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

I have a sligtly similar idea. In the game, the main character is established to have multiple-personality disorder, and the save points are him/her taking pills to surpress it for a little while. Basically, all the alternate personality have a flaw and a strength, and choosing certain dailouge options increases the strength of those personalities, which give you bonuses in battle. So far, so good.

But! The twist is that if you choose too many dailouge options for a certian personality, you will become less able to choose dailouge options for the other personality, meaning you have to decide: Do you balance out your personalities, and gain more choices but take more time to reach full power, or do you grind one personality and loss the ability to improve the others?

The ending would consist of the strongest personality taking over permamently. the golden ending, unlocked by maxing out all personalities -which is not a easy feat- would consist of the "normal" personalities fusing all the personalities together and becoming a true master of his/her own mind, with the final cutscene being him throwing away the pills he/she no longer needs.

CURSE YOU PAGETOPPER

CURSE YOOOOOOUUUUUUU

edited 8th Apr '11 5:26:39 AM by ABRICK

Sonic zombies.

I've had an idea mulling around in my head for a while of a game where you control the summoner and summons (I was thinking of Final Fantasy summons, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a spinoff of that). You could switch between the summoner and summons, and change out summons at any time, but could only keep out three or four at a time. The goal would be to protect your summoner and defeat your opponent summoner.

As the summons, you can move around freely and attack while the other summons are controlled by AI. Alternately, you can play as the summoner and stragetize your summoms' attacks while the game is paused; however, you cannot move them. Instead of HP, each summon would have a gauge built up through chaining attacks quickly, and once it's full, the summons' defenses are broken and it cannot move or attack until the gauge empties. Also during summoner mode, you can move around the summoner to hide behind your own summons and flee from enemy attacks.

I remember discovering an "inverse shmup" game a while back. It's Exactly What It Says on the Tin. How does it work, you ask? You control the Mooks and environmental hazards by clicking on them.

So I thought about how an "inverse Crush the Castle/Castle Clout" sort of game would work...since you're playing the besieged, you have to quickly construct a protective wall or fortress or something that would withstand an attack by a given set of projectiles.

A big issue would be constructing good AI for the sieger, who would have to pick out potential weak spots in your defensive wall/fort and attack accordingly. However, it might not be so bad if it were player-vs-player.

There are other things to consider...do we have alternating turns between the attackers and defenders (attacker fires, defender adds a thing or two to the wall/fort)? Do we just have the defender quickly construct a wall out of whatever's lying around, and then the attacker fires away with whatever he's got for a given round?

Minecraft meets Mario Galaxy. In addition to light levels, each cell has gravity levels, and the terrain generator creates planets. Infinite in three dimensions instead of two, obviously.

Build a big enough construction, and it gains its own gravity field.

@Beorc: Check out Geneforge, it's a WRPG rather than a JRPG, but (if you play a Shaper) you spend the game alone with the exception of customizable summons, over which you have a variable degree of control, and acquire more recipes for new types as it progresses.

I had a particularly interesting game mechanic about the summons as well. It actually came from a RPG styled story I've been neglecting and discontinuing for a while now and I'd like to see a game make some use of it.

Okay, you have a Summoner in your party. You find more summons while traveling to different locations in the world and give 'em to his arsenal. In a turned based battle the summoning would involve summoning a elemental creature (each has one elemental property but a few can have two). Depending on the summon beast's natural environment (where it was found and how) and its elemental property (Wind, Fire, Ice...), the Battle Environment would change based on those factors and allows other party members to take advantage of the current field.

Take for example Fenrir. He can use either Earth or Wind depending on the attacks and situation, while his Battle Environment consists of a forest marsh. It increases defense and evasion due to many obstacles in the way (such as trees), but might also lower the members' accuracy in return.

I had this idea about a Fire Emblem Tellius game which would detail the pasts of some of the more enigmatic characters, though I'm warning now, there will be unmarked spoilers. It'd have several different story choices, such as a path detailing Greil's life as a Daein Knight, and the battles he must have had to fight to get away and establish the Greil Mercenaries. It would also have a story detailing the war with Yune, and the many battles against Yune's powerful forces that raged during the time. There would be many other stories, but those were the only ones I could think of off the top of my head.

Here's a strange one:

It's an RPG in which you can't conventionally revive anyone. Instead everyone has a technique called Restore that brings a character back to life without any of their levels (although it can also be used on living characters.) It also has a lot of customization options that are mutually exclusive, so if you don't think your character(s) are cutting it, you can Restore them and start over.

Enemies have a rather consistent power level throughout the game.

edited 23rd Apr '11 3:48:26 PM by AweStriker

That could be interesting, if frustrating when you get half-way through the game and realise that you really really needed something on at least one character and have to grind them up from scratch.

I figured a game centred about teamwork and coordination of different characters (i.e. one centred around the Team Attack trope) could be quite good. Essentially one way it could work is that enemy defences can only be overcome by working in tandem. I'd make it a turn based strategy, Disgaeaesque game where you have to position your characters just right where they can support each other best. Basically you have to defend a lot, use your characters in just the right way (tanks to tie up opponents, agile characters to move fast and gain the advantage, and nukers who must be protected until they can make their final attack.) The difference is is that some of these moves could tie into other moves (like for instance, a character with the ability to shove enemies great distances combined with a character with a weapon like a spear, which does the worst damage when an enemy is moving fast towards the character. The shover (perhaps armed with a blunt weapon like a hammer) knocks the foe towards the spear wielder at high speed and the spearman thrusts with additional force.

The idea is that some bosses and tough opponents have such high defence stats that you need two or even entire teams of characters working together in perfect tandem to do them decent damage. Or enemies that need very close coordination of the roles of different kinds of heroes.

I got an idea for a game that's essentially much like the Sims, but without all the zany bollocks, focusing instead on in-depth character creation and all kinds of psychometrics and what not. The idea being that your character actually develops and shapes their personality by their interactions. All these personality traits are tracked and form a consistent persona. Another cool thing would be to give it a bit more guts. Broach subjects like sexuality, psychological issues, genetic predisposition, stuff like that.

Essentially, the God Sim to end all all God Sims.

Obviously, it'd be a massive pain in the arse to make and would be of questionable value in a market utterly geared towards casual gamers. But an awesome pipe dream.

...I'd play that.

A game where the Game Over screen was dynamic would be good. For instance, in an RPG with multiple party members, have the screen show a patch of terrain with your party members fallen weapons stacked upon it. Only the weapons of those party members you have collected and are using are present, and the terrain is dependent on the setting and weather (dry concrete for a factory, grassy with puddles for rainy battles in green areas. Maybe have special game over montages for special defeats (Non-Standard Game Over, certain major boss battles, Escort Mission gone wrong...)

You could even elaborate it out to show the immediate effects of your failure (missing child gets eaten by wolves, world gets blown up, earth taken over by monkeys...)

Not really a full game idea, but a lot of these aren't:

A game that deconstructs Beat the Curse Out of Him by killing off the party member in question for real.

God Hand prequel.

Player character is the original God Hand wielder. His real name is "Alexander" (The one Gene isn't).

This

A video game of Rise Of The Planet of The Apes. It could be like the game adaption of King Kong, except with a seperate co-op campaign, a la Portal 2.

Yes, I know it's a shitty idea.

A video game with a New Game Plus that the Player Character himself sees as a Peggy Sue plot, allowing to use his/her foreknowledge to avert various bad events from the first playthrough.

I actually had an idea for that once in a very post modern RPG that I never got around to finishing, except it was less of "Remembers everything" and more of "Started over with end game skills and gear", which resulted in a couple of otherwise impossible to beat bosses being beaten early on causing the plot to change drastically.

That being said, as I mentioned in another thread, I think a Metroid spin off where you command all of the Space Pirates and have them do experiments, raid planets and ships, etc would be quite interesting.

edited 3rd May '11 9:02:30 AM by Usht

In my idea, the guy would have retained all skills, but not gear (since it's Mental Time Travel).

For the Metroid one, I have never played Metroid, so I have no idea if the space pirates are interesting enough on their own.

A tough-but-fair low-fantasy RPG that draws inspiration from Demons Souls.

Your character is some sort of knight or soldier. You are not some nobody who miraculously does all these great things that no one else can do and becomes a hero. You do not level up or gain experience, as you are already an experienced fighter. Any sort of progression would be through finding better equipment on the battlefield. One-on-one, you're more than a match for any standard human opponent. If you charge in and try to take on a whole group of enemies, you're going to get slaughtered. If you try to tackle a demon, a dragon, or some other kind of powerful opponent head-on, you're going to get slaughtered.

The game would be all about doing whatever sneaky and devious things you need to just in order to survive.

With some assistance from Cygan, jseblan, and Kraken in IRC, I've fleshed out and edited one of my ideas a bit and am wondering what people think. So...

Story: The gods (summons) created summoners to serve as their prophets, essentially, so that they could serve as a link between the realm of Eidolons and the realm of humans. However, as time wore on, the summoners grew power-hungry and enslaved the summons to do their own bidding and control the masses with their powers. One day, centuries later, a summoner is born who becomes friends with his summons and is closer to them than humans. One day, his summons inform him that the high gods plan to destroy the world and begin anew if the summoners do not cease their ruthless tyranny. Thus he sets out to bring down the summoner rule.

Gameplay: A tactics game in the vein of Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem. There would be as many as 25 or so summons in the game that can be found and used in battle, each with unique properties and abilities. It would be mostly an RPG, but the summons would have no leveling up or equipment, instead simply unlocking abilities through Abiltiy Points earned in battles. My other ideas are that if you attack an enemy while another one of your units is adjacent to the enemy you do a team-up attack, and different elemental combinations will trigger different attacks. Each character would also have a Limit Break, but I haven't decided how they would be unlocked. Also, another concept is that, for example, if you attack with a Water-elemental special, it will give the Water status to the enemy, which would make a Fire attack less potent but make the enemy more likely to get the Freeze status if an Ice special is used on them.

Phew, I think that's all. I'm wondering if it would be worth pursuing or not.

edited 30th May '11 10:40:33 AM by Beorc

Wide-Open Sandbox Shin Megami Tensei.

Nintendo and Retro(or Bungie, anyone willing) should make an Affectionate Parody of Golden Eye.

Yes, I want an outdated world view womanizer spy with cool gadgets, as close to James Bond as possible without without going to court. Maybe change his nationality but make sure his organization is the Ian Fleming MI 6 in all but name(maybe an unlikely Nationality like Cuba or South Korea, just to make it funnier). No regenerating health, no cover system, everything short of a reinforced concrete wall should eventually explode if shot enough times, the old RCP 90, a really short guy that no one can hit in multiplayer and a ridiculous plot to steal oil which is really about water.

Some improvements can still be made obviously. Cut back on the amount of Unusable Enemy Equipment, shoot two guns at once whenever you feel like it,unless the weapons in question make that impossible, use the randomizing face feature better, more tanks, a composite of Jame's Bonds cars from the movies, since its not actually tied to any source there would be freedom to go crazy with the bosses and levels. An ice skating time mission level with a klob.

@Nameless Fragger: there were a couple of castle-building games released a couple of decades ago (God I'm old), unhelpfully named Castles. They're quite different from your general idea, but come to mind. There's also Siege, a game about defending castles, which I think plays more like a strategy game crossed with Dungeons and Dragons, and Rampart, which is an action game that alternates between firing at an enemy's castle and repairing one's own castle.

@Medinoc: There's one game out there with a Peggy Sue Time Travel New Game Plus, but I don't know if it applies to gear.

Strategy game: medieval Germany versus zombie apocalypse.

FPS where you play as a 6-7 year old and run around with a cap gun pretending to shoot the family cat. What, so I was the only one that did that as a kid?