Video game ideas that you're sure others would think are a good idea

Flower?

Dark Cloud 3.
With MORE world building, MORE weapons, MORE catgirl outfits and LESS golf.

I remember one interesting idea I once had for how to handle status effects in an RPG. It is an idea that would be best for a game that centered around status effects. I'm going to use math in the explanations. This math will likely not be suited for the code for a balanced game, but it should be enough to give a general idea of how it could work.

First of all, each character would have a pair of numbers assigned to them for each status effect in the game, with the occasional pair of numbers being assigned to a pair of status effects that would cancel each other out (like freeze and burn). Let's call this first number "Status Effect X" when talking about status effects in general and "(insert status effect here) X" when talking about a specific status effect, like "Poison X" for poison. We'll get into the second number a little later.

This Status Effect X number is how much of the status effect the character has been inflicted with. They get hit with a poison attack, the Poison X will go up. They take an antidote, the Poison X will go down (even into the negatives if it was low enough before). Now, this Status Effect X number will be used in a number of equations to determine the effects the status effect will have. A good number of them will use "Status Effect X / Vitality" or "Status Effect X / Wisdom". These equations may be used to decide when certain effects start, like having "Confuse X / Wisdom > 10" be where the character begins to attack random targets. They can also be used to determine the strength of those effects, like having "Poison X / Vitality = Damage Per Turn Dealt To Character". Seems straight forward enough right? Now let's talk about the second number.

We'll call call the second number "Status Effect Y" when talking about status effects in general and "(insert status effect here) Y" when talking about a specific status effect. Now this Status Effect Y will be used for having status effects go away on their own. Status Effect Y will do this by being a default value for Status Effect X. At regular intervals, the game would average the two numbers together to determine the new value of Status Effect X. If Status Effect Y is at 0, then Status Effect X would move towards 0. Now why not just use the number 0 instead of Status Effect Y? Because then you can do so much more fun stuff with a variable than with a constant. Let's say that you want a fight to take place in a cloud of poisonous gas (either one that was already there, or one that get made during the fight). Now a poisonous gas cloud isn't going to go away when a character downs an antidote, so what do you do to represent it in the mechanics? Use "Poison Y = whatever you wan the damage to be * Vitality". It could make for an interesting boss battle where both sides would either be constantly using antidotes or suffering from poison damage. Want to have some kind of equipment that's meant to get rid of poison in the body? Make it lower the Poison Y stat.

I think it might have some potential.

Kamen Rider Black & Samus Aran X Cutie Honey Vs. The Daleks.

Stealth-platforming-beat'em up video game crossover that makes affectionate parodies everything those characters came from (and crossovers in general. And Go Nagai), with the graphics style of an SNES game and the music score of a 8-bit game, ala Scott Pilgrim.

...

I'm probably posting in the wrong thread.

Ahem, Little King Story 2 please.

edited 15th Mar '11 11:04:05 AM by ThatOtherGriffin

Shotgun: Total War

New rule: NO STRAIGHT SEQUELS, PREQUELS, OR ANYTHINGQUELS PLEASE. More of the same isn't an idea, even if it would be nice regardless.

Remember around the late '90s when series like Quake and Unreal began dropping SP campaigns to concentrate solely on competitive MP? When that was happening, I thought to myself “If you can skip whole modes in a commercial game, how about cutting out normal SP campaigns in favor of campaigns that require co-op netplay? That would let you do things with the level design that would be impossible if those same levels had to account for SP playthroughs too.”

I don't mean something focused around getting the same replay value as a competitive game like Left 4 Dead or Diablo (which are basically Pipe Shooters without MP.) I mean a traditional, “play once or a few times and move on” fully fleshed out campaign, with a real story, real puzzles, real handcrafted static campaign design, of the sort vulnerable to spoilers since you're not supposed to have already played it 500 times. Something like Deus Ex, for instance, but designed so that every part of the game required a moderately large group (4-6) of players in order to solve things and make progress.

edited 15th Mar '11 4:04:42 PM by EricDVH

Paper Pokemon. Or Zelda. Or Metroid. You know what, I'm just going to say Paper anything by Nintendo.

A lot of what made Mario And Luigi Bowsers Inside Story such a good game was that it really explored Bowser's character—his arrogance, his short-sightedness, his bravery and charisma . . . Well, after Luigis Mansion quite a few people have been clamoring for another game starring Luigi, and I'd like to see a game that takes the same approach to him, looking at what motivates him towards heroism despite his natural cowardice, and at how he deals with constantly being in his brother's shadow. After that, a third game could examine Peach—a risk, admittedly, but the fans have shown that she can be an interesting character when written well, and the established power of her "star magic" when backed up by Mario and Luigi's physical force means that a group-based RPG would allow her to kick some butt without contradicting her also-established tendency to lose any one-on-one fight. To round it off, a fourth game would examine Mario himself, and the personality he's built up despite his status as a Silent Protagonist. (And yes, I'm leaving Toad out on purpose.)

edited 17th Mar '11 2:23:34 PM by feotakahari

^^^ You mean Army of Two or Kane & Lynch?

A Sonic Dating Sim.

I get that those games are terrible, but, if I may play devils advocate, that may be because the idea itself doesn't lend well to a good game. I mean, a Net co-op game needs to be something two people caqn complete together online in one sitting. The story can't be intensive, and the layout can't be too complex (or they'd become lost).

edited 17th Mar '11 3:11:48 PM by IndigoDingo

Oh, there's a number of games that have a dedicated coop story (other examples off the top of my head would be the special campaign in Splinter Cell: Conviction, and the upcoming Hunted,) but they tend to consist of just two players tightly coupled together as they're shunted through an absurdly linear campaign.

I mean something hearkening back to the days when level design involved multiple paths and some degree of backtracking, plus a significant amount of noncombat activities like puzzles and conversations with NPCs, but with enough coop players where you feel like a real team (like RPG party size) rather than a typical hero and his tagalong sidekick.

I admit that the big problem would be the need to keep things between random strangers online (and this game would be played by PUGs, because how many groups of 4-6 meatspace friends can rely on each other to play through a 20+ hour game together?) within one sitting at a time, so to have a story on par with most SP games I think a particular MMO-like conceit would be needed: There would be a continuing story, and the players would cooperate through each whole level (maybe 1-2 hours a piece?), but there would be a break between levels that would allow the PCs to split up in-story, so that each group could be composed of both different players and different characters they're playing.

This would allow each player to go through the campaign a whole level at a time with a full group pretty much whenever they wanted as the same character, but they would go through an Avengers Assemble via the lobby browser to gather what would most likely be an entirely new group each time they quit and ran the game. I imagine the backstory could be that either everybody's theoretically part of the same pool of a large organization's personnel (like X-Com and Bleach) or they're freelancers banding together for individual missions (like Shadowrun.)

edited 17th Mar '11 5:02:28 PM by EricDVH

@Miru: Wrong thread.

An action adventure game wherin instead of spells or items, the character gains tatoos to represent power. Each can be made as large as you want, to increase its power, but this takes away from the total space you can have for your other tatoos. Yes, its possible to get them removed and redone, but it really fucking hurts, cutting your health to 80% of its maximum for half an hour.

A Sonic prequel set on Angel Island.

Playable characters will include Tikal, Sinbad, Sir Gawain, Emerl, Chaos, Shade, and even some new characters.

Here's one. A side scrolling Oswald the lucky rabbit video game. With 2D hand-drawn animation in the veins of gameplay such as Wario Land, Earthworm Jim, along with Sonic and Mario. Also a game with Oswald in the veins of the Legend of Zelda would be just smashing.

Has there been any point and click games that have the Film noir genre in them?

Grim Fandango

The Lord Of The Rings, told entirely from Aragorn's perspective.

Most people tend to think of Aragorn as a warrior, but that's just one element of what could be an extremely broad game. Aragorn is a Ranger, adept at hiding and covering his trail and following others. He's also well-learned in lore and quite often a priority target for the Great Enemy. To those ends, the game doesn't have to be just about combat; it can be a stealth game, a puzzle game, a horror game and an action game rolled into one depending on the scenario.

For instance, what if attracting too much attention from agents of Sauron could put a Ringwraith on your heels? Especially in the early game, when Narsil is still broken, you have little means of defense against them and must hide. The entire presentation of the game world could change if a Ringwraith is present; vegetation could bleed red, the world could be bathed in shadow and the player could be tricked into perceiving dangers that don't exist.

The puzzle element could come through trailing adversaries or piecing together ancient texts. There could be various rewards. For instance, perhaps you could unlock sword techniques of the Numenorians or gain knowledge about the weaknesses of some adversaries. Or both.

Keep in mind that you can do things that happened while Aragorn wasn't in the pages himself. There's a whole seventeen years that could be played with for the early game. That could even be a whole half of the game wherein it only becomes more linear when Aragorn meets the Hobbits in Bree.

An Wide-Open Sandbox survival game...

To be more specific, it will be akin to Unreal World + Survival Crisis Z + GTA 4(?)...the game's set in Earth suffering alien invasion (aliens are trying to colonize the world, and is trying to root out humans...they will be foot soldiers, vehicles, and war animals akin to Antlions and others...), and you're just a civilian stuck in a city...(city area's around 20 km x 20 km or more...)...to survive, you must gather weapons, foods, water, and those kinds of stuff...you can also construct some structures like barricade, repair tools that can be used to repair vehicles and equipments...

There will be factions within the game, which have hideouts around the city...you can take a rest with them, trade, and hire people to help you...you can even create your own hideouts and get people to stay with you...although they will also have needs like you, and probably need gasoline to generate electricity to power their defense and those kind of stuff...in the settlement you can construct buildings like greenhouse as an impromptu farm or repair shop or even research base which you can get scientists to research and reverse engineer alien equipments for you to use and produce, like using alien batteries to help power your hideout along with gasoline or helping improve your armor...aliens will also have their own bases...and probably human militaries too...with that, there will be skirmishes...bases can be assaulted by other factions and overrun...

Enemies can be both humans and aliens, by the way...looters and gangs will definitely exist...

Speaking about vehicles, since the city will be pretty large, you can use vehicles like bicycles, motorbikes, cars, buses, and those kind of stuff to transport yourself, loots and other people around...but automobiles will require gasoline which will also be required for hideouts, and sounds will be detectable by aliens, so you need to be careful...military vehicles can also be found, and, if you managed to research on how to use them, alien vehicles too...

edited 21st Mar '11 8:24:37 AM by onyhow

Basically, Enslaved: Odyssey to the west but with no enemies, a younger child protagonist and no real story. Your just given a large area to explore and do so at your leisure.

I guess there needs to be a story...oh! Okay so you play...Kite, and your in love with this girl...Mona. So you travel to the...'land of lovers' or something. Now the land of lovers isn't like make out point, you go there to find something to use to confess your feelings to your sweet heart.

So Kite, the over compensator he is, decides to travel to the highest tower in the Land of lovers, which is like a massive industrial castle-esque area, and find some exquisite treasure for her, like a diamond necklace or something.

I haven't worked out the details but basically you look around for things a girl would like.

Sponge Bob RPG

@All of Miru's posts: Sweet fucking Christ man, just quit while you're behind.

On topic: Yeah, the whole "Running enemies" thing definitely seems like something I'd love....

...Unless of course it could apply to Enemies with expensive loot too.

>>Oswald the Lucky Rabbit game

A Warhammer 40k RTT/RTS/whatever in the vein of the Total War games. Enough said.

A game where a Heroic Mime undergoes character development that gives them dialog that is dependent on what choices you make.

At the beginning, the heroic mime would be without any text boxes at all. As the player makes a few decisions that indicate general reactions, he would move up to using ellipses, exclamation points, and question marks. Then, he might include a few grunts. Then he would get "(insert dialog here)" type of lines as a personality started to form. And then, the madlibs would start with the character getting to fill in the blanks with pre-selected words/phrases. And then the hero will fully cast off their mime status right before the final boss battle with a heroic speech/rant that uses just about all (or most) of the choices made up to then in its composition. Maybe even give the hero an 11th-Hour Superpower related to the speech/rant. There could be generic "I will protect" speeches, some "I will defeat you" speeches, a few "You pissed me off" rants, and a few speeches/rants that would exist merely to provide a potential crowning moment of funny. And it won't be complete until it has one of the potential speeches/rants be something along the lines of...

"Hey, whatever your name was! I didn't understand half the stuff you just said. I barely understood the stuff everyone else has said, and all they do when I tell them I didn't understand is to repeat the same thing all over again as if I would magically understand it the second time through. And they wouldn't let me escape from their lengthy retellings! And don't get me started on those times when I accidentally said I didn't understand a third, fourth, or fifth time! Well there is one thing that I do understand! I have to beat you up! I don't know why, but I have to do it. And while I'm beating you up, I'm going to pretend that you're that damn owl that explained some incomprehensible crap about whatever that town with the castle was 23 times! Do YOU understand?!"

And the game would check to see which "Do you understand?" loop the player went through the most and the number of times they went through it and incorporate it into the rant.