My Video Game Ideas
Last night, I was going over an entry in my notes app. I use it for all of my software ideas (almost exclusively video games), and I thought maybe here would be a good place to expand on those ideas. Reading these ideas always gets me jazzed to develop something. I wish those feelings weren’t always dashed by the dread that comes with the belief that I’m not good enough to actually create the idea. I need to lean more into free assets to make the things I want to, but that’s perhaps a post for another time…
These are all the ideas in my notes app. Some of them are more fleshed out than others, and some may already exist, but I don’t know about them:
Colonial City Watch Worker Placement Game
The initial inspiration for this game is This is the Police, a worker placement/resource management game where you’re trying to navigate corruption, budget cuts, and poor workers to run a police department. I love the map interface where you decide where units go in the city, which calls to entertain, which units to send, etc.
I’d be interested in something like that in a colonial context. In this particular case, it would be a sort of neighborhood or city watch instead of a police department. Initially, my thought was of the watch being a middle man between the people and an oppressive government. Of course, the player would have to choose between supporting the people that rely on the watch and the government that defines the enforcement of the watch.
I would want a Frostpunk-esque resource scarcity where the player always feels stretched thin, but they always have what they need to make it work if they manage the resourced properly. Units could have a variety of weapons defined by the era. Perhaps some swords like a cavalry officer may use, horses to ride, primitive guns, etc. A small skill tree may even be appropriate for watch-wide improvements. While each unit could have its pros and cons (again, not dissimilar to This is the Police), some universal stats that could be adjusted via player skills could give the player slightly more agency over the watch’s performance.
“Storm Cellar Idea”
Similar to the previous one, as well as other ideas in this list, there’s a particular piece of media that inspired this one. The flash game from 2010, One Chance, is the culprit this time. One Chance explored the idea of a game where your choices could never be reverted. It used cached data and cookies to save your progress between browser sessions, hence the name. It’s a short game that you play over several days during a disease outbreak. As a scientist working on the cure, you can continue working on a cure, spend your final days with your family, or participate in a small amount of end-of-the-world debauchery. The choices you make impact the ending you get.
While you don’t necessarily get to play the game only once with my idea, I envision a similar style of game that goes over a few days following a tragedy. The small number of choices you make have significant effects regarding how the game ends.
A terrible storm hits your town. You and your family make it to the storm cellar, but the family pet doesn’t. When the storm ends, you have to go looking for your pet, coming across wreckage, people in need, and other circumstances that may require your attention. How much time you spend helping others could determine if you’re able to save your pet in time.
This is a small idea with not much to it. It’s probably the oldest idea in my notes.
Subway or Trolley Across Time
I adore simulation games. It’s arguably my favorite video game genre. In this game, it’s a subway, trolley, or other form of public transportation simulator. However, the key is that it’s across many different time periods. For example, being a stage coach for hire in the old west. Old-style trolleys from the 1920s or ‘30s. American Civil War-era passenger trains. The way the simulation genre typically works is that each of these ideas would be its own, small game developed by a team that’s never put out a game before. In this game, all of them are combined. The difficulty of this would be nailing down a theme. All of the ideas I presented are disjointed and don’t have much commonality. Is “public transportation” enough of a central theme to make the game interesting? As opposed to the game being only about subways, or only about stage coaches, or only about trains.
“Auto Chess w/ Pieces Played By Other Players”
There’s a particular multiplayer game from the past half-decade or so that I believe played around with this idea. However, the hype for it didn’t last long, I never played it, I can’t remember the name of it, and I don’t even recall if this was the concept of the game. Regardless, thank you, unknown game, for inspiring me!… kinda.
This is a multiplayer idea where two players go against each other in an auto chess format similar to Teamfight Tactics, where before a match, each player places their chosen units in an orientation of their choosing. In a traditional auto chess game, the engine and scripts would simulate the units fighting one another, and eventually a victor would emerge. This is where the “auto” comes from, of course, in “auto chess.”
With this idea, instead of a simulation determining the victor, other players join a lobby, get assigned to the units that have been placed by the “chess masters” facing one another, and fight one another on the battlefield. This sort of combines two genres: auto chess and hero shooter.
This introduces a lot of balancing questions/problems:
How do we ensure that we have enough players interested in each role (chess master and units)?
How do we handle lobbies? I envision this would be the biggest problem with this type of game. We would need separate lobbies. We would need lobbies for chess masters and lobbies for units. Unit lobbies may even need to be broken up further depending on how many chess masters can be in a lobby at once.
Are unit lobbies done at the same time as chess master lobbies? Would that lead to too much waiting around for the units while the chess masters decide which units they want in the first place?
On the other side of the coin, if we wait until chess masters choose their units to get a unit lobby, how much time will chess masters have to wait for units to be populated? One of the beauties of auto chess is that each match is very quick. Too much waiting defeats part of the genre’s charm.
Can players in unit lobbies choose what units they play? What happens when a particular unit is chosen by a chess master but nobody is playing that unit?
Do we have unit players get assigned to units instead of letting the player choose? Perhaps a League of Legends-style role choice could be implemented; players can have their unit preferences, but they’re not guaranteed to get the units they want.
Do chess masters get enough control over the battle if the units aren’t controlled by the computer? One of the flaws with an idea like this is that chess master starts to feel like a non-competitive role. Does it matter what the pros and cons are of a unit if it could be controlled by someone who has never played the unit before?
Is there too much room for people to grief? You can easily screw a chess master if you don’t do your job on purpose. As the chess master, you can also grief your units by intentionally putting too few units up against the opponent.
All of these represent just a small number of the questions that arise with an idea like this. I think it’s an interesting concept, though.
Phone Text Messaging Game
This is far from an original idea. However, it’s something I’ve been very interested in making just to make it. I enjoy texting conversations. It’s interesting the different personas people have when texting. I’d love to make a game centered around texting people. Unfortunately, this is a very narrative-heavy idea, and narratives aren’t necessarily my strong suit. I can come up with lore, setting, etc. However, when it comes to plots, it’s something I struggle with in my game design. Nonetheless, this is on my list, and I’ll do it someday. I feel pretty confident about that.
A Talking RPG
Thank you, Tim Cain, for this idea. He was talking in one of his videos about RPGs (as he often does), and he mentioned something about stealth talking, if I remember correctly. This made me think if it’s possible to make a fun RPG that is just talking. It’s all conversation-based, but there are different talking mechanics in the game. Each mechanic has its own trait or skill. Each of those is part of a skill tree or stat sheet. You spec into the kind of talking you like to do. This is more of a thought experiment. Could it be done? What would that game look like? How would it be fun?
Open-World Game with Main Quests as Random Encounters
There’s no game idea here, per se, but rather a feature idea for open-world games in general. Dungeons & Dragons serves as the main inspiration here. I doubt this is a new idea, but its certainly one that hasn’t been perfected, and it quite possibly hasn’t been tried, in video games.
In Dungeons & Dragons, it’s common for the DM to whip up encounters related to the main story of the campaign. However, since D&D is the true open-world experience, if a DM takes an encounter, puts it in a particular place in the world, and waits for the players to get there, it may never happen. For small, side quests, this is fine. However, if it’s something important that you want the players to experience, the DM may need to adapt encounters for wherever the player happens to be at that time.
What if video games did this? A common complaint of the open-world theme in games is the fact that it feels like there’s so much world, but only a small percentage of it is actually the right place to be at any given time. Some form of random encounter-ness would allow the player to go wherever they want and still experience the main quests of the game. Every direction— or at least far more directions— are the right way to go.
“Grenades are the only form of combat”
That’s pretty much it… just some stupid fun. Probably a multiplayer game. Everyone running around throwing grenades or bombs would be chaos, and I love it.
Popcorn Kernel Simulator
Back to the simulation genre. Appropriately, I believe this one came to me during a movie night with friends when we were making popcorn. A small game where you play as a popcorn kernel trying to pop sounds just ridiculous enough to work. Similar to I Am Bread, you’re a piece of food navigating around an area, getting to a destination. Definitely a focus on physics for something like this. You have to get to whatever heat source you can so that you can pop.
Ships Leaving the Docks
In Game of Thrones, one of my favorite shows ever, Sansa plays a game in King’s Landing where she watches the ships leaving the docks and comes up with stories for them. Where are the ships going? Who are the crews? Who is the captain? What do they want? What’s the goal? How long will they be gone? What are their home lives like? What dangers will they face on the seas?
I decided to write this down, as I thought it might be interesting if this were a video game. How it would be played would be quite the feat to figure out, I think, but that’s how great ideas are born.
Maester Simulator
Another one based on Game of Thrones. This would be a simulation-style game where as the maester of a castle, you are in charge of sending the messages back and forth between important families in the realm. You may also be in charge of other matters like advising the Lords and Ladies of the castle or dealing with medical matters. In this, you would naturally get mixed up in political strife, and the messages you receive/send can be of the greatest importance.
Video Game Marketing Simulator
With my frustrations over current video game marketing, PR, and producing growing, I wrote down the concept of a satirical simulation game in which the player manages a video game publisher’s marketing (and some production). In it, the player works hard to make sure that a video game isn’t received too well by audiences. The player does things like make apologies for scandals at studios, announce delays, make sure to go certain periods of time without any updates, cancel projects, put out trailers that have nothing to do with gameplay, and announce layoffs while giving owners of companies more and more money. And what do you get for accomplishing this in the game? Millions of video game sales.
Time Traveling Via Save File
This is my most recent idea. I thought of it during a discussion with some coworkers. I’m interested in save files being a mechanic for time traveling. I like when games such as Doki Doki Literature Club have the player manipulate files on the drive to progress the story. I think it’s a novel idea that games typically only take too far. This is an idea that builds on the concept in a way.
While the player wouldn’t necessarily interact with files via file explorer on Windows, for example, they would interact much more with literal save files to progress the story. Currently, save files are used as a way to eliminate progress and create new progress. What if you could load a save file to go to a particular place and time in the game, but any knowledge you gathered from previous save files travels with your character? Picture Life Is Strange where Max reverses time and then magically sees a new dialogue option. It would be similar to this, but much farther reaching. Navigating time and saves becomes its own sort of puzzle mechanic.
I hope to make at least some of these ideas someday. For now, they’ll live in my notes app on my phone. And here, I suppose.