amazing titles just to show they can and then never doing anything with them after they hit market.

EDIT: I want my Legend of Dragoon 2. :(

^ I want Megaman Legends 3 dammit!

I'm somewhat disappointed that there's no mention of Streets of Rage, which had some great music to bump to as well as any other game.

Add to that a few options of upgrading and it could be really diverse.

Streets of Rage was good, but not RCR/DD/BT good.

I'm iffy on the DD. It started a lot, and it's got my respect. SoR did a lot in just three iterations.

And SoR never came out with this. The black spot of a series that went over the hill after its third.

I kinda want to see an unofficial sequel to God Hand.

A man can always hope.

HELL. FUCKING. YES. Blue, will you marry me?


That or a new Vanguard Bandits. Honestly, one of the best games I have ever played. Much like tactics, with out the grinding, and you use fucking mechs.

EDIT: Or TMNT: Turtles in Time. That was fun.

7 years ago.

Indie dev content is best with growth-based gameplay, if you can tweak a system so it's fun to progress and evolve just through numbers people will eat it up, you just gotta represent the numbers as things people relate to. It's all about brain chemical release, growth is a big part of fun.

A dating sim where the shy girl who keeps bumping into you is actually a deranged, obsessive, sociopath who burns down the school on the last day, killing everyone so that she can be together forever with you no matter what you've done during the game. The only thing decided by your actions during the game is which girl's face she's wearing as a flesh mask when she shows up in the ending.

YES! Legend of Dragoon 2 would be amazing, and they were supposed to make one or a prequel or something, but cancelled it if I recall correctly. :(
I loved Legend of Dragoon.

I think these two wishes should be combined into something awesome.

Eh, sorry, I'm a guy, and I'm pretty sure you're a guy, so it probably wouldn't work out. Happy to be your wingman, though.



I suppose I'll chime in with my own desires/projects. I'm a Reagan baby, so my childhood was marked by EGA games and the onset of the VGA era and the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color. Naturally, that leaves me looking back to those old 16-color PC titles as "old" stuff, like Hugo, Dangerous Dave, Peganitzu, and Kiloblaster, with a helping of stuff like Hocus Pocus, Riptide, Lands of Lore, and a wee, bitter bit of Eye of the Beholder on the PC end of things where most of my focus has gone. Basically, my projects revolve around the stuff I'd like to see, so:

The Power of Commands: 16-color top-down RPG with a turn-based battle system, visually akin to D&D games, functionally closer to FF1, music in basic waveforms
Magical Platformer (working title): 16-color sidescrolling platformer/shooter styled similarly to Hocus Pocus, functionally enhanced beyond most of the genre, music undecided
Ghost in the Machine: 2-bit monochrome top-down RPG with a turn-based battle system, visually like a B&W FF6, functionally mostly generic, Game Boy-style music
Mirror Quest: a text adventure with accompanying 16-color illustrations, visually unique, functionally most similar to any text adventure with party members, no sound
Ruby: The Calling: a 16-color dungeon crawler, visually unique, but functionally similar to most d20 dungeon crawlers, music undecided
Guiding Lights: Feng (working title): a dungeon-crawler with a unique palette of my own design, visually unique, functionally enhanced compared to the genre, MIDI music
Battle (working title): a 32-bit top-down MMO visually akin to a GBA game, functionally quite unique (there is nothing like it on the market, for better or worse), MIDI music

These are the ones for which I currently have (at least basic) resources and have a current intent, or at least desire, to continue.



Edit: Curse the new layout! It was lined up all pretty-like in the preview. :(

Y'know, I liked everything about Godhand except the gameplay. Never really did anything for me there. Maybe I just didn't play it long enough/am too used to the playstyles of other modern action games.

Eh, I guess that will have to work. My current wingman fails at everything. He has ruined it for me on multiple occasions. Hence the screen name....

So yeah, I would totally play most the games you just listed. Oh, you should make a GOOD sequel to Shining Force! More like the original man.

This is probably an actual BL manga premise. Crazy...
 

They started off as simple wingmen, but little did they know how deep their feelings would soon become.

Read Wingmen, the latest manga by acclaimed author Tarako Kotobuki, now available from Blu Manga wherever fine books are sold.

I would probably read that based on this thread alone.

Nuklear Power Forums: We write slash about the members...

DFifthM?

You're at least two years late for that relevation.