While I plan to keep my in-depth game ideas somewhere secure off the internet to avoid getting them stolen, I'll go over the bare bones of this and many other ideas in this blog. That way, when folk start coming here, they can give feedback on what they think of the game as potential players. Besides, even if they did get stolen, I'd have the benefit of knowing my ideas don't suck PLUS it would mean another game on the market I'd really want to play. After all, that's rule #1 of any of my game ideas - I have to want to play it.
The first of these game ideas is this one I had that sort of follows on the comic appeal of Luigi's Mansion, but far more in-depth than that interesting little title. Your character inherits a spooky mansion after its owner (and your last known relative), Strange Uncle Pete, dies. Wandering around the decrepit building, your Uncle appears to you and leads you to a chamber where he was conducting experiments to explore the ruins underneath where the mansion is located. Instead of actually going down there and exploring himself (which is highly dangerous), he created a golem prototype that could be warped down there and warped back again once it had filled up on all the treasure and relics that were purportedly lost down there. Unfortunately, he only managed to build the one "fetcher"-class prototype golem before he lost his research in the lab explosion that killed him.
This is where you come in. Your Uncle wants you to fund his research to explore the vast ruins beneath the mansion. In order to make enough money to fix the current golem and create better and more expensive ones, you'll need to turn the mansion into some kind of profitable business. If you can make just enough money from hiring out rooms of the mansion as a hotel to fund your Uncle's golem research, you can find your fortune in the lost artifacts and treasure that await you.
Now, onto the gameplay itself: The gameplay will be split between a) sending golems down underground to fight creatures and recover items and b) continuing to build and decorate rooms in the mansion above for respective clientele. The advancement of one mode will greatly benefit the other so it's recommended you keep on track with both equally. Because the hotel is sort of macabre and spooky, you'll be attracting very strange specimens to your hotel and you'll need some obscure and slightly off-kilter furniture to decorate the rooms with for them to want to stay. The ruins now serve two purposes: find treasure to pay for upgrades to the hotel and your golems and find ancient relics and curios of interest to decorate your hotel with. Killing a boss for example will allow you to keep its treasure (money), any furniture that was in the boss room that could be servicable (like a throne if the boss was a Zombie King for example) and maybe the boss's head for the hotel's grotesque trophy room. The deeper you go into the underground ruins, the better the items you'll find and the more money you'll make, which you'll need to fund the research of better classes of golems, as well as building them (which your dead-but-still-present Uncle can help you build).
Eventually, you'll be able to have a party of golems like a party of RPG characters. You can control the "fighter" golems while several lesser-equipped "fetcher" golems run around and collect treasure. Once a golem's inventory is full of stuff it can be warped out (possibly using a crystal built into the golem, or maybe warp pads situated all over the ruins). If a golem dies, it'll need to be replaced at great cost (depending on how valuable a class it was) and as well as buying new golems you'll be able to upgrade existing ones with various enhancements (maybe like a miniature sword for it to carry to increase its damage output). There will be many variants of golem classes and will all have their own AI system while you're not controlling them (as you'll only be able to control one character at a time like most group-based Action RPGs). It'll be up to the player to find the best team to match their playing habits. There may also be "magic" golems who can cast spells, "digger" golems who can uncover hidden rooms and areas by digging through walls/floors and maybe even some kind of "ultimate" golem who can do the jobs of some or all of the other golems (but will need a lot of special items and cash to make).
Other features I'm considering incorporating into this idea:
A) A time limit. This may force the player to make only profitable runs with his golems before their magical power runs out. The game may work in cycles (control the golems by night, run the hotel by day) and you'll need to fulfil certain requirements before a certain deadline (e.g., an important VIP visiting the area that you'll need to prepare a room for or have a hotel rating that's high enough for them to want to stay). The second factor would have the benefit of forcing the player to concentrate on both the dungeon part and the hotel-building part, since each is important to the furtherment of the other. Of course, forcing the gamer to do things is something that good designers should try to avoid. I've found the best games don't force the player to do anything but make their own fun with the resources available.
B) Some kind of dynamic storage system. While a tad nerdish and probably something that's very much an acquired taste, inventory micro-management is a big draw for me so being able to control what your little golem minions carry could be a boon for the game. Being able to squeeze in as much as they can handle before they're shipped back with all their treasure would be far preferable than leaving huge spaces as soon a golem finds it can't pick up some huge item. Rather than the usual 2x4 item slots for shields, 4x1 item slots for swords etc., I was thinking of a system that takes an item and condenses it into an inventory sphere. Each sphere would have it's own volume and color depending on the item, and the player can easily move the spheres around to better fill a golem's carrying capacity. Also, should the game bother with some kind of inventory collection subquest (like Katamari Damacy's record of all the items you've rolled up into a katamari and blanks of what still remains), if they could all be displayed on the overview as their respective colored spheres, it'll be easier to figure out what type of item is still missing from your collection. For instance, a red sphere could be an enemy artifact (something an enemy could leave behind, which won't be worth much usually but may have some use, i.e. a giant head for a trophy wall or a pair of spooky antlers for a novelty hat rack) with its own volume depending on how big the creature that dropped it was. A mighty dragon's head would appear on the collection screen as a giant red ball for instance.
C) Final one this, a unique set of requirements for special characters in your hotel. For instance, you could hire someone who knows about the history of the dungeon beneath you who could provide you hints on what he knows about the current area of the ruins you're exploring. However, he'll want his own free room (which means an additional monthly cost to you) that's decorated to his liking (and as a scholar, he'd want lots of ancient books and artifacts decorating his room, along with a standard bed and desk). Other special characters that could stay in your hotel could include a blacksmith who could make special upgrades for your golems with the right items (found in the underground ruins of course), whose room will need to have a forge and an anvil. You may have a cook that will increase the popularity of the hotel if you bring him exotic food items from the dungeon (including things enemies leave behind when they die - ugh..). And so on.
The game will measure how successful your hotel is to provide you with a monthly (or whatever I decide to use as a cycle) income which you can use for improvements to the hotel and creating explorer golems to excavate the ruins with. You can buy things to decorate the hotel with from regular shops or find them for free in the ruins (though they might end up cursed or something, so you'll need to uncurse them with a witch, which you can have onhand in the hotel once you make a room for her). This idea works because there's so many possibilities with the format.
So, yeah, long post about the first of many game idea updates I'll have. This one sounds fun to me (I'd play it at any rate), but it could really use the right creative team to make it all it can be. A uniquely quirky art style in the vein of Tim Burton maybe, to properly realize all the macabre elements of the hotel and the ruins beneath. It's the kind of game I'd love to work on someday anyway.
