Topic: The Game Idea Thread

[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.

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.

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:

I like it.

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?