Your Game Ideas!

Dr_Maxwell · November 25, 2018, 2:40am

Hey, this thread is just for casual posting of and discussion on hypothetical game ideas. I guess I’m the one to remake this thread after the forum got reset.

I thought this post of mine was lost, but I managed to dig it up anyways!

Bear with me, this is going to sound like Half-Life 1 or Black Mesa at first…

It’s a first-person game with no cutscenes and a silent protagonist. It starts out as a normal day in some kind of enormous mysterious facility. Then, something goes drastically wrong, people start dying, hostile entities begin to flood in, and the whole complex falls apart.

The first thing that you might notice that distinguishes it from Half-Life and Black Mesa is that you’re not always being railroaded in one direction. There are tons of different paths you can take, and they lead in different directions. That’s not the only way you can influence the course of the story - even if you are mute, you can still communicate with the other survivors by answering questions with “yes” and “no” (by nodding or shaking your head). Everything is incredibly detailed, and I mean even beyond Black Mesa level. Every person in the complex has a full personality and history (and there are a lot of people in the complex), every document in the complex is readable, and every room in the complex is mapped out and could hypothetically be visited.

But the real magic starts when you finish, and you hit new game.

The facility is in working condition, again, like it was when you started it the first time. All of the calendars indicate that it’s the same date as it was on your first playthrough. All of that makes sense, it’s a new playthrough, so it starts at the same point in time as the first one did. But everything isn’t quite the same. You don’t recognize the part of the building that you’re in. And you’re not playing as the same character, either. Then the disaster strikes. But it’s not the same disaster. Maybe the first time, aliens teleported in, but this time, the central computer has gained self-awareness and doesn’t like people. Or maybe the power went out and all of the experiments escaped. Or maybe you were invaded by a paramilitary organization. There are a lot of possibilities, and it varies from playthrough to playthrough. (There are enough different disasters that it’ll take a while for them to recur, and each disaster can play out in many, many different ways. Sometimes, one disaster will cause another one, but only if it’s a logical procession of events.)

Whatever the disaster is, the effects on the facility are randomly generated to suit that disaster. The self-aware computer would tend to use the facility’s electronic systems to create hazards and barriers, for example. What it takes multiple playthroughs to get, though, is that the only random elements are “who is the player character” and “what is the disaster and how does it effect the facility”. The starting state of the facility is always the same, and you’ll slowly recognize this over the course of multiple playthroughs, as you visit an area you’ve seen before in a different disaster, or you meet up with a survivor who you’ve met as someone else in a different disaster. Also, note that everything in the facility is simulated independently of the player’s presence. When you reach an area and you see a group of survivors hiding in a little shelter that they’ve made, that’s not randomized when you got there. That was randomized a while ago, while you were somewhere else, and the game bounced those character’s AIs off of each other (and every character has a unique AI, since every character has their own personality and history), and they decided together that it would be a good idea to hide in a shelter.

Every time you play, you learn a little bit more about the facility and the people in it. It’s never explicitly mentioned, but on average, the security clearance of the character you play as increases as you play the game more and more times. Over multiple playthroughs, you can slowly flesh out your map of the complex and your knowledge of its history and inhabitants. The thing is, the complex is always struck by SOME kind of disaster. At first you just take it as a given, but as time goes by, it really gives you pause to think, doesn’t it? As you play more and more, it will slowly become apparent that there is a reason that the complex is always struck by disaster at the same time. You can only find out why by piecing together little subtle details from different playthroughs - and maybe, just maybe, you might eventually be able to stop the cycle.

Llewen_Ebag · November 25, 2018, 2:40am

I think I’ve seen this before. Must be my imagination.

How about a FPS where you start as a russian fighting americans, then a big fuck off hole appears and demons start pouring out. You get critically wounded, you’re used as a base for a robo-soldier that can hold multiple guns, move incredibly fast, never gets tired and doesn’t even have to use iron sights because he has a built in crosshair in his helmet. Let’s call it “Enough with the modern military shooters already”, starring Oleg Taktarov.

I like your idea by the way.

ChancyWancy · November 25, 2018, 2:40am

I don’t really have an idea for a game itself, but I came up with a great way to incorporate Co-Operative play into Skyrim IMO.

Dr_Maxwell · November 25, 2018, 2:40am

There’s a good chance you did, I posted it in the last thread.

And I’d love it if you shared your idea with us, ChancyWancy!

elevenbravo · November 25, 2018, 2:40am

Survival FPS with Dinosaurs. Hell yes.

k3nny1550 · November 25, 2018, 2:40am

^ Trespasser, but good this time. Running on Source, with food chain mechanics from King Kong: The Game? That would be fucking nice.

I’d love a GTA style game that focused on the player character as a serial arsonist on a revenge mission against people who wronged him/her. Talk about being a “flame-baiting” game from the media. =P

Pyroclase · November 25, 2018, 2:41am

A co-op game with two playable protagonists; one is focused on stealth and puzzle-solving, the other on fighting and direct combat.

Emerged from my thinking about a story I’m writing, and how it might translate into a good video game.

Dr_Maxwell · November 25, 2018, 2:41am

Reminds me of an idea I had a while back for a co-op game where one of the players is strictly aquatic and the other one instantly dies in water.

Dr_Maxwell · November 25, 2018, 2:59am

So I’m reading a Wikipedia article on BioShock, and I’m thinking about the way that BioShock’s “thing” is settings wherein idealistic utopian visions wind up producing horrifying, unstable dystopias. And I wonder what other ideology could be put through this process. I absentmindedly look up at the top of the screen, where the site is begging for donations, just like it constantly has for quite some time. And I read the Jimbo Wales quote (“When I founded Wikipedia, I could have made it into a for-profit company with advertising banners, but decided to do something different. Commerce is fine. Advertising is not evil. But it doesn’t belong here. Not in Wikipedia.”) in an Andrew Ryan-ish way, and it just fit so perfectly…

Pyroclase · November 25, 2018, 2:59am

I want to write up a version of Andrew Ryan’s opening spiel that’s about wikipedia, but I’m too tired at the moment.

Joe_Freeman · November 25, 2018, 2:59am

One game where you have an ecosystem full of living beings you can control. It would be like Sims, but controlling everything, from ants to trees.

Another one where you play as a couple in the stone age and you have to start fucking and having children until you have a small village and then start researching new technologies, building things and attacking others. Like an Age of Empires but in a small scale, where every citizen you control is important, with an inventory, skills and all that stuff. And with a good graphic engine too.

Another idea I’ve got is about a Police Department simulator, where you control all the cops and have to fight against crime, investigate, erradicate corruption, etc.

Pyroclase · November 25, 2018, 2:59am

That kinda sounds like Dwarf Fortress.

Edit: Aside from that last part.