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My game ideas

Owned by Nathan Wailes
Last updated: Mar 27, 2019
10 min read

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Inspiration for game ideas

  • Example of how you can use extra computing power in uncommon ways: Have bodies and bullets stay on the level instead of fading out, like in Brutal Wolfenstein.
  • Braid is a great example of a game that answers the question, "We have so much more computing power than 30 years ago, what can we do with this extra power other than just making the graphics more detailed?"
  • Try to think of other ways that games could switch between two main minigames that influence each other the way Total War does.
  • I wish games had more totally insane mash-up elements. Like, you're in a WW2 transport plain about to parachute out, but all the troops are from the civil war, and when you land you're fighting...aliens or something. Just totally randomize all the various elements, like if it was designed via Mad Libs.
  • Magic: Duels is really a masterpiece of easing players into a complicated game.

Game ideas

  • First-person game where you and AI-controlled subordinates (and maybe also other AI on your side that aren't your subordinates) have to do some kind of really hard mission, and your job is to program your AI subordinates in such a way that you can win the mission. Basically you create a pre-determined strategy for your AI subordinates to follow, like "surround the enemy" or "flank", and maybe you can assign different strategies to different hotkeys and switch up the strategy on the fly like a quarterback in football. So it's kind of like OFP (where you're the commander), it's kind of like Rainbox 6, it's kind of like TIS-100. But it's not like Rainbox 6 where you're hard-coding specific responses to specific positions on the map; it's more like, "If you see this, do this". You can main the main campaign missions fairly easy and then have a harder campaign created by players, similar to TIS-100.
  • For a competition, have a bunch of players show up with their PCs without knowing what game they'll be playing, and then reveal some new game or game that none of them are likely to have spent much time playing, and give them all a set amount of time (maybe a few hours) to familiarize themselves with the game before starting a bracket-style tournament.
  • Have something like Arma but allow users to sell standalone games that they've designed using the mission editor and any custom graphics / units / etc. Maybe sell the standalone games for less than a full-priced game or have some kind of freemium ability built into the Arma game that developers can make easy use of. Then these modders can flood Steam with their creations because the time it takes to develop a game is drastically cut, you can get a cut of all the direct sales and in-app purchases (eg custom skins), and the awareness of your engine will grow and so people will be more likely to buy other titles put out using your engine.
  • A first-person dance music venue simulator, where you can choose the music and customize the lighting. You can tap out the way the lighting should be done for each light and the different types of lights.
  • A first-person maze-running game.
    • Version 1: you have different items (one item idea: bread crumbs you can use), and are told different characteristics about the maze you're in (one example: whether it has loops).
      • The idea is to train people to understand that using an algorithm that is known to solve a problem quickly is a much, much faster way of solving a problem than by unthinkingly just trying stuff. And so you should always be either using an algorithm or trying to figure out what the ideal algorithm is for the situation you're in.
      • But it would also just be interesting to make a "good" or "modern" maze-running game.
      • The "you have different items and you're told characteristics of the maze" ideas are probably influenced by the fact that I've been playing a lot of Heat Signature. I love that aspect of the game.
    • Version 2: A game where mapping the area you've explored is the game.  In Doom the map is just given to you for free as you explore.
      • The game could be themed around the ancient Greek myth of the labyrinth and the centaur.
      • It could be a 3D maze.
      • There could be lots of windows / open areas so you can see other parts of the maze that you have or have not already accessed.
        • I have a vivid memory of a particular real wooden 3D-ish maze that I got to briefly explore when I was very young and it left a strong impression on me as being a lot of fun.
        • This is also similar to those tube mazes that kids play in at Chuck-E-Cheese and similar places, which I loved when I was younger.
          • And just like how those mazes have different "rooms" with different features (like a ball pit room), this game could feature different rooms that have different mini-experiences that make them interesting.
        • In fact you could have the entire thing be mostly-transparent, with maybe most of the "tubes" (corridors) being clear-colored, but occasionally having tubes that have some other color (red, blue, etc.) to serve as visual guideposts.
    • Misc ideas
  • I should have a wiki page for non-videogame game ideas.
    • One of the experiences I really like is when I'm part of a group where I make an inconsequential contribution, but the collection of all of our small contributions results in an awesome combination.
      • Being in an orchestra was like this.
      • Being in a stadium where everyone is doing the Wave is another example of this.
    • I also like experiences where I'm surprised.
      • Mad-libs were like this: it was always a funny surprise to see how your contributions resulted in a finished product.
        • I think there may be some connection here to the pleasant surprise of practicing my part of an orchestral piece of music and hearing everyone's part come together.
  • Not necessarily a videogame idea: Create rules for a combat mission style game in rl that doesn't require any guns. It's all based on kill tables.
  • compete to rearrange the deck chairs on the titanic as it sinks
  • "let the boss win" game: you have to lose, but in a non-obvious way
  • Make pixel games. Make games that use the pixel graphics that you had for the viral infection simulator.
  • Make a game that's in more than 3 dimensions. Maybe start by having the player play the game in 1 or 2 dimensions, then work up to 3 dimensions, then up to 4 dimensions, and beyond.
    • I got the idea while playing with a function that creates a neural network when you feed it several parameters. I was trying different parameters and seeing how it responded, and I was thinking about gradient descent, and I thought it would be cool if there was a simple numbers-only game where you're in a spaceship and you have pairs of buttons that let you move each way in each dimension, and there is an established world where the conditions gradually change from dimension to dimension, and there are beings that can exist in certain dimensions but not move through other dimensions

  • Make a game that teaches people about how important it is to consider the time you waste trying to make a decision. You may often be better off making imperfect decisions quickly rather than spending a lot of time to make a perfect decision about everything.
  • make a game that has rare random events, all with different probabilities, so that if the game reaches 100,000 or 1,000,000 players, there will have been people who would have experienced very rare things. (Like if there was a real bigfoot in GTA that showed up very, very rarely.)
  • Make a REALISTIC getaway driver game, like Driver except more realistic. And force the player to print out the map and take notes on paper about the timing of the traffic lights. The goal is to train people to use these methods when tackling a difficult problem in R/L.
  • I want a game where a big part of the game is delegation. The problem with RTSs like Total War or Starcraft is that you have to micromanage stuff.
  • an iphone app that would help people learn to collaborate with each other to produce music wherever they are, even without instruments, just by banging on stuff and using their voices to produce the different parts of the song. each person could have a DDR-style readout in front of him, and could have a single earphone playing his part to help him get his pitch right.
  • a device that would detect the pitch of different piano keys and use that to help people to learn to play the piano by starting them on easier songs and gradually ramping up the difficulty. the key part would be that they'd be accompanied the entire time, and you could have a video read-out that would help them find the right key quickly.
  • a game where you need to adjust the direction your monitor is facing at your job so that your bosses can't see that you're playing this game
  • make a game that teaches people about sovereign debt. like, you play a country over the course of many centuries and you see how the forces you're subject to lead you again and again to borrow money and then default.
  • make a zombie-infection-simulator-style game that shows individual buyers and sellers interacting to arrive at a market price. I got this idea while reading pages 140-141 of the Cartoon Introduction to Microeconomics
  • IMO too many games involve things we already commonly experience: being a person, walking around familiar settings.
  • Make a game that takes place on a VERY different timescale, like microseconds or over billions of years.
  • Make a game that takes place on a VERY different physical scale, like microns or over galaxies
  • Make a game with a realistic map of the galaxy / universe, where you can fly around to the different stars / galaxies / superclusters.
  • Make a videogame harness that pulls you in different directions to simulate G forces. Start with a man-powered version where people are pulling on ropes attached to you. [IIRC I came up with this idea when I was playing a lot of Forza 5 and noticed that it wasn't as intense as driving real cars because you weren't feeling the G forces).
  • Make a game like frogger except you're maneuvering a car trying to get through slow-moving traffic on the freeway (the traffic is moving at, say, 30-40mph. It's not stop-and-go.)
  • Cowboys and indians
  • Compile a list of games that people have played through the ages and try to think of what a modern videogame equivalent might look like.
    • For example, I recently learned about tip-cat, and thought the gameplay element of having one player estimate the distance of the other player's hit and then having the other player accept the estimate or reject it and risk a lower valuation was interesting and isn't common in modern videogames.
  • Frisbee golf
  • Company simulator
    • Top-down view
    • You start out as a single pixel, and your job is to run around looking for food that you can use to get bigger. But you also have to avoid the bigger companies / animals that will try to eat you or steal the food you've found.
    • There's actually a simulator that already does this, but you can't control one of the animals. I should find the link for it and post it here.
    • (Later: IIRC the reason I called this 'company simulator' was that I wanted it to train entrepreneurs to look for problems / markets that are the 'right size' for them: if the opportunity is too big, you might quickly get competition from the 'big fish'.  I'm not sure if this is actually good advice but that was the thought I had.)
  • Status / Triple-Oh / 000 / Persuasion
  • Necromancer game
    • make a game where you're a necromancer and can control from dozens to hundreds of sprite minions like in the first Shogun game (maybe a bit more animated than Shogun)
    • make the game guide-proof: randomize the way magic / animals / enemies work in each game so that you HAVE to use in-game situations to figure out how the world you're in functions.
    • make the game HARD
    • make huge worlds where there are towns spread out (like in Mount & Blade) except travel in-game
    • make the game first-person, and have that be a major source of potential confusion
    • prevent people from playing too much, to make sure the world stays undiscovered (otherwise you'll have people figuring out all the secrets)
    • use that total-world engine, and make the objective of the game to find the other players
    • have NO MAPS at all
    • make it in the middle-ages (like Diablo)
    • no horses or fast ways to get around
  • Modern-day car chase game
    • Inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCKRe4jJ0Qk
    • Driver 1 for the Playstation 1 is one of my all-time favorite games. Nowadays, though, you have to deal with a lot of challenges that aren't in that game. The #1 challenge seems to be police helicopters.
    • Gameplay: You need to find a covered area (like a parking garage, tunnel, etc.) where you can switch cars, but it takes time to switch cars, so you need to be far enough away from the police so that they can't shoot you or spot you switching cars. You need to do the switch in such a way that the police helicopter won't be able to tell who you are when you leave the covered area. So the gameplay consists of the two-step process of 1) get far away from any police cars or police officers that may be nearby, and 2) then find a covered area where you can switch cars or do something else that will lose the helicopter that's chasing you.
  • Chess Tactic Visualizer
    • The basic inspiration for this was that I was doing chess drills where I would need to spot the best next move, and I would end up running through the same checklist every time. I began to think it would be cool if there was a GUI that would automatically run through that checklist and graphically show you all the different potential hazards.
    • The even deeper motivation was an interest in having people work together with computers effectively.

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