The Game Idea Thread

[Oddysseus]

Welcome to the Game Idea Thread.

I started this thread to provide a place for spare game ideas so that people could get inspiration from them.  The ideas come from two sources:
1.Old threads.  I'm now searching through the forum archives for interesting/novel/bizarre game ideas.  When I find one, I'll take the basic concept, paraphrase it, remove all the extraneous bits, and put it in this thread.  Having all the old ideas arranged neatly in this thread will save others the trouble of searching through the forum and reading all the way through countless threads to get to the good stuff.
2.Me and you.  You (yes, you) are encouraged to post any game idea that floats into your head here.
I'd encourage you to give a brief, but detailed overview of the concept that makes the game unique.  I'd also recommend you stay away from suggesting game versions of existing stories/animes/movies, etc.  Of course it's up to you.  This thread won't be of much use if people don't participate.

You should also feel free to comment on any of the ideas posted, but I don't think it's too much to ask that you throw in a quick (maybe one sentence) game idea with your comment, to keep the thread on track.


Now, let's kick things off in style with a trio of ideas from Eggie:

You play a hideous monster from a swamp. The GUI starts off with two commands 'Eat' and 'Don't Eat.' There are two ways to complete it: A) Eat EVERYONE B) Try not eating things and watch as your social interaction skills grow.

You play a dead native american, and this obnoxious family are living on top of your buriel ground. You can control the house and make it do crazy things.

You play a teenage girl who's got home a little later than her mother considers acceptable. Through the magic of Dialogue options which appear at crucial points of the game, spin a yarn and play it at the same time.


And a more detailed concept from Alliance:

A boy gets in an accident of some sort, and ends up in a coma. Trapped inside his own mind, the boy must make his way through his dreams if he wants to recover. He has to go through everything from the most beautiful dreams to the most horrific nightmares. If he fails in the dream world, his heart rate flatlines in the real one, and he dies.
Later in the story, he meets a girl in his dreams, and falls in love with her. However, he has to face the possibility that she's not real.
However, she is. In the end of the story, the boy wakes up. He was in the accident at age 15, and he always pictured himself at that age. He is now 25. He stumbles into another room in the hostpital, and finds the girl. She's in a coma, just like him. He has to find a way to wake her up, so he gets back in bed, and aids her in her dreams.


And one of my own ideas:

A detective story that spans 4 decades, from the 1960s to the 1990s.  An artist/civil rights activist is murdered in each decade, and the detective (who works all the cases) becomes convinced that the murders are related.  However, each murder goes unsolved until the fourth and final case is resolved.  The gimmick is that each decade of the game is presented in a style that suits the decade (bright colors & op art for the 60s, bright neon for the 80s, etc). Also the detective starts as a naive rookie in the first case, but by the last case, he is very weathered and cynical.

Your turn.  Let's have some fun.

[FSi++]

Ok, let's get it spinning.

OK, one idea I made up for Pmdee, not that he'll ever use it. Not very imaginative, mind you.

Give me a hand
Hero of the game is a executor / killer / torturer / whatever but he has only one hand. All goes well until a king / queen / tzar / sultan / whoever gives him an order which could only be fulfilled with TWO hands. So he has now to ask his friend to give him a hand.

[Baron]

Alright,
       An average everyman type character is the only survivor of an interstellar spacecraft crash on a strange alien jungle world.  He activates the distress beacon, which will send ships traveling at light speed across the cosmos to rescue him, but the signal will take three days to reach the nearest base.  The character now has three days (1 hour in game time, broken into three 10 minute days and three 10 minute nights) with but one mission: survive.  He must use his wits and observations to solve the terrible perils of his temporary home.  Death would be a frequent outcome, but through judicious game saves and close attention to details the player would be able to steer this character through increasingly elaborate dangers.

Now, make my game!

BaRoN

[ManicMatt]

Sorry, I'm going to use an existing TV series! 

Star Trek Deep Space Nine:

Odo's Investigations

Solve crimes as Odo, the shapeshifting security officer! Use your office to contact your uh.. contacts, and find out information from the databases. Use your keen observation skills to observe whether people are lying or not, shown with a small diagram of some sort. Shape shift into different animals and objects to investigate smuggler's ships and find clues and evidence! The fact that Odo never carries a gun in the series works well for a point and click style game.

I actually wanted to make this once, but I don't have the skills to draw serious characters and backgrounds.

[dasjoe]

not exactly adventure-game related, but an interesting concept:
300 game ideas in 300 days, which stalled some time last year.

[Play_Pretend]

The Tower:  You're a princess trapped in a tall tower with no doors, just a window.  You must use the things inside your bedroom, the passing princes and woodcutters for help, and maybe even abuse/kill your witch kidnapper in the process.  (Every time a new prince tries to save you, he fails in some comical way, but you gain some new inventory item from his attempt.) UPDATE:  You can't have this one, it's mine, it's mine!  And may be a short game In Production thread in a few months.

Anticide:  An extremely depressed rich man wants to kill himself, but everything in his spooky old mansion and the surrounding town he tries to kill himself on/with fails somehow.  (i.e. falling off a building but onto a mattress truck, the poison really being just Tang, etc.)  Help him figure out/set up an unescapable deathtrap!

The Handoff: Instead of just one to three player characters, every single character in the game is necessary at some point to help with a specific puzzle, or multiple puzzles.  You have to get them to do their thing, but when you switch to another character, that one you just controlled might wander off and carry on with their other personal business/motivations.  And you can't just switch - the player you're in right now has to make contact with the new character you want to switch to, but social relationships are still the rule - strangers might not want to help unless motivated properly.

[OneDollar]

Surveillance
In a similar way to Uplink you start by using a program to hack into low level security systems at a science lab. After observing the labs for a while you discover something is afoot and someone is trying to destroy a part of the lab and the scientists in it. Using the systems under your control you have to guide the scientists out of danger.

The focus is very much to immerse the player, and make the scenario seem as real as possible. The scientists gradually become aware that someone is watching them, and will react accordingly when you help or hinder. Continue to help them and you will gain their trust and they will start looking to you and asking you for advice. Fail to do anything for a while and the scientists will get increasingly worried. Failure to help, or giving bad advice will result in scientists narrowly avoiding injury, getting hurt or even killed, and the other scientists will react accordingly and start mistrusting you.

As the game progresses you would get opportunities to hack into deeper level systems to aid the scientists further. Also  you'll be monitored and traced, and will have to pay attention to stop being kicked off the system

[Radiant]

A boy gets in an accident of some sort, and ends up in a coma. Trapped inside his own mind, the boy must make his way through his dreams if he wants to recover. He has to go through everything from the most beautiful dreams to the most horrific nightmares. If he fails in the dream world, his heart rate flatlines in the real one, and he dies.

If you're interested in that, try the classic action/adventure hybrid, Weird Dreams.

[Oddysseus]

Off to a good start!  Actually, the response is better than I thought it would be (so far)

Another classic from teh forumz:

I would love to do a kind of game where the main character has no memory of what happened, but he finds, e.g., his family murdered and he is the prime suspect.  He is travelling backward in time, and each day he has to figure out more pieces to the puzzle and who really killed his family.  The game ends on the "last" day, when the murder actually occurs and he has to prevent it. (idea courtesy of Migs)

And another of my own:

A typical cliche adventure game plot where you have to save your kidnapped significant other.  The twist is, you can select your gender at the beginning of the game, and the characters in the game will respond to you differently based on your gender (i.e. the jocks will try to beat you up if you're a guy, but they'll drool all over themselves and help you if you're a girl).  This would also affect all the puzzles in the game, so even though the locations and obstacles are the same, the puzzle solutions are different.  There are also places that only a character of a certain gender can enter (really basic example- women's rest room).  The places that are "off-limits" to characters of the other gender would contain unique items that would help keep the puzzle solutions different.
Basically, it would investigate the issues of gender identity in an interesting and hopefully fun way that wouldn't bore everyone to tears.

Tag, you're it!

[Renal Shutdown]

That classic from the forum has been used outside the forum, too:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0751186/

As for an actual idea, I once had a semi-plan to make a game based on the TV show Red Dwarf.  Each series had an accompanying book, which contained lots of material that didn't make the shows, so there's plenty of storylines and jokes to make something from.  I'd have considered persuing the idea if (like ManicMatt) my art style would've suited it.

Another idea I planned, but then stuck on the back burner was a Sketchbook Adventure.  Each "Room" was really a page of a notepad (complete with coffee stains, doodles, etc), and the line-art-ish main character had to get from page to page in an effort to escape.

[FSi++]

Another idea of mine (for those of you who like twisted plots):

Time Kidnapper
Evil time traveller have kidnapped your future self and threatens to kill him/her/you if you won't start the world war/revolution/kill some significant person. But instead you managed to steal his time travelling machine and now have to rescue yourself from the evil genius.

[Indie Boy]

What about a game that is in 1st person and the main character is blind. Everything in the room is black apart from your hands and you have to feel/smell/taste etc everything in the room for it to become visable. Maybe a kind of dialogue puzzle kind of thing for some of the more general objects to discover what they are(eg is this a phone or a remote?). The more information you have about the object the more clear it is and the more colour it has. Also due to nature of being blind there would be lots of ways you could die e.g fall down stairs or get ran over by a car. I just thought it would be an interesting game to play.

[lo_res_man]

You play the deputy and you are desperately in love with the sheriffs daughter, and she thinks your cute too. Only her papa, the sheriff, stands in your way. Then, a gypsy fortune teller accidently dumps the "the spirit of theatro" into a nearby pond. No harm no fowl, 'cept some Shakespearean ducks right? Alas, the sheriff takes a dip in said pond for his yearly bath, and he is possessed by THE SPIRIT OF THEATRO! All good right? I mean, now your free to court his daughter, and if the hay seed town folk are exposed to a little culture, where is the bad? Unfortunately, the Shakespearean spirit now wants to make EVERYBODY in the town as Elizabethan as he is. Can you stop him? Can you gain the sheriffs daughters hand? For suth,I know not, but I think it woulds make a ripping good game.

[Oddysseus]

lo_res_man- I remember reading that idea while digging through the forums, but I think I prefer another idea of yours:

"Villainy Inc: Zombie Labour Stinks" A hero stalks your castle, attempting to free the princess in your basement. But how are you supposed to deal with that, when your zombie hoard goes on strike?

And how about another short but intriguing idea, while I'm at it:

Jack the Policeman's shift has ended, and he takes the train home as usual. What he doesn't know is that the train will be high-jacked 15 minutes later. Without any weapons or whatsoever, he tries to figure something out...
(by jannar85)

For my own idea, I think there aren't enough satirical games, so:

You are the front-runner for the Republican nomination for President.  Unfortunately, the night before the convention where you would be nominated, some Godless heathen liberal tells the press that your son is a homosexual.  Obviously, this throws a monkey wrench into your 'family values' campaign.  The only way you could win the nomination now is if your son publicly announces that he has found Jesus and renounced his gayosity.  Unfortunately (for you and your campaign), he doesn't think being gay is a problem, and has no intention of lying for you.  Your mission is clear: you have less than 24 hours to degayify your son.  So, break out the football, the Playboys, and that Bible you always carry with you but never bother to read, because it's going to be a long night!

(Of course at the end, nothing works, and your son suggests that maybe you could still win the nomination if you show that you are compassionate and accepting of his differences.  At this point, you legally disown him, thus securing the Republican nomination for President.  Don't you love happy endings?)

[Phemar]

That classic from the forum has been used outside the forum, too:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0751186/

Also similar to http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209144/

Are all these ideas here freely available to use? Or is it just a showcase of ideas?

[Radiant]

Is anyone familiar with Roger Zelazny's works? I've always thought the "shadow walking" from his Amber series would make for an excellent adventure game.

(and one exists, but that is a text adventure which really doesn't do it justice).

Also, I've got this bunch of old and partially-developed game ideas.

[TheJBurger]

That classic from the forum has been used outside the forum, too:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0751186/

Also similar to http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209144/

Are all these ideas here freely available to use? Or is it just a showcase of ideas?

As far as movies that would make great adventure games, Memento is near the top of my list.

[Pelican]

Are all these ideas here freely available to use? Or is it just a showcase of ideas?

As far as I'm aware, the original idea was a thread of abandoned ideas. Ideas people had thought of but didn't have the time or inclination to make, so put them up for other people to use.

In any case, this one is up for grabs :

Ok PC wakes up from cryosleep on a research space station/ship which is out in the middle of nowhere studying some sort of stellar phenomena. The computer is supposed to regularly wake a crew member to run a few tests, compile some data etc. then put them back to sleep. The PC soon finds out that the last crew member to be woken up went a bit cuckoo and threw himself out of the airlock. (yeah, I know, sounds familiar, bear with me )

PC has to figure out what happened. Could be something as simple as the other crew member was a nut, or something more sinister. Unfortunately, the other crew member damaged a number of ship systems before spacing himself, including the ship's AI. The PC has to either convince the AI to give access to certain areas or permit certain actions, or attempt to fix the borked systems, or just bash them until something happens. The PC's actions also have effects on other ship systems, so taking time to repair one thing, might repair a related system; and bashing something might trash something else. And bashing things too much may cause everything to fail and boom, game over!


Yeah, the plot idea is a bit old, but I liked the thought of indirect effects depending on how you solved puzzles. Still, its rather ambitious for me to attempt at the moment, so loot away if you like. 

[Oddysseus]

@Zor: As fun as it is to post ideas for our own amusement, yes, this thread is intended to either help inspire others or give them a full idea to start on. (By the way, which idea were you planning on developing? If it was one of mine, you can have it.)

Another quick one from the archives:

A sort of Double Dragon clone/remake, with the premise being a schoolgirl trying to get her backpack back from a street thug, and by the end of the game she ends up bringing down the whole crime organization. I envision a look/feel of a Hong Kong kung-fu movie and heavy inspiration by the Kill Bill movies.  (by EagerMind)

Okay, not really an adventure game... but then again, wouldn't it be an interesting challenge to remake Double Dragon as an adventure game?  With a little schoolgirl as the protagonist?  Well, I thought so.

Another of mine:

A game set in an insane asylum with Cubism-inspired backgrounds and sprites.  You're a schizophrenic trying to solve a murder committed at the asylum.  The problem is, all three witnesses give different descriptions of the killer, and all three feel differently about the victim (one feels sorry for him, one thinks he deserved it, etc.)  You have to figure out who the real killer is by piecing together the three accounts of the murder.
I was also thinking about using different kinds of dialogue puzzles for the game.  Most dialogue puzzles are either "pick the right topic or lose" or "click everything."  Not really puzzles at all.  So I thought, what if deciphering the dialogue itself was the puzzle?  One character would speak only about the past and future, never the present (so she would answer questions you hadn't asked yet, and then answer things you asked at the start of the conversation).  Another character would alternate between telling the truth and telling lies, so you could never really be sure whether to trust the information or not.  And one character could even speak in code, or in a type of slang that you would have to translate yourself.

Your turn, interweb.

[Akatosh]

Evil Genius (stupid working title from times immemorable. The game idea has changed notably since then, too.)

As sketched up before, this game would let you play as an evil genius - but not in the restricted way it's normally possible. You would be able to create your own villain pretty much from sketch, with a limited collection of Hats, Beards, Faces, Skin Color, Genders (obvioulsy  :) and "villain archetypes" (I sketched up "Ex-General", "Presidente", "Alien", "Evil Scientist" and "Crazy AI", I think). The actual game would be split into several parts afterwards: Building a hideout with your limited funds (depending on profession and background), choosing yourself a target (Erasion of Humankind or World Domination) coming up with a nice plan (adventure-y), then arming your base with traps and troops and ultimately holding off a certain amount of heroes, one at a time, in a turnbased sidescrolling tactics game, with your troops and traps. Of course, the hero has every single advantage on his side - your troops are hindered by fog of war, have a limited view range, can take VERY few damage and are generally only dangerous in amounts of 5 or more. You can, of course, hire strong troops, too, but with a hard limit and at a high cost; remember - you are the evil guy, your mercenaries are disposable! We're talking in terms of "send in cannon fodder until he runs out of ammo" tactics here. Kamikaze tactics. Zap Brannigan tactics. You see where I'm going here?

I might still start this game and maybe sketch up a coupla fake screenshots someday... just thought I'd share this idea with you. 

[Oddysseus]

Thanks for sharing!  That's what this thread is for.

And with that in mind, I'd like to point you to this thread over here.  There are two great ideas in it that I didn't feel like chopping and re-posting because they are so big (and awesome).  I'm talking about Hitler and the Duck : The Election Scamper, which is near the bottom of the first page, and ProgZmax's Reggae Reggie and the Alien Freebasers of Vulguss V!, which is at the top of the second page.

And for my own contribution:

A game set in the imaginary fantasy world of a little boy.  One day, the boy commits suicide, which casts a dark shadow over the fantasy world and allows nightmares to take over.  Can the boy's imaginary friends save their fantasy home from these demons?  Can the fantasy world even exist without the little boy to give it form?  Will the imaginary friends ever get over the grief of their loss?
Etc.

I look forward to hearing more of your ideas. 

[JimmyShelter]

A game set in the imaginary fantasy world of a little boy.  One day, the boy commits suicide, which casts a dark shadow over the fantasy world and allows nightmares to take over.  Can the boy's imaginary friends save their fantasy home from these demons?  Can the fantasy world even exist without the little boy to give it form?  Will the imaginary friends ever get over the grief of their loss?
Etc.

A bit dark, but very very cool.

[Gord10]

And for my own contribution:

A game set in the imaginary fantasy world of a little boy.  One day, the boy commits suicide, which casts a dark shadow over the fantasy world and allows nightmares to take over.  Can the boy's imaginary friends save their fantasy home from these demons?  Can the fantasy world even exist without the little boy to give it form?  Will the imaginary friends ever get over the grief of their loss?
Etc.

Honestly, this is the most inspiring idea I have ever seen for a long time. I have been building a new game plot in my head for an hour; a plot that is based on your idea, but a bit differently.

Spoiler

The boy attempts to commit suicide by taking pills before sleeping. He is about to die. We begin the game in a comical world as an imaginary friend (actually a story character created by the sleeping boy) who is a private detective (just like Sam & Max). A king and a queen from a far country visits the detective to hire him for finding their lost Prince son (and do I need to tell who the Prince is?). 

Another point with the game in my head:
The graphic style (and the world) changes along the levels. The first levels are like Sam & Max, but along the game the style gets darker and we end up on a nightmarish world (Silent Hill!) to witness the reasons why the boy attempted to commit suicide.

[close]

How is this? I really want to finish the plot and start working on this game as soon as possible, the game I wanted to make after Lost in the Nightmare was like this. 

[Oddysseus]

Hooray!  This thread is officially a success- an idea posted here has inspired someone else.

I'm glad I could help.  And as for your idea:

Spoiler

I like it.

[close]

I haven't played Lost in the Nightmare yet, but people on the forums seem to like it, so I'm sure your next game will be just as good.

Keeping this thread rolling, here is a very stylish/high-concept idea from Esseb, courtesy of teh forumz:

You must investigate a murder in a mansion. There are 5 endings total but they're fixed and you must play them one after another. Finish the game once and you can replay the game, but now the game has changed subtly and clues you saw last time around are now gone and the killer is a different person. Each time you finish the game a playing card is flipped around to display the portrait of the killer. Each subsequent play through would get weirder and weirder untill the last one when you find out you were the killer all along.

The ending scene shows you as an old man in a dark prison cell playing with cards. 5 cards lying in front of you. If people only bothered to play the game through once it would just be a standard whodunnit and that would be that, no harm done.


And another of my own:

"Mr. Shmeck is Going Mad."  Basically, you're crazy and you forgot to take your pills.  The game is set up with timers, so that every minute or so that you don't take your pills, the background changes.  The background has five stages: 1.normal, 2.normal but fuzzy, 3.things start to look like other things (your refrigerator grows eyes, etc.) 4.Things become other things (phone in the kitchen becomes a phonebooth, pet cat becomes a tiger, etc.) 5.dark and creepy and evil.  After stage 5, if you don't take your pills within one minute, you die of a heart attack.
The trick is, you can only solve certain puzzles by intentionally going a little nuts.  For example: the door leading outside is locked, but as you get 'crazier,' a mouth appears on it and eventually grows large enough to crawl through.  Once you pop the pills, the door is still locked, but you're outside now.  So then, the question is: if you're sane now (as you should be, because modern medicine solves everything!), how did you get through the door?  Are you really crazy, or just seeing into another dimension? (cue Twilight Zone music).

What do you think? Would it be possible to script something like that?

[ginanubismon]

"Mr. Shmeck is Going Mad."  Basically, you're crazy and you forgot to take your pills.  The game is set up with timers, so that every minute or so that you don't take your pills, the background changes.  The background has five stages: 1.normal, 2.normal but fuzzy, 3.things start to look like other things (your refrigerator grows eyes, etc.) 4.Things become other things (phone in the kitchen becomes a phonebooth, pet cat becomes a tiger, etc.) 5.dark and creepy and evil.  After stage 5, if you don't take your pills within one minute, you die of a heart attack.
The trick is, you can only solve certain puzzles by intentionally going a little nuts.  For example: the door leading outside is locked, but as you get 'crazier,' a mouth appears on it and eventually grows large enough to crawl through.  Once you pop the pills, the door is still locked, but you're outside now.  So then, the question is: if you're sane now (as you should be, because modern medicine solves everything!), how did you get through the door?  Are you really crazy, or just seeing into another dimension? (cue Twilight Zone music).

What do you think? Would it be possible to script something like that?

Both ideas are freaking awsome, I do like the idea of the character's sanity playing a major role in the puzzles and then popping pills to over take it. I love to play them.

Here's an idea:

You take on the role of a team of the usual paranormal investigators, you know the type in Point and click games, and you head out to any location that has any type of seriously wacky paranormal stuff going on.

This time the team goes to a store, an abandoned Wal Mart of all places, which was suppose to be an April fool's joke for the site the team runs but finds some really strange things like iron bars on the employee areas and everything had been lefted where they were on the shelves, even the meat (which sticks to the high heaven.)

Now the team wants out, losing their collective ever loving minds as things happen that shouldn't and trying to stay alive as well.

[Oddysseus]

Sorry I haven't posted again sooner- I got my wisdom teeth taken out recently, and the experience proved to be more debilitating than I anticipated.  To make up for my absence, I'll post a few more of my ideas than usual.
But first, two more pithy gems from Eggie-

You play as a demon. Work your way up the sin ladder, first possessing a morally weak person than eventually winning the game by corrupting a nun or something.

You play as a wacky evil sidekick who has to keep his/her wacky evil master out of trouble.

(I love how open and flexible these two ideas are, in addition to their simplicity.  They really encourage a storyteller's infusion of unique and creative characters and ideas.  Two people could make completely different games based on the same exact premise.)

Anyway, my turn:

"The Cure"
The game is set in a dystopian future where women are put into two categories: Domestics, the servants of men and rearers of children, and Breeders, who exist only to squirt out babies so the Domestics don't have to do any of the dirty work.  You play as a Breeder who escapes from a secret military experiment to create the perfect soldier.  If you can't find someone to give you the 'cure' (an abortion) in the next seven days, the genetically-enhanced superbaby will punch its way out of your uterus, killing you.  (Alright, so it's a bit heavy-handed, but name another videogame that deals with abortion.  You can't, can you?)

"Undone"
You play as a detective investigating a murder in a small city in India.  The 'hook' is that you think the female victim was your lover in a past life.  As you investigate the murder in the present, you have flashbacks to your past life with her, and begin to suspect that you knew the killer in your past life too.  But the question is, who?  Could it be her ex-lover, your jealous friend, or her mentally-unbalanced sister?  What would those people look like in their present incarnation?  And even if you figured out who did it, would you be able to find enough physical evidence in the present to prove it?
A little gimmick I also thought up was that, since you had been an animal in one of your past lives, you could understand their behavior and notice things that others would miss, like a bird flying towards the killer's hideout, or a dog digging up a clue at the crime scene.

"Pimp Quest"
This one really writes itself.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

and ProgZmax's Reggae Reggie and the Alien Freebasers of Vulguss V!, which is at the top of the second page.

Haha, that was meant to be a joke, not a serious idea ^_^.


I like the idea of a kid dying and it affecting the game world, but suicide is a really morbid concept that eliminates a large, young core audience because of the mature (and controversial) subject matter.  Perhaps if he'd become seriously ill instead?  Then you could have characters taking on weird virus-infected appearances.

[Mortis]

I like the idea of a kid dying and it affecting the game world, but suicide is a really morbid concept that eliminates a large, young core audience because of the mature (and controversial) subject matter.  Perhaps if he'd become seriously ill instead?  Then you could have characters taking on weird virus-infected appearances.

Yes, anything that will hamper his control over exerting his imagination constantly will do just fine. This reminds me of Little Nemo quite a bit, with the dream always eventually overtaking Nemo's faculties

[Oddysseus]

@ProgZmax- I know a joke when I see one, but don't underestimate the gameplay potential of a joke idea.  The premise of Leisure Suit Larry sounds like a joke: "Bald loser in a leisure suit tries to score with hot women," and yet they managed to wring six games out of the concept!

And as for eliminating a "core audience" with my other idea, I could give two [sticks] whether my game is popular or not.  I never intended for children to play it- it may take place in a child's imagination, but suicide isn't a concept children should be exposed to, metaphorically, alegorically, or in any way at all.  The game would be clearly labeled as containing mature content, and if that means less people playing it, so be it.  As you point out, there are thousands of alternative ways of presenting the same material, but I personally enjoy the 'dark and cotroversial' route (as evinced by my posting of an idea that could be summarized as 'Abortion Quest' in the post directy above yours).

Well, that was intellectually stimulating, but back to the thread at hand!

I found this little gem called Pixel Land while wandering back through the forums; I'll link to it rather than re-post because it comes with pretty pictures! (Pretty pictures? Yay!)

Another of mine:

"Hardboiled Adventures"
You play as Phillup "Pulp" Fikshin, a freelance adventurer/private detective/mercenary.  Together with the young Penny Dreadful and his on-again-off-again love interest Tequila Barbell, he is part of the Highwaymen, a roving band of do-gooders fighting against the evil Underground Overlord and his Global Crime Syndicate.  See him in these thrilling adventures:
Pulp Fikshin Fights the Saucy Sirens of Saturn Six!
Pulp Fikshin vs. the Filthy Foreigner
Pulp Fikshin and the Robotic Dinosaur Ninjas from Beyond Dimension X
(and my personal favorite):
Pulp Fikshin Punches God in the Face

Basically, the games would emulate old adventure novels and early comic books, full of swashbuckling and completely devoid of logic or scientific accuracy.  I was thinking the games would be released as different chapters, but the chapters wouldn't be in chronological order and would only loosely connect to one another anyway.  I figure, the more slapdash and nonsensical the plots were, the better.  I considered opening the concept so that anyone could write their own game in the collective universe, but since RON already exists and is so well maintained, there's no use muddying the waters.

[vertigoaddict]

I just had this idea...

title: CRAP!

In the world of AGS games with good graphics co-exist with bad graphic/story games.

One day an egoistic game decides that all games should look good and have a better story, all the others should be refined or else! (deleted)

One game believes that the graphic and story of a game does not define how well it is, because (obviously) all crappy games are the starting points of / to make a great game! And what of the game creators that would like to look back at their crap and think "Look at how much I've improved!Thank GOD!".

Help 'The Crap' from getting refined and help all he other crappy games escape from the clutches of 'Mr.Award Winner'.

(except for test-games, they have they're own community 'Recycle Bin'...the sequel 'Test-games are games 2!').

[Renal Shutdown]

It's Tuesday.  Outside, it's 56°F.  Your name is Jack, Jack Flint.  You're a freelance mathetician, and you're wearing a cheap suit and even cheaper aftershave, despite not shaving for the last two days.  It's morning and your favorite color is blue.  Except on Thursdays, when it's still blue, but a slightly lighter shade, but today is Tuesday.

You're just starting to wake up, and you can sense you're not in your bed.  Questions are presenting themselves, but you're not even contemplating acknowledging them yet, let alone answering them.  It's 8:14 AM.  Your room-mate in college once lots $400 dollars in a casino run by a guy who was 1/4 Cherokee, and your right shin aches a little.  It's still Tuesday, and you're still a little out of it.  You think you just heard a dog barking, but you could of imagined it.

You're starting to think there's something amiss, and you're wondering if last night's fish supper wasn't just a little bit queer.  You don't like pears, but are quite partial to apples.  The sour kind, green preferably.  The situation starting to seem funkier than the three day old milk in your fridge.  It *is* Tuesday, right?  Isn't it?  The garbage is collected on Wednesdays, and you sure as hell don't want that milk staying another week.  Your father had a moustache, but you've never been able to grow one.

You convince yourself you wake up more.   You like boxers, not briefs.  Your eyes ache, but you're certain you have to open them.  Just where did you sleep last night?  It rained on Friday, and you got wet.  Things are blurry.  Everything is just shapes at the moment.  Now's the time to take action, and set off on your adventure.  Welcome to "Vision Quest: Lessons in Self Discovery". 

A glorious technicolor foray into the depths of your own self concious.  Battle inner demons, and make friends with a your choice from a menagerie of at least 4 different spirit animals.  I'm a panda.  Explore the deepest reaches of your own psychotropic mindscape, and voyage thru your own twisted imagination.  Comes with a free, limited edition, scratch-and-lick hallucinagenic trading card game card.  Collect and abuse them all.

It's Tuesday, and you're aware of your tongue.



That above, er, thing was the result of me thinking of a title for my blindness simulation idea.  Which starts with a narrated, blank screen pixel hunt.  The voiceover describes what you can "feel", and slowly the graphics build from nothing, to obscure shapes, to a full interpreted view of the world.  Is that a ragged teddy bear or a soft towel? Only further interaction will tell.

As for plot, I'm at a loss on this one.  But hell, Tetris didn't have a plot, did it?  Unless it was a furniture removals lorry loading sim, and I skipped the intro.

[Radiant]

As for plot, I'm at a loss on this one.  But hell, Tetris didn't have a plot, did it?  Unless it was a furniture removals lorry loading sim, and I skipped the intro.

Yes it did

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Heh, the grandma running part was great.

[Stupot]

Because I'm too rootin' tootin' damn busy and even more lazy, I might aswell reveal the idea I was planning to start work on ages ago.  If anyone feels like having a go at making it, feel free... I'm never going to get round to making it myself.

Ouija
This game begins with a short cut scene in which your character finds a dusty Ouija board in the attic or an old house or whatever.  Gameplay works using a simple text-parsing system.  The player would type questions into the parser - such questions as (what is your name?, etc - and the game (spirit) would answer some, and also refuse to answer others.  It would be up to the player to ask the right questions in order to move the game further, and at regular points into the game playable flashback scenes would occur where you would learn more about the nature of how the spirit died.  Needless to say it would be horriffic and scary.

These flashback scenes would take the form of a more traditional point-and-click with a puzzle or two and some gory imagery, then once that part of the story has been told gameplay would revert to the text-parser system for more interrogation of the spirit and the questions would become more specific.

I never really got round to writing a story for it, but I've had several ideas, and if one or two people on here fancy taking on the artistic and tecnical duties I would be happy to take the role of writer...

What d'ya think peeps?  Should I put a request in the recruit a team section?

[space boy]

Sounds really interesting and original. Go for it.

[radiowaves]

An old styled platform shooter where you have to actually click to shoot or do anything.

[vertigoaddict]

--What d'ya think peeps?  Should I put a request in the recruit a team section?

You should PM people who are active, offering their services, and haven't done any games yet. You'll be helping them while they help you.

[Galen]

MacGyver, need I say more?

[akumi]

Game idea: Malice

One thing that I've found interesting about some adventure games, in particular Lucasarts adventure games, is that the player and the character the player controls are to some extent two separate entities. My idea is to take this to an extreme, so that the player and the character controlled by the player are actually acknowledged as two separate characters in the game.

Example: In the first part of the game, the character is bored and wants the player to find some way for him to entertain himself for a lengthy period of time. However, this is impossible, because the character refuses to do anything appropriate(watching television, reading a book, etc.), instead complaining endlessly. The player has to find a way to get him to knock himself unconscious through a series of seemingly innocuous actions.

This dynamic between the player and the character can be aided by the addition of a narrator, who can conspire with the player and possibly give instructions, or at least advice, on how to proceed. The narrator can also be given commands, just like the main character, but like the main character it will often refuse to do as you instruct. The narrator would also have a limited ability to influence the physical world which increases as the game proceeds. For instance, it may gain the ability to magnetize things, or give them a static electrical charge, or even mess around with gravity.

As I envision it, the plot of the game revolves around the narrator, who has certain dangerous ambitions. The player has to figure out what the narrator is up to and either stop it or assist it, while the main character is clueless throughout.

[darrkchylde]

How about a game were you play as a butt?

[EdLoen]

How about a game were you play as a butt?

An Assy McGee game perchance?

[evenwolf]

How about a game were you play as a butt?

A butt that has to find a new body.... I like it.   

Definitely lots of fart jokes.  But I think the idea would be better if the ass was a snob and doesn't care for the lowlife asses he has to see everyday.    So he seeks a better life off in a new town... hopefully on a new body.   And he looks down on other asses when they act immaturely.

Typical lines of dialogue: 

"Surely I can find a better specimen than THAT."

"Oh I must reeally get out of this dump."

"You don't think me the kind of ass that ACTS like one, do you?"

"Now THERE's someone I can follow around all day."

[Nagania]

i tried making a game idea thread in a different forum once and people just thought i was an idiot and was trying to steal their ideas!

guess AGS forums are much more friendly! 

[Oddysseus]

I was surprised to see this thread rise from the grave, and also to see how high the bar has now been set.
I don't know how I can compete with "You're a butt trying to find a new body," but I'll give it a try.

These are some ideas for one-room games I came up with after getting burned out on my first (unfeasibly huge) unfinished project:

"Robo, Your Post-Apocalyptic Pal"

You play as a robot designed to help humans with their daily routines: feed them, clean up after them, etc.  Except your humans got killed in a nuclear blast.  Being a robot, you don't really mind, and continue to feed canned food to their well-polished skeletons.  Gameplay would consist of you doing various menial chores like opening canned food (without a can opener! difficulties abound!), re-glueing the skeletons of your deceased masters, and defusing old bombs that litter your otherwise charming kitchen.
The game ends with you taking your owner's remains for a walk (in a little red wagon), revealing that your house is the only remnant of civilization in a charred, dead landscape.
(if the idea sounds familiar to you, that's probably because it's basically stolen from a sci-fi short story I read back in seventh grade... I think it was by Heinlein.  As they say, good artists borrow, great artists steal etc. etc.)


"The Great Cape Catastrophe"

You're a sidekick to a generic city-dwelling superhero (I'm thinkin... the Land Shark?  the Puncher?  the Masked Marmoset?) anyway, you're back in action after almost being blown to bits by Smithereen, AKA the Mad Bomber.  Your fearless leader doesn't think you're prepared to go back yet, but you aim to prove him wrong.  The problem?  Your only supersuit has like 39 bullet holes and knife wounds in it.  You've got to make another suit from random crap in your apartment in time to hit the midnight patrol, or he's gonna team up with someone else (probably that super slut from the Teen Morality Brigade!)  Do you have the courage, the ingenuity, and the sewing skills necessary to complete your task?  Probably not.


"Man's Best Friend"

This one's a little bizarre and creepy, but maybe someone besides me will find it amusing.  You play as the loyal pet dog of a very depressed young man.  In fact, he's so bummed that he's decided to commit suicide.  You must do everything in your power to cheer him up, or you'll never get another bowl of that wet food you like (oh, and your friend will be dead, too).  So, chew up his suicide note, play tug-of-war with his noose, turn on the tv, or just fall on your back and act cute - anything to get your owner's mind off of the crushing pit of soulless drudgery that his life has become.

Okay, internet - your turn.
Give me your best shot!

[MRollins]

Ouija
This game begins with a short cut scene in which your character finds a dusty Ouija board in the attic or an old house or whatever.  Gameplay works using a simple text-parsing system.  The player would type questions into the parser - such questions as (what is your name?, etc - and the game (spirit) would answer some, and also refuse to answer others.  It would be up to the player to ask the right questions in order to move the game further, and at regular points into the game playable flashback scenes would occur where you would learn more about the nature of how the spirit died.  Needless to say it would be horriffic and scary.

These flashback scenes would take the form of a more traditional point-and-click with a puzzle or two and some gory imagery, then once that part of the story has been told gameplay would revert to the text-parser system for more interrogation of the spirit and the questions would become more specific.

I never really got round to writing a story for it, but I've had several ideas, and if one or two people on here fancy taking on the artistic and tecnical duties I would be happy to take the role of writer...

What d'ya think peeps?  Should I put a request in the recruit a team section?

I think this a great idea nad I'd love to work on it if you need a scripter...

[Akatosh]

How about a game were you play as a butt?

Been there, done that. 

[darrkchylde]

yea, wel how bout a game where you play as a terorist trying to attak somethin

[Akatosh]

Better suggestion, but still nuh-uh. 

[The Meek Geek]

8)  AWESOME IDEAS ALERT!!!  8)


Idea #1: A point and click Adventure style, Magic the Gathering/Age of Empires/Risk/Starcraft/etc...Science Fiction or Fantasy Turn based strategy game. You can pick your own nation/empire/alien race. Single or Multi-player (you could take turns with friends at the computer). You can build your own castles/space stations and fight battles. Your goal: Conquer!

Idea #2: A bizarre Game Show set in a Dystopian Future, similar to The Running Man and movies like that, you could go through a Obstacle Course of Doom and/or answer real Trivia Questions where you will be given a great prize or if you lose, you fall in a deadly trapdoor. Or something like that.

[blueskirt]

Squidi posted 2 adventures gameplay ideas on his Three Hundred website this week. Here they are:

http://www.squidi.net/three/entry.php?id=87
http://www.squidi.net/three/entry.php?id=89

In case you don't know what Squidi's Three Hundred project is, the project's premise was to post 300 unique gameplay mechanics in 300 days, and while it failed after 50 days, Squidi still updates his website from time to time with new gameplay mechanics.

[Za_Uvek]

I love all the remakes that are coming out these days of all the lucas and sierra games, Kings quest, police quest, QFG, Manic Mans! How about some of the one not as popular, like Codename: iceman or conquest for camalot. But i think one of the best would be manhunter all VGA'd up.
OOOOOOOoooooooo, and someone should give the old monkey islands a crack, do up 1 and 2. That would be sick mate! hehe.

[zabnat]

Well Za_Uvek, you are welcome to make a remake of those games
Nobody dares to touch the monkey islands, because firstly they are tabu (the remake need to be nearly perfect or it will be said "you ruined it you bastard") and secondly they already have beautiful vga graphics, so why remake?

[radiowaves]

I recently got an awesome game idea.

There is a boy who had a donut. Then the evil monster came and stole his donut. You have to get your donut back.

[Za_Uvek]

Well Za_Uvek, you are welcome to make a remake of those games
Nobody dares to touch the monkey islands, because firstly they are tabu (the remake need to be nearly perfect or it will be said "you ruined it you bastard") and secondly they already have beautiful vga graphics, so why remake?

Hey!! Its an idea!! I know thoughs games are average and thats why someone should remake em. Unlike Monkey Island, you could bend the game to your will and no one would care. Thats why they would be great to ramp up. 

As for Monkey Isl, I would not agree with "beautiful" VGA graphics, I always thought they could have looked better, even for VGA. But yeah I see where your coming from when its tabu, Monley Isl is a bit too great for anyone to even make a single stuff up. Thats like IA doing SQ2, I cant wait but if they stuff it grrrrrrrrrrr  . (Only cause SQ2 was like the first adventure game I ever played).

I do have another idea though. I think the book "Assassins Apprentice"  :o from the Farseer Trilogy would make a great adven game. Theres not exactly enough action to make it with a modern day engine, and there are plenty of ways you can incorporate the story into a adven game.

[olafmoriarty]

One idea I think would be pretty exciting for an adventure game, would be to make a game where you don't have a primary objective. You do, however, have a bunch of optional side quests. In that way, the game wouldn't be so much about moving from start to end as it would be about exploring the game world.

For instance: You are trapped somewhere -- let's use the old cliché of a desert island, even though the idea could work perfectly with other scenarios as well. Fortunately you have a radio transmitter, so you manage to call for help, and you're told that a boat will arrive to pick you up in, say, six hours (much less if it's a small game, maybe more if it's a huge game). Now, that is six hours real-time -- not that you have to sit and play six hours in a row, the in-game time will pause when you're not playing.

You *know* that the game will end in six hours, whether you accomplish anything in that time or not, so you might as well spend the time exploring, right? Now, the island could contain tons of puzzles and minigames, all of which add up to the total score, but there's nothing you actually HAVE to accomplish in your time on the island (if the game is very huge and the total playtime is closer to ten or twelve or twenty hours, you may give the mandatory mission of finding food and water, though I suggest that this should be very easy and that there are several ways of doing so). With a cleverly designed game, you have so many options and possibilities that most players probably won't get to them all in their first sit, so which puzzles to solve and which to ignore is completely up to the player. Maybe there's a cave nearby where you find some strange cave paintings you want to decipher? Maybe you need to figure out how to climb a palm, to get coconuts or get an overview of the island or whatever? Maybe one of your fellow castaways has deep emotional problems and you want to help them figure things out? Maybe you have a crush on another castaway? Maybe there's a fallen tree blocking the road to the other side of the island? Maybe you want to find a way to kill a passing seagull for its meat? There are tons of available options here, but NONE of them are mandatory. Whatever the player chooses to do has nothing to do with getting any closer to the ending (which can be done by sitting idle on the beach in six hours); everything they do, they do to get familiar with the environment on the island. Optionally, you add a cutscene after leaving the island where having a high score pays off. For instance, you go straight from the island to a job interview where your "high survival skills" can help you score the job.

(This is possibly done before.)

[blueskirt]

And Squidi strike again with yet another adventure game gameplay idea:

http://www.squidi.net/three/entry.php?id=90

[Ultra Magnus]

I had an idea. Not sure how original it is, but anyway...

Player character plays an adventure game where people are locked in a hotel and start dying one by one (the standard).
They then go on holiday and soon discover that the events of the game are actually happening to them, so they know what's going to happen where, when and to whom and are just running around trying to stop it.
Like whoever is doing it to them made the game as a kind of blueprint for their ideas.

Now I think about it a bit more, maybe it's been a few years since the character played the game, so they've forgotten most of the details.
This could be where the puzzles come in - they have to figure out and/or remember what's going to happen in time to prevent it.
Kinda like that Squidi mechanic blueskirt posted a while back, actually.

I'm not sure how suited to a game this might be.
Maybe it'd be better as a short story or film, but there you have it.

[olafmoriarty]

Here's a couple of game ideas I have been fiddling with, but which are pretty abandoned by now. (But if you want to pick them up, I'd be happy to help out with script, dialogue and coding!)



You wake up in a distant location, not remembering anything about how you got there. You have to find your way home and maybe solve a big mystery on the way. Oh, and by the way, you are blind. When you start out the game, everything in the game is black except for the outline of the player character. You have to walk around and feel things, talk to people and listen to sounds to make walls and objects visible -- you have an exceptional memory, so once you collide in a wall you will always remember that there is a wall there, thus it will be drawn onto your screen (though you don't see its colour, unless an NPC actually tells you what it is). Some parts of the game would require sound to solve (e.g. listen for a signal to know when you can cross the road).



You have tons of business ideas and want to get rich. However, you live in the Stone age. You and the rest of your tribe have enough to eat as long as you only eat grass, but people want something better. Climb the Maslow pyramid as you invent new items, discover and evolve concepts and use these to find new resources. When you start the game you have access to unlimited sticks and stones and a few other items, but you must use your mind to combine these things and find that stick + stick = fire, stick + rock + vine = axe, long stick + vine + a berry = fishing pole or log + more logs + the concept of a roof protecting you from rainstorms (which you get from examining the cave) = house. Find ways of getting what people want, and you can get them to work for you. Go on like this until you've found every invention possible and used them to create a better world for the people ... and a huge stack of cash for yourself.



You are a little Kansas girl whose house is sucked away by a tornado, and you wind up in a distant country called Oz. You have to find a mysterious wizard to ... wait, you know that story. The idea is: Make a game based on Frank L. Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" -- the copyrights are expired, and I think it makes a wicked adventure game plot. The Scarecrow, Tin Woodman and Cowardly Lion would become playable characters the moment they joined your team. In MY incarnation, the game would be faithful to the original book -- that plot is very much better than the movie's, I think. Some of the chapters make excellent minigames, for instance the scene where Tin Woodman has to kill forty wolves.



That's what I have now ... And I have no time whatsoever to actually make games out of them. At least not alone ... So if anyone can use them, be my guest.

[blueskirt]

Since I see the "stranded on a desert island" or "stone age" idea pretty often, some of you will probably be happy to know that this idea has already been done in a much better way than a traditionnal point and click adventure game. Simply download Stranded 2 from this site:

http://www.stranded.unrealsoftware.de/

[darrkchylde]

you play as a guys shadow and the guy gets murdred so you haveto find the killr by slidin under doors and avoiding lamps.

[Andail]

you play as a guys shadow and the guy gets murdred so you haveto find the killr by slidin under doors and avoiding lamps.

Not bad at all, but I hope you find a proof-reader before releasing this one

[auriond]

I've just got an idea of a game, played in first-person view, where you are a detective having to sort out paperwork in order to solve a case. So the game plays out as a mostly paper-trail chase where the detective never leaves his desk. Occasionally you can call up other characters, watch videos, have other characters come into your office and be interviewed. It would be a short game, but the whole idea is to immerse the player in the game world as much as possible. Better still if the "detective" isn't a detective at all, but a desk-bound Joe who just has to solve this mystery - possibly in secret. New developments can play out as cutscenes imagined by our wannabe detective. There could even be some kind of searchable database a la SIDNEY from GK3 where you can find new information.

Not terribly exciting, but I thought I'd throw it out here for whoever wants to tweak it into something more

[jetxl]

This might not be the right place to post this but I didn't want to make a new topic or revive the original thread...

Discarded Helm game idea #234265247:  I play the part of a man stranded on an island. How I got there is not very important. My first interest is securing food and potable water. I scavenge in the wilderness, trying to avoid dangers and get my basic resources going. Then I make basic tools with which I defend myslef if needed, fish, harvest, hunt and upgrade my living conditions (thatched hut by the beach, wee!) more efficiently or what have you. If it rains a lot and I have no shelter, I might get sick and die. Once my basic needs are taken care of, I start to travel the island and map its' geography, slowly finding remains of an older civilization, clues that lead me to search the various caves on the island. I fight off a bear in one cave, carefully navigate the slipperly terrain inside, find it too dark. I emerge to search for means of fire, find some broken lens, concentrate the sun's rays (only on a very sunny day) on a piece of wood, or alterately, I try the rubbing wood together thing to get fire. Anyway, once I have fire (also, cooked fish straight from the sea, but watch out for the shark!) I return to the caves and with the added illumination find a series of painted instructions on a wall. They're very symbolic, and I have to discern where the clues lead me on the island. Now with fire, I may maintain a beacon flame at an elevated spot on the island, that needs regular tending, and hope that one randomly passing ship will see me. On the adventuring front, once I find the location the hints hinted at, I find a hidden passage to the deeper cave system of the island, where only the braver survivor dares to dwell...

at the end of the game, I'm ranked for how I survived, what habits I had, if I was a vegetarian, a pacifist or none of these things, what I ate and how much I did, how sick I got and how many days I lived. How much of the island I charted, what kind of clues did I gather and how far into the subterrainian mystery sideplot of the island I get into. Finally, if I was rescued, and what my overal morale was.

This is a kind of adventure game I'd love to play. A very realized version of the 'deserted island' cliche. Now think how most people have utilized the deserted island scenario in actual adventure games. It's endless day, you walk wherever you want, no danger, you collect objects and combine them and solve PUZZLES until the designer deems it right to transport you from this locale to the next one. Boring, underutilized, marred by unambitious design. Everything I say above is not easy to make in AGS, but scripting-wise nothing is stopping you. I can't do it, but somebody else might. It's difficult to do, but it's a better game than the usual fare.

And then I saw Lost in Blue: Shipwrecked. Thought it was funny, that's all.

[darrkchylde]

Sperm Quest! in this gaem you play as a sperm tryin to find a egg but you accdentaly wind up in a woman's eye insted of the regular starting place. Explore da human body on your jorney!

[Babar]

I think that was already made. One of the OROWs

[GarageGothic]

But did it have the controversial religious twist of being set at the Virgin Mary's bukkake party?

[Oddysseus]

Idea:

You play as a character in a storybook. The top half of the screen is a drawing, the bottom half is the text of the story, for example: "Unfortunately, the door was not left unlocked." You could sometimes advance to the next 'page' by changing the text - i.e. dumping a pot of white paint on the letters 'Un' and 'not' so that the sentence reads "__fortunately, the door was ___ left unlocked." You could also use grease to make the page transparent and then be able to see the words on the opposite side - "The password is 'Grease,' you proclaim." Or you could just use a fishing hook to snag the paper itself and turn the pages to skip over a nasty fight. Or maybe you use the ancient art of origami, or make a paper airplane. Lots of possibilities, I'm sure.

[Ryan Timothy B]

That reminds me of the game suggestions I made for this video clip:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=30502.msg517146#msg517146

I swear, if I were to make a game with a hand drawn character on paper, it would totally be like that.

[Scarab]

I had an idea for a game recently which I think would be impossible, but a nice concept.

Basically you play a renegade cop/vigilante of some kind, who must solve a series of murders by using the evidence you find at the case to find suspects (nothing new here), but then your job is to stalk them to find out who was the murderer, by making observations about their behaviour and maintaining undetectability.

The plan is to have 200 characters in the town, all of whom have completely independent lives and run through the course of their days on a pre-existing schedule. You can talk to them and each will have their own personality, and recognise you if you make yourself seen too much or if you befriend them.

This game is partly inspired by Darkly Dreaming Dexter, partly by In a World of their Own, and partly by the Character Control Module.

The CCM wouldn't work in this case because it controls the characters by putting them all in the current room, just invisible if they aren't 'in' the room. This is a problem because there are character count limitations in rooms.

My idea for controlling these characters is to have a massive seven day schedule for every character in the game (this is where it starts getting unfeasible) and whenever you change room, the game checks the schedule for who is due to be in the room and what they are due to be doing, with a time compensation scheme for schedule interruptions causes by the player interacting with characters within the game.

The biggest problem with this game is the massive overhead work of constructing 200 characters, not to mention the hundreds of rooms which would be needed. In order to keep file size down, clever coding techniques would have to be used left and right (i.e. doubling, tripling and quadrupling up on characters and re-using rooms)

The other issue is the limitations of the Point and Click mechanics, as this would work a lot better as a 3d-sandbox world, so the navigation of the town would be less convoluted. An overhead driving mini game would remedy this perhaps?

OK, so that's the idea. Thoughts?

[Wonkyth]

I had an idea like that, but it was for a turn-based RPG, it was tile based, and it wasn't AGS...

[Oddysseus]

Idea:

"Dr. Brain and his Marvelous Machine"

You play as Bartholomeu Brainard, inventor extraordinaire.  Since the outbreak of the Zombie Virus, you've been working on an impenetrable robot body in which to place your squishy, vulnerable brain.  Unfortunately, you were bitten during a zombie rush before the design could be finalized.  Fortunately, you managed to kill the remaining attackers and transplant your brain into the prototype before the virus could corrupt it.

Of course, the prototype's power supply only lasts 72 hours.  And the nearest functional electrical station (as far as you can determine) is 300 miles away.  Oh, and the prototype body still has some kinks to work out.  But together with your decapitated body - which you can direct and give basic commands via remote telepathic control - you just might make it.

That is, if the designer of the Zombie Virus - your former lab assistant, Steve Croolshickle AKA "Evil Steve" - doesn't kill you first.  But hey, he just has an army of the slavering undead.  You have a giant robot body and the power of SCIENCE!

[ddq]

I really want to make a mystery game that takes place on a train, as a homage to a level in Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door and North by Northwest. I originally wanted to set it on the chunnel train until I actually did some research and realized that it was a really quick trip. So now, I'm thinking a normal, above-ground train would be fine. I'm still trying to formulate an idea for the main plot, but I'm thinking either something supernatural or a more realistic murder mystery. Passage of time a must. Definitely have some smooth jazz music. I'd rather be on the writing side and maybe do the programing and puzzle design, but graphics aren't quite my thing.

[Ali]

ddq: If you haven't played the Last Express, I'd hunt it down and play it immediately! It has murders, and the passage of time is central to the story. It also has characters that move from place to place with their own motives, a bit like Scarab's idea. It's also great.

[Stupot]

I really want to make a mystery game that takes place on a train, ...

Then check this out...
http://www.agathachristiegame.com/motoe/

[Anian]

I really want to make a mystery game that takes place on a train, as a homage to a level in Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door and North by Northwest. I originally wanted to set it on the chunnel train until I actually did some research and realized that it was a really quick trip. So now, I'm thinking a normal, above-ground train would be fine. I'm still trying to formulate an idea for the main plot, but I'm thinking either something supernatural or a more realistic murder mystery. Passage of time a must. Definitely have some smooth jazz music. I'd rather be on the writing side and maybe do the programing and puzzle design, but graphics aren't quite my thing.

Wait, so you thought a 50km track would take long for a train to cross?  
...anyway, I suggest going for something in the past (Last Ex is before the first world war and Murder on the OE is probably between the WW's cause that's when most of Poirot's mysteries are set) - because trains were much slower and and had more interesting interiors.
Personally I hated LE cause I always (and I played months apart) I would end up with the same ending or two and the intrface seemed like I was kind of in a box (not much freedom, yet you easily miss something)...but the graphics were cool and the story as well...didn't like the time system though.

Still if you want to make it modern, perhaps trans-siberian railway line (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Railway) - plenty of white backgrounds, rarley can get out of the train, old carriages, mysteriuos lands, few people and takes long.

[Oddysseus]

Idea for a game:

"Hugs for DethBot999"

It is far future. You are malfunctioning killer robot. All the people run away and make the loud screaming sounds when you come near them. But you no want hurt humans. You love humans! But everytime you try hug people, their meatbodies go squishy and they squirt red juice. You hug too hard.

You must use parts of environment to build softer hugging machine. But everytime you take parts of building, building fall down and crush humans! You know you can build hugging machine, but will there be humans left to hug when you do?

[ddq]

Idea for a game:

"Hugs for DethBot999"

It is far future. You are malfunctioning killer robot. All the people run away and make the loud screaming sounds when you come near them. But you no want hurt humans. You love humans! But everytime you try hug people, their meatbodies go squishy and they squirt red juice. You hug too hard.

You must use parts of environment to build softer hugging machine. But everytime you take parts of building, building fall down and crush humans! You know you can build hugging machine, but will there be humans left to hug when you do?

It's actually already a flash game, but with tickles instead of hugs: http://www.kongregate.com/games/xpndsprt/the-tickler

And anian, the Trans-Siberian Railway sounds great! I'm definitely going to research it some more. Thanks for the idea!

[Stupot]

I'd play a game set on the Trans-Siberian Railway :-)
Go for it, man.

[Crimson Wizard]

I'd play a game set on the Trans-Siberian Railway :-)
Go for it, man.

Just a possible source of inspiration:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_Express

[ddq]

Just a possible source of inspiration:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_Express

Christopher. Freakin'. Lee. How would I beat that? Have Christopher Walken as the player character?

Anyway, per my new self-imposed rules, I don't announce anything I'm working on before it's finished. And I know for a fact that I couldn't make this game on my own, I just don't have the art skills. So file this under "We'll see," unless you'd be interested in helping with the graphics and scripting, in which case file it under "We'll SEE."

[Oddysseus]

Idea:

"Grognax Does Some Minor Repairs"

Mr. and Mrs. Dalrymple have just bought their first house.  They put themselves massively in debt and maxed-out their credit cards, but their fully furnished Victorian was well worth it.  But this story isn't about the Dalrymples - it's about Grognax, alien ne'erdowell.

You play as Grognax, who (after a spectacular intergalactic bender) has crashlanded his small spacecraft into the Dalrymple's living room while they are out on holiday.  You must use the appliances and raw materials of the house to fix your ship.  The catch is, every item you use weakens the structural integrity of the house - 'borrowing' some of the plumbing pipes causes the kitchen to flood, using the blender to jumpstart your engines creates an electrical surge, etc.  Can you repair your ship before the house caves in around you?

If you do, the jet-stream exhaust from your engines will incinerate the house to ashes in front of the returning Dalrymples as you soar off into the night sky.  But who cares?  You're off to see the six-breasted strippers at the new Neptunian orbiting casino!

It's good to be an alien.

[Crimson Wizard]

I had this idea saved for MAGS, but since I haven't won yet, so I think maybe it will be useful to someone.

Recall all the quests you played as an uber-cool-hero... Whether you are vile or good, you always do the same: sneak into people houses, take their posessons, ask tonns of deadly stupid questions... And those pathetic non-player characters just stand on their predefined places watching you pass by, stealing all their items...

They had Enough!! It is time for

Background Characters Revolution!!!

This is generic idea, not bound to any particular character or characters. But there should be a character or multiple characters being robbed by so-called "hero". He or she was on another one extra silly mission to save galaxy (find treasure, beat ghost pirate Le Chuck, or whatever), and thought he could take every useful item you had in your house. Well... He was f***ng wrong! Background character(s) is/are set on quest to teach that social chauvinist some respect.

[Clarvalon]

Game Idea threads seem to be quite prevalent at the moment, so here's a link to a post about several abandoned/abortive ideas I've had for the Xbox Live Indie Games channel - there's some crossover with adventure games towards the end:

http://clarvalon.blogspot.com/2009/12/abortive-xblig-ideas.html

[Oddysseus]

I like Crimson Wizard's idea.  And clarvalon's (on his site) to make a game based on an average woman's experience with pregnancy/childbirth.

It just occurred to me that it would be cool to play a game based on deciphering a missing character's journal (like Rorschach's journal in Watchmen).  You could read the whole thing at any time, but parts would be totally incomprehensible until later in the game, when you could put them in context.  Also, pages would be torn out and you would find them as you retraced the person's steps (he would be hiding them in plain sight like breadcrumbs for you to follow).  And of course, the last few pages would only APPEAR blank, until you realize that they were written on in (say it with me) invisible ink!

Eventually, you would find where the character was being held against his will, and defeat the big baddy.  Of course.

[Wonkyth]

Yeah, CWs idea is nice.
Why is it that you always have to play a dick of a character?

[Oddysseus]

Trigger Happy

You play as Trigger, a robot revolver with legs created by eccentric toy designer Gustave Monroe.  Unfortunately, Monroe has just been murdered.  You take it upon yourself to find the killer and bring him to justice.  You are aided in your quest by your 6 specialized kinds of ammo:

Truth Serum: perfect for getting intel from a prisoner.
Acid-Tipped: for those pesky locked doors.
Silenced Stun Dart: for those stealthy situations.
Glow-in-the-dark Paintball: lights up anything it richochets off of.
Explosive: no explanation necessary.
Electromagnet with Filament: acts as a grappling gun; simply fire it at a metal target, and reel yourself over. Cut the power and the magnet comes right off!

(ammo would either be infinite, or you'd be able to make new ammo yourself by scrounging bits of metal from the environment)

I couldn't help making some sprites of the little guy (plus I needed the practice):

x1
x2

Feel free to use these sprites if you feel like it.

[Scarab]

You play as Trigger, a robot revolver with legs created by eccentric toy designer Gustave Monroe.  Unfortunately, Monroe has just been murdered.  You take it upon yourself to find the killer and bring him to justice. 

I think I see a fairly obvious twist there waiting for you

Spoiler

It was You!!!11!!1ONE!

[close]

[Oddysseus]

I had an idea for a zombie game.  Nothing revolutionary, but it won't stop bugging me until I write it down.

The zombie apocalypse has happened... on spring break, of course.  Typical.  You and five friends are the only survivors on the tiny tropical island you were vacationing on.  During the last zombie rush, you got bit on the arm, but the others didn't notice.  You'd tell them, but you're the only one who can shoot worth a damn, and they'd never make it without you.  You have to get them through town to the beach, where hopefully  there will be some boats they can take off the island.  And you have to do it before you go full-on zombie on their butts.

Features:

-Zombie-related puzzles.  Use the environment to distract, kill, or sneak past zombies.  For example, toss a cat to lure a zombie in front of a wrecking ball, then let 'em have it.
-Insta-puzzle-solver.  Your rifle has three rounds, so if you can't get past one or two puzzles with brainpower, do so with firepower!
-Non-linear gameplay.  The gameworld is setup as a grid, with individual 'rooms' being squares in the grid.  You start at the bottom and have to travel to the top, but the route you take is up to you.
-Time-limit.  If you don't beat the game in the alloted time, you become a zombie and chow down on your buddies.  Sad day for you.
-No cliche happy ending.  Assuming you get your friends to the boats, you'll still wind up a zombie.  I'm thinking the game should end with the boat sailing off into the distance, and then the sound of a single gunshot as you shoot yourself before the transformation takes place (assuming you have ammo left).

that's it. short and sweet.

[Anian]

Wouldn't non-linear gameplay be kinda ruined by a time limit? I mean, if you had a limited time you'd be finding the shortest way on the grid - you could make it so the shortest path has the hardest/most time taking puzzles but that kinda leads the player a bit too much and so you might as well have only 3-4 paths (I'm assuming that "the grid" would have more than that) and that's it.
I'm all for "just use the gun" solutions, it can always be limited (for example make the room flooded or gas leak or some other situation where you can't use a gun). And then you can make a point on grid into a gun shop (not an out of context shop, I mean like a real gun shop or a gun locker or a safe and you'd steal ammo but this requiers solving a hard puzzle etc.

Non-cliche endings (especially if multiple, are always great, and if there's a few of them then they don't have to be too far from a cliche, cause it's variety and that's enough. Now making plot points like an infected hiding his byte and thus turns into a zombie when story demands it - if you can avoid those, that would be even better. 

[darrkchylde]

youplay as a ghost hauntin a castel who was killd by the king but you cant get revenge cause the king is protectd by magicians who use magic. You gotta posess people wit diffrent abilites to kill the 4 magicians than you can kill the king

[Eggie]

Wouldn't non-linear gameplay be kinda ruined by a time limit? I mean, if you had a limited time you'd be finding the shortest way on the grid - you could make it so the shortest path has the hardest/most time taking puzzles but that kinda leads the player a bit too much and so you might as well have only 3-4 paths (I'm assuming that "the grid" would have more than that) and that's it.
I'm all for "just use the gun" solutions, it can always be limited (for example make the room flooded or gas leak or some other situation where you can't use a gun). And then you can make a point on grid into a gun shop (not an out of context shop, I mean like a real gun shop or a gun locker or a safe and you'd steal ammo but this requiers solving a hard puzzle etc.

Non-cliche endings (especially if multiple, are always great, and if there's a few of them then they don't have to be too far from a cliche, cause it's variety and that's enough. Now making plot points like an infected hiding his byte and thus turns into a zombie when story demands it - if you can avoid those, that would be even better. 

I think it would be neat if the game forced you to sacrifice a friend to solve some puzzles when you screwed up.
Like a very literal version of the 'lives remaining' in old computer games.

[Wonkyth]

'Friends Remaining' 

[Oddysseus]

I like the idea of losing a member of your party if you screw up.  How did I not think of that? (well, I guess that's what this thread is for - to get those creative juices flowing.)

To that end, another idea:

"Colonel Swifty Saves the Day... Eventually"

Colonel Swifty was the fastest superhero in the world... back when fighting Nazis was still cool and new.  Now, he's gotten old, and he travels around Peaceful Palisades Retirement Home in his motorized wheelchair most of the time.  But should the need arise, he can still put out a jolt of superspeed... he thinks.

Hopefully he thinks right, because the need has just arisen!  Lord Immortal has been murdered, and the culprit can only be one of the other residents of the super-retirement home.  Is there a super villain hiding in their midst?  Is this death just the beginning of a scheme by an old nemesis to bump off all the heroes who know his one true weakness?  Will Swifty finally be able to get it on with his old partner Amerigal now that dementia has set in, and she has forgotten how much she hates him?

To answer these questions, Colonel Swifty will have to team up with a bunch of other old coots to form a new superteam, the Golden Oldies!

Featuring:

The Spectacular Spectacles! His x-ray vision still works... mostly.  It's gotten a little blurrier over the years, but he can still make out the outlines of shapes.

Big Ear! His superhearing works fine.  Unfortunately, concentration isn't his strong suit- so he only catches every couple of words.

Magic Pants! The hero known only as Magic Pants was gifted at an early age with the psychic ability to perceive an object's history just by touching it!  Except touching it with his fingers never works... it only works if the object touches his penis.  So he has to shove an object down his pants to learns its secrets.  But still, that's a neat power, right?  Kinda?  Where are you going?

Can Colonel Swifty catch the murderor before Jello Tuesday is canceled?  Only with YOUR help!

[Eggie]

Here is my one and only note on this idea:

Old person's home for Superheroes been done stop Make whole game about Magic Pants stop.

Ooh yeah; idea I had the other day: multi-floored themed restaurant First Person Shooter. You play as a waitress you needs to collect tips to buy better weapons against, like, chefs who throw pizza and you and and each level is a different themed restaurant cliche and and and and spatulas.

[Oddysseus]

Forgot to upload this one last time:


"Pluto's Awesome Journey"

An idea for an edutainment game that would teach kids about the planets in the solar system:

Pluto has just heard that some scientists on Earth have taken away his planet status.  He decides to visit those scientists and give them a piece of his mind.  Of course, it's a long trip to Earth, and there are plenty of obstacles in his way.  He'll have to get help from each planet he passes along the way (and after he passes Mars, he'll accidentally overshoot Earth, so he can talk to the Sun, Venus, and Mercury).

Each planet will personally give him some interesting factoids:

Jupiter: "I'm fucking huge, and I've got this big-ass red spot on me that's actually a giant storm.  Isn't that awesome!?!"
Saturn: "I've got rings and shit."
Uranus: "Can you help me up?  I'm the only planet that rotates on its side.  I'm also frequently used in toilet humor."

(Obviously the cursing is just me having a little fun.  The actual game would feature kid-appropriate language).

When he finally gets to Earth, the scientists are so freaked out to be scolded by a celestial body that they reinstate Pluto as a planet and he goes back to his orbit, the end.

[ddq]

Forgot to upload this one last time:


"Pluto's Awesome Journey"

An idea for an edutainment game that would teach kids about the planets in the solar system:

Pluto has just heard that some scientists on Earth have taken away his planet status.  He decides to visit those scientists and give them a piece of his mind.  Of course, it's a long trip to Earth, and there are plenty of obstacles in his way.  He'll have to get help from each planet he passes along the way (and after he passes Mars, he'll accidentally overshoot Earth, so he can talk to the Sun, Venus, and Mercury).

Each planet will personally give him some interesting factoids:

Jupiter: "I'm fucking huge, and I've got this big-ass red spot on me that's actually a giant storm.  Isn't that awesome!?!"
Saturn: "I've got rings and shit."
Uranus: "Can you help me up?  I'm the only planet that rotates on its side.  I'm also frequently used in toilet humor."

(Obviously the cursing is just me having a little fun.  The actual game would feature kid-appropriate language).

When he finally gets to Earth, the scientists are so freaked out to be scolded by a celestial body that they reinstate Pluto as a planet and he goes back to his orbit, the end.

And I assume it'd have convenient planetary alignment like Magic School Bus. Also, don't forget the asteroid belt.

[MrCheminee]

The AD(H)D experience

The player has to make it through a week of school, work and other appointments.
Obstacles are:
Focus/hyperfocus (parts of the screen get blurry)
Distorted timeperception (time goes at a random speed)
Forgetfulness (List of wat to do's is contstantly changing...)

Instead of a healthbar, Happyness, energy and focus are monitored.

Player wins by not walking under a car, or losing all his friends...

[darrkchylde]

Life ofa Hooker- have sex wit peopl 4 money. sometines they try ta kil you.

[Oddysseus]

How about a game where you play as a Dr. Frankenstein-in-training mad scientist.  You have to figure out how to "misplace" parts at the organ donor facility where you work, while pinning the blame on someone else so you don't get fired.

Of course, once you have enough pieces to build your evil creation, there'd be no need for secrecy. Just snap your fingers, and it would crush your former employers.  Unless it goes nuts and disobeys you... but that never happens.

[Cyrus]

A LucasArts/Noir detective or LucasArts/Lovecraft crossover. Probably DOTT/Lovecraft, since they both involve tentacles 

[Eggie]

A sidescrolling platformer where you play as a piece of graffiti running across the city; it came to me thinking about how nice 3D engines do brick walls with all the nice bumps and crevices and slippery rain effects and how cool animated 2D graffiti art would look juxtaposed with it.

You could slide down drain pipes, dodge council cleaners, run onto the pavement to get to different walls and the way your character would fade and chip as he takes more damage would negate the need for a health-bar.

[Wonkyth]

I love it!

[Derrick Freeland]

There's some footage in this video that would show what that might actually look like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yphwzD1XaBY

Sweet idea, btw.

[Cyrus]

Perhaps a classic Lucas-styled adventure game based on "Dumb & Dumber" animated series? Guess it could end up pretty similar to "Ace Ventura" by 7th Level: a series of cartoonish comedy escapades and silly situations. There could be some really zany, wacky and crazy puzzles (in the vein of said Ace Ventura or perhaps even DOTT), red herring items, strange item combinations (like: "dog+ice cream=glowing dog" or "stuffed cat+glue+cotton candy=squirrel"), DOTT-like switches between two characters and specific humor. And it could even be episodic! (the format of the original series fits perfectly for this format)

[Gabriel_Down]

Not an idea, more of a yearning.

Since the movie was a joke I'd like too see an adventure game on Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy (or on a part of it anyway!)

Well I hope till I have children and they're 12yr old, someone makes this!

[Peder 🚀]

Well I hope till I have children and they're 12yr old, someone makes this!

How old are you now?
Do you have a wife or GF?

[Gabriel_Down]

i'm late 20's and thank you but I'm not into devs.

[Peder 🚀]

lol, my point was to see how much time whoever would take on your challenge would have to make that game .
If you are single that would make it realistic to add more time than if you had a GF or a wife .

[Gabriel_Down]

heh well I have a gf but that doesn't matter really. if you make the game i'll marry you.

After all the main question is, can I have kids? Fertility, a sperm racing against time... trying to get to the womb, he meets bacteria (!) other sperms hmhmhm well there's a game idea. "Spermie the trouble"

*goes hiding in the shadows again*

[Peder 🚀]

lol

I haven't even read the books yet so if I WOULD make this game it would be many years from now :|.

[Snarky]

Watching people be idiots on The Walking Dead has made me wish for a strategy game like Settlers or Civilization set in the zombie apocalypse.

Survive the initial chaos, escape the disaster zone while dodging ghouls and crazed survivors, befriend others to join your gang of survivors. Travel to a safer place or stand your ground. Build defenses and warning systems. Send out raiding parties to forage for supplies, weapons and equipment. Provide shelter, food and water for your group. Maintain morale and defend against hostiles, living or undead. Flee fires, toxic spills and the air force's last-ditch carpet bombing campaigns. Resolve internal group conflicts and determine what limits still exist on acceptable behavior and use of violence. Grow food, and figure out how to protect it against other, starving survivors. Decide on a system of government for your colony. Establish links with other pockets of survivors. Begin the long work of reconsolidating civilization and purging the land of zombies.

I always liked strategy games like that where you have to keep a society alive against various threats. I think this scenario would offer a cool twist on the genre.

[Wonkyth]

I'm still hanging out for an adventure game based on Danger Mouse.

[Sslaxx]

I'm still hanging out for an adventure game based on Danger Mouse.

Someone did a remake of an old Speccy DM adventure a few years back...

[tzachs]

Snarky, that's a great idea, I would definitely play this game!
Go on and make it, now!

[Snake]

Watching people be idiots on The Walking Dead has made me wish for a strategy game like Settlers or Civilization set in the zombie apocalypse.

Survive the initial chaos, escape the disaster zone while dodging ghouls and crazed survivors, befriend others to join your gang of survivors. Travel to a safer place or stand your ground. Build defenses and warning systems. Send out raiding parties to forage for supplies, weapons and equipment. Provide shelter, food and water for your group. Maintain morale and defend against hostiles, living or undead. Flee fires, toxic spills and the air force's last-ditch carpet bombing campaigns. Resolve internal group conflicts and determine what limits still exist on acceptable behavior and use of violence. Grow food, and figure out how to protect it against other, starving survivors. Decide on a system of government for your colony. Establish links with other pockets of survivors. Begin the long work of reconsolidating civilization and purging the land of zombies.

I always liked strategy games like that where you have to keep a society alive against various threats. I think this scenario would offer a cool twist on the genre.

Wow, you are almost describing a new zombie game for PC I read about about a year ago that was in production. It revolved more so around survivors of the zombie apocolypse. There are zombies in the game that you must defend yourself against, but the main aspect of the game is you and the people you meet.

[Eggie]

This one?

Sounds awesome, don't it?!

[Cyrus]

A horror game made in a non-typical visual style: for example, the CMI style or even the style of children's games like Spy Fox and Pink Panther.

[Eggie]

The first few episodes of RON remade as an RPG

I have procrastinating-from-Uni- fuelled artwork and everything Mika's still a work-in-progress


These characters are really quick to make, I just tweak the symbols a bit in flash and they can all use the same sets of animations for running and punching, then all I need to do is animate the special attacks. Davy throws a fireball and Elandra shoots a ray gun. It's adorable, you guys. I want this game to exist.

[bicilotti]

The first few episodes of RON remade as an RPG
[...]
These characters are really quick to make, I just tweak the symbols a bit in flash and they can all use the same sets of animations for running and punching, then all I need to do is animate the special attacks. Davy throws a fireball and Elandra shoots a ray gun, it's adorable, you guys. I want this game to exist.

Lovely!

[Cyrus]

POST DELETED

[Cyrus]

DELETED POST

[Eggie]

A 3D racing game called "Drive Safely" set at Victorioa Stiffington's Reform School For Wayward Drivers. The object of the game is to drive safely. Crossing the finish line first is irrelevant if you take unnecessary risks you must DRIVE SAFELY!

The catch? Every single course is loaded with incredibly fun ways to smash your car into a barely moving twisted scrap-heap. Ramps, loops, underwater segments, giant drops, giant snails, giant drinking straws that suck you into whirling blade fans; basically everything fun.

The way I see there's two ways to play it; either basically throw your hands up and say "Okay, here's the joke!" and put up a big 'wall of shame' for the least safe drivers, make the x-box achievements be Stiffington's demerits etc or play it straight, offer no reward for pulling off the insane stunts and make it a pure study of the question "How important to you is winning if losing is more fun?"

I think it's an important message the kids of today need to hear.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Losing is fun as an important message for kids?

I don't know about that.  Do we really want our children to think that losing is better than winning so achievement is thrown out the door?  People around the world are already reaching almost terminal levels of laziness, do we want go-getters to become the new 'nerd' class while other people are satisfied with failure?

The 'drive safely' angle is fine, but then you go into how losing is somehow better than winning and it just seems to confuse the issue.  If the object of the game is to teach safe driving then reward them for safe driving, not for 'racing'.  If the object is to race, then either award them for a)winning or b)causing insane mayhem on the race track like other games I've played that rate vehicular destruction higher than race times...but de-emphasizing winning in favor of a loser mindset as a 'message' for kids?  

[Eggie]

It's a device I'm employing called 'silliness'

[TomatoesInTheHead]

I like the idea (and silliness). The "losing is more fun than winning" scheme is implemented in some games already: think about Lemmings, isn't it more fun to let them all commit suicide? (which gives you a bad highscore or lets you not win the level)
And I think there are some games where it's possible to drive over or shoot people you were supposed to rescue, and if you do it for fun, you (sometimes even instantly) lose the game.
Sim City let you ruin your city with disasters, only for fun.

[darrkchylde]

game wheree you play as meduasa and haveta get a haircut

[Cyrus]

Moved.

[NickyNyce]

This was mentioned already but I'll say it again just in case it gets someone to nibble and decide to make it....Cube(1997)

I would love to try an make this game but fear I am not ready for such a project even if it is a short one. So someone pleaseeeeeee make ....Cube 

[Eggie]

A sidescrolling platformer where you play as a piece of graffiti running across the city; it came to me thinking about how nice 3D engines do brick walls with all the nice bumps and crevices and slippery rain effects and how cool animated 2D graffiti art would look juxtaposed with it.

I am going to SUE!!

[blueskirt]

A sidescrolling platformer where you play as a piece of graffiti running across the city; it came to me thinking about how nice 3D engines do brick walls with all the nice bumps and crevices and slippery rain effects and how cool animated 2D graffiti art would look juxtaposed with it.

I am going to SUE!!

Whoa, now that is weird.

Oh, I had an idea, a FMV adventure game, but instead of humans, characters are played by plushies and puppets.

Bonus points if you get your child or younger brother/sister to write the plot.

Double bonus points if you get a plush Tex Murphy cameo.

[Construed]

More QFG remakes!

[Cyrus]

A classic adventure game (DOTT or CMI/Discworld II visual style) which can be finished by a single action (clicking on a specific hotspot, using a specific inventory item on a specific on-screen object, etc.), but the action is pretty non-obvious. At the same time, the game has LOTS of red herring items, useless locations, characters you can talk to, puzzles you can try to solve without result and so on. I believe this could be the next experimental game evolution stage after Rip Van Bubsy.

[Radiant]

A classic adventure game (DOTT or CMI/Discworld II visual style) which can be finished by a single action (clicking on a specific hotspot, using a specific inventory item on a specific on-screen object, etc.), but the action is pretty non-obvious.

I know one game that qualifies, a text adventure called Slouching Towards Bedlam. One of the better endings is reached if you start the game by

Spoiler

killing yourself immediately

[close]

.

[EchosofNezhyt]

Someone make a awesome western.

[Cyrus]

DELETED POST

[Crimson Wizard]

I was a bit nostalgic and reviewed some of the ancient threads I participated in, and I found this:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=37559.msg494100#msg494100

I remember there was some TCP/IP plugin? Would it be possible to make anything like that?

Now, if we remove the multiplayer aspect and decide to stick to ole good single-player, here's another way to implement that idea.
First the criminal plays the game and commits the crime, then a data file is saved and passed to another player who starts the game as detective, loads that data file and will have to find clues left by criminal player.

[geork]

A detective game where you will never know if you really got the right guy (you can arrest anyone and everyone) where all areas are accessible. Furthermore, the game will block you from playing again thanks to text files (would probably need multiple mysteries)

This probably exists in flash form but I've never seen this in "bigger" games

For more flavour, the detective could also be mildly delirious 

[gamerwiz]

I know it's probably already been an idea in the back of all our minds for years now...  I want to see a Pokemon RPG with next gen graphics.  I think it would not only boost the sales of the company, but give us fans a much anticipated game that we've wanted to see for years.  Lemme know what you guys think.

[BunnyShoggoth]

Naked Lunch: The Adventure Game. The one where you could go on surrealistic spy missions for Islam Inc., travel through the Interzone, Annexia and Freeland, meet mugwumps and other strange creatures and escape from Hauser and O'Brien. The closest (in my opinion) style would be Discworld 2: for instance, I can easily imagine A. J. and his baboon like this, and Hassan's rumpus room like that. Even if it included about 10% of the book and movie's material, it would still be an instant adventure gaming classic.

[Cyrus]

Umm... A Stephen King adaptation? (Surprisingly, being as famous as he is, he has very few video game adaptations). I would pick themes from the novels linked to Dark Tower, like "From a Buick 8" or "Low Men in Yellow Coats", which focus more on mystery than on horror. Would be interesting to visit the "Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind" and travel between different worlds.

As for the visual style, could be something along the lines of "Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island": creepy but more lighthearted than the original novels, with the feel of Scooby-Doo style paranormal investigation.

[Crimson Wizard]

A game where you play a zombie, a recently died man raised by a voodoo shaman. The enchanting went somehow wrong and the periods of unconsciousness alternate with short times when you realize who you are and can control yourself. At first you are only confused, trying to understand what happened to you, later you learn that you are suspected in number of crimes, you have no idea about. Worse, every witness clearly remembers your face. You are put into detention, but break out during one of the "blackouts". Now all police is after you, and shaman is planning on killing few more people with your "help".

[Cyrus]

How about this?

[Crimson Wizard]

How about this?

I had darker and less cartoonish zombie in mind Something in Gabriel's Knight's style.
And drama! (why do I kill those people omg omg omg)

[Cyrus]

How about... say, a serial killer obsessed with adventure genre? He would probably dress up as Zombie Pirate LeChuck or Purple Tentacle for his murders, like in Dario Argento's movies. Or, he would place his victims in rooms modeled after adventure game locations (like Edison family motel from DOTT or Mystery Vortex from Sam & Max) and give them puzzles, Saw-style. You could play as a detective or as a victim trying to escape.

[Ben X]

How about... say, a serial killer obsessed with adventure genre? He would probably dress up as Zombie Pirate LeChuck or Purple Tentacle for his murders, like in Dario Argento's movies. Or, he would place his victims in rooms modeled after adventure game locations (like Edison family motel from DOTT or Mystery Vortex from Sam & Max) and give them puzzles, Saw-style. You could play as a detective or as a victim trying to escape.

We had a very early idea for "Ben There, Dan That!" where a serial killer was leaving his victims in the position of the Lucasarts logo!

[Cyrus]

That would have been interesting

Just thought that the concept opens up to endless possibilities. There could be poisoned root beer, or exploding pecan candy (like the item from Sam & Max Hit the Road), or leaving Juju bags with voodoo dolls at the crime scene. Or... he could dress up one of his victims as cousin Ted from DOTT

[Thepeacefullman]

Here is an idea. Ozzy and Drix fan game where Hector is a teenager. He gets HIV and his classmates have to save him from it.   

[Cyrus]

How about a Scooby-Doo/Kafka crossover? It can be a game in the style of the SEGA Scooby-Doo mystery (i. e. with the main character chasing after a ghost or a monster), but with trails that lead nowhere. You would find lots of red herring clues and meet many unhelpful characters/suspects, and the investigation would eventually stop.