Semi-Annual Game Idea Thread

[Kim]

For everyone to share whatever random game ideas they've had.

I've been bouncing around an idea for a horror-themed isometric dungeon crawler. All the possible characters are fairly everyday people. A photographer. A professor. A nurse. A chemist. However, every character is interested in the occult and interacts with it in some way through their profession, either intentionally or having a history with it.

You put together a party and you go explore supernatural locations. If you're playing by yourself, you control one party member and the rest run on AI. You can swap to controlling a different character whenever you want.

Photographer fights the supernatural with their camera. Definitely Fatal Frame inspired. Photographer attacks would either be charged attacks against single enemies (focusing the camera = charging) or AoE attacks in a cone shape. The photographer might be able to set up traps with like time cameras or something??

The other benefit to the photographer is that whenever they get a last hit on an enemy, there's a chance of that enemy dropping a photo. These photos can be sold for cash for the party. Players can level up that ability of the photographer to make it so the photos drop more frequently or sell for more.

Enemies don't drop anything usually, I'm thinking. Only photos for photographer and raw materials for the chemist. Most of the loot hunting is built around exploration.

Professor is a buff/debuff character. Their knowledge of ancient runes and various mystical symbols allows them to manipulate the environment in little ways that hinder their opponents and help their allies. One special ability is put a quick salt circle around a group of enemies, holding them in place for a little while.

Professors can also identify loot for free and translate ancient texts, which can be helpful for sidequests or secrets.

Nurse is obviously the healing class. They restore the health of their allies and cure status effects. Outside of combat, they can craft healing items.

Chemist is the closest the game would have to a magic user. They can combine chemicals in various containers for offensive purposes. Depending on the container, it affects how the item is used. Putting an acid in a vial to be thrown versus some kind of spray canister.

Chemist's can also upgrade equipment by applying certain mixtures to them.

A big trope of dungeon crawlers is the dungeons being massive and sometimes randomized. There would of course be an in-game explanation for this. Specifically, all the dungeons in the game are Genius Loci, locations with a mind of their own. Able to freely change their shape and nature.

As for the kind of horrors I'd want to use, I'd tend more toward urban legends, ghosts, and folklore than any Cthulhu stuff, which I actively want to avoid. I'm kinda burned out on it and I'd love a horror investigation game that doesn't touch on it at all.

EDIT: Thinking on it, there'd definitely be a lot of secret corridors/rooms behind like paintings and stuff.

[Aerozord]

I wanted to do a visual novel/dating sim game based around friendships. Game takes place over the course of decades starting with childhood. You can lose friends, gain new ones, perhaps even date. However I wanted it to branch alot based on life choices. Do you go to that good out of state college or stick with the local one your friends are attending, do you spend time with Ben or Joe this weekend.

The goal of the game is to help people see just how difficult it is to maintain friendships long term so they might better appreciate the ones they have.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

For the 11 billionth time people, Han Solo; Intergalactic Smuggler. How many more times must I say this before somebody makes the one game that the Star Wars universe needs but was never made?

Set before he joined the Rebellion, it follows Han in his smuggler years, shows how he met Chewie, won the Falcon, and was generally awesome running Imperial blockades and dealing with all the various dirty lowlifes of the galaxy as he tries to make a living.

I see it as a combination of GTA open-worldness and Mass Effect sized galaxy map. 3rd person action shooter on the planets and ship based combat ala Colony Wars/Battlefront 2. Potential for co-op sections with Han and Chewie piloting/gunning or on the ground fighting criminal scum/bounty hunters/Imperial forces they've managed to piss off.


I have other ideas for games involving time travel and parallel worlds but this is the one I want to see the most.

[Aldurin]

Chao Garden

Standalone, crossover, whatever. We all need more Chao Garden. Admit that most of those hours playing Sonic Adventure 2 were not spent playing the actual game.

[Red Mage Black]

Kim, your horror game idea just made me remember my own. Though it's not as fantasy based. If I had to describe it, it's something of a mix of Paranoia and CoC. I remember discussing with another NPFer over AIM about the details of 'what I want to happen'. Any statistics outside of Health and Sanity are entirely useless. Okay, I think it would be better to describe some of the mechanics and a little bit of the background:

"You and [a number] other people have been stranded here, out in the desert, alone. The only thing ahead of you seems to be a very large building. From what you can tell, it seems to be powered by a field of solar panels on the right and a large communications array dish hangs just above the roof.

The object of this game is basically 'survival'. There is no super wacky adventures to be had, only madness and creations beyond your ken. All the people are normal. The items you start with are decided at random or perhaps make sense based on your character's previous history, but regardless, long winded backgrounds are pretty useless to this setting. The story could be changed around a little, but this game is meant to make you scared and paranoid. That shadow, is it normal or is there some creature creating it? Maybe the shadow is the creature? Should you shine your flashlight on it or should you just walk away and act as if you didn't see it? You only have a ballpoint pen and a stick of gum. Do you feel lucky?

You would have your basic statistics, but the most important would be health and sanity. You could always trade some of either away for an earlier advantage, but due to the strangeness of this game, it's hard to tell what you might run into.

I had planned a sort of "random" generator for the "creatures" that would pop up in this game. There would also be a section for helping the GM come up with things not normally found in the book. Another thing would be 'mutation points' for the players and should they gain enough, would roll on that 'monster chart' to see what they got. It wouldn't be wholly advantageous to the player though. They would end up sacrificing health or sanity involuntarily depending on the mutation and that would depend entirely on how well their mind 'takes' to the mutation. So you can never go through the game with the most advantageous mutations and come out completely sane or even human. One part of this may be mutations of the brain, such as psychic powers and use your sanity score as measuring stick for just how far you can push yourself without suffering mental stress. However, this also means that the creatures you face are also capable of having them, too.

Another effect for the low sanity players would be hallucinations or delusions. Maybe a certain part of the game requires someone have a low sanity score or that there's something only they can see because of how badly their mind has deteriorated?

I had fully planned on 'health packs' and 'insanity treatments' for keeping players from dying too soon. (Unless they made a stupid decision that is.) Neither would be the friendliest to them, but it's better than nothing, right?

Going back to the ability scores. I say they're mostly useless, because humans are very limited in capability. No matter how much you train, you will never be able to punch through a steel wall or run faster than a cheetah or be able to take a bullet without suffering a wound. What I mean is, some creatures will have scores 'far' beyond what the players will be able to achieve. You think this is unfair? I don't think so. It means the players will need to get creative if they want to beat it or possibly just be skilled enough to avoid it.

I had no intentions for this game to be 'light'. This would be full on "make your choices very carefully".

[Aerozord]

I love Corruption of Champions, shame we have such a stigma against pornographic games because it has some great game mechanics. Especially how it shows players surprisingly care about purely cosmetic changes despite never even seeing the character. The game does a good job of reminding you of these alterations as well. Thus players are as concerned with body sculpting as leveling, weighing if its worth the risk of mutation.

I mention this RMB because it might be worth considering. Giving players choice, you could eat this fruit. It might make you stronger, it might give you a cow tail, it might do both. Having the effects cumulative and some contradictory but not completely opposite. Another great mechanic is nothing has just one type of mutation and more than one can take place. You might try to counteract one effect with another, but it hits you with a secondary mutation.

Because you want atleast the illusion of choice. So make it the result of their choices that they gain mutation points. I do suggest making it possible to avoid mutating but alot harder to survive. It adds more variety and more ways to play. As well as making them feel like becoming a horrible abomination was their fault instead of something the GM forced on them.

[Amake]

Well, I thought of a RPG called Kingslayers the other week. Picture something looking basically like Final Fantasy 6, but you've got your whole team of twelve heroes fighting at the same time; formations, positioning and synchronized attacks would be key.

On a strategic level, you'd get to develop your guys as you like, though it'd probably be most clever to have a balanced team of various specialists: Long ranged spellcasters, fast flankers, charismatic commanders, et cetera. Maybe you'd deliberately kill off a few guys so the rest can level faster and streamline formations and such, but that'll make it harder to get a good ending.

The story is the part that requires the most thought, and yet I've given it the least. But picture your average medieval european feudal region with an asshole king who people want dead, and so they organize a rebellion. More than half the people of the land join it, led by a vibrant couple of heroes - the skilled rhetorician and master strategist what's-his-face and the passionate combat sorceress so-and-so.

And then the king drafts the other half and hires an army of mercenaries from the neighboring nation and kills them all. Fifteen percent of the adult population of the country is left wounded but alive, hordes of orphaned children wander the monster-infested ruins and beast-infested wilderness, the king is executing people if he even hears about anyone looking at him funny, and of the rebel army there are exactly twelve people left, hiding in a village deep in the mountains.

And this is where you come in. You'll have to elect a new leader, and decide if you're going to call it a day (game over) or announce your existence (the hard way) or stay underground (the slow but sure way). This will make the game play out somewhat different, and you'll face similar if smaller in scale decisions every step of the way. Do you let a portion of the forces practice farming, hunting or various trade skills to keep your tiny army in decent food and clothes at the expense of combat skills? Do you help out people on your way - with food, medicine, monster killing, bedtime stories - or intimidate them to gain their support faster and reach the next town before the king's forces do? Do you let your best men give themselves up to be executed to calm down the king and give yourself and the country an easier time? Do you play the long game, gathering the orphans and train them, waiting for the day they're old enough to take up battle, or do you risk everything in a public speech and/or battle in the capital clever enough get the king to abdicate, or have everyone in the country killed? Do you apply just enough martial and political pressure to force the king into making some humane reforms to shut you up and then quit before any more people gets killed? There's only one thing for sure: Your merry band of terrorists will not be parted from each other as long as they live.

[Locke cole]

I've been bouncing around the thought of a text-parser-driven horror adventure game.

The game is, as said, a test-parser-driven adventure game, in the vein of stuff like Zork or something. The parser's descriptions of the rooms you go to (probably in a big mansion?) are supplemented by images of the room

Midway through the game, the player awakens some horrific monster (not sure if it should be some fanged horror or ichor-dripping betentacled thing, or what. The creature's identity isn't all that important), which proceeds to pursue the player through the mansion as they fight to get out and/or defeat the beast.

At least, that's what you see on the screen. Because while you can clearly see the monster and other assorted horrors, and the trail of destruction left in their wake, and can see the beast getting closer and closer with every attempted action, the text parser flatly refuses to acknowledge the monster's existence, or any effect of its actions. Trying to LOOK at the beast results in a flat, generic, "I don't see any MONSTER in this room" response, same as any failed action. Trying to use anything on the creature directly has a similar failure. And even if the room you're in has been ripped to shreds by some application of terrible fangs, the text accompaniment will still be describing the beautiful ballroom you find yourself in, and linger on the marvelous crystal chandelier which, to your eyes, has crashed into the ground and been ground into glittering grit.

The intent is to build the tension by making it impossible to interact with the creature in any direct way; you can only attempt to protect yourself by using items the game believes to exist, and doing things that, indirecty, impact the monster or allow you to escape. And the disconnect between what you see and what the game says is real could raise the question as to which party is seeing reality.

[Daimo Mac, The Blue Light of Hope]

I have two game ideas.

1: Princess Badass

You play as the titular Princess who is on a quest to save her betrothed and her 12 knights from an evil witch who wishes to cast a spell that will bring about darkness yadda yadda the same shit you see in countless games.

The gameplay mechanics are simple as it is a sidescroller in the vein of Double Dragon. you punch, kick and magic your way through the levels stopping your enemies and collecting powerups in the form of dresses.

Each dress will add (or subtract) from your characters stats and each dress gives a special bonus spell to use. Some spells are offensive, some are used as a buff and some are used to protect.

[Red Mage Black]

Originally Posted by Aerozord

I love Corruption of Champions, shame we have such a stigma against pornographic games because it has some great game mechanics. Especially how it shows players surprisingly care about purely cosmetic changes despite never even seeing the character. The game does a good job of reminding you of these alterations as well. Thus players are as concerned with body sculpting as leveling, weighing if its worth the risk of mutation.

At the time, I was actually talking about Call of Cthulhu, but Corruption of Champions also works in this context. I was kind of debating how anyone would interpret the initials and I was pleasantly surprised someone brought that game up.

I mention this RMB because it might be worth considering. Giving players choice, you could eat this fruit. It might make you stronger, it might give you a cow tail, it might do both. Having the effects cumulative and some contradictory but not completely opposite. Another great mechanic is nothing has just one type of mutation and more than one can take place. You might try to counteract one effect with another, but it hits you with a secondary mutation.

Because you want atleast the illusion of choice. So make it the result of their choices that they gain mutation points. I do suggest making it possible to avoid mutating but alot harder to survive. It adds more variety and more ways to play. As well as making them feel like becoming a horrible abomination was their fault instead of something the GM forced on them.

Oh, I had ideas of ways to make it harder to survive. Considering most of the time, you probably won't find anything to use as a weapon. Hell, you might not even affect a creature with whatever you find. Maybe the flamethrower doesn't have a lot of juice yet, maybe the gun doesn't have very many bullets left or that laser pistol/rifle has a low battery. That doesn't mean everything will be useless, just use it wisely.

As for mutations, yeah, I see what you mean. I wouldn't 'force' anyone to mutate, but if someone drinks some messed up concoction without knowing what it is or without reading the label or even eating some alien fruit they don't know, it's going to be their fault anyway. Some may affect the mind, some the body, maybe both, maybe they'll have some temporary regenerative effect or maybe nothing will happen at all.

Genetic Engineering is some crazy stuff.