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.
