Not so much a whole developed game idea than another mechanic or potential RPG character gimmick.
There have been many "make words to score points" games in the past, starting with the boardgame grand-daddies Scrabble and Boggle and moving down to things like Wordtris and Bookworm Adventures. There's also a couple of RPG-ish ones like Dungeon Scroll, a game I'd recommend to anyone wanting to waste a few minutes building their vocabulary.
This idea is a little different from all of those. For one thing, it isn't about building the biggest words possible; you will in fact be limited to three letter words. Your character is learning the forbidden magical art of litermancy (which may be changed to wordamancy depending on which one sounds less dumb after I've slept on it), which relies on combining three runes to create various powerful effects. Of course, knowledge of what, exactly, each combination of the three runes does has been lost for centuries and will need to be rediscovered by your character.
While you planned on learning this idiosyncratic but potentially powerful art in relative safety and secrecy, a call goes out from your native Kingdom for all registered magic users (those able to use magic being rare in the kingdoms of this world) to be drafted into the Guardian Army to protect the state from an imminent invasion of evil-doers. Thrust out into active combat almost right away, you need to figure out your chosen magical art form and get good at it quick before you get killed; either by the enemy for fear of your emerging skills or by your own army for your wildy unpredictable magic.
The story follows a series of set battles, usually against a group of regular opponents or occasionally a single boss creature. You are taken to a screen with a bunch of jumbled up letters and must fill ten slots with ten three-letter words. The words you make become your magic spells for that battle, shuffled and given to you three at a time in a random order throughout the battle. Specific "real" words have unique effects based loosely around the traditional schools of magic: for instance, a RAT or CAT spell will summon the appropriate animals for a duration, doing damage and blocking enemy attacks towards you. GAP might conjure a hole in the ground to swallow up opponents (or give them trendy clothes, who knows?). Things like RAY or POW will cause direct evocation damage.
Those are the easy spells. You can get more abstract with some words which may end up doing more damage than the obvious ones. For example, SOL, which may not be a well-known alias of our sun, will do horrendous damage with a solar beam - perhaps doing more damage than the more-obvious SUN. Using something like GOD or BOX will have all sorts of interesting effects. Many, many words will have completely insane or benign effects that will either not affect the battle itself at all (though may confuse an opponent) or could end up damaging/aiding either or both sides in some way. Part of the fun (that'd be a good word to use in-game) of this game will be discovering what all these different words will do and maybe incorporating the unexpectedly great ones into your next battle, rather than relying on the same ol' bunch of obvious ones over and over.
As well as forming actual words, the game will have a system where each rune (not necessarily every letter, so you could get two of the same letters with different properties) will have an elemental property attached to it. These elemental properties will disappear if you make a "real" word, superseded by that real word's specific effect. But if you make a three letter combination that is either nonsense or a word that doesn't have a unique effect (there are a hell of a lot of three-letter words out there so not all of them can have unique effects), it will rely on its elemental background for its overall effect when cast. So a word with a strong Earth leaning (three green letters in a random configuration), when cast, will perform a random Earth spell such as a damaging earthquake or healing the good guys. Though usually beneficial to you (as opposed to the often random real words), relying on these random elemental words will not get you too far since their effects will generally be minimal.
I was considering adapting this system to allow for combo spells: You could cast what appears to be a nonsense spell (SHA) and then follow it up with another spell (DOW) to complete a whole six-letter word (SHADOW) for an even bigger spell effect, with the downside being that you have to hope that those two piece-words come up in the same turn. Because you can form 10 words (and this number may go up as your character gets more talented) and only have three available per combat round, you could pepper your arsenal with several of these twin-combo words and hope for a chance to use them. If not, they'll just default to their elemental spell effects. This would add a whole new bunch of unique words to the engine though, which will overload the memory along with all those unique three-letter words. Combine it with the possibility for nine-letter words and it's just getting ridiculous.
While this could go for it's own game easily enough, it could also be adapted into one of those ensemble RPGs where every character has a unique talent or skill. It may be a little dull to make all the new words each time in the latter's case, but it should still prove to be an interesting addition. With all the potentially humorous situations your apprentice magic-user could get into to with his "talent", combined with the amount of exploration to be done (into the words themselves), the game should be pretty awesome fun. IMO.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Game Idea: Braintrain
Note: I'm currently working on the Item Quest Design Doc, covering all the aspects of the game save the Master Item List (MIL.. 'cause, like, there's a million of them), which is going to take a long while. I'll be cribbing from all sorts of places to fill that list (and not just from other video games, which I will steal from like the hack I am). I want to also want to bring some attention to Squidi's Three Hundred Mechanics thing he's got going on here:
http://www.squidi.net/three/index.php
I'll be posting nitpicks and suggestions in the forum until he gets tired of my backseat-designerisms and kicks me out. The dude's good at coming up with that stuff and, unlike me, he actually includes pictures. Which really do help.
So, this idea then. It's inspired in part by train simulators like Railroad Tycoon and an old PC/Amiga game called Transartica, which was a strategy game set in a post-apocalyptic future where the world is trapped in a nuclear winter in which rival train/delivery companies moved vital supplies over the frozen landscape to remote subterranean settlements. Like Elite, it involved buying goods you can trade off for a higher price at another destination and fighting off the various smugglers and pirates that attack you on your journey.
This game builds on that somewhat. It's the future, where intergalactic travel and terraforming technology exists, but is still in their respective infancy stages. In newly terraformed worlds, settlers are dropped in the just-barely livable conditions and are expected to make the best of it and develop the land. The game is set around one of these worlds, a planet close to Earth but in its initial stages: volcanic and often dangerous. You play a merchant who has travelled to this planet to use your knowledge of trading for the great wealth that is supposed to lie under the planet. As such, you've developed technology that will allow normal trains to run on nothing but steam and the various inexpensive minerals that the planet has in vast quantities. Developing a train route between the various outposts on the planet (which are pre-generated by the computer, as you only control the rail aspect), you slowly build up your rail empire and find new and better ways to develop your trains and railtracks for optimum trading opportunities.
Although you have regressed in technology from the space-age facilities of your home planet (Earth), you still have correspondence with the space-faring trade company your family owns. Occasionally, they'll provide resources and technology for you by delivering them via launched space-containers: This relatively inexpensive mode of travel is basically dropping cargo from nearby deep space, aiming various containers made of a hyper-strong and space-worthy material towards your planet, so that you may find where they crash and use them for your operation. Of course, as this technology is cheap and affordable (since it is just a cannon in space firing things at your planet), there are times when the containers are delivered somewhat off-course from your home base. Part of your journey around the trading routes will invariably involve finding and securing these containers. In return, you're expected to launch containers full of valuable mined material (received in trades from the mining outposts you deal business with) back into space for your relatives to find and sell back to interested parties.
The game works in stages, or, more accurately, eras. The planet only has a few outposts initially so your trading route is basic and newbie-friendly. You're introduced to new technology and challenges to overcome as the game progresses so the difficulty curve will be kind to you as you gradually learn the ropes. Eventually, should you fulfill all the trade requirements and goals in the current incarnation of your merchant empire, you'll skip ahead to the next generation (that is, your original character's children) about 20 years later. This new stage will have expanded your people's established civilisation on this planet, based on your success as the planet's driving merchant force, and will have bigger and more elaborate outposts in higher numbers. You'll be able to see how Earth's occupation of the planet is going over the years as you play. As you and your off-world company grow in wealth (what with all the successful trading), you'll have access to improvements in your train and rail technology.
Eventually, though you'll be dealing in meagre human trainrobbers and bandits in the first few eras, you'll meet a few rival alien merchants who have had the same idea and plan to usurp your valuable operation for the same important minerals to export to their own planet/empire. Some of these alien interlopers will be fairly harmless and fair, acting as rival traders eager for their own piece of the pie and friendly enough for you to trade with, since you're not always going after the same valuable materials (one man's trash is another man's treasure, so to speak). Others will be far more hostile, sweeping the planet for anything valuable and often attacking both trains and outposts alike for their mined treasures. Your trains will be able to upgrade themselves with weapons (like gun turrets and ground-to-air missiles) and even have passenger cars for small security forces with which to combat these hostiles. Also watch out that these same bandits/aliens don't collect the various cargo drops from space that you're relying on; you'll get prior notice of new arrivals but it won't help if the containers land too close to where an enemy encampment is and you're not there in time.
So yeah, this idea borrows from games like Transartica and Elite and the sci-fi epic Dune somewhat, but the core of the game is trade. Upgrading your train to be an unstoppable death engine full of turrets and soldiers is one route to take, but you wouldn't be able to hold much on your train if you did it and you sort of need those traded minerals for your business to stay afloat. Similarly, making your train too big or too weapons-light will make it an easy target for trainrobbers and alien menaces alike. Maintaining your age-old (or at least it will be age-old in the later stages) rail empire against increasing dangers for increasing profit is the goal and it should be pretty enthralling for train sim and strategy game enthusiasts alike.
NB: The name comes from what I'm expecting to be the game's major antagonist in the later stages of the game: A sentient alien train that usurps the same track system to attack your own trains for their trade goods. The engine out in front will just be a giant alien brain and face on wheels. Sort of goofy, I know, but then I was a big fan of Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors as a kid.
http://www.squidi.net/three/index.php
I'll be posting nitpicks and suggestions in the forum until he gets tired of my backseat-designerisms and kicks me out. The dude's good at coming up with that stuff and, unlike me, he actually includes pictures. Which really do help.
So, this idea then. It's inspired in part by train simulators like Railroad Tycoon and an old PC/Amiga game called Transartica, which was a strategy game set in a post-apocalyptic future where the world is trapped in a nuclear winter in which rival train/delivery companies moved vital supplies over the frozen landscape to remote subterranean settlements. Like Elite, it involved buying goods you can trade off for a higher price at another destination and fighting off the various smugglers and pirates that attack you on your journey.
This game builds on that somewhat. It's the future, where intergalactic travel and terraforming technology exists, but is still in their respective infancy stages. In newly terraformed worlds, settlers are dropped in the just-barely livable conditions and are expected to make the best of it and develop the land. The game is set around one of these worlds, a planet close to Earth but in its initial stages: volcanic and often dangerous. You play a merchant who has travelled to this planet to use your knowledge of trading for the great wealth that is supposed to lie under the planet. As such, you've developed technology that will allow normal trains to run on nothing but steam and the various inexpensive minerals that the planet has in vast quantities. Developing a train route between the various outposts on the planet (which are pre-generated by the computer, as you only control the rail aspect), you slowly build up your rail empire and find new and better ways to develop your trains and railtracks for optimum trading opportunities.
Although you have regressed in technology from the space-age facilities of your home planet (Earth), you still have correspondence with the space-faring trade company your family owns. Occasionally, they'll provide resources and technology for you by delivering them via launched space-containers: This relatively inexpensive mode of travel is basically dropping cargo from nearby deep space, aiming various containers made of a hyper-strong and space-worthy material towards your planet, so that you may find where they crash and use them for your operation. Of course, as this technology is cheap and affordable (since it is just a cannon in space firing things at your planet), there are times when the containers are delivered somewhat off-course from your home base. Part of your journey around the trading routes will invariably involve finding and securing these containers. In return, you're expected to launch containers full of valuable mined material (received in trades from the mining outposts you deal business with) back into space for your relatives to find and sell back to interested parties.
The game works in stages, or, more accurately, eras. The planet only has a few outposts initially so your trading route is basic and newbie-friendly. You're introduced to new technology and challenges to overcome as the game progresses so the difficulty curve will be kind to you as you gradually learn the ropes. Eventually, should you fulfill all the trade requirements and goals in the current incarnation of your merchant empire, you'll skip ahead to the next generation (that is, your original character's children) about 20 years later. This new stage will have expanded your people's established civilisation on this planet, based on your success as the planet's driving merchant force, and will have bigger and more elaborate outposts in higher numbers. You'll be able to see how Earth's occupation of the planet is going over the years as you play. As you and your off-world company grow in wealth (what with all the successful trading), you'll have access to improvements in your train and rail technology.
Eventually, though you'll be dealing in meagre human trainrobbers and bandits in the first few eras, you'll meet a few rival alien merchants who have had the same idea and plan to usurp your valuable operation for the same important minerals to export to their own planet/empire. Some of these alien interlopers will be fairly harmless and fair, acting as rival traders eager for their own piece of the pie and friendly enough for you to trade with, since you're not always going after the same valuable materials (one man's trash is another man's treasure, so to speak). Others will be far more hostile, sweeping the planet for anything valuable and often attacking both trains and outposts alike for their mined treasures. Your trains will be able to upgrade themselves with weapons (like gun turrets and ground-to-air missiles) and even have passenger cars for small security forces with which to combat these hostiles. Also watch out that these same bandits/aliens don't collect the various cargo drops from space that you're relying on; you'll get prior notice of new arrivals but it won't help if the containers land too close to where an enemy encampment is and you're not there in time.
So yeah, this idea borrows from games like Transartica and Elite and the sci-fi epic Dune somewhat, but the core of the game is trade. Upgrading your train to be an unstoppable death engine full of turrets and soldiers is one route to take, but you wouldn't be able to hold much on your train if you did it and you sort of need those traded minerals for your business to stay afloat. Similarly, making your train too big or too weapons-light will make it an easy target for trainrobbers and alien menaces alike. Maintaining your age-old (or at least it will be age-old in the later stages) rail empire against increasing dangers for increasing profit is the goal and it should be pretty enthralling for train sim and strategy game enthusiasts alike.
NB: The name comes from what I'm expecting to be the game's major antagonist in the later stages of the game: A sentient alien train that usurps the same track system to attack your own trains for their trade goods. The engine out in front will just be a giant alien brain and face on wheels. Sort of goofy, I know, but then I was a big fan of Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors as a kid.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Game Idea: Choose Your Own Video Game
OK, my game idea is particularly meta this week, possibly even downright postmodern.
It starts with the concept of the Choose Your Own Adventure books that were all the rage 10 to 20 years ago. Maybe they still are, I don't know. Like I know what kids are into. iPods and Youtube and "Weblogs". With this kind of generation gap humor, I'm so close to a syndicated comic strip I can taste it. But I digress. In these books you started at Blurb #1, and very quickly found yourself making decisions that would affect the course of the rest of the story, turning pages until you discover the results of the latest monumental decision. Then you had the morbid kids like myself who would just scan the book for all the end-game scenarios that resulted in gory death. Like, not even to cheat, but just to read about how the dude fell down a dark hole and was eaten by a grue.
Anyway, this idea sort of takes that concept and exaggerates it. I'm not talking about branching storylines so much; they're everywhere in video games already. Instead, what this game does is judge the decisions made by the player and changes the genre of the gameplay accordingly.
You start with a simple third-person 3D Platformer format, since that is generally the most basic and easily modifiable (when adding subgenres) of modern game genres. You are given a basic plot hook (rescue the princess; save the big diamond; defeat the bad guys) and set off on an adventure. The levels will be episodic like a normal 3D Platformer, with self-contained worlds and various goals to achieve in them. The first level will be mostly tutorial in nature, giving you the controls and instructions of the current "basic" form. However, you'll reach a small, somewhat ominous area before the next level where you'll receive the first power-up of the game.
And, of course, this power-up will be based on a multiple choice decision.
You have a table with three items: a sword, a gun and a staff. Choosing the sword means that, subconsciously (or at least this is how the game will interpret and promote its gimmick), you want to play a game with lots of hand-to-hand fighting and beating up bad guys in close-combat, setting up the first Fighter beacon (a system of beacons will be used to demonstrate what genre you're heading towards: I figure they'd be like the batsignal, but with an icon that depicts the current genre focus in the light beam instead). The next level for the sword guy will feature far more enemies than the previous, which will be fought in a Scrolling Fighter-type smashfest. However, since this is only the first Fighter beacon to go up, the gameplay will still mostly resemble that of the original Platformer, just with a few "A, A, B, A" fighting combos. If you continue making "Fighter game" type decisions, the game will adjust the gameplay to match the hack-happy thought process behind those decisions.
Similarly, choosing the Gun will shift the game's genre to a TPS (third-person shooter) game, which also share the same kind of "horde attack" of the Fighter scenario but with more TPS-unique situations (like using cover, or switching to different guns depending on distance/accuracy/necessary firepower for bosses). The staff will hint that an RPG is more your thing, which subsequently gives you arbitrary stats and changes your health bar to a numerical "HP" amount. These stats are completely irrelevant and are more for display after the first RPG beacon goes up, but getting more RPG beacons will change the game world and your character's abilities to match these stats, and may even eventually start making everyone move in turns like proper well-behaved RPG antagonists.
Each level, after its completion, will give you another chance to shift the game based on the unconscious desire for the type of game you really want. A future level's decision might ask you what tactic you plan to use for assailing the enemy's stronghold: Sneak in? Go in the front way by gung-ho force? Find a way to magic yourself in? Find allies? The first decision may start adding Stealth-elements to the gameplay, while the fourth could add an RPG party (if you're focusing on RPG elements) or some kind of squad-based shooter (if you're focusing on TPS elements).
A factor of this game is the collectible items: In Platformer games, this secondary goal is generally a capricious collect-fest of useless knick-knacks. As the genre "evolves", they start to mean something. If we have a bunch of common yellow items and a rarer red item or two, this could translate in the TPS world as "bullets" and "new guns". In the RPG world it would be "money" and "new equipment". In the more spartan Fighter games, maybe just "bonus points" and "food/heal items". This way, the levels can be generally the same (the layout will be more or less equal no matter what the genre, but the content will change) without too much manipulation.
Another thing about the levels: Although most of the early stages would be the same (for the purposes of not having to make a unique game for every decision made) as soon as a solid genre is decided upon by the gamer, they can start to move away from this linear progression. Subsequently, if you've been deciding on a majority of TPS beacons/decisions, you'll eventually reach the TPS version's endgame which would be a series of levels based on the TPS genre and culminating in a proper TPS end of game boss (a giant fellah that needs several good rockets to the face would be my guess). Likewise, the RPG genre version, once realised enough with plenty of RPG beacons/decisions, will turn into a proper dungeon crawl with a Lich or Dragon as the end of game boss.
One last note about this system is the cross-genreing that could go on with indecisive players who started with a Fighter but wants to switch to the gun-happy TPS mode: You get a chance to do so. The game will keep the hand-to-hand cronies, but also introduce bullets and guns as the collectible items. Thus, you can start shooting away at the burly gang-members that affront you. Choosing "Fighter" again at the next decision will take away the ammunition lying around and replace them with "Fighter" items (but not the guns you already have, giving you a slight but only temporary advantage), and choosing "TPS" again will take away the burly gang members with chainwhips and replace them with gun-toting enemy soldiers. Likewise, you could make decisions to change the fancy schmancy medieval RPG scenario into a Fighting-fest, allowing you to spin kick the cliché blobs and skeletons until a more solid bias can be made between the two conflicting genre types.
As well as the TPS/RPG/Fighter decisions, as you progress with one specific genre in mind, you can add subgenres to it with future between-level decisions. For instance, both the Fighter and the Shooter can be given Stealth elements if you choose to "sneak into" the enemy stronghold. This will make the enemies both more dangerous but less alert, prompting you to take them out without too much backfire. It'll also give the enemies things like line of sight and hearing, so that they stop unerringly honing in on your position (like most confrontational action games) and start walking around a set pattern allowing you to get past them /take them out with careful planning. You could instead introduce the idea of a sniper rifle to the Shooter genre instead of the shotgun, making the patrolling enemies far more nonchalant with a reliance on their powerful weaponry (hence needing to snipe them safely from a distance) than the bloodthirsty (but relatively less damaging) hordes you would mow down with your close-combat pump-action or chainsaw bayonet.
This is my favorite part: After every game playthrough, you can save the finished product of your ADD genre-mixing and start the game from scratch with this hybrid genre in effect right from the get-go. If you found the perfect mix of action and strategy with a Fighter/TPS mix with squad-based combat thrown in at later levels, you can play that game right from the start without all the decision-making interrupting the gameplay. As you unlock each of the end-of-game scenarios (remember, they branch out into a unique few levels and a boss towards the end), you'll have more choice over what the perfect version of the game would be like. Stealth? Fighter? RPG? Maybe even a Racing element or some kind of regression back to the initial kid-friendly Platformer mold (which will take some very mild decision making, such as letting the captured bad guy from level 5 off with a warning instead of putting his head on a banner to lead into war with a la the more violent game modes available.) You could even choose to send your RPG hero into the world of tough TPS action, once both scenarios have been completed, giving you a bizarre playthrough as you duck for cover to block enemy gunfire as you fireball their asses.
Obviously a multi-genre game of this magnitude would be a little resources-heavy to pull off, not to mention the sheer dissonance between game styles and the subsequent lengthy playtesting that would need to be done with each genre-merging, but it's not entirely out of the question with a developer that's crazy enough to take it on (sounds like a bad movie tagline..). Not only would it be a kickass game for someone who doesn't know what they want or isn't always in the mood for the same type of game each time, but it would also be a cool thing for obsessive completists like myself who wants to see each end of game boss and each possible combination, with the evolution of the main character from Regular Joe to gruff army colonel or effete spell-lobber or a badass kung-fu bandana dude or shady ninja or an anthropomorphic cartoon character of some kind... or even some mixture of the above.
Damn, I've never been more excited about a game idea that couldn't possibly work since that one where 50ft-tall cheerleaders take over Manhattan.
It starts with the concept of the Choose Your Own Adventure books that were all the rage 10 to 20 years ago. Maybe they still are, I don't know. Like I know what kids are into. iPods and Youtube and "Weblogs". With this kind of generation gap humor, I'm so close to a syndicated comic strip I can taste it. But I digress. In these books you started at Blurb #1, and very quickly found yourself making decisions that would affect the course of the rest of the story, turning pages until you discover the results of the latest monumental decision. Then you had the morbid kids like myself who would just scan the book for all the end-game scenarios that resulted in gory death. Like, not even to cheat, but just to read about how the dude fell down a dark hole and was eaten by a grue.
Anyway, this idea sort of takes that concept and exaggerates it. I'm not talking about branching storylines so much; they're everywhere in video games already. Instead, what this game does is judge the decisions made by the player and changes the genre of the gameplay accordingly.
You start with a simple third-person 3D Platformer format, since that is generally the most basic and easily modifiable (when adding subgenres) of modern game genres. You are given a basic plot hook (rescue the princess; save the big diamond; defeat the bad guys) and set off on an adventure. The levels will be episodic like a normal 3D Platformer, with self-contained worlds and various goals to achieve in them. The first level will be mostly tutorial in nature, giving you the controls and instructions of the current "basic" form. However, you'll reach a small, somewhat ominous area before the next level where you'll receive the first power-up of the game.
And, of course, this power-up will be based on a multiple choice decision.
You have a table with three items: a sword, a gun and a staff. Choosing the sword means that, subconsciously (or at least this is how the game will interpret and promote its gimmick), you want to play a game with lots of hand-to-hand fighting and beating up bad guys in close-combat, setting up the first Fighter beacon (a system of beacons will be used to demonstrate what genre you're heading towards: I figure they'd be like the batsignal, but with an icon that depicts the current genre focus in the light beam instead). The next level for the sword guy will feature far more enemies than the previous, which will be fought in a Scrolling Fighter-type smashfest. However, since this is only the first Fighter beacon to go up, the gameplay will still mostly resemble that of the original Platformer, just with a few "A, A, B, A" fighting combos. If you continue making "Fighter game" type decisions, the game will adjust the gameplay to match the hack-happy thought process behind those decisions.
Similarly, choosing the Gun will shift the game's genre to a TPS (third-person shooter) game, which also share the same kind of "horde attack" of the Fighter scenario but with more TPS-unique situations (like using cover, or switching to different guns depending on distance/accuracy/necessary firepower for bosses). The staff will hint that an RPG is more your thing, which subsequently gives you arbitrary stats and changes your health bar to a numerical "HP" amount. These stats are completely irrelevant and are more for display after the first RPG beacon goes up, but getting more RPG beacons will change the game world and your character's abilities to match these stats, and may even eventually start making everyone move in turns like proper well-behaved RPG antagonists.
Each level, after its completion, will give you another chance to shift the game based on the unconscious desire for the type of game you really want. A future level's decision might ask you what tactic you plan to use for assailing the enemy's stronghold: Sneak in? Go in the front way by gung-ho force? Find a way to magic yourself in? Find allies? The first decision may start adding Stealth-elements to the gameplay, while the fourth could add an RPG party (if you're focusing on RPG elements) or some kind of squad-based shooter (if you're focusing on TPS elements).
A factor of this game is the collectible items: In Platformer games, this secondary goal is generally a capricious collect-fest of useless knick-knacks. As the genre "evolves", they start to mean something. If we have a bunch of common yellow items and a rarer red item or two, this could translate in the TPS world as "bullets" and "new guns". In the RPG world it would be "money" and "new equipment". In the more spartan Fighter games, maybe just "bonus points" and "food/heal items". This way, the levels can be generally the same (the layout will be more or less equal no matter what the genre, but the content will change) without too much manipulation.
Another thing about the levels: Although most of the early stages would be the same (for the purposes of not having to make a unique game for every decision made) as soon as a solid genre is decided upon by the gamer, they can start to move away from this linear progression. Subsequently, if you've been deciding on a majority of TPS beacons/decisions, you'll eventually reach the TPS version's endgame which would be a series of levels based on the TPS genre and culminating in a proper TPS end of game boss (a giant fellah that needs several good rockets to the face would be my guess). Likewise, the RPG genre version, once realised enough with plenty of RPG beacons/decisions, will turn into a proper dungeon crawl with a Lich or Dragon as the end of game boss.
One last note about this system is the cross-genreing that could go on with indecisive players who started with a Fighter but wants to switch to the gun-happy TPS mode: You get a chance to do so. The game will keep the hand-to-hand cronies, but also introduce bullets and guns as the collectible items. Thus, you can start shooting away at the burly gang-members that affront you. Choosing "Fighter" again at the next decision will take away the ammunition lying around and replace them with "Fighter" items (but not the guns you already have, giving you a slight but only temporary advantage), and choosing "TPS" again will take away the burly gang members with chainwhips and replace them with gun-toting enemy soldiers. Likewise, you could make decisions to change the fancy schmancy medieval RPG scenario into a Fighting-fest, allowing you to spin kick the cliché blobs and skeletons until a more solid bias can be made between the two conflicting genre types.
As well as the TPS/RPG/Fighter decisions, as you progress with one specific genre in mind, you can add subgenres to it with future between-level decisions. For instance, both the Fighter and the Shooter can be given Stealth elements if you choose to "sneak into" the enemy stronghold. This will make the enemies both more dangerous but less alert, prompting you to take them out without too much backfire. It'll also give the enemies things like line of sight and hearing, so that they stop unerringly honing in on your position (like most confrontational action games) and start walking around a set pattern allowing you to get past them /take them out with careful planning. You could instead introduce the idea of a sniper rifle to the Shooter genre instead of the shotgun, making the patrolling enemies far more nonchalant with a reliance on their powerful weaponry (hence needing to snipe them safely from a distance) than the bloodthirsty (but relatively less damaging) hordes you would mow down with your close-combat pump-action or chainsaw bayonet.
This is my favorite part: After every game playthrough, you can save the finished product of your ADD genre-mixing and start the game from scratch with this hybrid genre in effect right from the get-go. If you found the perfect mix of action and strategy with a Fighter/TPS mix with squad-based combat thrown in at later levels, you can play that game right from the start without all the decision-making interrupting the gameplay. As you unlock each of the end-of-game scenarios (remember, they branch out into a unique few levels and a boss towards the end), you'll have more choice over what the perfect version of the game would be like. Stealth? Fighter? RPG? Maybe even a Racing element or some kind of regression back to the initial kid-friendly Platformer mold (which will take some very mild decision making, such as letting the captured bad guy from level 5 off with a warning instead of putting his head on a banner to lead into war with a la the more violent game modes available.) You could even choose to send your RPG hero into the world of tough TPS action, once both scenarios have been completed, giving you a bizarre playthrough as you duck for cover to block enemy gunfire as you fireball their asses.
Obviously a multi-genre game of this magnitude would be a little resources-heavy to pull off, not to mention the sheer dissonance between game styles and the subsequent lengthy playtesting that would need to be done with each genre-merging, but it's not entirely out of the question with a developer that's crazy enough to take it on (sounds like a bad movie tagline..). Not only would it be a kickass game for someone who doesn't know what they want or isn't always in the mood for the same type of game each time, but it would also be a cool thing for obsessive completists like myself who wants to see each end of game boss and each possible combination, with the evolution of the main character from Regular Joe to gruff army colonel or effete spell-lobber or a badass kung-fu bandana dude or shady ninja or an anthropomorphic cartoon character of some kind... or even some mixture of the above.
Damn, I've never been more excited about a game idea that couldn't possibly work since that one where 50ft-tall cheerleaders take over Manhattan.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
More RPG Hybrids
OK, I'm three days late, so I'll do three game ideas today to make up for it. I think that's fair.
Continuing on from the previous Design Genres article, I wanted to come up with more ways an RPG subgenre can be latched onto games that traditionally don't feature any kind of in-depth character development.
Idea #1: RPG/Pinball
Video game Pinball has come a long way from the simple bonuses and buttons on one or more highly-realized pinball tables (because why not just play the real thing?) to franchises like Pokemon Pinball, where you have a separate goal beyond just breaking into the highscore table to find and collect as many Pokemon as possible and evolve them, completing the in-game Pokedex. Also, and more relevant to my own idea, are the Odami and Metroid Prime pinball games, which have enemies on-screen that you must defeat with the pinball to proceed with the game.
The RPG Pinball idea is similar to the Worms/Strategic 2D Platformer idea last time as it involves a PC (player character) wizard who uses the pinball itself as a sort of magic missile to defeat enemies. Exploring a dungeon, which may be four or five "tables" in length, you can defeat the guardians to proceed further and unlock all kinds of treasures and equipment to use. You may even gain additional powers, allowing you to adapt the regular pinball into something more damaging (like a fireball or a cannonball) to do more damage or unlock specific hidden bonuses - you could shoot a fireball into a tapestry, burning it down and revealing a treasure chest.
The game would have XP (experience) and GP (gold) like a regular RPG, and between dungeons you can use these values to purchase new skills or power-ups to use in the field. Your XP will also dictate what dungeons are available, as tougher ones will continue to open up as you climb XP levels. As well as the pinball spell and variants (fireball, etc.) you can use special spells such as Lightning Bolts (which bounce around the arena at random, damaging enemies sometimes deflecting the pinball) or Time Slow to stop faster enemies from moving around too quickly to hit. Instead of one or two highly-complex tables to work off, there would be several smaller ones with their own traps, bonuses and enemies to take care of. They could range from normal castle-like dungeons to natural (maybe volcanic) caves to goblin fortresses to ancient marble temples full of undead.
Idea #2: RPG/Sports
Now, this one sounds a little daft. First off, I should point out that there are many sports games that allow your players to gain stats and get better between games by training or what have you. There are several managerial franchises that depend on this sort of development from a young potential signing to eventual star player.
However, this is where the "daft" comes in. The game is set in a vaguely Middle Earth type world where demons are spilling out of dimensional portals and generally causing a ruckus. A group of wizards have found a feasible way to create magical anomalies (which are in various shapes) that will close any portal it is sent into. There are special conditions for each one, however, which means each dimensional portal can only be closed in a specific way.
You control the leader of a group of mercenaries/adventurers who will transport these anomalies to their portals and try and get them past the defending demons to seal the dimensional portals forever. Each of these scenarios will be played out like a sports game, where the demons are actively trying to recover the anomalies you've made and destroy them before they can close their gate to this world. The adventurers have to pass/kick/throw the anomalies between each other to get it out of the demons' way and then somehow get it to the "goal" to finish the match. As you move around the world, you will have to play a different sport for each new area. For instance, in the cold arctic north, you may need to play Ice Hockey. In the aquatic island region it could be something like Water Polo or Volleyball.
Obviously the game would have to be a little tongue-in-cheek to adhere to the respective sports' rules, instead of just having the team of adventurers kill the demons and reach the portal like in a normal RPG. Maybe some kind of magical gaeas or something. As well as traditional sports stats such as endurance, strength, reactions and speed, you would also have a miscellaneous RPG trait or two. For instance, your winger could be an Elven Archer who could shoot an attacking demon if he's about to tackle another player, distracting him long enough for the player with the ball to get past him. In which case, he would need an accuracy stat for his bow. Likewise, you could have special attacks and tricks for other players in the field: An Illusionist could recreate a clone of the player with the ball, potentially fooling a demon into going for the fake one. A Dwarven Berserker could take the ball and charge downfield ignoring attacks made by the demons. You would have to configure and train your group of adventurers and use them for the appropriate sports. Casualties are to be expected, so make sure to heal often and hire new talent to replace those lost.
Idea #3: RPG/Katamari Damacy
OK, it may seem like my desperation for trying to come up with three different genres to attach an RPG element to is becoming evident. But this is as far from the truth as you can get. Maybe. The goal of Katamari Damacy is to build one's Katamari as big and as quickly as possible. It really doesn't need an RPG element, since the gameplay is nearly perfect in its simplicity as is. However, I'm not one to shy from a challenge, or at least a chance to ruin a better game designer's great idea out of spite.
In each Katamari level, there are various hidden or rare items that may take a modicum of searching or a bigger Katamari than can be feasibly expected to roll it up. These items give you a big "happiness" bonus, as they happen to be one of the King of all Cosmo's "favorite" things about Earth. More often than not, these bonus items will be pictures, sculptures, origami models or engraved coins which all feature the King himself in some way (the modest type that he is).
Let's take the usual first stage of a Katamari game as an example; someone's living room or bedroom. As well as the usual objects, there are five of these special "King" objects; A coin (which is inside a box full of other items), a shampoo bottle (which is high on a shelf), a statue that resembles an Oscar (which would be very heavy/big and therefore need a large Katamari to find), a novel about the King (which would be on the bookshelf with other books, so you'll need to roll them all up) and a child's drawing of the King (which is underneath a box or something on the floor). All of these objects would be hard to find/reach/roll-up, but they'll give you a bonus at the end of the level.
These happiness bonuses can then be traded in for powers and accessories, sort of like those available in the second game. Powers include: Iron Prince, which stops you losing so much from the Katamari when you get hit; Eye For Taste, which allows you to spot hidden King items when you're close enough; Camaraderie, which lets you identify what cousins are available and where they are in a stage and Magnetic Personality, which allows very small items to actually be attracted towards the Katamari.
In the levels where success is determined by the type of items you rolled up over the sheer quantity (such as that level in We Love Katamari where you needed to roll up expensive items), the King items would be worth considerably more than others. Finding all the King items from every level may even unlock a surprise or two. The King is a very vain fellow, so pleasing him with all these fan items will no doubt have beneficial consequences.
Well, three more ideas about how specific game genres could employ an additional RPG trait. Of course, whether or not these games would actually prosper with this RPG aspect is entirely academic.
Continuing on from the previous Design Genres article, I wanted to come up with more ways an RPG subgenre can be latched onto games that traditionally don't feature any kind of in-depth character development.
Idea #1: RPG/Pinball
Video game Pinball has come a long way from the simple bonuses and buttons on one or more highly-realized pinball tables (because why not just play the real thing?) to franchises like Pokemon Pinball, where you have a separate goal beyond just breaking into the highscore table to find and collect as many Pokemon as possible and evolve them, completing the in-game Pokedex. Also, and more relevant to my own idea, are the Odami and Metroid Prime pinball games, which have enemies on-screen that you must defeat with the pinball to proceed with the game.
The RPG Pinball idea is similar to the Worms/Strategic 2D Platformer idea last time as it involves a PC (player character) wizard who uses the pinball itself as a sort of magic missile to defeat enemies. Exploring a dungeon, which may be four or five "tables" in length, you can defeat the guardians to proceed further and unlock all kinds of treasures and equipment to use. You may even gain additional powers, allowing you to adapt the regular pinball into something more damaging (like a fireball or a cannonball) to do more damage or unlock specific hidden bonuses - you could shoot a fireball into a tapestry, burning it down and revealing a treasure chest.
The game would have XP (experience) and GP (gold) like a regular RPG, and between dungeons you can use these values to purchase new skills or power-ups to use in the field. Your XP will also dictate what dungeons are available, as tougher ones will continue to open up as you climb XP levels. As well as the pinball spell and variants (fireball, etc.) you can use special spells such as Lightning Bolts (which bounce around the arena at random, damaging enemies sometimes deflecting the pinball) or Time Slow to stop faster enemies from moving around too quickly to hit. Instead of one or two highly-complex tables to work off, there would be several smaller ones with their own traps, bonuses and enemies to take care of. They could range from normal castle-like dungeons to natural (maybe volcanic) caves to goblin fortresses to ancient marble temples full of undead.
Idea #2: RPG/Sports
Now, this one sounds a little daft. First off, I should point out that there are many sports games that allow your players to gain stats and get better between games by training or what have you. There are several managerial franchises that depend on this sort of development from a young potential signing to eventual star player.
However, this is where the "daft" comes in. The game is set in a vaguely Middle Earth type world where demons are spilling out of dimensional portals and generally causing a ruckus. A group of wizards have found a feasible way to create magical anomalies (which are in various shapes) that will close any portal it is sent into. There are special conditions for each one, however, which means each dimensional portal can only be closed in a specific way.
You control the leader of a group of mercenaries/adventurers who will transport these anomalies to their portals and try and get them past the defending demons to seal the dimensional portals forever. Each of these scenarios will be played out like a sports game, where the demons are actively trying to recover the anomalies you've made and destroy them before they can close their gate to this world. The adventurers have to pass/kick/throw the anomalies between each other to get it out of the demons' way and then somehow get it to the "goal" to finish the match. As you move around the world, you will have to play a different sport for each new area. For instance, in the cold arctic north, you may need to play Ice Hockey. In the aquatic island region it could be something like Water Polo or Volleyball.
Obviously the game would have to be a little tongue-in-cheek to adhere to the respective sports' rules, instead of just having the team of adventurers kill the demons and reach the portal like in a normal RPG. Maybe some kind of magical gaeas or something. As well as traditional sports stats such as endurance, strength, reactions and speed, you would also have a miscellaneous RPG trait or two. For instance, your winger could be an Elven Archer who could shoot an attacking demon if he's about to tackle another player, distracting him long enough for the player with the ball to get past him. In which case, he would need an accuracy stat for his bow. Likewise, you could have special attacks and tricks for other players in the field: An Illusionist could recreate a clone of the player with the ball, potentially fooling a demon into going for the fake one. A Dwarven Berserker could take the ball and charge downfield ignoring attacks made by the demons. You would have to configure and train your group of adventurers and use them for the appropriate sports. Casualties are to be expected, so make sure to heal often and hire new talent to replace those lost.
Idea #3: RPG/Katamari Damacy
OK, it may seem like my desperation for trying to come up with three different genres to attach an RPG element to is becoming evident. But this is as far from the truth as you can get. Maybe. The goal of Katamari Damacy is to build one's Katamari as big and as quickly as possible. It really doesn't need an RPG element, since the gameplay is nearly perfect in its simplicity as is. However, I'm not one to shy from a challenge, or at least a chance to ruin a better game designer's great idea out of spite.
In each Katamari level, there are various hidden or rare items that may take a modicum of searching or a bigger Katamari than can be feasibly expected to roll it up. These items give you a big "happiness" bonus, as they happen to be one of the King of all Cosmo's "favorite" things about Earth. More often than not, these bonus items will be pictures, sculptures, origami models or engraved coins which all feature the King himself in some way (the modest type that he is).
Let's take the usual first stage of a Katamari game as an example; someone's living room or bedroom. As well as the usual objects, there are five of these special "King" objects; A coin (which is inside a box full of other items), a shampoo bottle (which is high on a shelf), a statue that resembles an Oscar (which would be very heavy/big and therefore need a large Katamari to find), a novel about the King (which would be on the bookshelf with other books, so you'll need to roll them all up) and a child's drawing of the King (which is underneath a box or something on the floor). All of these objects would be hard to find/reach/roll-up, but they'll give you a bonus at the end of the level.
These happiness bonuses can then be traded in for powers and accessories, sort of like those available in the second game. Powers include: Iron Prince, which stops you losing so much from the Katamari when you get hit; Eye For Taste, which allows you to spot hidden King items when you're close enough; Camaraderie, which lets you identify what cousins are available and where they are in a stage and Magnetic Personality, which allows very small items to actually be attracted towards the Katamari.
In the levels where success is determined by the type of items you rolled up over the sheer quantity (such as that level in We Love Katamari where you needed to roll up expensive items), the King items would be worth considerably more than others. Finding all the King items from every level may even unlock a surprise or two. The King is a very vain fellow, so pleasing him with all these fan items will no doubt have beneficial consequences.
Well, three more ideas about how specific game genres could employ an additional RPG trait. Of course, whether or not these games would actually prosper with this RPG aspect is entirely academic.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Deconstructing Qix
Something a little different this week. I will take a classic arcade staple (in this case, Qix) and discuss the core elements of its gameplay, and how those core elements can be transferred or integrated into other games and game genres. I am able to do this because the core gameplay of Qix is a free license, if not the name itself (which belongs to Taito), which is why there are so many Qix clones around that aren't called Qix.
First, the fundamentals of the Qix gameplay: The goal is to fill-in portions of the screen by piloting your ship from the safe-ish border to draw squares in the "danger zone" before the enemies in the unshaded area can attack you or your unfinished line. Successfully reaching the border again with your line will fill/shade-in the percentage of the screen you managed to box in. If your line gets hit midway, you lose a life. Filling 75% of the screen will complete the level, though sometimes this goal % can vary. The game's system demands a fair amount of caution, but also the occasional bold move to cover a large percentage in one go. There are also various techniques you can employ, such as making a bridge of safe small boxes from one side of the screen to the other in order to trap the wider area above/below this bridge.
Second, I'll discuss how this system can be translated or integrated into other games. The most basic way, obviously, is to transfer the entire thing as-is into the core game as an optional mini-game. In this case the victory conditions and the game itself are the same, it's just a game-within-a-game with little relevance to the actual game in which it appears. Compilations of Taito arcade games often feature Qix in its entirety. Sometimes there's an arbitrary beneficial effect for the main game in which Qix is a minigame, such as in Rockstar's Bully, where the Art class is a Qix-based minigame that grants you bonuses to your character's skills depending on your success. In this case simply achieving Qix's usual victory conditions is sufficient for the main game bonus, which is unrelated to the minigame.
However, the game can be integrated even further into the game's engine. For instance, say you were playing a futuristic hacker game and that the password to an important computer system was hidden inside a virtual portrait (which has a computer chip in it). You would have to "hack" the portrait in a Qix-style minigame while avoiding the anti-virus protection software, which would be represented by the usual Qix enemies of a large, central enemy and various smaller ones that crawl around the border. Successfully completing the Qix minigame means that you've hacked a sufficient amount of the virtual portrait's memory file to recover the required password.
But it doesn't have to stop there. Let's say the game you're playing is an RTS. You fire a bombardment missile to a specific square in the enemy's territory. The purpose of this missile is to bomb regions it will "paint" (a military term for targeting an area) from the sky, while the enemy tries to shoot it down before it can destroy anything major. As soon as the missile is fired to a map square of the controlling player's choosing, the player then controls the remote missile in a Qix-style minigame. For every enemy building it can box in, that building is destroyed. Similarly, it can box in stationary/moving enemy units to destroy them also. All territory that the missile has currently boxed in will be on fire (as it drops a sort of napalm) and impassable until the missile is either destroyed or fulfills a 75% quota of the chosen screen, in which case it returns to base to get refuelled. While this is going on, the enemy can either try to shoot down the missile by firing at it from outside of the chosen square (the enemy player won't actually know the specific boundaries of this square) or risk shooting it down from within the square that is being attacked. Alternatively, the enemy can attack the other player's base while he is distracted with the minigame, if he believes the buildings in the bombing areas are an acceptable sacrifice for a surprise attack. The player runs the risk of using this devastating weapon at the cost of being distracted while he's busy with the Qix minigame. He can abort the missile at any time if the enemy decides to take advantage and attack.
Here's another example using one of my own ideas; specifically, my Item Quest idea from a few weeks ago. I mentioned that one of the many items you can pick up are Portraits. Well, occasionally, you may find a "cursed portrait". These are portraits which used to be valuable but now have a hex on them, changing their original, beautiful image into something twisted and unpleasant. Subsequently, the value of the portrait has dropped considerably. If you wanted, you can pay for a sort of "uncursing exorcism" to change the portrait back to what it once was to hopefully increase its value substantially. This will be done, again, with a Qix-style minigame, where you have to draw in the "real" portrait by boxing in cursed areas and purifying them, all the while avoiding the evil spirits that have possessed the painting. As soon as a specific % of the painting has been recovered, the rest of the portrait is purified and you have a much more valuable portrait in your hands. If your little exorcism spirit dies, you have just wasted the money it costs to summon it. You may even lose the portrait itself, destroying it utterly. The risk of failing the minigame would need to be equal to the potential gain, though one could simply boost the difficulty of the minigame if the "real" portrait is much more valuable than usual. The Item Quest idea could benefit from all sorts of "uncurse the cursed item" minigames, which would take a lowly treasure you may find earlier on and turn it into something highly collectible that you can later brag about. Of course, if you're playing as an "evil" character, you might prefer the aesthetic of the cursed image.
Anyway, there's some ideas about how an old Arcade game that people are familiar with can be integrated into modern games in a much more immersive way than simply dropping the whole thing in there, untouched and unmodified. If there's a definite gain to be made in the core game from successfully completing a few levels of a Qix minigame (or Pacman, or Yar's Revenge, or Space Invaders..), then people might start getting addicted to these old games all over again.
First, the fundamentals of the Qix gameplay: The goal is to fill-in portions of the screen by piloting your ship from the safe-ish border to draw squares in the "danger zone" before the enemies in the unshaded area can attack you or your unfinished line. Successfully reaching the border again with your line will fill/shade-in the percentage of the screen you managed to box in. If your line gets hit midway, you lose a life. Filling 75% of the screen will complete the level, though sometimes this goal % can vary. The game's system demands a fair amount of caution, but also the occasional bold move to cover a large percentage in one go. There are also various techniques you can employ, such as making a bridge of safe small boxes from one side of the screen to the other in order to trap the wider area above/below this bridge.
Second, I'll discuss how this system can be translated or integrated into other games. The most basic way, obviously, is to transfer the entire thing as-is into the core game as an optional mini-game. In this case the victory conditions and the game itself are the same, it's just a game-within-a-game with little relevance to the actual game in which it appears. Compilations of Taito arcade games often feature Qix in its entirety. Sometimes there's an arbitrary beneficial effect for the main game in which Qix is a minigame, such as in Rockstar's Bully, where the Art class is a Qix-based minigame that grants you bonuses to your character's skills depending on your success. In this case simply achieving Qix's usual victory conditions is sufficient for the main game bonus, which is unrelated to the minigame.
However, the game can be integrated even further into the game's engine. For instance, say you were playing a futuristic hacker game and that the password to an important computer system was hidden inside a virtual portrait (which has a computer chip in it). You would have to "hack" the portrait in a Qix-style minigame while avoiding the anti-virus protection software, which would be represented by the usual Qix enemies of a large, central enemy and various smaller ones that crawl around the border. Successfully completing the Qix minigame means that you've hacked a sufficient amount of the virtual portrait's memory file to recover the required password.
But it doesn't have to stop there. Let's say the game you're playing is an RTS. You fire a bombardment missile to a specific square in the enemy's territory. The purpose of this missile is to bomb regions it will "paint" (a military term for targeting an area) from the sky, while the enemy tries to shoot it down before it can destroy anything major. As soon as the missile is fired to a map square of the controlling player's choosing, the player then controls the remote missile in a Qix-style minigame. For every enemy building it can box in, that building is destroyed. Similarly, it can box in stationary/moving enemy units to destroy them also. All territory that the missile has currently boxed in will be on fire (as it drops a sort of napalm) and impassable until the missile is either destroyed or fulfills a 75% quota of the chosen screen, in which case it returns to base to get refuelled. While this is going on, the enemy can either try to shoot down the missile by firing at it from outside of the chosen square (the enemy player won't actually know the specific boundaries of this square) or risk shooting it down from within the square that is being attacked. Alternatively, the enemy can attack the other player's base while he is distracted with the minigame, if he believes the buildings in the bombing areas are an acceptable sacrifice for a surprise attack. The player runs the risk of using this devastating weapon at the cost of being distracted while he's busy with the Qix minigame. He can abort the missile at any time if the enemy decides to take advantage and attack.
Here's another example using one of my own ideas; specifically, my Item Quest idea from a few weeks ago. I mentioned that one of the many items you can pick up are Portraits. Well, occasionally, you may find a "cursed portrait". These are portraits which used to be valuable but now have a hex on them, changing their original, beautiful image into something twisted and unpleasant. Subsequently, the value of the portrait has dropped considerably. If you wanted, you can pay for a sort of "uncursing exorcism" to change the portrait back to what it once was to hopefully increase its value substantially. This will be done, again, with a Qix-style minigame, where you have to draw in the "real" portrait by boxing in cursed areas and purifying them, all the while avoiding the evil spirits that have possessed the painting. As soon as a specific % of the painting has been recovered, the rest of the portrait is purified and you have a much more valuable portrait in your hands. If your little exorcism spirit dies, you have just wasted the money it costs to summon it. You may even lose the portrait itself, destroying it utterly. The risk of failing the minigame would need to be equal to the potential gain, though one could simply boost the difficulty of the minigame if the "real" portrait is much more valuable than usual. The Item Quest idea could benefit from all sorts of "uncurse the cursed item" minigames, which would take a lowly treasure you may find earlier on and turn it into something highly collectible that you can later brag about. Of course, if you're playing as an "evil" character, you might prefer the aesthetic of the cursed image.
Anyway, there's some ideas about how an old Arcade game that people are familiar with can be integrated into modern games in a much more immersive way than simply dropping the whole thing in there, untouched and unmodified. If there's a definite gain to be made in the core game from successfully completing a few levels of a Qix minigame (or Pacman, or Yar's Revenge, or Space Invaders..), then people might start getting addicted to these old games all over again.
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