hello David Cage? it's me, amateur game dasigner

yeso

Post your video game concepts and ideas. Maybe a famous game designer will steal it

I had this idea: make a Hallmark Christmas movie game. Like an Until Dawn or Life Is Strange but really dial into that whole look. Low stress, low stakes plot. Just ultra chill and antiseptic looking like those movies. People just living in a pottery barn catalogue. I think it could reach a wide audience, and an annual holiday release schedule would be cool. I don’t actually know how easy or hard it is to make a game.

rearnakedwindow

This is a great idea for a thread. As someone with lots of (probably bad) ideas and little likelihood of ever using most of them, this is wonderful.

yeso One of my favorite film podcasts (it’s called The Pink Smoke) fantasized about a AAA open-world game based on Meet Me In St. Louis where you would go around having cute conversations in Technicolor scenarios and you’d load up on items like “a fancy button” or “an ornate bit of string.”

I’ve often thought it would be cool to have a fighting game that has ways for you to totally disable certain attacks/types of attacks/other inputs for your opponent.

-Maybe make it something that happens at the beginning of the match, like each player gets to ban one thing for BOTH players (so I choose to ban dashing and you choose to ban light attacks, so now that’s how we’re fighting)
-Maybe make it part of the fight: you have to land certain attacks to disable certain moves for your opponent*
-Maybe tie it into the aesthetic, like the characters are cyborgs and you can rip off their limbs/weapons/components to indicate an option-loss
-Obviously, balancing this game would be a nightmare, but I think there might be ways. I just think it would keep the metagame fresh…to get good at the game, you could never rely on any one optimal playstyle. You would have to be ready to play your character in a wide variety of unusual ways in any given match in order to win. I love weird, gimmicky, awkward playstyles in fighting games, so maybe this is just my dream of making that happen more regularly.

*To be fair, some games sort of already did this (Samurai Showdown series when you disarm your opponent they lose moves and Time Killers where you can tear off limbs), but there’s just so much more to explore here.

rootfifthoctave

yeso make a Hallmark Christmas movie game

i like the idea of a xmas fmv game where you have to guide different households from xmas morning to a big gathering in the afternoon.

whatsarobot

i’ve had this idea for one million years, but still think it’s a good one.

basically, playground games, but with big beautiful Fortnite-style (haha all you “that’s an oxymoron” jokesters out there, pipe down) graphics and a variety of fun/exciting locales and a first-person perspective. think about it! you’ve got your tag, your freeze tag, your dodgeball, your manhunt, what have you. throw in good character designs and unlockable characters and gear, and you’ve got a good old time on your hands. no guns required (guns can gtfo, is what i think).

穴

whatsarobot playground games

100% this, Nintendo Land has a couple of games kind of like this, more specifically Mario Chase which is just manhunt and it’s extremely fun (especially for kids) and it’s just stuck there on the Wii U

I keep half-jokingly saying that I should just learn how to use unity, make a barebones Mario Chase clone, put it on steam and I’m sure it would sell a few tens of thousands of copies.

There’s even a developer called playground games and they seem to think kids were making music festivals and had cars while playing in the playground. (That’s a Forza horizon joke)

saddleblasters

whatsarobot there are a bunch of roblox games similar to what you describe that take place in various playgroundy environments, e.g. ball pits and mcdonalds play place tube mazes. of course, only the most iconoclastic of insert credit forum posters would ever argue these are “beautiful.”

my half baked idea is a two player dating sim where each person designs/trains love interests for the other person to pursue. i suppose the target audience would be couples, especially those in long distance relationships who can’t actually be together physically. i’m imagining something asynchronous, since that works better if the players are in different timezones. half of the game would be a single player experience where you “train” your character, maybe answer a bunch of personality quiz questions, engage in certain challenges, decide stats to boost, and write free form text responses to certain prompts. the other half would be guiding your character through dates with the other person’s character. maybe you get asked a question and if you pick an answer your partner marked as bad their character starts to hate your character a little bit. maybe your character says weird stuff out of context based on a prompt you answered 6 months ago and forgot about. that sort of thing.

…actually this sounds a lot like tomodachi life, but as a dating sim. the idea is that your characters aren’t necessarily you. they have a life of their own, but that life feels in some way derived from your personality, so when you and your partner’s character go on dates together, you feel like you are exploring some corner of their mental world that you wouldn’t get access to otherwise. and perhaps more importantly, it would give you both another thing to talk about. the areas could all be various degrees of quirky with interesting npcs that your two characters interact with. it might be fun to talk about how, say, your partner’s character got in a fight with the hairdresser, who in response stabbed them in the eye with a pair of scissors, and now their character has to wear an eyepatch. stuff like that.

whatsarobot

穴

There’s even a studio called playground games and they seem to think kids were making music festivals and had cars while playing in the playground.

i mean this sounds awesome, regardless.

please be the developer who gets rich off this idea! or at least breaks even!

tapevulture

i have long dreamed of an RPG with a Final Fantasy XII-like real-time battle system and Xenogears graphics: so you are running around polygonal battlefields and your dudes are converging on groups of enemies, and the camera is rotating around and regularly giving you that awesome sprite swap when it moves far enough for your perspective on the sprite to change

also this game would have a vaguely historical setting and badass music. will probably make it myself some day since it would be very easy to do so

yeso

rearnakedwindow AAA open-world game based on Meet Me In St. Louis

that would rock

yeso

not open world though. But it would have steambot chronicles music minigame for ding ding ding goes the trolley

saddleblasters

saddleblasters Just discovered Tokimeki Factory, which is The Mario Maker of dating sims, and does something sort of like what I described (though only sort of)

marurun

I have long wanted to basically remake the old SSI Gold Box engine as a “modern” hybrid RPG with first person dungeon exploration and world interaction ala Grimrock and the like and strategic turn-based combat on a square grid. The combat would have to be more accessible than SRPG-style battles because it would need to be robust enough to support random encounters. If they could do it well in the late 80s it can be done today.

TracyDMcGrath

Similar lines but a 45-90 minute roguelike Wizardry clone. Pick your party of 6 at the start and go through random dungeons with them, if any of them die, they die. Basically Darkest Dungeon but much shorter and less grimdark

shlootermcgavin

I really like the feeling you get when free falling in Luftrausers and you’re just able to save yourself from crashing into the water. I am sure this exists but I have thought it would be cool to make a 3D Luftrausers-style game that replicates that feeling.

My joke answer was simply “Dark Souls with cars,” but there’s not really anything there, oops.

notthetoilet

I want Stardew Valley, but the setting is a no/low conflict post-apocalypse.

There’s probably dozens of survival games kind of like this, but danger is such a big part of those. This game would be chill, resources are somewhat abundant and there is little to no competition. But there’s no services or government or whatever, so your days are filled mostly by chores.

It’s a long time since I watched The Walking Dead, but I remember when one season started, they were living in an old prison, growing crops, being relatively chill. I want that vibe, but there’s no zombies or bad guys to ruin it.

MDS-02

Saw your post in the game idea thread:

notthetoilet I want Stardew Valley, but the setting is a no/low conflict post-apocalypse.

There’s probably dozens of survival games kind of like this, but danger is such a big part of those. This game would be chill, resources are somewhat abundant and there is little to no competition. But there’s no services or government or whatever, so your days are filled mostly by chores.

It’s a long time since I watched The Walking Dead, but I remember when one season started, they were living in an old prison, growing crops, being relatively chill. I want that vibe, but there’s no zombies or bad guys to ruin it.

Just some roads to explore if you’re interested:

Not post apocalyptic but low tech wilderness survival that can develop into a DIY semi Stardew Valley: UnReal World. Highly recommended. If you wanna try it out you can download the second-latest version for free directly from the devs webpage. Very low fi, but the literal loop I am in with my most advanced save: daily wake up, start a fire and get water from the lake to start boiling turnip stew for breakfast, go check my fields for anything ready to harvest, go check my net in the lake for fish, start smoking any fish found, then maybe go forage around for the afternoon. Check traps, etc. A nice mini-chores space that’s completely self-defined (had to till all that soil over time, build each fence segment, build my small cabin). Anyways, writing about it has been entertainment for me so I hope you’ll excuse my random message.

Second is that project zomboid’s custom difficulties let you totally cut out any zombies. No non-player npcs at this point, but it has a very robust character stat system and crafting/construction/farming all is pretty thoroughly there. I haven’t played that way yet, but might give it a shot now that I think about it. Could definitely get by just going and raiding grocery stores for canned food, but other self-imposed RP options are definitely in the possibility space.

Curious if you’ve already got either of these on your radar or if you check them out. They’re both games that make me feel optimistic about the possibility of thorough and realistic sims. (Tho now that I think of your post, the ‘hardcore’ sim aspect of both these suggestions may stray too far from the stardewness you may be wanting)

Anyways, just tryin to spread the good word. Peace.

RubySunrise

I have this idea for a tactics RPG where you and your friends are defending the squat you live in from cops trying to evict you. You have to use the environment a lot to create advantages, because one-on-one, the pigs have better training and gear than you and your punk friends. I haven’t developed this idea at all, but I would love to see a tactics RPG with a militant anarchist bent to it (in a good way), rather than the usual fantasy medieval political drama we usually get.

Wildermyth uses the environment in a tactics setting in some cool ways, and I think this game mechanic can be expanded on. And I like the idea of having much much more limited resources than the cops, so being forced to use what you have in clever ways. Like, yeah you’ve got a shotgun, but you also only have two shells. So take out as many as possible with what you have.

It’d require some really good level design, like… modern Hitman level of thoroughness and detail. And that’s after thinking through all the actual battle mechanics and whatnot.

goonbag

Persona but with grown ups. Atlus, my DMs are open

whatsarobot

goonbag great idea, but could we do this without Atlus’ involvement? i prefer my adults without creep and homophobic tendencies.

goonbag

whatsarobot On second thought.. what about Persona without Persona

whatsarobot

…and yet, what about Persona, but with the cast of Seinfeld? @goonbag’s DMs are open

JoJoestar

@yeso Being you the person responsible I need to ask, is the typo on the title intentional? I want it to be intentional.

yeso

JoJoestar typo

whatsarobot

goonbag now you’re talkin!