Some game ideas that I've been sitting on
By nintendoeats 21 Comments
So because I'm too tired to do any of the mountain of work that I should be doing, I thought I might take stock of the various games that I've put some thought into. I'd like some feedback on anything that interests you. Some of these are just ideas, others I've done some serious design work on. Headers are just working titles.
Onward
This is one of the games that I'm working on right now, which I will be using as a portfolio piece in February. Imagine 2 parts Myst, 1 part Silent Hill and a dash of Russian-ness. Gameplay starts as first-person, but moves into third-person for story reasons that don't become clear until the end of the game. Its more about puzzles 
The story follows Elisa, who wakes up at the beginning/end of a set of train tracks. The tracks are built up over the course of the game as something comforting, somewhere safe. However, she continually has to leave the path to turn the lights on further down the track. Most of the game occurs off the tracks where she encounters a variety of people and environments. There is a lot of symbolism in these areas she journeys to, generally covering themes of isolation, guilt and self-consciousness.
I've worked out a lot more specifics for this than I'm including in this post, but here is a mock up of the intro sequence (oh yeah, and there are no cut-scenes so this a narrative of the intended player experience).
Political Lines
It's a mobile phone game NO WAIT COME BACK!!!! My thought here is that mobile games have two big issues. Firstly the controls usually suck. Secondly, its difficult to have any kind of story because you need to be able to play the gmae in a bite-sized fashion. What I would like to see here is a game which plays like a very complicated Choose-your-own-adventure book, or if you wanty a video game comparison, Mass Effect without the action.
The story in this case is that you are running for political office. You can run on whatever ticket and platform you like, and all of your decisions over the course of the game will impact whether you win or lose. The only part of the game that is generate by the computer is the end result, which is a simplistic voter model which is constantly being updated over the course of the game.
The player experience would revolve a lot around making careful decisions in morally and politically ambiguous situations. My hope is that people would spend a lot of time out of game pondering how to deal with the current situation. This would only really work in the phone-game format, since the player doesn't expect to spend any long stretches in-game
The Dead Outside
It's a zombie game NO WAIT COME BACK!!!!! Instead of being about killing hordes of the undead, this game is about an individual who is living in their house. They have to venture out into the world for supplies, and are trying to contact other survivors. The story line is linear, but it takes place in a small open world...that's full of fast-zombies. I haven't put a ton of thought into the story arc of this one, but I like it as a concept.
I'm also thinking that there might be a parallel storyline involving a member of the military, but to get into that would ruin the ending that I'm envisioning.
The Saviour Machine
I sort of worked on this as a computer science project in Grade 12, but I was way too ambitious with it. I also wasn't able to articulate what I wanted it to be at the time. That was quite a while ago now, but I still really like the idea. Its a top-down puzzle game that can be completed in about 3 minutes, but only if you want the garbage ending. You wake up one morning to find that you have some pretty serious magic powers. You could go to the giant machine that has appeared in the middle of city hall and confront the mayor about what he has done, or you could run around using your powers to solve puzzles for the people around town Super Scribblenauts style. Helping different people will impact the ending of the game and might play out in surprising ways. This idea is dependent on some pretty serious character design, but its probably the smallest in scope of any of the ideas here.