software.dev

Now the fun part — deciding what type of game to make   I’ve been doing some thinking about what kinds of games I’d like to see [more of] and here’s what I came up with:

- RPG styled like Megaman: Battle Network.  I didn’t really like the feel of MM:BN, but I think it has a lot of potential.  It takes a little more twitch skill than, say, an FF style RPG.  I also absolutely love the idea of ‘cards’.  I never played any TCG seriously because they’re too expensive, but I like the idea of customizing a ‘deck’ and drawing abilities from that deck in battle.  There was a pretty cool Gamecube game like this.

- ‘Reactive RPG’, ala Mario RPG.  Again for similar reasons as above.  I like the idea of using a little twitch skill every now and then to increase / avoid damage.

- I recently played a cool little Flash game called ‘Nevermore’, which apparently, is like Hapland (I didn’t really think so, but they both have cool art styles).  In any case, Nevermore is basically a ‘puzzle platformer’.  It has a kind of mysterious, surreal feel to it that I kind of like, almost like Myst.  I’d like to see a game like Nevermore, but longer, and with more point and click interactions instead of straight platform jumping.

- A turn-based strategy game where, when units meet, they are controlled in a real-time battle.  You probably notice a trend here.  There was a game like this on PS called ‘Unholy Wars’; it was a turn-base strategy game with a really simple resource model, and maybe… 8-10 different units with different abilities.  You could attack adjacent units, entering a battlefield where each player controlled their unit, and had four different abilities to attack with.  This was presented in a third person view.

- Stylus (mouse drawing) game.  The Wii and NDS have really got me thinking about ‘drawing’ games.  It’s certainly not as fun to draw with a mouse, but I think there is a lot of untapped potential here.  More on this later.

- Puzzle platformer, centered on a mage-like character.  Possible ‘color’ theme, or more specifically, ‘ elemental’ magic.  Maybe you could pick the type of mage you wanted, or would have to use several types of mages to solve puzzles… not sure yet.

- Generic Flash ’survival’ game.  I like the idea of a mage character here as well… learn spells, get gold, buy defenses, keep playing until dead.  I’d like to see a game like this with a bit more strategic depth than is normally themed… more options.

- Fantasy-themed Worms game… specifically with base-building.  One of my favorite ‘house-rules’ ways to play Worms was to set the amount of girders allowed to infinite, with which my friend and I would build huge fortresses and put our Worms inside before we started the match.  We also built ’sky bases’ (girders in the air in the shape of say, an airship) and boats (girders in the water); the other person had to siege the base.  I think a game that actually included a mode like this would be a ton of fun to play.

- Some other union of genres that doesn’t really fit.  I played a side-scrolling RTS awhile back (I forget the name, but it was kind of Steam-punkish).

I’ll continue this later, but I think I have an idea I might go with… currently thinking of a ‘Gladiator’ type game where you control a mage from a top-down view to blast opponents with magic.  Specifically, drawing runes on the screen ala Lost Magic, but hopefully implemented better.  Several schools of magic should make it interesting.  We’ll see!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 4th, 2006 at 8:45 pm and is filed under games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.