A slow-burning subgenre that has been picking up speed lately is the RPG Hybrid: A game that generally keeps to the conventions of a specific non-RPG genre and then adds a developmental RPG trait to it. So far, an additional "-RPG" tag has been applied to many separate genres. Here's a few examples:
Scrolling Fighter/Run & Gun - Guardian Heroes
Fighter - Tobol 2, Soul Calibur's "Quest" modes
Puzzle - Puzzle Quest
Space Sim - Sigma Star Saga
Card Games - any CCG game
City/World-Builder Sim - ActRaiser, Dark Cloud
Strategy - FFT, any Nippon Ichi SRPG
Platformers - any modern Castlevania, Metroid (to a degree)
Plus many other modern games that contain RPG elements, most of which only have a small subtle effect on the gameplay.
This week's idea sort of combines the Worms/Scorched Tanks arena of strategic combat, as well as a Lemmings-style "figure out how to get around the obstacles without dying", with an RPG. You control a mage with a range of spells and abilities, and must travel the lands looking for wealth and power (like any good RPG hero would do). These battles take place in Worms-esque 2D landscapes, which are partly pre-generated (the placement of certain traps and treasures, for example) but has a degree of randomly generated topography that you can vary to a lesser/greater extent in the options menu.
You start by selecting a square on an overworld map grid to "explore" - after each of these grid squares have been "explored", you can travel past them for the unexplored squares beyond. Each square opens up into a 2D arena like the one described above, depending on the square's features (if it was a hill, for example). After defeating the various wandering monsters (if any), you can take advantage of any dungeons you find on that square, exploring it by selecting the newly conquered square grid from the map and then on the preferred dungeon (you could potentially fit more than one dungeon there). You will then need to successfully complete several more 2D arenas (the appearance and structures of which would depend on the type of dungeon you're doing, similar to the geography of the overland map) in order to acquire the spoils within.
Like Worms, you (and your party, since the system could afford for hirelings to help you with bigger dungeons) can move and attack on a turn; after the attack your turn ends and the next enemy or ally in order (based on speed, like SRPGs) would take their turn. Many of your spells work the same way as the weapons in Worms: A fireball, for example, would need to be fired at the right angle and velocity to hit a monster and it'd be up to you to get those figures right. Other spells and attacks work like other weapons in Worms, or in a completely new unique way: Lightning works like Air Strikes (death from above!) and a Mud spell could be fired onto the floor near an enemy's feet, severely limiting movement for a patch around him - or you could just zap him with a Sleep spell, which would have an Area of Effect (AoE) and may knock out other enemies near him. You are also able to walk up to creatures and hit them with your chosen weapon, though this may put you in danger as the majority of enemy creatures attack hand-to-hand and are better than you at it. You can control your hirelings too, who will be a lot more limited in their arsenal, but be careful you don't let them or yourself get hit by friendly fire. The amount of firepower your mage character has is dependent on his/her level, though you can choose to lessen the effects of many of your spells (like the aforementioned fireball spell) in order to conserve mana; if an enemy only has a small bit of health left or just needs a gentle nudge to fall into some convenient lava, it would be a waste to use a full-strength fireball on them anyway.
As well as simply killing everything to get gold, you could sneak past them to where the treasure is hiding (though it can often be buried in the landscape, needing some dirt-moving spells) and escape without messing with the more challenging beasts. You may also need to figure out how to get past certain traps, discovering ways that your spells can help you get over a pit, for example. Killing monsters gives you XP, which will level you up and give you higher level spells to work with (as well as more mana to cast these spells). You can also buy spells from the hub town once you've earned enough cash.
With this idea, I wanted to sort of build a dungeon-crawling version of something like Worms with the occasional puzzle-intelligence of something like Lemmings. To be honest, an idea like this would've been more at home around the early 90s when 2D was still being explored to its fullest potential and the two games I've referred to would've been closer to the peaks of their popularity. I still think this would be an awesome game, especially if you could join up with friends (over the internet or in turns around one machine), and the amount of gigantic, beautiful-looking sprite monsters you could fit into such a game with today's technology would be super neato. Why spend five hours on WoW with your fellow nerds and then an hour of online Worms to cool off when you could combine the two?
