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.
Friday, July 20, 2007
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.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Game Idea: Deep
Deep is an exploration game based on digging. While digging games exist - and I refer to famous examples such as Mr Driller, Dig-Dug and the various incarnations of Boulder Dash - they mostly rely on action. In these games, you get a cartoonish side-view depiction of the land you're digging and the gameplay tends to focus on frantically clearing dirt to reach diamonds or enemies or just to find the way down as quickly as possible.
Deep is slightly more RPG-based. Your goal is to scan the undeveloped area around your city for interesting signals and then purchase that area so you can dig it up. As you make money from your discoveries, you are able to upgrade your equipment in order to detect new and interesting things which will result in even more cash and you progress through the game in this manner.
Brief background to the game: The year is somewhere in the 8000s AD (though there's no-one alive who can remember the old date system). Humanity has managed to develop itself up to an advanced age where faster than light speed is possible. However, each time this is accomplished, a mysterious disaster resembling an earthquake packed with electromagnetic energy destroys all the technological advancements and drags humanity back into a pre-industrial age. Anyone who survives the earthquake wakes up to find no trace of their achievements and humanity has to rebuild from the ground up. Nobody is actually aware of this, but this event has occurred four times in humanity's past.
It is now a time period analogous to the 1940s (though without the war speeding things along). Humanity has been slowly recovering from the last Event and is only a few decades away from once again approaching the first steps into space exploration. You happen to be a Digger: someone who makes their living by using metal-detection equipment to scour the now-empty lands for materials you can sell to the developing cities. Because of the unique nature of this world, the ground is filled with remnants of several thousand years of technology, now inactive debris. Because these past generations of humanity at the peak of their advancement has all but stripped the natural resources of valuable metals and minerals of the planet, the only way to recover these necessary materials is by digging them up in "wealth zones" (actually the decaying remains of highly advanced cities). You live right on top of one of these.
Your detection equipment is limited to metallic elements close to the surface and so you must dig up the various near-surface scrap materials in order to raise money. You don't need to purchase land for this early segment as it's simply a tutorial about how you detect items and then dig them up. Eventually, you'll come across an actual find (which will be sent back to the nearby city for analysis) which will fund the next part of the game.
With the advanced detection equipment that your friends will research and create for you, you can start finding even bigger pieces of scrap metal to sell to interested parties. You'll start finding intact traces of the old civilisations too, which you can sell as cultural oddities. The game will eventually lead to clearing huge amounts of the Earth to recover entrances to whole buildings which you can then explore in a team and recover anything of use before destroying the entire building with concussion mines and selling the whole thing for valuable scrap. You'll also slowly start solving the mystery of where all this ancient stuff came from and why humanity seems fated to repeat its technological advancement over and over.
Gameplay-wise, the game will be split into three modes, the last of which won't be available until late in the game. The first mode is a digging simulator where you start digging at the most interesting places (you'll be dealing with several hundred feet of square land, so there's plenty to find). Anything dug up will be sent to your associates in the city to analyze for metallic components by your assistant on-site, which basically means anything dug up (including the ground soil) will be automatically be sent away for analysis. You'll start with a simple shovel initially, making progress slow, but you'll be able to upgrade digging equipment (as well as other things) as you progress.
For the second mode of the game you assume the role of your associates in the city, who are part trading company and part scholar research team. They actually receive discoveries from all Diggers in the areas surrounding the city and reward them for their findings, but since you'll soon outshine them (due to fortunate circumstances on your part) the company will end up being yours later in the game. To begin with, all you'll have available is a list of menu options to process the materials from your Digger protagonist. They will also clean up and preserve any intact items you will find. Both the metallic-compound search (in the soil you've dug up) and item clean-up are optional minigames you can play, though both can also be processed automatically without needing your control.
When the game gets to the point where you can start exploring whole subterranean buildings and outposts, you'll be assuming the lead of an exploration team and carefully exploring the dilapidated underground ruins for anything salvageable. There'll be various traps, both intentional (such as still-functioning security equipment) and incidental (such as doors that automatically open and shut at random). This exploration system will work in an FPS mode to properly recreate the feel of exploring the age-old ruin. It may also use a Metroid Prime-esque scanning system so you can continue to use your progressively-updated scanning technology underground. Your team is comprised of the protagonist Digger (who you will assume the first-person POV of) as well as several members of the research team in the city. Like the Digging mode, this mode will become more complex as you continually upgrade your tools using the discoveries you find.
I'm hoping to make this game an engaging mystery story going on as well as a highly playable sci-fi-esque treasure hunt. The storyline I have in mind doesn't simply involve aliens who zap us whenever we get close to reaching our potential: the story goes much deeper than that, with secret revelations and twists aplenty. Which is what one should expect from a game with a name like this.
Deep is slightly more RPG-based. Your goal is to scan the undeveloped area around your city for interesting signals and then purchase that area so you can dig it up. As you make money from your discoveries, you are able to upgrade your equipment in order to detect new and interesting things which will result in even more cash and you progress through the game in this manner.
Brief background to the game: The year is somewhere in the 8000s AD (though there's no-one alive who can remember the old date system). Humanity has managed to develop itself up to an advanced age where faster than light speed is possible. However, each time this is accomplished, a mysterious disaster resembling an earthquake packed with electromagnetic energy destroys all the technological advancements and drags humanity back into a pre-industrial age. Anyone who survives the earthquake wakes up to find no trace of their achievements and humanity has to rebuild from the ground up. Nobody is actually aware of this, but this event has occurred four times in humanity's past.
It is now a time period analogous to the 1940s (though without the war speeding things along). Humanity has been slowly recovering from the last Event and is only a few decades away from once again approaching the first steps into space exploration. You happen to be a Digger: someone who makes their living by using metal-detection equipment to scour the now-empty lands for materials you can sell to the developing cities. Because of the unique nature of this world, the ground is filled with remnants of several thousand years of technology, now inactive debris. Because these past generations of humanity at the peak of their advancement has all but stripped the natural resources of valuable metals and minerals of the planet, the only way to recover these necessary materials is by digging them up in "wealth zones" (actually the decaying remains of highly advanced cities). You live right on top of one of these.
Your detection equipment is limited to metallic elements close to the surface and so you must dig up the various near-surface scrap materials in order to raise money. You don't need to purchase land for this early segment as it's simply a tutorial about how you detect items and then dig them up. Eventually, you'll come across an actual find (which will be sent back to the nearby city for analysis) which will fund the next part of the game.
With the advanced detection equipment that your friends will research and create for you, you can start finding even bigger pieces of scrap metal to sell to interested parties. You'll start finding intact traces of the old civilisations too, which you can sell as cultural oddities. The game will eventually lead to clearing huge amounts of the Earth to recover entrances to whole buildings which you can then explore in a team and recover anything of use before destroying the entire building with concussion mines and selling the whole thing for valuable scrap. You'll also slowly start solving the mystery of where all this ancient stuff came from and why humanity seems fated to repeat its technological advancement over and over.
Gameplay-wise, the game will be split into three modes, the last of which won't be available until late in the game. The first mode is a digging simulator where you start digging at the most interesting places (you'll be dealing with several hundred feet of square land, so there's plenty to find). Anything dug up will be sent to your associates in the city to analyze for metallic components by your assistant on-site, which basically means anything dug up (including the ground soil) will be automatically be sent away for analysis. You'll start with a simple shovel initially, making progress slow, but you'll be able to upgrade digging equipment (as well as other things) as you progress.
For the second mode of the game you assume the role of your associates in the city, who are part trading company and part scholar research team. They actually receive discoveries from all Diggers in the areas surrounding the city and reward them for their findings, but since you'll soon outshine them (due to fortunate circumstances on your part) the company will end up being yours later in the game. To begin with, all you'll have available is a list of menu options to process the materials from your Digger protagonist. They will also clean up and preserve any intact items you will find. Both the metallic-compound search (in the soil you've dug up) and item clean-up are optional minigames you can play, though both can also be processed automatically without needing your control.
When the game gets to the point where you can start exploring whole subterranean buildings and outposts, you'll be assuming the lead of an exploration team and carefully exploring the dilapidated underground ruins for anything salvageable. There'll be various traps, both intentional (such as still-functioning security equipment) and incidental (such as doors that automatically open and shut at random). This exploration system will work in an FPS mode to properly recreate the feel of exploring the age-old ruin. It may also use a Metroid Prime-esque scanning system so you can continue to use your progressively-updated scanning technology underground. Your team is comprised of the protagonist Digger (who you will assume the first-person POV of) as well as several members of the research team in the city. Like the Digging mode, this mode will become more complex as you continually upgrade your tools using the discoveries you find.
I'm hoping to make this game an engaging mystery story going on as well as a highly playable sci-fi-esque treasure hunt. The storyline I have in mind doesn't simply involve aliens who zap us whenever we get close to reaching our potential: the story goes much deeper than that, with secret revelations and twists aplenty. Which is what one should expect from a game with a name like this.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Design Elements #3: Planet-Eaters
Planet-eating. There are various movie/comic villains that eat planets. Galactus is one. Unicron is another. There's probably two or three of them in Star Trek lore. The Death Star didn't eat planets, it just 'sploded them. And now, I've decided to create a game idea that will allow the average gamer at home to eat planets.
"Why eat planets?", I hear you exclaim.
Because eating planets is cool. Duh.
You'll control one of these nameless/lots of names ancient (like, "from the dawn of time, two minutes after the big bang" ancient) planet-eating things as it goes about its daily grind. Which is to eat planets. The planets you pick are dependant on your tastes: You get more energy from occupied planets but they're slightly more difficult to get close to because of stupid sentient species who like their planet and try to attack you with spaceships. Damn nuisances. So what you do is you eat all the spaceships they send at you. And then eat their planet.
You sort of use an intergalactic radar to identify nearby planets and their relative worth in the field of nutrition: Is it a tasty planet? Teeming with juicy life? Is it one of those volcano planets that might cause a tummy ache? Maybe you shouldn't eat that one. Poison planets will poison you. Acid planets will give you acid reflux. Gas planets are no good for obvious reasons. You travel to planets you like the look of, then eat them. You'll receive an energy burst and maybe a neat little planet recipe card (with fancy French calligraphy) to add to a growing collection of eaten planet cards.
Maybe there'll be cameos. The general universe of planets will be almost entirely generated at random, but there may be one or two special ones that show up. Like a candy planet. Or a cowboy planet. Eat two planets perpetually stuck in Prohibition-era Earth (for some reason) and you could unlock a special gangster fedora for your planet-eating terror to put on. He can wear it at a jaunty angle while he genocides entire sentient species. Maybe impress the lady planet-eaters and have a baby planet-eater (or... moon-eater.. I guess). Maybe you'll eat a planet the Prince of All Cosmos rolled up or one of those ones from Spore populated by creatures with butts for eyes. Depending on which industry figures we can get on board this planet-eating extravaganza.
While the life of a planet-eater is generally all milk and honey (and planets), there'll be a fair share of challenges, even for you. For instance, black holes could unexpectedly eat a planet before you get the chance to. Or the Phoenix Force blips one. Or that Death Star I mentioned. Then there's the spaceships - always, always the spaceships. While you can generally eat everything (with a particular preference for planets), you may want to outsmart these other cosmic-scale troublemakers. Maybe stick a straw into a planet and eat all of its insides first, like Homer did with that wedding cake. Just because you're a creature a bajillion metres long who's very voice can destroy a planet's natural magnetic fields with its sheer sonic power, it doesn't mean you can't be sneaky.
People would want to play this game because there is no game yet, to my knowledge, that'll let you eat entire planets. There are several which lets you blow up planets and more than a few that will let you eat part of a planet. If you want to see more planet-eating games in the future, give me money and I shall spend it on things that I like. And then maybe create a planet-eating game.
"Why eat planets?", I hear you exclaim.
Because eating planets is cool. Duh.
You'll control one of these nameless/lots of names ancient (like, "from the dawn of time, two minutes after the big bang" ancient) planet-eating things as it goes about its daily grind. Which is to eat planets. The planets you pick are dependant on your tastes: You get more energy from occupied planets but they're slightly more difficult to get close to because of stupid sentient species who like their planet and try to attack you with spaceships. Damn nuisances. So what you do is you eat all the spaceships they send at you. And then eat their planet.
You sort of use an intergalactic radar to identify nearby planets and their relative worth in the field of nutrition: Is it a tasty planet? Teeming with juicy life? Is it one of those volcano planets that might cause a tummy ache? Maybe you shouldn't eat that one. Poison planets will poison you. Acid planets will give you acid reflux. Gas planets are no good for obvious reasons. You travel to planets you like the look of, then eat them. You'll receive an energy burst and maybe a neat little planet recipe card (with fancy French calligraphy) to add to a growing collection of eaten planet cards.
Maybe there'll be cameos. The general universe of planets will be almost entirely generated at random, but there may be one or two special ones that show up. Like a candy planet. Or a cowboy planet. Eat two planets perpetually stuck in Prohibition-era Earth (for some reason) and you could unlock a special gangster fedora for your planet-eating terror to put on. He can wear it at a jaunty angle while he genocides entire sentient species. Maybe impress the lady planet-eaters and have a baby planet-eater (or... moon-eater.. I guess). Maybe you'll eat a planet the Prince of All Cosmos rolled up or one of those ones from Spore populated by creatures with butts for eyes. Depending on which industry figures we can get on board this planet-eating extravaganza.
While the life of a planet-eater is generally all milk and honey (and planets), there'll be a fair share of challenges, even for you. For instance, black holes could unexpectedly eat a planet before you get the chance to. Or the Phoenix Force blips one. Or that Death Star I mentioned. Then there's the spaceships - always, always the spaceships. While you can generally eat everything (with a particular preference for planets), you may want to outsmart these other cosmic-scale troublemakers. Maybe stick a straw into a planet and eat all of its insides first, like Homer did with that wedding cake. Just because you're a creature a bajillion metres long who's very voice can destroy a planet's natural magnetic fields with its sheer sonic power, it doesn't mean you can't be sneaky.
People would want to play this game because there is no game yet, to my knowledge, that'll let you eat entire planets. There are several which lets you blow up planets and more than a few that will let you eat part of a planet. If you want to see more planet-eating games in the future, give me money and I shall spend it on things that I like. And then maybe create a planet-eating game.
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