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Tell Me About Your Dream Game
Juggernut
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I am bored at work and looking for ways to pass the time. One of the things I'll sometimes think about (instead of bettering myself by learning a new language or educating myself on the pressing issues of our day) is if I owned a video game company what kind of game would I make?
So I am interested in hearing about what other people would want from a video game if they could make it themselves.
Heres an idea I've been kicking around: A massive open world, fantasy RPG where you aren't any kind of special person, you just wash up on a shore one day and from there you gotta figure it out. The big emphasis would be on natural exploration. A minimal hud, no real mini map and having to rely on hints, landmarks and directions to places gleaned from local chatter or rumors. It's something some games have touched on but I'd like to see it really leaned into. The only map you get is one you fill in yourself by exploring and you have to take out and look at to orient yourself. You can scribble in markers for yourself if you come across something and need to remember it. Otherwise, finding off the beaten path locations requires you to ask around, look for clues or stumble on it yourself.
The other big focus would be on indepth inventory management. You're just some random joe humping it across Fantasy Land. You need to equip rucksacks or satchels with realistic weight limits and space, meaning whatever you set out with is what you can carry on your back and in your pack. Pouches and pockets would come into play for smaller items, and bandoliers for some other things. Basically a big like, 20 or 30 point attachment system for your character where you can pick where to stow or hang things. Certain clothing options would allow for more inventory space but reduces your armor, whereas going out in full plate makes you tougher but less nimble and allows for fewer attachment points to carry gear.
You get the ability to bundle up loot (up to a point) like weapons or armor that you can pick up and carry over your shoulder ala Death Stranding, though not as absurd with 20 foot tall stacks of knick knacks. If you get jumped on the way you can release it and start fighting, then pick it back up when your done. If you really want to load up on loot you could get a horse and cart but then you'd be much more limited in your ability to cross open country and would need to stick more to roads. It would be cool to also have a kind of Metro: Exodus style interactive pack where you have to actually dig around in your kit and select what you need.
This would make dungeon crawling and exploration a lot more strategic and methodical. Say you come across a neat cave, but you're already packed out with gear, so you'll need to make a note of it and come back later when you have space after stopping at your home or camp. That way you're not just hitting up every cave or bandit camp you come across, clearing out map markers and looting hundreds of items until you hit an arbitrary weight number. You could also create stashes or troves throughout the world if you come across something you have to have but you'd need to drop something else to take it. Find a reasonable landmark, mark it on your map and then come back for it later when you can.
There'd also be a RDR2 style survival element. I like the idea of having to prep and take provisions if you're going out to explore but I also don't like it to be so punishing that finding yourself stranded without a rabbit leg or a mushroom or whatever means you're going to die. Maybe have the scale be adjustable from "hardcore" to "survival lite" so you still get the effect of having to plan your trips and balance your inventory without getting punished for overshooting your supplies.
Combat would be fairly standard but I've been trying to come up with a sort of "stance" mechanic that creates subtypes of combat within each kind of weapon. So instead of increasing a generic long sword skill you would pick a long sword and then pick a stance to level and master. Each stance would have different perks or strengths and weaknesses. Seems like a cool way to personalize combat even more and allow for more branching gameplay and replayability beyond "pick a axe guy this time."
As for the world I dunno, haven't thought that one out too much. I figure it'd be you fairly typical medieval fantasy world with monsters and such, maybe some vague political tensions and warring kingdoms you can get involved with if you so choose. Or fuck off and just play the absurdly in depth and meticulously designed fishing and accompanying fish cleaning and cooking mini game. Create little fish traps, use a net, use a spear, get on a boat and go out and catch bigger river fish. Then bring em back and de-scale, gut and roast them over a happy little fire. Go gather herbs and roots and spend hours chopping them up and making various dishes and stews to eat on the road. Alchemy would be an involved process where you have to actually grind and brew and bottle things.
The overall goal would be to make a massive and dense world where you're not radically re-shaping it. You exist there and you do things but the impact you have is much smaller in the grand scheme of things. However, the actions you do take would feel more meaningful.
Anyway, that's what I'm pondering tonight.
So I am interested in hearing about what other people would want from a video game if they could make it themselves.
Heres an idea I've been kicking around: A massive open world, fantasy RPG where you aren't any kind of special person, you just wash up on a shore one day and from there you gotta figure it out. The big emphasis would be on natural exploration. A minimal hud, no real mini map and having to rely on hints, landmarks and directions to places gleaned from local chatter or rumors. It's something some games have touched on but I'd like to see it really leaned into. The only map you get is one you fill in yourself by exploring and you have to take out and look at to orient yourself. You can scribble in markers for yourself if you come across something and need to remember it. Otherwise, finding off the beaten path locations requires you to ask around, look for clues or stumble on it yourself.
The other big focus would be on indepth inventory management. You're just some random joe humping it across Fantasy Land. You need to equip rucksacks or satchels with realistic weight limits and space, meaning whatever you set out with is what you can carry on your back and in your pack. Pouches and pockets would come into play for smaller items, and bandoliers for some other things. Basically a big like, 20 or 30 point attachment system for your character where you can pick where to stow or hang things. Certain clothing options would allow for more inventory space but reduces your armor, whereas going out in full plate makes you tougher but less nimble and allows for fewer attachment points to carry gear.
You get the ability to bundle up loot (up to a point) like weapons or armor that you can pick up and carry over your shoulder ala Death Stranding, though not as absurd with 20 foot tall stacks of knick knacks. If you get jumped on the way you can release it and start fighting, then pick it back up when your done. If you really want to load up on loot you could get a horse and cart but then you'd be much more limited in your ability to cross open country and would need to stick more to roads. It would be cool to also have a kind of Metro: Exodus style interactive pack where you have to actually dig around in your kit and select what you need.
This would make dungeon crawling and exploration a lot more strategic and methodical. Say you come across a neat cave, but you're already packed out with gear, so you'll need to make a note of it and come back later when you have space after stopping at your home or camp. That way you're not just hitting up every cave or bandit camp you come across, clearing out map markers and looting hundreds of items until you hit an arbitrary weight number. You could also create stashes or troves throughout the world if you come across something you have to have but you'd need to drop something else to take it. Find a reasonable landmark, mark it on your map and then come back for it later when you can.
There'd also be a RDR2 style survival element. I like the idea of having to prep and take provisions if you're going out to explore but I also don't like it to be so punishing that finding yourself stranded without a rabbit leg or a mushroom or whatever means you're going to die. Maybe have the scale be adjustable from "hardcore" to "survival lite" so you still get the effect of having to plan your trips and balance your inventory without getting punished for overshooting your supplies.
Combat would be fairly standard but I've been trying to come up with a sort of "stance" mechanic that creates subtypes of combat within each kind of weapon. So instead of increasing a generic long sword skill you would pick a long sword and then pick a stance to level and master. Each stance would have different perks or strengths and weaknesses. Seems like a cool way to personalize combat even more and allow for more branching gameplay and replayability beyond "pick a axe guy this time."
As for the world I dunno, haven't thought that one out too much. I figure it'd be you fairly typical medieval fantasy world with monsters and such, maybe some vague political tensions and warring kingdoms you can get involved with if you so choose. Or fuck off and just play the absurdly in depth and meticulously designed fishing and accompanying fish cleaning and cooking mini game. Create little fish traps, use a net, use a spear, get on a boat and go out and catch bigger river fish. Then bring em back and de-scale, gut and roast them over a happy little fire. Go gather herbs and roots and spend hours chopping them up and making various dishes and stews to eat on the road. Alchemy would be an involved process where you have to actually grind and brew and bottle things.
The overall goal would be to make a massive and dense world where you're not radically re-shaping it. You exist there and you do things but the impact you have is much smaller in the grand scheme of things. However, the actions you do take would feel more meaningful.
Anyway, that's what I'm pondering tonight.
Juggernut on
+10
Posts
Also there's a corporation version of the game where it's a business sim mix with Reigns and you build your corp deck up that way, I dunno, I'm an ideas guy, the other developers can work that side out.
shit can I change my answer
also you can kick people. so like you load a freeze cartridge into your spellgun and freeze some goon then shatter his ass with your boot. or you paralyze a goon with your shock spell and kick him off a cliff
I call it 'Kickmage"
@Jars
all the art on the walls would be procedurally generated to match the ridiculous descriptions
Didn't expect the answer to 'how do I stop people hacking my hacking game' to be 'ask them nicely' though.
You can play a pre-loaded movie or franchise or go into a map editor/download creator maps for movies.
You start as the slasher and pick off the victims one by one. Different styles of killer reward different play styles (thinking of how of the Dead by Daylight killers play out differently), but the victims are AI and follow a loose pattern of behaviors. Certain areas and weapons will be marked on a timer and your kills contribute to a combo score.
When one character remains the perspective shifts to the "final" character (and from third person to first person) and you try to create a tense final chase. Points are scored for survival, but keeping it close and thrilling through set pieces that increase in difficulty is the meat of the system (think longer grinds in Tony Hawk).
Loading screen and menu stuff is all cartoon style BTS footage of the cast and crews setting shots and after parties.
(Alternatively, a Mage: The Awakening RPG a la Bloodlines.)
and then a sci-fi sequel that is the same but with Escape Velocity: Nova as the inspiration
-- Final Fantasy Tactics but with superheroes (either DC or Marvel)
or
-- A MacGyver SCUMM/LucasArts point-and-click adventure game
I've been playing through Call of the Sea, which is an exploration/puzzle game in the style of Myst.
If you're looking for a relaxing puzzle game, it scratches that itch particularly well.
I have been waiting for this moment for a lifetime.
…
I’ll do it later.
Add in actual one of a kind items, unique exploration, and allowing players almost as much control over the game world as they want. I want an actual living, breathing, virtual world to tell a galaxy of stories.
Endless varieties of unique aliens and predators and marines to fill out your army, and instead of a single character you control the captains at will. With captains you control more getting more and more powerful and having more encounters to flesh out their story and stats
Also third person action, not fps, cos #1, I wanna see the cool character models at all times, and #2, I feel like combat would be more fun as xenomorph and predator if you could see your own character as that would make it easier to have traversal, melee and like stealth kills, making zipping around a forest canopy as the predators, or climbing upside down as the xenomorph, way easier to control .
Essentially the way it would work is a fleet of marines and prisoner ships crash on a planet that the predators use to hunt aliens. And so for the Colonial Marines faction campaign you’re recruiting engineers, prisoners, lost marines from crashed ships into captains to take territory and control points from the predators and aliens, ie clearing out hives and hunting grounds, maybe some story framing it.
With the predator you’re choosing young hunters, having them be promoted through kills and actions, and getting new hunters as they arrive by ship, since the predators can leave any time they want. You establish new hunting grounds, seek out battles and worthy opponent captains and trophies, and the more successful you are the more you attract promising new hunters to land on the planet and join in on the grand hunt
And with the aliens, you’re expanding your hive, acquiring genetic material from the opposing factions to make new unique breeds and unique “captain” xenomorphs with their own abilities, scars, missing limbs, etc. killing enemies gets certain stats for individual captains, but you strengthen the hive if you bring back better quarry to be impregnated by your queen
You’d also have fodder enemies the way the shadow of Mordor games have fodder orcs, which can be promoted into named captains if they get a kill. So basic runner xenomorphs, low ranking soldiers, prisoners or civilian engineers for the marines faction, and untested juvenile predators who are on their first hunt, with very little armour or weaponry.
Humans would have lots of tech support, loaders, apcs, air support, drones, they could also set traps for predators and aliens. Predators would have their tech and like hunting animals. And xenomorphs would have fodder drones and facehugger variants, as well as the ability to like dig underground to escape encounters or set ambushes.
Essentially I just want the nemesis system in more games, and I want a god damn aliens and predator game that isn’t in first person ffs.
But this setting would be my dream game because just imagining all the potential varieties of predators, xenomorphs and colonial marines would be my heaven. The abilities write themselves for each faction. And imagining all the armour, weaponry, xenomorph types, *chefs kiss*
The idea being you take over the region and like gain a central point, facilitating an evacuation for humans, a successful cleansing hunt for predators, and complete assimilation of all species for the xenomorphs.
The nemesis system with like predators respecting humans that survive a battle to them, or like making armour out of a xenomorph you kill, the amount of encounters, scars, scenarios, fun to think about
Now I’ve made myself sad like I always do when I think about this, cos it will just never happen
Then make it an SF invitationals, with a shit ton of DLC guest characters - make it the Smash of SF style fighting games.
YOU DIED
There's a gang.
They have daggers.
It's a single player episodic action game with an open world but a collection of different characters you can switch between, kind of like GTA5.
You play as a D Class who is confined to a single testing and storage site, who is given different duties maintaining or testing SCPS
You play as a member of a Mobile Task Force, tracking, retrieving and securing new or escaped SCPs
You play as a junior researcher interviewing, testing and logging SCPs
and you play as a couple of different humanoid SCPs themselves, with different abilities, pre containment and during containment and testing
And who would have known you all have to team up to prevent an XK End of the World Scenario.
Also I want a game that's basically GTA Online only single player with APB's customization.
Need some stuff designed or printed? I can help with that.
Also it must have local co-op. My wife and I want to be able to play together.
And it's set in Warhammer 40K.
Anyway what I want is Asmodeus of the Nine Hells as the series big bad. If not literally than structurally. I want bad guys who are mostly Lawful Evil with the occasional Neutral Evil and maybe a plot twist of a random Lawful Neutral baddie. By contrast, I want the overwhelming majority of the angels to be Chaotic Good, with a token Chaotic Neutral angel and maybe a triumvirate type situation of a Lawful Good angel and a pair of Neutral Good angels. But I want the overall supernatural background theme to be fundamentally about independent powers of good coming together to confront and topple a hugely organized and thereby force multiplied evil empire. And if you do it via supernatural means you don't have to worry about what comes after Happily Ever After because it's the supernatural so you can just handwave and say they abandoned anything resembling human politics and infighting afterward to forever maintain the peace.
I've craved for something like that for a long time. Sorry that was probably reallllly rambly.
I want a metahuman game.
Sort of a GTA open world, with many factions and power players to ally with, confront, or compete with.
But you build a character like City of Heroes.
Extremely customizable power sets, point-based market for purchasing your starting power set, which you can then develop as the game progresses.
Wanna be a villain? Go nuts. Rob banks, challenge gang leaders and other meta humans in the underworld. Get yourself a nemesis and mess with him for giggles. Clown the cops and execute your master plan to take over the city.
Wanna be a hero? Nice! Get the key to the city, be best buds with the commissioner, run your operation out of your apartment like a friendly neighborhood Arachno-Man, out of the sewers like some Adolescent Morphed Shinobi Amphibians, or from a sprawling cave outside the city like some manner of Winged-Mammalian Man.
Want to be a lone wolf anti-hero grim dark douche bag? Douche it up, friendo! Go it alone, delivering justice, vengeance, or mayhem on whomever you see fit. Be careful, though! If the whole city hates and mistrusts you, you may have trouble getting things done!
The hardest part of this really flexible system is figuring out various end-game scenarios, especially for characters that are in the grey zone between Hero and Villain, but this is the game I wanted from Infamous and the other late 2000s “hero” games, but I hated being the character they picked for me.
I want Jake Solomon and Mark Nauta to team up to make an X-Com clone using the Warhammer IP (fantasy or space, idgaf). But I want procedurally-generated maps and some kind of rogue-like mode, and points-based PvP, also on procedurally-generated maps.
i am a simple man, with humble tastes.
People always say that a game like this doesn’t exist because companies are worried about being sued by marvel or dc but I’m like come on, it’s so obviously a good idea, cmon!
but it's important to stress that this game isn't so much your standard fair post-apocalyptic hellscape - because the apocalypse is still happening
a deadly substance dubbed The Primer started leaking out of those meteors and changing life on earth - think Tiberium from Command and Conquer. Fields of deadly spores spread from the impact creators to choke all life and change the genetic and psychic makeup of the progeny of its hosts, giving birth to horrifying races of post-human predators that can command insects, cephalopods, and vermin of all kind: the Homo-Degenesis
the world itself is pretty interesting too - Europe is rubble, split by differing factions called Cults like the Spitalians, warrior-immunologists who have sprung from the remnants of the socialized healthcare apparatus of the EU and who are actively trying to fight back the spores but who by nature of their purity-seeking and dedication to exterminating vectors of infection flirt too close to comfort with fascist tactics, the techbro Chroniclers who are trying to bring back the internet to save humanity but aren't afraid to use people's superstitions and fears in order to do so, or the faithful Jehammedans who are essentially the Israelite tribes of the Old Testament revived by faith of a Messiah that appeared to lead them during humanity's end times
but Europe isn't the sole focus of the setting - Africa is the hegemon. Benefiting from relatively minor meteor impacts, beneficial climate change which increased arable land and the end of exploitative global economics, Africa has united and blossomed in the ensuing centuries. Though the diverse tribes and cultural traditions are still very much present, the Cults which interact with Europe are the mercantile Neo-Libyans, the martial Scourges and the spiritual healers of the Anubians
now, it may seem like I'm full of nothing but praises for this setting; I do think it does a bunch of very interesting things and presents plenty of fresh and engaging ideas. But it is also very, very, very clearly made by a bunch of white European men with centrist politics who, despite seeming to try their best, do fall into the general pitfalls of their ilk - lack of introspection, both side-ism, edginess for the sake of titillation without critical thought, etc. There are some issues here, ya'll, which I won't go into because I am supposedly trying to sell this setting as something I would like to make a game in - specifically because I want to have these issues addressed, because I want to take an honest and progressive lens to some of the stuff they decided to include in their world, because I think there are stories here worth telling and lessons here worth sharing; and the creators, despite their worldbuilding abilities, simply aren't up to that task themselves. The less you know about the plots and narrative choices they went with for their Adventure supplementals, the better.
So I want to Mass Effect 2 this shit. Have your boss/party members be a wealthy Neo-Libyan who decided to hire you to explore a dangerous European debris field, have a companion who's an engineer trying to redeem herself before her tribe members; join up with a Spitalian who feels uncomfortable with the methods their more zealous Cult members are taking and get them to argue with a Paler, fresh from the vaults where she lived all her life and following the footsteps of the Gods which stepped out of cryo-sleep to lead the world to a new dawn. Let me grab this universe with my teeth and not let go until I can make it sing.