First, the apology: Sorry I haven't updated in a while. The purpose of this blog was to never lose my ability (what ability I have anyway) to come up with interesting ideas for new games and new game features. I therefore intended to post something at least once a week to keep sharp, something I neglected to do last week.
Now, onto the thoughts. 1) While I don't have any new game ideas at the moment I have been considering expanding a few of the older ideas I've liked in the same manner as the Horror Hotel idea. I'm specifically referring to adding drawn sketches/blueprints to previous ideas to better illustrate what I mean to do with them, though I'm not much of a casual artist. I suppose it's something else I should work constantly on improving though.
2) Something I really like to see in video games, and I think I mentioned this in the Chibi Robo review, are instances where the game is centred around a mircocosm. That is, a miniaturised version of the world scaled down with all its own problems and concerns. Several of my ideas in the past have used these, as well as some of my favorite existing games (Pikmin and Chibi Robo, for example).
The following is a list of mini-ideas (so to speak), using various genres, that also capitalize on the concept of the microcosm. I may expand one or more of these into their own article at a later date:
Sim City-eque - It's the future, we've wiped ourselves out and somehow a new race of beings (possibly aliens, though I do use the "aliens" device a lot) has decided to take over Earth. Keeping the relics of the ancient civilisations that used to populate the planet as a mark of respect, they decide to create towns and power centres in the existing structures. They are, of course, tiny compared to us, barely an inch tall, and throughout the game you need to help them create workable settlements out of locations such as an old coffee table or a toy chest.
These locations can be both overgrown with weeds (suggesting it's fairly far into the future and nature has taken over) and have hyper-realised graphics of old recognisable furniture and debris, sort of like Pikmin and their slipping in of various brand names and the like. Instead of being a static 2D grid environment, some of the more vertical locations (like the aforementioned toy chest, which will have several layers of old, rotting toys to build on) will allow you to explore and build upon higher and lower ground. There may even be added dangers such as existing lifeforms on the planet: maybe cockroaches survived the cataclysm and now threaten the tiny protagonists. If we died sufficiently far enough into the future, there may be house-cleaning robots on an endless loop of chores and self-repair that may sometimes swipe away whole settlements if you're not careful.
Scrolling Fighter/GTA Clone - I can sense a reprisal of the scrolling fighter genre (or "Beat-'em-Up"s) if marketed sufficiently well. Scrolling fighters kind of stagnated once it became difficult to animate lots of high definition characters on screen, as well as a growing predilection for 3D environments. Thanks to games such as GTA 3 and other similar Rock Star titles (like the new Bully, which I intend to try out) you can have the same fun, senseless violence by fighting towards to a goal area as well as some other interesting mission directives to follow. This idea basically takes place in the same universe as the previous idea: an ancient version of our current level of civilisation that miniature people try to find a way to live in. In this, you take the role of an explorer and mercenary that has gone ahead to remove any dangers in the area before the settlers arrive. You're also sort of a bounty- and treasure-hunter also, taking on dangerous jobs to line your pockets with opportunities on the side.
You'll have to deal with various other miniature races vieing for control of the planet of the ancient big people and also some not-so-miniature indigneous and ancient lifeforms, such as giant insects and possibly the occasional irradiated pet (which would be a colossal creature to take down). It takes place in a large free-form environment that could well be an entire room or a garden, with lots of obvious and hidden dangers and treasures to be found. You'll have various tools at your disposal, including a very useful light-cycle/speeder thing which will get you from one place to another (since it'd take a while to walk and climb there) and give you enough firepower to take on some of the bigger threats.
There may even be missions where you take out rival settlements of aliens (if the game takes that route) who plan to do something evil with the planet's resources. They may well have gigantic citadels that take up half the room by the time you reach them, giving you lots of blowing up to do. A potential level idea is a futuristic fridge, powered by a nuclear battery so it'll never stop being cold, that has been taken over by hostile ice creatures/aliens. You'll fight through the various levels of decomposing food items to remove the threat and claim the valuable ice deposits within for your own clan. There's several more ideas like that that I've thought up too.
Shooter - This idea sort of approaches what I did for the RTS Design Genres, in that it takes place inside the body. It also follows on from movies such as Innerspace or the Fantastic Voyage (or the amusing Futurama spoof thereof), where your hero is shrunk down in his spaceship and inserted into people to cure them of various ills. You need to fly around various 3D re-enactments of the human body (this is starting to sound pretty gross) and fight off infections with your ship's weaponry within a certain time-limit. Once this time-limit is over you'll regrow and sort of kill your patient messily, so speed is of the essence. You'll also need to find a way out, surgically providing one (at a penalty loss of health to the patient) if a natural one is not available.
Some illnesses may take several trips, in which case the infection recovers slightly in the time it takes you to service the ship and re-shrink it again. If successful, you'll destroy enough the bacteria causing the sickness to allow the white blood cells to take over (white blood cells do not recognise you as friendly however, so be careful not to take too many out if you need to defend yourself). The goal for the stage may either be a percentage of deadly pathogens defeated (a sample level may have a 70% elimination goal, with 10% of the original total recovering if you leave the body and come back) or one particularly bad illness-causing agent like a (surprising well-armed and shielded) malignant tumor; in which case you have a boss on your hands.
This idea is simply another approach to the RTS idea of stocking and controlling "units" of friendly cells and anti-biotics against the pathogen home base. It is like a whole other universe in there, which is sort of unsettling. I'm also aware of a few existing shooters handling this concept (such as Abadox for the NES, though that was a giant alien body), but nothing like it exists in the more recent 3D dogfighting genre that I'm aware of.
