Unusual game design ideas
polycounter lvl 18
I think this thread should have a rule:
Every time you post comments on other people's ideas you must also post a new idea yourself
I had some game design ideas, and I thought it would be cool to have a thread talking about unusual game design concepts. This thread isn't so much about what ideas would sell the most games, but what would you be interested to see tried in a game. Here are some of mine:
- A game that locks itself so you can't play it anymore once your character dies. You only get one chance to beat it EVER. If you die the game will never launch again, you are not given the option of restarting.
I think this would work best for an easy horror game, as a way of increasing the tension the player experiences.
- A game that lets you only play a certain amount of time each day and rewards you with more playtime as in-game pick-ups
I think this idea is cool because you can reward and penalize the player in a new way. In most games you have to replay a section if you fail, but with this setup you could simply reduce the amount of time they could play each day, or if they do really well give them extra time.
Another idea for it is that you could use it to structure the game more, allowing for cliffhanger story events that happened near the end of your playtime for that day
Also, you could have cypher puzzles or some other type of puzzle that you could copy down and play outside the game. Since the time playing the game is limited, the player would have an incentive to save his gametime by copying them down and solving them when they aren't playing.
- A game that "plays itself" when you are not actively controlling it
I imagine this kind of like how Mario takes a nap after you leave the controller idle for a few minutes in Super Mario 64, but instead imagine Mario starts doing his own thing. Pulls out his cellphone and calls Luigi triggering a mini-cutscene or something. Maybe the camera pans around showing secret areas when you leave the controller for awhile
- A game with realistic avatar damage (ie, pulled muscle, broken leg, etc)
I don't think this would work in an action game, but maybe a survival game. If your character becomes injured, you can do a subgame to perform surgery on yourself, or maybe if you make it to a cabin you can switch to a kind of timelapse mode in which the gameplay is different while you heal up. Something like that documentary movie Into the Void is what I imagine when your character is totally screwed up.
- An FPS game that has no graphics, only sound cues so that blind people can play.
As someone pointed out, this has recently been done pretty much how I imagined it.
Every time you post comments on other people's ideas you must also post a new idea yourself
I had some game design ideas, and I thought it would be cool to have a thread talking about unusual game design concepts. This thread isn't so much about what ideas would sell the most games, but what would you be interested to see tried in a game. Here are some of mine:
- A game that locks itself so you can't play it anymore once your character dies. You only get one chance to beat it EVER. If you die the game will never launch again, you are not given the option of restarting.
I think this would work best for an easy horror game, as a way of increasing the tension the player experiences.
- A game that lets you only play a certain amount of time each day and rewards you with more playtime as in-game pick-ups
I think this idea is cool because you can reward and penalize the player in a new way. In most games you have to replay a section if you fail, but with this setup you could simply reduce the amount of time they could play each day, or if they do really well give them extra time.
Another idea for it is that you could use it to structure the game more, allowing for cliffhanger story events that happened near the end of your playtime for that day
Also, you could have cypher puzzles or some other type of puzzle that you could copy down and play outside the game. Since the time playing the game is limited, the player would have an incentive to save his gametime by copying them down and solving them when they aren't playing.
- A game that "plays itself" when you are not actively controlling it
I imagine this kind of like how Mario takes a nap after you leave the controller idle for a few minutes in Super Mario 64, but instead imagine Mario starts doing his own thing. Pulls out his cellphone and calls Luigi triggering a mini-cutscene or something. Maybe the camera pans around showing secret areas when you leave the controller for awhile
- A game with realistic avatar damage (ie, pulled muscle, broken leg, etc)
I don't think this would work in an action game, but maybe a survival game. If your character becomes injured, you can do a subgame to perform surgery on yourself, or maybe if you make it to a cabin you can switch to a kind of timelapse mode in which the gameplay is different while you heal up. Something like that documentary movie Into the Void is what I imagine when your character is totally screwed up.
- An FPS game that has no graphics, only sound cues so that blind people can play.
As someone pointed out, this has recently been done pretty much how I imagined it.
Replies
My own ideas... hmm, well, I have some on the concept doc stage, but don't want to post them just yet. Ummm...
Well, it's an idea I've already implemented, as have other games, but...
Games which allow the user to interact with the game world in unusal ways.
- For me this was in Introspect, the user paints the world, however I continue to like the idea, enjoy games that have done it, and hope to see more.
My idea is Rick's + bloom, with sound cues for the deaf.
Yeah, that is cool. Okami did that well. I recently played a game called Chalk that was neat. What I like about the painting is the analog-ness of it. I should play your game
Rick:
That doesn't sound very feasible, but I had an idea kind of like that. More like a joke, but it could still be fun...
How about a Nascar game where you have a pro wrestler copilot? While your wrestler is in the car, you drive, but at any time you can set your wrestler to jump onto another car and wrestle them, at which time your car is controlled by AI. Or better yet, co-op with one driver and one wrestler!
Tulkamir:
Yeah, that is cool. Okami did that well. I recently played a game called Chalk that was neat. What I like about the painting is the analog-ness of it. I should play your game
[/ QUOTE ]
I'd love it if you did.
And yea, I need to try okami out. Haven't got to yet, but I really should. Sounds up my alley. What's this chalk game about?
i think so far, Rick has the most appealing idea... for like, a really big market right? cha-ching! $$
my idea:
an online world in which u 'actually exist' so to speak. When u log off, u go to ur virtual house and sleep. When u wake up u start off there [duh]. U can take part in anything from gangsterness and stick-ups to being a composer. Or maybe join the military so that, when somebody goes for politics and decides to start a war, u can fight it for him. Get imprisoned, run away from jail and become a convict. Jump into some nuclear waste and become a super-hero/villain. With the added fun of having ur friends and enemies online with you..... yeah..... my ideas tend to be simple.
heres mine :
Fear factor in an FPS , if you hold the gun for a first time the character would have to learn how to reload it, and the first eload hje would be confused and dont know what to do and there would be a chance of jamming the gun.
No huds in an fps game, if you want to know how many bullets , just press a key and you can take the magazine out for a biref period and look yourself. If your character is diying , also no huds, you would hear echos, and you would get the motions more blurred , etc , and walking would cost alot more than pressing the key once.
A medieval post apocaliptic game ahaha , like someone nukes middle earth and all them are forced to live even worse conditions and feed on rat anus.
i know im nuts and this is very cliche, but is something i would find cool in an FPS.
hmm tulkamir, aren't u supposed to give a suggestion with that post of urs?
[/ QUOTE ]
Actually, you only have to post an idea if you are commenting on another person's idea, so I don't have to post an idea in this post.
Chalk is kind of like a side scrolling shooter. I have not beat it yet, but some of the gameplay is cool.
Sadly I do not have UT '04. Maybe I can hunt it down somewhere.
Ninja, I was thinking of a way we could get your survival horror game, "only die once " game to work....How about it's on xbox live for maybe 15 dollars. And if you beat it, then you either A: get the game for free.
Or you maybe get a discount or another game free. Or maybe both...Or possibly you could win another game, that worked the same way, as the horror game, with one chance, and a free game up for grabs.
If you beat three games in a row without dying, then you maybe get a medal, and can keep all the games to play over and over.
my idea:
A racing game, in which your car acted as a giant skateboard with super-hydraulics that put it into action. You would be racing and simultaneously pulling off kickflips and grinding your car on guard-rails for extra points.
The winner would be the person with the highest combined point total, from their place in the race, and tricks executed.
the Jurassic Park first person adventure(?)
[/ QUOTE ]
That game was called Trespasser
You should post one of your ideas Asherr
As for my ideas -- I play a lot of Multiplayer games, so I'm always trying to think of fun/interesting MP ideas in genres I personally enjoy.
A deathmatch game based entirely off of grapple based melee seems like a potentially fun idea, to me. *Very* simple fighting game style combos for a variety of throws/locks -- would theoretically lead to some pretty fun, if potentially shallow, 6-12 player free for all. People getting thrown off platforms/into other players, and the like... I've always honestly found anything where combat almost becomes stupid to be great fun with friends.
[ QUOTE ]
A racing game, in which your car acted as a giant skateboard with super-hydraulics that put it into action. You would be racing and simultaneously pulling off kickflips and grinding your car on guard-rails for extra points.
[/ QUOTE ]
That sounds pretty cool. I think arcade racing could be pushed pretty far and still be fun.
SupRore:
[ QUOTE ]
I think actually locking you out of a game when you die is pretty stupid
[/ QUOTE ]
It could be very stupid, but without playing it I am just not sure. If you wanted to you could just have people pay for each attempt to beat it, like an arcade game.
Your idea reminds me of Lithium Q2. The offhand grapple in that was awesome. That reminds me of an idea I had:
A ninja deathmatch game in which RMB sends your character on a parabolic jump towards where your reticle is pointing and holding LMB lets you swing your sword continuously. If you swing your sword at a person who is swinging his sword at you, you both bounce away, but if you hit them when they are not swinging at you then you instant kill them.
I think this would allow for all the classic ninja anime stuff to happen in a fairly organic way, for example if you spot a guy across from you and you both aim and jump at each other you will cross paths in mid air.
This is actually the game concept I did my Ninja Ghost model and concept for. I still may make the game if I can figure out how.
you get dumped there, with nothing.
the end goal is to run the planet.
my idea:
an online world in which u 'actually exist' so to speak. When u log off, u go to ur virtual house and sleep. When u wake up u start off there [duh].
[/ QUOTE ]
animal crossing?
When I was a kid I had an idea for a game set on a prison planet.
you get dumped there, with nothing.
the end goal is to run the planet.
[/ QUOTE ]
Kind of done in Gothic1
My idea: A mmo with a system where the world creation is part of the game.
It would need a proper background story, like a world that is under constant attack by some time/space fabric dissolving extra dimensional aliens or someting, and the players have to extent the little that is left of the universe by waiving time and space...while fighting the aliens with big guns
It would need a different in game way of editing levels, where most of the stuff is done procedurally and editing feels less like.. well "3D modeling". And it would need to be integrated into the gameplay mechanics (like power/money etc to build).
And it would be cool if building something is a certain way, like realisticly pysically stable, or is some abstract certain extendable rule following way, it would actually increase the "game value" of the structure. In that way there would be a certain puzzle/tetris like gameplay mechanic as another layer of the game.
My idea would be a game where you have to unlock everything.Let's say you start with a text game then,when you've finished that you unlock a black/white game with 2d graphics.the further you go,the more you would unlock,such as AI,sound,multiplayer,etc..I'm not entirely sure what genre it should be,but maybe you could go different ways and choose a racing game and when you start over an action game.
When I was a kid I had an idea for a game set on a prison planet.
you get dumped there, with nothing.
the end goal is to run the planet.
[/ QUOTE ]
This would be pretty sweet. To expand upon the idea, creating your own stunt courses with jumps and loops and stuff, and being given specific missions would be a treat.
Give it a planning mode where you program specific things and get to test it, setting up times for turning, angles of turns, acceleration, braking etc, and then it runs a simulated run. Once you perfect it in simulation you're given control of the actual motorcycle and have to perform it, matching your pre-planned strategy or adapting on the fly if you make a mistake (IE accelerate too quickly so you have to turn earlier than in the simulation or slam on the brakes, etc). I guess in a nutshell you could call it "rainbow 6 meets evel knievel".
A game I'd like to make is a hacking game where you have to travel around a world finding access points to jack yourself into to pull off hacks (find a starbucks, use a tone converter to dial up over a payphone, etc) and the hacks would all be based on your analyzing randomly generated data to find vulnerabilities to exploit. You would have to perform more complex data analysis and pattern recognition to isolate the vulnerabilities, then bust in and steal data and cover your tracks, all while worrying about the cops or the FBI zeroing in on where you're accessing it from and busting you.
The basic idea is to make a game out of improving people's analytical thinking and problem solving skills, which is why things should be randomized, etc, so that you can't write a gamefaq for it that holds your hand through it all the time.
[ QUOTE ]
That game was called Trespasser
[/ QUOTE ]Ah yes, a truly innovative one - perhaps the only game where you could beat yourself to death with a baseball bat. Accidentally. Not to mention an accurate simulation of a person so clumsy that you actually had to throw your gun or whatever else you happened to be carrying to the tops of hills lest your buxom avatar dropped them on her way up and watched them roll all the way back to the bottom again. I loved that game.
As for my concept, I always wanted to take the hive mind concept thats used in Warhammer 40,000 for the Tyranid (and probably Starship Troopers which I'm pretty sure the idea was originally lifted from) and build it into an entire Rts/Strategy typed game. You have your Brain bug - commander type who has an area of effect control over its underlings, and creatures that extend the field of command (synapse creatures in 40k if I remember rightly) and then the various soldier units that remain controllable within this area but revert to base instinct if they move beyond it.
I never did quite work out what I wanted to do with it from there, but I'm sure theres a workable game concept there.
- A game that locks itself so you can't play it anymore once your character dies. You only get one chance to beat it EVER. If you die the game will never launch again, you are not given the option of restarting.
[/ QUOTE ]
This is Hideo Kojimas idea in exactly his same words.
I think its cute that people don't realise Rick was joking.
[/ QUOTE ]
Hehehe, yeah
Also Trespasser was pretty hilarious, I remember it as the broken-wrist simulator.
I've had ideas knocking around in my head for a while now about a 2/3-team multiplayer objective-based FPS, where the team classes are balanced such that one player on one team isn't necessarily the equal of another player on a different team (or alien race, whatever, kinda reminiscent of AvP really), and the dynamic would be that if a team of more generic grunt-like soldiers played against a team of more hardcore hunter creatures, the "creature" team would have half as many players, but they'd be twice as powerful (this would be balanced server-side - something like you can only join the powerful-alien team if there are enough people on the grunty-soldier team to balance it). Similarly if there are too many players on one team, the unbalanced team gets bonuses in terms of weapons or armour to even out the game.
Then you'd have something like UT Assault mode where 2 smaller teams of hardcore shock attack guys are attacking a central base defended by lots of low-level guys (bots making up numbers if necessary), with base defences that can be constructed and levelled up etc.
Now watch someone steal that and make a mint.
[ QUOTE ]
This is Hideo Kojimas idea in exactly his same words.
[/ QUOTE ]
I find that pretty improbable, since I don't remember hearing Kojima talk about this idea, and the odds of me picking the exact same words as him are very slim. It could be I read him talking about it in an interview though-- who knows.
Honestly, it is not an idea that hard to come up with. There are a number of set assumptions in games that are not really there for any reason, and getting to restart after you die is one of them.
You should post one of your ideas Genjix.
I had the idea of a reverse RPG. In a normal RPG, so long as you keep playing, every possible thing you do in the game makes your character stronger. The idea for the reverse RPG is that you start off as a complete badass and no matter what course of action you take you become weaker. It would work well in a survival simulator, like you survive an airplane crash and have to try to get rescued, or in some kind of life simulation where at the end you die of old age.
On a similar note though, I've always liked the idea of an RPG which doesn't strictly bar you from anything - If you want, you can wield the biggest sword or most powerful spell right from the beginning, its just you'll most likely wind up barely able to lift the sword off the ground, much less swing it effectively, or turn yourself into a fine red mist when the spell critically backfires. It'd make for far more interesting gameplay than simply - You need to be stronger/smarter to use this item. There could also be items that have a high risk of failure no matter your level where you take a gamble on risk against reward - sure this scroll it might make your brain ooze out through your nose, but theres a slim possibility that it might make you really smart instead.