Dang. More of these, huh? "Let's get scratchin'", to paraphrase Jet Set Radio (only in this instance I'm referring to the proverbial barrel).
031. Highschool RPG Clique Powers
So, in this scenario we have something like the old Dungeons and Dragons cartoon, where a bunch of stereotypical teenagers from our world are sent into a fantasy universe with super powers. Only this is more in the style of a Final Fantasy turn-based RPG affair rather than anything to do with rolling amusingly shaped dice. The Jock is an expert with unconventional weaponry (like a hockey stick or baseball bat), The Cheerleader can boost the party's stats like a bard and best of all the Pop Culture Nerd can summon cult movie personalities to perform damaging attacks in a similar vein to FF's famous aeon/eidolon summoning. Their repertoires are based on their HS clique and you get to decide which party to take with you, judging by how useful you interpret them to be or the type of challenge you want to face, similar to Maniac Mansion (or Final Fantasy 1 if we're continuing the FF comparison). Try the game with three Jocks for a smash-a-thon (and presumably a lot of drinking) or try it with three Goth chicks who have discovered that they can actually raise the dead now by sitting in a graveyard and writing poetry, rather than just getting unfortunate medical conditions from sitting on cold tombstones all evening.
032. Cutscene Chaser
You're a secret agent slash mercenary with ADD: In order to concentrate on your mission, something needs to happen every five minutes. That something is a cutscene. An exciting cutscene full of action and danger and a lot of talking usually. Failure to reach the next cutscene results in you getting distracted and wandering off somewhere. Into enemy fire. What with you needing to be sneaky in this non-specific satirical game idea. In a cardboard box, perhaps? A non-specific cardboard box.
033. Final Philately
Hell yeah, stamp collecting! An oft-overlooked arena of thrills and excitement if there ever was one. Collect stamps.. and then organise them! In sequential orders of value and/or the date they were issued! Considering dozens of games employ collectible stamps as some kind of sidequest/reward system thing, this idea isn't as ridiculous as it sounds.
034. Shapeshifter Detective
No, not like Kameo. Or those other guys who change into monsters and such. This is a point and click affair with a private detective, sort of like Gabriel Knight or that Broken Sword series, only you're able to transform into other people. There's some kind of stipulation to limit who you're able to turn into (you need to have shaken their hand or own something of theirs) which also adds an additional puzzle to solve. If you need to ransack some files to find out who killed whoever, you can "borrow" an item of the main dude in charge of those files - the File Dude himself in other words - and then turn into him to get past the laser eye security. Which will laser you in the eye if you're not the File Dude. Point and clicks are coming back, thanks in part to the renewed accessibility to the P-n'-C classics that the Scumm emulation engine provides as well as the DS and its stylus' natural affinity for pointing and clicking on things. So it'll be natural to see more of these in the future. Only with less File Dudes involved, most likely.
035. Claymation FPS
With the Neverhood Chronicles movie on its way, based on a series of bizarre and awesome claymation-based action/platformer games, it's about time to start thinking of riding the innovation train all the way to EasyMoneyville, with stops at Ripoff Junction and Potential Copyright Infringement Suit Lane. See, the industry works in veins - find a wealthy vein of commercially viable content and bleed it dry of blood/ore/oil/coconut. Whichever's more applicable. In this FPS, you'd have fully destructible clay environments to wander around in and shoot to pieces. Kind of like Black. Only with clay. And gameplay.
036. Pacmin
Organise your lovable but ravenous Pacmin on this journey of fabulous wonders and team management. The Pacmin are round yellow guys who will eat anything you tell them to eat: As their ranks swell from eating ghosts and other--hopefully more corporeal--creatures, you can eventually get them to chew through anything en-masse discovering a vast wealth of, I dunno, cherries. Or gold. Gold cherries. I already did a Pacman thing, didn't I? Well, I just thought having your own little stable of pacmen to order around would be adorable. So sue me. Unless you're Namco or Nintendo, in which case please don't.
037. Qolor-In
A DS game, like Qix, only instead of using lines and boxes to fill in the screen, you're actually coloring in the screen with the stylus. While the stylus is pressed on the screen, a pool of paint will flow from it, coloring the surrounding area in a circle. The longer it's held down, the more paint flows out from it, though you'll be in more danger from the wandering enemies around the place while the stylus is touching the screen. If you move the stylus or lift it from the screen, the paint stops flowing out. You could, alternatively, color-in the screen with fast strokes, only pausing briefly for a few small pools before moving on. Keeping the stylus touching the screen for as long as possible (either moving or stationary) will accrue various bonus/combo points. The backgrounds are constantly changing from cartoony backdrops to slightly more eccentric and far-fetched, like art masterpieces and the like. And as well as having just the one screen, you can scroll in any direction by motioning the stylus towards that side of the screen - the top screen would reveal the picture in its entirety with the current section in the bottom screen highlighted.
038. Forensic/Crime Scene Investigator Video Game
The life of a forensic whatsit in a video game is very difficult. Nothing like these TV shows where they have the power to zoom in on a piece of fluff on the floor of the victim's immaculate apartment and before David Caruso can put on his sunglasses, they've already discovered it's a towel fibre that came from the hotel where the victim was murdered. Instead, forensic guys in the video game world have literally seconds before their victim blinks a few times and vanishes and so must ascertain all they can in that short time: Was the victim hit by a hurled barrel? Did he get shot with a three-way laser gun? Did the victim have another guy left? Because then the victim could explain what happened once he comes back. The game follows one of these investigators in a series of common video game genres: The first level might be a Platformer type who fell down a hole while the second is some impossibly entangled body who was the unfortunate victim of an FPS with ragdoll physics.
039. Musical Silent Hill Monsters
Just a crazy idea, but instead of radio static, monsters in Silent Hill set off specific rock numbers? Like Journey would suddenly start playing if one of those straitjacket crazy demon things is on its way. You might get distracted by all the rocking out to not notice it. All right, so most of the creepy tension would fly out of the window and sure, there may be Clockwork Orange-type repercussions in mentally linking awesome music to horrible demon figment things, but still. Journey. And maybe the Scorpions whenever Pyramid Head shows up. Here he is, indeed. Best yet, the XBox version will let you assign a custom soundtrack to all the monsters so you can listen to your favoritest tunes while something is trying to tear out your eyes.
040. Knights of the Round Redux
A 3D remake of that classic beat-em-up game where you select Arthur or any of his knights and go off to kick copious amounts of ass in a historically-dubious rendition of the medieval world. I'm thinking of something like a Dynasty Warriors 3rd-person thing, but instead of seeking/protecting/killing people with identical sounding names (hello racism) you're just out there to get as much glory and honor as you can. A little gold wouldn't go amiss either, since Camelot's an expensive place to do up. Find the grail, save the innocents, hit everything and everyone else with swords until they blow up somehow. Lots of fun.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Friday, July 20, 2007
100 New Game Features III
Another one of these! Hooray!
021. Reverse RPG
So, you start at the end right? Take out the big evil thing and save the world from not being big evil thinged. But alas, you've sacrificed so much on your journey, like losing the love interest and having to kill the childhood friend that turned evil, that when the good gods and goddesses agree to your wish to turn everything back to how they were the consequences of that wish become apparent: You're forced to take your journey backwards, undoing all that you've done. This means running around the place, resurrecting evil warriors and creatures (who are now friendly again since you've removed the big evil thing's influence) and then smack them around to heal all their damage so they're nice and healthy. You also have to make sure to put all your best gear in the precariously located chests provided, replacing them with your crappier stuff as you drop levels. Finally, you'll return to the tranquil life you left behind, with the world all but mended and the big evil thing just a memory. Of course, there'll be various plotlines involving the big evil thing's minions following you backwards in time and such, but I'd just love to see the expressions on those hardcore grinder power-gamer types when they're told they have to throw their +7 Greatswords away and drop a few levels before they're allowed to leave the dungeon. And then resort to those missions where you go deliver a bag of rice to the farmer down the road. Or... take it from him.. I guess.
022. Something With Superheroes
OK, so you have this superhero, doesn't matter which one (Batman would be the ideal choice though) and you have to fulfill specific quotas of crimefightery to retire to the batcave (dammit, I was trying to make this non-specific) or what have you for the night. These quotas aren't based on bodycounts, or successful arrests or even fighting your way to the Joker (dammit!) or someone and then taking them out. Nope, the quota you have to meet is in big comic onomatopoeic sound effect bubbles. Five "Zok!"s, four "Kapow!"s and two "Smackk!"s oughta do it for the first level. The sound effect you get is based on a number of factors that you'll need to familiarize yourself with, including using certain weapons (a baseball bat might always produce a "Whockk!" effect, which may be easier to achieve with the bat than with some cumbersome unarmed combo attack) and aiming for an opponent's face rather than his body and so on. As you progress, the sound effects you need to collect become all the more difficult to achieve. Fortunately, you'll have a training dummy to test the various punching/kicking/thwacking combos on (the game would be like a beat-em-up with all that technical fighting jargon that the one-on-one fighter games have). Try and unlock the various easter egg noises, like "Newt!" and "Mint!".
023. Madden 2017
Not necessarily a sci-fi variant or anything, I just wanted EA Sports to make a version of Madden based 10 years into the future and see how accurate it ends up becoming. Anti-gravity zones would still be interesting though.
024. Robocrusher
You've been sent by some kind of hostile alien star empire to conquer the Earth but due to a slight mix-up, you're actually smaller than the people you're trying to overthrow. A lot smaller. Thanks to your sleek T-1000 design however, you can stealthily collect metal and add it to your own body, increasing your size gradually. Part Katamari, part Chibi Robo and part Godzilla Smashes Stuff Simulator, you'll take your pint-sized destroyer and buff him up with whatever metal deposits you can find. Here's the twist: While you can grow relatively quickly by simply eating common metals like copper and iron, you'll inherit the defensive properties of those same metals. That is to say, not a whole lot of defence against things like gunfire (and later missiles). Instead, you want to make an effort to snobbishly pass over such weak materials and only go for things like stainless steel or possibly something like titanium (which is very rare). Your metal composition, which will continue to grow and change through the game, will dictate your power and defence levels as you get bigger. You can whizz through the game with the cheap stuff, but you'll find it hard going towards the end: You need to seek out the good stuff and stay under the radar until you're ready. Those fleshy earthlings aren't going to take a steel colossal giant down very easily.
025. Popular Online Encyclopedia Battlers
As an Admin, it is your mission to monitor your domain and deal with any and all trespasses made by interlopers to your kingdom. Because this is a video game, instead of simply editing text changes to the Wik..errr, Popular Online Encyclopedia entries you govern, you need to head in there with some kind of internet spaceship dealie and shoot the edits down in a scrolling shooter variant. While simple typos tend to make up the bulk of the misinformation forces, they lead all the way up to conflicting opinions and original research: the deadliest of all edits. The game is based in real-time, so your territory will be constantly under attack. The longer you leave a zone alone, the more corrupt it will become from outside influence. As it heads from green to yellow to red (states of emergency as it were), cleansing them will become more difficult but ultimately more rewarding. You can exchange high amounts of points for moderator locks, protecting some of the problem zones by blocking all outside edits, so it's worth your while to go after the big ones.
026. Chess RPG
It begins as a simple chess game: move the pieces, avoid getting taken, wear down the opponent's defences and take the King. Add to that a variety of powers, personalities and playing possibilities and you have something.. well, pretty ridiculous. But that's the fun of it. For instance, the Black Queen is a master (mistress?) of the sword and she cuts down her enemies with a grim satisfaction while the kinder White Queen uses a staff to disarm her opponents. Bishops can use magic; Castles have techniques to defend themselves and allies alike; the Knights, though encumbered with the L shaped movement, have some of the most powerful attacks in the game. The pawns are basically comic relief. Though you face your traditional enemies a lot on the battlefield (the black side or the white side, depending on who's story you're following), there's all sorts of other opponents and monsters in the world out there, most of which are based on other famous board games. Like a clan of warrior checkers. Or that Dog from Monopoly.
027. Sim Sandwich
In this innovative title, you... well, you.. okay, I'll come even with you, this is a Simpsons reference. And I want a sandwich. That's why I wrote this one. I'm... I'm sorry. For everything.
028. Gritty Pacman
There's a burgeoning market for gritty. Gritty Bomberman, for instance, sold like hotcake. Now comes gritty Pacman, a journey into drug abuse, compulsive feeding and hallucinations about supernatural terrors. Terrors that never die, their eyes constantly wandering. Watching. Pacman's world has become dark now, black as night, and his only companion is constant, repetitive electronic music to emphasize his dire plight. A bit of a departure, sure, but this is what the kids want these days.
029. Call of Cthulhu: The Party Game
Like Mario Party, the game is split into two parts: One is a boardgame where you compete with others in the long term to discover the terrible secrets that lie beneath the veil of reality that mankind has shielded itself with for millennia untold. Then there's lots of fun minigames. Like "Don't read the weird old book under any circumstances" and "Whatever that thing was, I don't want to know". You'll be gambling with the malevolent and pernicious forces of the eldritch underworld and with your own fragile sanity, but great rewards await those who dare. Like power stars and candy. A party game the whole family can enjoy.
030. America Declares War On Everybody
A strategy game released to the generations of gifted video game players everywhere. For the public, it's a satirical statement made by supposed liberal game developers. For the US government, it's the Last Starfighter made real. You get 200 XBox Live Achievement Points for nailing China.
021. Reverse RPG
So, you start at the end right? Take out the big evil thing and save the world from not being big evil thinged. But alas, you've sacrificed so much on your journey, like losing the love interest and having to kill the childhood friend that turned evil, that when the good gods and goddesses agree to your wish to turn everything back to how they were the consequences of that wish become apparent: You're forced to take your journey backwards, undoing all that you've done. This means running around the place, resurrecting evil warriors and creatures (who are now friendly again since you've removed the big evil thing's influence) and then smack them around to heal all their damage so they're nice and healthy. You also have to make sure to put all your best gear in the precariously located chests provided, replacing them with your crappier stuff as you drop levels. Finally, you'll return to the tranquil life you left behind, with the world all but mended and the big evil thing just a memory. Of course, there'll be various plotlines involving the big evil thing's minions following you backwards in time and such, but I'd just love to see the expressions on those hardcore grinder power-gamer types when they're told they have to throw their +7 Greatswords away and drop a few levels before they're allowed to leave the dungeon. And then resort to those missions where you go deliver a bag of rice to the farmer down the road. Or... take it from him.. I guess.
022. Something With Superheroes
OK, so you have this superhero, doesn't matter which one (Batman would be the ideal choice though) and you have to fulfill specific quotas of crimefightery to retire to the batcave (dammit, I was trying to make this non-specific) or what have you for the night. These quotas aren't based on bodycounts, or successful arrests or even fighting your way to the Joker (dammit!) or someone and then taking them out. Nope, the quota you have to meet is in big comic onomatopoeic sound effect bubbles. Five "Zok!"s, four "Kapow!"s and two "Smackk!"s oughta do it for the first level. The sound effect you get is based on a number of factors that you'll need to familiarize yourself with, including using certain weapons (a baseball bat might always produce a "Whockk!" effect, which may be easier to achieve with the bat than with some cumbersome unarmed combo attack) and aiming for an opponent's face rather than his body and so on. As you progress, the sound effects you need to collect become all the more difficult to achieve. Fortunately, you'll have a training dummy to test the various punching/kicking/thwacking combos on (the game would be like a beat-em-up with all that technical fighting jargon that the one-on-one fighter games have). Try and unlock the various easter egg noises, like "Newt!" and "Mint!".
023. Madden 2017
Not necessarily a sci-fi variant or anything, I just wanted EA Sports to make a version of Madden based 10 years into the future and see how accurate it ends up becoming. Anti-gravity zones would still be interesting though.
024. Robocrusher
You've been sent by some kind of hostile alien star empire to conquer the Earth but due to a slight mix-up, you're actually smaller than the people you're trying to overthrow. A lot smaller. Thanks to your sleek T-1000 design however, you can stealthily collect metal and add it to your own body, increasing your size gradually. Part Katamari, part Chibi Robo and part Godzilla Smashes Stuff Simulator, you'll take your pint-sized destroyer and buff him up with whatever metal deposits you can find. Here's the twist: While you can grow relatively quickly by simply eating common metals like copper and iron, you'll inherit the defensive properties of those same metals. That is to say, not a whole lot of defence against things like gunfire (and later missiles). Instead, you want to make an effort to snobbishly pass over such weak materials and only go for things like stainless steel or possibly something like titanium (which is very rare). Your metal composition, which will continue to grow and change through the game, will dictate your power and defence levels as you get bigger. You can whizz through the game with the cheap stuff, but you'll find it hard going towards the end: You need to seek out the good stuff and stay under the radar until you're ready. Those fleshy earthlings aren't going to take a steel colossal giant down very easily.
025. Popular Online Encyclopedia Battlers
As an Admin, it is your mission to monitor your domain and deal with any and all trespasses made by interlopers to your kingdom. Because this is a video game, instead of simply editing text changes to the Wik..errr, Popular Online Encyclopedia entries you govern, you need to head in there with some kind of internet spaceship dealie and shoot the edits down in a scrolling shooter variant. While simple typos tend to make up the bulk of the misinformation forces, they lead all the way up to conflicting opinions and original research: the deadliest of all edits. The game is based in real-time, so your territory will be constantly under attack. The longer you leave a zone alone, the more corrupt it will become from outside influence. As it heads from green to yellow to red (states of emergency as it were), cleansing them will become more difficult but ultimately more rewarding. You can exchange high amounts of points for moderator locks, protecting some of the problem zones by blocking all outside edits, so it's worth your while to go after the big ones.
026. Chess RPG
It begins as a simple chess game: move the pieces, avoid getting taken, wear down the opponent's defences and take the King. Add to that a variety of powers, personalities and playing possibilities and you have something.. well, pretty ridiculous. But that's the fun of it. For instance, the Black Queen is a master (mistress?) of the sword and she cuts down her enemies with a grim satisfaction while the kinder White Queen uses a staff to disarm her opponents. Bishops can use magic; Castles have techniques to defend themselves and allies alike; the Knights, though encumbered with the L shaped movement, have some of the most powerful attacks in the game. The pawns are basically comic relief. Though you face your traditional enemies a lot on the battlefield (the black side or the white side, depending on who's story you're following), there's all sorts of other opponents and monsters in the world out there, most of which are based on other famous board games. Like a clan of warrior checkers. Or that Dog from Monopoly.
027. Sim Sandwich
In this innovative title, you... well, you.. okay, I'll come even with you, this is a Simpsons reference. And I want a sandwich. That's why I wrote this one. I'm... I'm sorry. For everything.
028. Gritty Pacman
There's a burgeoning market for gritty. Gritty Bomberman, for instance, sold like hotcake. Now comes gritty Pacman, a journey into drug abuse, compulsive feeding and hallucinations about supernatural terrors. Terrors that never die, their eyes constantly wandering. Watching. Pacman's world has become dark now, black as night, and his only companion is constant, repetitive electronic music to emphasize his dire plight. A bit of a departure, sure, but this is what the kids want these days.
029. Call of Cthulhu: The Party Game
Like Mario Party, the game is split into two parts: One is a boardgame where you compete with others in the long term to discover the terrible secrets that lie beneath the veil of reality that mankind has shielded itself with for millennia untold. Then there's lots of fun minigames. Like "Don't read the weird old book under any circumstances" and "Whatever that thing was, I don't want to know". You'll be gambling with the malevolent and pernicious forces of the eldritch underworld and with your own fragile sanity, but great rewards await those who dare. Like power stars and candy. A party game the whole family can enjoy.
030. America Declares War On Everybody
A strategy game released to the generations of gifted video game players everywhere. For the public, it's a satirical statement made by supposed liberal game developers. For the US government, it's the Last Starfighter made real. You get 200 XBox Live Achievement Points for nailing China.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
100 New Game Features II
Sorry, sorry, too busy replaying Anachronox. Man does that game kick ass. These ideas kick less ass, but still kick some ass. Between moderate and reasonable on the kickass scale.
011. A Game With A Cat Protagonist That Isn't Garfield or some Furry Abomination
Those things are dexterous and can get everywhere, seemingly. It'd be cool to play to their acrobatic talents by having the main character be an actual cat with grace and poise that isn't fatter than a house or doesn't wear clothes or crack wise about things. Maybe the cat is a reincarnated human who died early and can remember its past life and now uses its stealthy and slinky new form to solve the mystery behind their death? Or it can do cat stuff like look for mice or shiny things. Or whatever it is they like to do when they aren't killing me with allergy-related maladies. Damn cats. Evil things.
012. Another Cool Way to Store Treasure In a Dungeon-Crawler Game
OK, so you have this Imp familiar right? "Familiar", as in wizard's pet. Since Imps come from a different dimension (usually that bad fire place, though not necessarily in this case) they can store things in an extra-dimensional pocket by eating them. You feed your Imp anything you come across and once the thing gets too fat to float around after you, that's the point where you go back to town and regurgitate your spoils for the no-doubt grateful merchant to deal with. The combination of a cute imp that gets progressively fatter plus all the vomiting is a surefire winner. You could have other familiars with similarly ignominious tasks, like a bat that checks out ceiling cavities for hidden switches or something.
013. FPS Nutshot System
In a lot of FPS games, the amount of damage you can do to an opponent can be increased by aiming at the dude's head. So why not his glorybox? Aim a decent shot at the happysack and you'll do lots of damage and get a cheap laugh to boot. Of course, if you're dealing with aliens they may have their breadbasket someplace else. Like that Ballchinian in Men in Black 2. Obviously there would need to be a downside to constantly hitting people in the pleasurepouch, because that isn't the sort of thing you want to advertise to small children (who will invariably find and play any game with this much violence somehow). Maybe you'll get some negative reputation, or dark force points if it's a Star Wars game. Nothing like hitting someone in the dark side of the pants to join the dark side of the force quicker.
014. Improved Interactive Cinematic/Cutscene Controls
By this I mean those "revolutionary" bits in video games where you're told to press a button or five in quick sequence while a cutscene is playing to make sure your hero doesn't die or whatever. You know, the "revolutionary" ones? I use "revolutionary" a lot, in quotes, because this system has, in fact, been around for donkey's years. Since Dragon Lair and earlier, in fact. Little has changed or improved with those bits since then. So instead, if you're going to have these stupid things, put them in every cutscene. If you have a quiet dialogue section to move the plot along a little, have a button indicator suddenly show up halfway through a lengthy exposition. If you fail it, a giant boulder inexplicably drops on the talker and you have to redo the scene. You could be sharing a little comedy section to build on character development between the main guy and gal - have an arrow come out of nowhere at random and kill the heroine if you press the wrong key. Would've livened up that stupid laughing scene in FFX a little. It would also stop people from thinking those interactive sequences are so neat after having to replay a dozen of these things because they were told they had to press a button completely unexpectedly.
015. Unethical Sports Coach
This could work for any sports management game, though I'm inclined to think Baseball or the Olympics would be the best areas to concentrate on. Instead of the clean-cut management sims that don't deal with the seedier side of competitive sports, you play a coach/manager that isn't afraid to pump your star athletes with any kind of concoction that may improve performance. You'll be mostly in charge of shipping in the narcotics from somewhere (black market, gangsters, mad scientists), supplying it to your athletes as a herbal performance enhancer and then trying to sneak them past compulsory drug testing for the megabux you receive when they win. Hilarity ensues when the dubious steroids causes your athlete to become violent, crazy, dead or some kind of tentacled flesh-devouring monstrosity that will need a proficient SWAT team to bring down before it can reach all the tasty spectators in the stands. Your successes need to outbalance your failures to keep your reputation in the clear (though an expensive lawyer will help), and more importantly your money inflow (cash prizes, sponsorships) needs to exceed the outflow (bribes to officials, expensive medicine, armed security teams, corsages to grieving widows). A sports sim game everyone can enjoy.
016. Lemmings Pinball
Good old Lemmings. Haven't heard from them for a while. There was some remake recently, but its been overshadowed by all these newcomers to the sphere of unfortunate-creature-management games. Such as those utterly cute/edible Pikmin. With Lemmings Pinball, your goal is still the same: Get all the Lemmings (or as many as you're able) past the traps and into the exit. Care must be made to transport the Lemmings through a danger-filled pinball table (there'll be several tables to choose from, possibly based on the 12 lemming tribes from Lemmings 2) using the paddles and a special Lemming pinball (these Lemmings will become the pinball itself to help out its friends). Knock it around the table a bit to score points and close off all the traps and barriers so they can march their little blue asses around the outside of the table (and often across it, so watch out for that) to safety. And then try and rescue the brave lemming that assumed the role of pinball to finish.
017. Confuse-A-Cat
Basically a game version of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMCRru6JEo8
There are cats that need confusing and only your carefully assembled team can do this - otherwise the cats are doomed to a life of soul-crushing ennui. Direct the scene in the manner of one of those movie director games and use the available elements, as well as special effects such as people randomly vanishing or shrinking or something, to utterly confuse the cat out of its deep funk. As you succeed in your tasks and earn cash from wealthy cat owners, you can expand your repertoire so you may one day confuse even the most inconfusable (real word) of felines. The game will decide how confusing your performance is by assigning each combination of actor/prop/special-effect/music accompaniment with a "confusion quotient" score. Often the most random configurations are the most confusing, though continually repeating the same configuration or element can breed too much familiarity - a cat confusement (real word again) killer. So keep it varied, keep it bizarre and confuse those cats!
018. UFO Game
Now I know there's been a few "destroy all humans" games (including the stunningly titled "Destroy All Humans" and others like "Alien Hominid") but this idea is based more on stealth rather than outright violence against mankind. You want to scope out humanity's chances through experimentation first, and that requires keeping under the radar. Steal cows and rednecks and make sure they get returned back to where they came from - not inside out (may take a few tries to manage this) and without any accompanying evidence of their trip to the stars to get probed a bit. You can start getting brave and move your operations up a notch, including theft of interesting landmarks (for analysis, of course.. and maybe space cash). Get spotted by the feds however, and you'll be dealing with black helicopters and dudes in observatories trying to find you, which means a lower profile for a while. I submitted something like this for the Invader Zim game idea a long while back, but it can be used for any kind of comedic invade-them-up game.
019. Random Power-Ups in Fighter Games
Most of these "serious" fighter games get too samey, as you rely on elaborate combination attacks or combo juggling or clever dodging ability. Any newcomer won't really get a look in until they've memorized half an encyclopedia's worth of fighting techniques. Sometimes they just want to beat the tar out of something, goshdarnit. Which is where Power-Up Mode comes in. A power-up can have any kind of random affect: sometimes good and sometimes bad. It's up to the players if they want to use one that's offered to them. These affects can range from being on fire (double damage to opponent but your health bar slowly sinks from the burning) to shrinking (absolutely no use to anyone) to getting boxing gloves (easier to hit and block with but does less damage) to some kind of gun (OK, this is plainly cheating now). It could switch the health bars or make them invisible, change to disco lighting, give both characters cowboy hats or eliminate the entire background, leaving both fighters in some kind of weird white zone. Like the serious racing car idea, players sometimes need this kind of randomness in their games to liven it up and chill out in the crazy zone for a while.
020. MP3 Champions
An idea that progresses on those of Vib Ribbon (generated gameplay content based on music) and things like Monster Rancher or Barcode Battler. Since consoles, specifically Xbox consoles, can have custom MP3 soundtracks, there needs to be more games that take advantage of those additional MP3s for more than just something better to listen to than the noisy nu-metal pap games usually come with these days. One idea was to have a champion (an RPG hero perhaps, or a custom-made fighter like the ones in Soul Calibur or WWE/WCW/nWo games) created by interpreting the MP3 by its coding to produce a generated character, and have a clip of the MP3 (preferably the bridge or chorus, though it might be hard for the engine to pinpoint) be his theme music whenever he shows up. If you have a group of these characters out fighting, or online, they can exude this theme music to warn people of their presence. Obviously there couldn't be everyone's theme music playing at once, so it would only start up if you've got your cursor currently on that character or its their turn to fight. It'd be cool if they could be personalized even further to match the MP3's genre/tune, though that would require some kind of extensive recognition software. Maybe it can be configured to identify certain characteristics from a genre of music (deep base and guitars or something for Heavy Metal, you can tell I'm no music expert) and develop the random character's style and appearance based around those fundamental aspects (in this case some kind of boss axe or viking helmet).
OK, I'll make sure to get the next 10 in on time. I could assure you that these delays are caused by spending too much time on quality control, but the evidence doesn't exactly support it.
011. A Game With A Cat Protagonist That Isn't Garfield or some Furry Abomination
Those things are dexterous and can get everywhere, seemingly. It'd be cool to play to their acrobatic talents by having the main character be an actual cat with grace and poise that isn't fatter than a house or doesn't wear clothes or crack wise about things. Maybe the cat is a reincarnated human who died early and can remember its past life and now uses its stealthy and slinky new form to solve the mystery behind their death? Or it can do cat stuff like look for mice or shiny things. Or whatever it is they like to do when they aren't killing me with allergy-related maladies. Damn cats. Evil things.
012. Another Cool Way to Store Treasure In a Dungeon-Crawler Game
OK, so you have this Imp familiar right? "Familiar", as in wizard's pet. Since Imps come from a different dimension (usually that bad fire place, though not necessarily in this case) they can store things in an extra-dimensional pocket by eating them. You feed your Imp anything you come across and once the thing gets too fat to float around after you, that's the point where you go back to town and regurgitate your spoils for the no-doubt grateful merchant to deal with. The combination of a cute imp that gets progressively fatter plus all the vomiting is a surefire winner. You could have other familiars with similarly ignominious tasks, like a bat that checks out ceiling cavities for hidden switches or something.
013. FPS Nutshot System
In a lot of FPS games, the amount of damage you can do to an opponent can be increased by aiming at the dude's head. So why not his glorybox? Aim a decent shot at the happysack and you'll do lots of damage and get a cheap laugh to boot. Of course, if you're dealing with aliens they may have their breadbasket someplace else. Like that Ballchinian in Men in Black 2. Obviously there would need to be a downside to constantly hitting people in the pleasurepouch, because that isn't the sort of thing you want to advertise to small children (who will invariably find and play any game with this much violence somehow). Maybe you'll get some negative reputation, or dark force points if it's a Star Wars game. Nothing like hitting someone in the dark side of the pants to join the dark side of the force quicker.
014. Improved Interactive Cinematic/Cutscene Controls
By this I mean those "revolutionary" bits in video games where you're told to press a button or five in quick sequence while a cutscene is playing to make sure your hero doesn't die or whatever. You know, the "revolutionary" ones? I use "revolutionary" a lot, in quotes, because this system has, in fact, been around for donkey's years. Since Dragon Lair and earlier, in fact. Little has changed or improved with those bits since then. So instead, if you're going to have these stupid things, put them in every cutscene. If you have a quiet dialogue section to move the plot along a little, have a button indicator suddenly show up halfway through a lengthy exposition. If you fail it, a giant boulder inexplicably drops on the talker and you have to redo the scene. You could be sharing a little comedy section to build on character development between the main guy and gal - have an arrow come out of nowhere at random and kill the heroine if you press the wrong key. Would've livened up that stupid laughing scene in FFX a little. It would also stop people from thinking those interactive sequences are so neat after having to replay a dozen of these things because they were told they had to press a button completely unexpectedly.
015. Unethical Sports Coach
This could work for any sports management game, though I'm inclined to think Baseball or the Olympics would be the best areas to concentrate on. Instead of the clean-cut management sims that don't deal with the seedier side of competitive sports, you play a coach/manager that isn't afraid to pump your star athletes with any kind of concoction that may improve performance. You'll be mostly in charge of shipping in the narcotics from somewhere (black market, gangsters, mad scientists), supplying it to your athletes as a herbal performance enhancer and then trying to sneak them past compulsory drug testing for the megabux you receive when they win. Hilarity ensues when the dubious steroids causes your athlete to become violent, crazy, dead or some kind of tentacled flesh-devouring monstrosity that will need a proficient SWAT team to bring down before it can reach all the tasty spectators in the stands. Your successes need to outbalance your failures to keep your reputation in the clear (though an expensive lawyer will help), and more importantly your money inflow (cash prizes, sponsorships) needs to exceed the outflow (bribes to officials, expensive medicine, armed security teams, corsages to grieving widows). A sports sim game everyone can enjoy.
016. Lemmings Pinball
Good old Lemmings. Haven't heard from them for a while. There was some remake recently, but its been overshadowed by all these newcomers to the sphere of unfortunate-creature-management games. Such as those utterly cute/edible Pikmin. With Lemmings Pinball, your goal is still the same: Get all the Lemmings (or as many as you're able) past the traps and into the exit. Care must be made to transport the Lemmings through a danger-filled pinball table (there'll be several tables to choose from, possibly based on the 12 lemming tribes from Lemmings 2) using the paddles and a special Lemming pinball (these Lemmings will become the pinball itself to help out its friends). Knock it around the table a bit to score points and close off all the traps and barriers so they can march their little blue asses around the outside of the table (and often across it, so watch out for that) to safety. And then try and rescue the brave lemming that assumed the role of pinball to finish.
017. Confuse-A-Cat
Basically a game version of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMCRru6JEo8
There are cats that need confusing and only your carefully assembled team can do this - otherwise the cats are doomed to a life of soul-crushing ennui. Direct the scene in the manner of one of those movie director games and use the available elements, as well as special effects such as people randomly vanishing or shrinking or something, to utterly confuse the cat out of its deep funk. As you succeed in your tasks and earn cash from wealthy cat owners, you can expand your repertoire so you may one day confuse even the most inconfusable (real word) of felines. The game will decide how confusing your performance is by assigning each combination of actor/prop/special-effect/music accompaniment with a "confusion quotient" score. Often the most random configurations are the most confusing, though continually repeating the same configuration or element can breed too much familiarity - a cat confusement (real word again) killer. So keep it varied, keep it bizarre and confuse those cats!
018. UFO Game
Now I know there's been a few "destroy all humans" games (including the stunningly titled "Destroy All Humans" and others like "Alien Hominid") but this idea is based more on stealth rather than outright violence against mankind. You want to scope out humanity's chances through experimentation first, and that requires keeping under the radar. Steal cows and rednecks and make sure they get returned back to where they came from - not inside out (may take a few tries to manage this) and without any accompanying evidence of their trip to the stars to get probed a bit. You can start getting brave and move your operations up a notch, including theft of interesting landmarks (for analysis, of course.. and maybe space cash). Get spotted by the feds however, and you'll be dealing with black helicopters and dudes in observatories trying to find you, which means a lower profile for a while. I submitted something like this for the Invader Zim game idea a long while back, but it can be used for any kind of comedic invade-them-up game.
019. Random Power-Ups in Fighter Games
Most of these "serious" fighter games get too samey, as you rely on elaborate combination attacks or combo juggling or clever dodging ability. Any newcomer won't really get a look in until they've memorized half an encyclopedia's worth of fighting techniques. Sometimes they just want to beat the tar out of something, goshdarnit. Which is where Power-Up Mode comes in. A power-up can have any kind of random affect: sometimes good and sometimes bad. It's up to the players if they want to use one that's offered to them. These affects can range from being on fire (double damage to opponent but your health bar slowly sinks from the burning) to shrinking (absolutely no use to anyone) to getting boxing gloves (easier to hit and block with but does less damage) to some kind of gun (OK, this is plainly cheating now). It could switch the health bars or make them invisible, change to disco lighting, give both characters cowboy hats or eliminate the entire background, leaving both fighters in some kind of weird white zone. Like the serious racing car idea, players sometimes need this kind of randomness in their games to liven it up and chill out in the crazy zone for a while.
020. MP3 Champions
An idea that progresses on those of Vib Ribbon (generated gameplay content based on music) and things like Monster Rancher or Barcode Battler. Since consoles, specifically Xbox consoles, can have custom MP3 soundtracks, there needs to be more games that take advantage of those additional MP3s for more than just something better to listen to than the noisy nu-metal pap games usually come with these days. One idea was to have a champion (an RPG hero perhaps, or a custom-made fighter like the ones in Soul Calibur or WWE/WCW/nWo games) created by interpreting the MP3 by its coding to produce a generated character, and have a clip of the MP3 (preferably the bridge or chorus, though it might be hard for the engine to pinpoint) be his theme music whenever he shows up. If you have a group of these characters out fighting, or online, they can exude this theme music to warn people of their presence. Obviously there couldn't be everyone's theme music playing at once, so it would only start up if you've got your cursor currently on that character or its their turn to fight. It'd be cool if they could be personalized even further to match the MP3's genre/tune, though that would require some kind of extensive recognition software. Maybe it can be configured to identify certain characteristics from a genre of music (deep base and guitars or something for Heavy Metal, you can tell I'm no music expert) and develop the random character's style and appearance based around those fundamental aspects (in this case some kind of boss axe or viking helmet).
OK, I'll make sure to get the next 10 in on time. I could assure you that these delays are caused by spending too much time on quality control, but the evidence doesn't exactly support it.
Friday, July 06, 2007
100 New Game Features
In a sort of tribute to the 300 thing I mentioned a while ago (which sadly petered-out at 50, partially because of the vast amount of effort and illustrations that accompanied them), I've decided to make my own little list of never-before (as far as I'm aware) game features, at the rate of 10 per week for 10 weeks.
Basically, instead of any detailed game mechanic or full game idea, I'll just post some kind of random premise or gimmick a game could factor into its gameplay structure somehow. I'll try and keep the genres varied and will also try not to make any of these too crap (though I'm not promising anything). If they are too crap, they were meant to be satirical. If you didn't get the joke, then the satire is too complex for you. Now that I've covered my bases and insulted your intelligence, we'll begin.
001. Base of Operations is a Living Creature
Not just one of those "Whoa, we're inside a monster for this level! Check out the viscera! And the squishy things that are trying to kill us!" generic scenarios but rather a kind of parasite/symbiont thing where you control either one or many little guys as they go around and, I don't know, take over what they think is the world but is actually a suburban home. After each launch or jaunt or whatever, they head back home to their chosen host body to go over their conquering progress. If you think the idea of having a beloved pet or even a person as some sort of meat castle thing to set up camp in is a gross idea, then you may have inadvertently stumbled onto why this idea is totally tits.
002. Mighty Max Game Hub
Now this both equally applies to a game starring Mighty Max himself or just games that follow a traditional platformer kind of "no two stages are anything alike" pattern. The hub world, like most hub worlds, allow you to travel from one level to the next with the occasional hidden bonuses or whatever. For an example, consider the hubs and lobbies of Rare N64 platformers like Donkey Kong 64 or Banjo Kazooie where you could find important shit just lying around the vanilla starting areas of the game. Instead, you would explore various static playset models of the level you are about to embark on, finding the exit and all sorts of other cool stuff just by exploring the playset as a little toy version of your hero, checking behind walls and opening flaps and what have you. It would even be done in a photorealistic style, to make it seem like you're playing around with a real life model. Once you find the way in, though, the game resumes with its normal (and no doubt cartoony) graphics and action-packed gameplay.
003. Terror Ducks
Ducks are cute. There needs to be more games where you take over the world as them. Maybe play as a Terror Duck turned good (the Mellow Duck), preventing his brethren from destroying all life as we know it. There'd probably even be puns involving the word quack, god help us.
004. Final Fantasy Fables: That Walking House Thing With a Cannon
I mean, what's his deal, really? We FF fans deserve to know.
005. President Evil
George W. Bu
005. Resident Evil: Type Veronica
A better Res Evil parody, in this one they break Sega's monopoly on zombie related typing games with their own version. The added difficulty level is that all the sentences are in terrible Engrish and involve crappy dialogue, often causing you to subconsciously correct or improve the garbage that is coming out of their mouths and die in the attempt. Now imagine a Dead Rising typing game! Even more difficult, because you won't be able to see a single fucking word on the screen without satellite dish eyes.
006. Ahnuld Megapack
An FPS with a slight difference: All the levels are based on Arnold Schwarzenegger movies and you play the governator himself. The themes, weapons and often the very rules change between each level as you enter a new movie and fight your way through to the inevitable bloody climax. Fight an unseen jungle menace in a Predator game that doesn't suck for once. Obliterate an island fortress in the Commando level's unique "buckets o' bad guys" engine. Shoot, hack and slay through an action-packed brawl-fest of terror, giblets and heavily-accented one-liners (and that's just the "Jingle All The Way" stage). The end of game boss will be the kid he gives birth to in Junior. And like all good action games, he'll even fight his own twin! (which won't last long considering it's Danny DeVito sized) Bonus Feature: Unlock all the exceptionally crappy license games that the movies spawned during their theatrical releases! We might as well call this game the "Ocean Anniversary Pack" come to think of it.
007. James Bond - Something is Everything
I sort of had to make the 007 slot be about Bond. In this game, he still has the fantastic gadgets only he spends a lot more time shooting those free-running freaks like the one at the start of the last movie. I mean, they can bounce off walls and defy the laws of inertia! They must be stopped before they find a way to use these powers for something other than being French and sort of artsy pretentious about their hobby of jumping off tall structures and not dying 9 times out of 10. Keep an eye on the "traceur" dude in the new Die Hard movie if you want a good laugh.
008. Clerks - The Video Game
The movie licenses keep on coming. The Clerks game will be like a Kevin Smith version of a LucasArt adventure game, where you play as Dante and solve mysteries around the small NJ town in which you reside, only to have the action frequently interrupted by the fact you have to serve customers in your dead-end convenience store clerk job. Choose the best dialogue options to avoid incident and be ever mindful of your foulmouthed companion Randall before he does or says something typically inflammatory. Lots of nonsequitur comedy and video game/movie parodies abound. I am of course basing this game on the superior cartoon adventures.
009. Item Presto-Chango Device
During Dungeon Crawlers, you find all kinds of random crap that you can't do anything with. What to do? Put them in this little gizmo (which could also be a spell of some kind) and hope something good happens. The effects are mostly random, with the potential reward (or punishment) equal to the quality of the item placed inside. You could end up with cash, XP, a weapon or something you could actually use or just some horrible demon chicken monster thing that will pluck your eyes out. After about five or six eye-pluckings, you may finally learn something and decide to leave that useless crap on the floor.
010. A Realistic Racing Game That Does Something Unexpected
Thundering through a flat city landscape around an uninspired circuit a dozen times and repeating the process for a slightly better time? Sounds... heavenly. So how about on the third lap you see Godzilla walking around blowing shit up? How will that affect your driving performance, seeing him torch downtown Tokyo while you're trying to carefully take corners without too much spin? With that deafening roar of his drowning out the horrible synthpop music? Without actually affecting the car's performance or the track too much (since apparently racing game enthusiasts are into that boring bullshit), the usually normal background areas beyond the track could explode with all sorts of random happenings-on, ranging from an all out meteor-storm, fire-n'-brimstone Armageddon (which will, curiously, be over once the race is complete) to something completely bizarre and often very subtle, like the moon growing in size with a big scary face on it (a la Majora's Mask) each time you complete a lap. For new players, it will friggin' blow their minds to see all the buildings suddenly flip upside down or something, hopefully causing an accident and creating entertainment to whomever has to watch this dreck.
OK, so that's 10. I'll do another 10 next week. Hopefully I'll be funnier/more innovative by then, but I wouldn't hold your breath since I'm not exactly getting paid by the word here.
Basically, instead of any detailed game mechanic or full game idea, I'll just post some kind of random premise or gimmick a game could factor into its gameplay structure somehow. I'll try and keep the genres varied and will also try not to make any of these too crap (though I'm not promising anything). If they are too crap, they were meant to be satirical. If you didn't get the joke, then the satire is too complex for you. Now that I've covered my bases and insulted your intelligence, we'll begin.
001. Base of Operations is a Living Creature
Not just one of those "Whoa, we're inside a monster for this level! Check out the viscera! And the squishy things that are trying to kill us!" generic scenarios but rather a kind of parasite/symbiont thing where you control either one or many little guys as they go around and, I don't know, take over what they think is the world but is actually a suburban home. After each launch or jaunt or whatever, they head back home to their chosen host body to go over their conquering progress. If you think the idea of having a beloved pet or even a person as some sort of meat castle thing to set up camp in is a gross idea, then you may have inadvertently stumbled onto why this idea is totally tits.
002. Mighty Max Game Hub
Now this both equally applies to a game starring Mighty Max himself or just games that follow a traditional platformer kind of "no two stages are anything alike" pattern. The hub world, like most hub worlds, allow you to travel from one level to the next with the occasional hidden bonuses or whatever. For an example, consider the hubs and lobbies of Rare N64 platformers like Donkey Kong 64 or Banjo Kazooie where you could find important shit just lying around the vanilla starting areas of the game. Instead, you would explore various static playset models of the level you are about to embark on, finding the exit and all sorts of other cool stuff just by exploring the playset as a little toy version of your hero, checking behind walls and opening flaps and what have you. It would even be done in a photorealistic style, to make it seem like you're playing around with a real life model. Once you find the way in, though, the game resumes with its normal (and no doubt cartoony) graphics and action-packed gameplay.
003. Terror Ducks
Ducks are cute. There needs to be more games where you take over the world as them. Maybe play as a Terror Duck turned good (the Mellow Duck), preventing his brethren from destroying all life as we know it. There'd probably even be puns involving the word quack, god help us.
004. Final Fantasy Fables: That Walking House Thing With a Cannon
I mean, what's his deal, really? We FF fans deserve to know.
George W. Bu
005. Resident Evil: Type Veronica
A better Res Evil parody, in this one they break Sega's monopoly on zombie related typing games with their own version. The added difficulty level is that all the sentences are in terrible Engrish and involve crappy dialogue, often causing you to subconsciously correct or improve the garbage that is coming out of their mouths and die in the attempt. Now imagine a Dead Rising typing game! Even more difficult, because you won't be able to see a single fucking word on the screen without satellite dish eyes.
006. Ahnuld Megapack
An FPS with a slight difference: All the levels are based on Arnold Schwarzenegger movies and you play the governator himself. The themes, weapons and often the very rules change between each level as you enter a new movie and fight your way through to the inevitable bloody climax. Fight an unseen jungle menace in a Predator game that doesn't suck for once. Obliterate an island fortress in the Commando level's unique "buckets o' bad guys" engine. Shoot, hack and slay through an action-packed brawl-fest of terror, giblets and heavily-accented one-liners (and that's just the "Jingle All The Way" stage). The end of game boss will be the kid he gives birth to in Junior. And like all good action games, he'll even fight his own twin! (which won't last long considering it's Danny DeVito sized) Bonus Feature: Unlock all the exceptionally crappy license games that the movies spawned during their theatrical releases! We might as well call this game the "Ocean Anniversary Pack" come to think of it.
007. James Bond - Something is Everything
I sort of had to make the 007 slot be about Bond. In this game, he still has the fantastic gadgets only he spends a lot more time shooting those free-running freaks like the one at the start of the last movie. I mean, they can bounce off walls and defy the laws of inertia! They must be stopped before they find a way to use these powers for something other than being French and sort of artsy pretentious about their hobby of jumping off tall structures and not dying 9 times out of 10. Keep an eye on the "traceur" dude in the new Die Hard movie if you want a good laugh.
008. Clerks - The Video Game
The movie licenses keep on coming. The Clerks game will be like a Kevin Smith version of a LucasArt adventure game, where you play as Dante and solve mysteries around the small NJ town in which you reside, only to have the action frequently interrupted by the fact you have to serve customers in your dead-end convenience store clerk job. Choose the best dialogue options to avoid incident and be ever mindful of your foulmouthed companion Randall before he does or says something typically inflammatory. Lots of nonsequitur comedy and video game/movie parodies abound. I am of course basing this game on the superior cartoon adventures.
009. Item Presto-Chango Device
During Dungeon Crawlers, you find all kinds of random crap that you can't do anything with. What to do? Put them in this little gizmo (which could also be a spell of some kind) and hope something good happens. The effects are mostly random, with the potential reward (or punishment) equal to the quality of the item placed inside. You could end up with cash, XP, a weapon or something you could actually use or just some horrible demon chicken monster thing that will pluck your eyes out. After about five or six eye-pluckings, you may finally learn something and decide to leave that useless crap on the floor.
010. A Realistic Racing Game That Does Something Unexpected
Thundering through a flat city landscape around an uninspired circuit a dozen times and repeating the process for a slightly better time? Sounds... heavenly. So how about on the third lap you see Godzilla walking around blowing shit up? How will that affect your driving performance, seeing him torch downtown Tokyo while you're trying to carefully take corners without too much spin? With that deafening roar of his drowning out the horrible synthpop music? Without actually affecting the car's performance or the track too much (since apparently racing game enthusiasts are into that boring bullshit), the usually normal background areas beyond the track could explode with all sorts of random happenings-on, ranging from an all out meteor-storm, fire-n'-brimstone Armageddon (which will, curiously, be over once the race is complete) to something completely bizarre and often very subtle, like the moon growing in size with a big scary face on it (a la Majora's Mask) each time you complete a lap. For new players, it will friggin' blow their minds to see all the buildings suddenly flip upside down or something, hopefully causing an accident and creating entertainment to whomever has to watch this dreck.
OK, so that's 10. I'll do another 10 next week. Hopefully I'll be funnier/more innovative by then, but I wouldn't hold your breath since I'm not exactly getting paid by the word here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)