A bunch of game ideas I would like to see made and game settings I would like to see more of. Of course, it is possible that some of these already exist and I just don’t know about them.
This video is the best demo of this concept I found so far. The best part of the 4th dimension mechanic is that it can be applied to probably any kind of game - puzzle game is an obvious choice but it could find its place even in a shooter or a strategy game.
I am somewhat fond of the ability based combat used in many MMO games, but I don’t like the large amount of time I have to spend on leveling up and especially obtaining equipment. So I would like to see someone taking the PvP duels, arenas and battlegrounds and making them into a separate game where you would start off with max level and all equipment available, so you can fully focus on designing your build and playing the game.
When it comes to technical innovations in games, developers usually try to impress people with better and better graphics. Instead, I would like to see more games try to sacrifice graphics for bigger and more complex game worlds. I think that with the hardware we have today, we could simulate a dynamic world, where things happen without someone designing them beforehand and even get resolved on their own, if the player does not interfere.
Imagine the game Epistory: Typing Chronicles, but with skill trees and loot. So, instead of clicking on enemies to make them explode, you would type words to make them explode. With a little inventiveness, it is possible to come up with various effects for skills and items. Apart from the common things like more health, armor or movement speed, they could change how hard or how long words you get, poison enemies to remove letters over time from the word’s end or make multiple enemies share the same word. And you have an extra challenge of trying to type while running away or dodging projectiles.
From our experience we are used to expect that when we see something, it is where we just saw it. That does not hold true when we go into space and talk distances measured in light years (or even light seconds for that matter). A game could be created that simulates this. A game where you can spot objects or units on such long distances that when it appears on your screen, you actually see a few seconds or even minutes old information. I imagine a tactical game where players would have to operate with outdated information and guess where the opponent actually is.
I must say that Achron really impressed me with its mechanics that allow to actually change the past during a real time match and I would like to see this mechanic explored further.
Weapons in most sci-fi shooters seem like they got stuck in the past, like a little bit after world war 2. Today we have things like accurate long range artillery, active anti-missile defense, guided missiles, drones, long range radars, satellites, thermal camouflage, microwave gun and many more in development. I have seen some people say that with these weapons the game would not be fun anymore, but I disagree. While it would play a lot differently than your common shooter, I think it could still be made fun to play.
Most stealth games in modern setting are ridiculous. Enemies completely forget about you a moment after losing you, are never missed when killed and there conveniently placed air ducts everywhere. But I get it. If you make it realistic, it will become frustratingly hard. That is why you need an advantage. So, I was thinking about a game set in late 20th century, where the player would control an alien trying to infiltrate and rescue captured comrades from human military base. Because the player would have access to things like thermovision, camouflage or drone cameras, you could make the guards intelligent and security tight. So the player would use all their tools to avoid detection until they inevitably make a mistake. But even when the alarm is up, the player still can win by distracting the actively searching guards with sabotages, breach walls to skip control points and so on.
We know the first person camera and the third person camera, but what about the second person camera? Given how the first and third work, the second would mean that the player sees their character through the eyes of a different in-game character. I can imagine applying this in a two person cooperative game, where one player does most of the work but relies on the other player to stand and look where needed. To make this make sense, the other guy could be a camera man and we see the game through the camera. Another concept, player escaping from a monster, the player has a combination of first and second person camera – the second person is from the monster and player sees everything the monster sees and the first person camera would offer a wireframe outlines of the players immediate surroundings (simulating a blind person touching things).
While i am not yet tired of zombie games, I would like to try replacing them with triffids from The Day of the Triffids novel. They are actually quite similar - triffids are slow, hard to kill with bullets and while they won’t turn humans into more triffids, one wound is enough to kill you. However, they have other properties that would spice up the gameplay. Mainly, weapons good against people are not good against plants so players would have to switch based on situation. They are also way stealthier and lastly, it makes sense for them to keep increasing their numbers, compared to zombies that should start to dwindle in numbers after the main outbreak.
I might be looking at the wrong places but I think that this age in our history is not used as often as I would like. I find it interesting thanks to the cumbersome but still useful guns people had there and I would be for both the historically accurate and the folklore accurate adaptation in a game.
Do you remember Empire Earth? The strategy game where you lead a nation from prehistoric times to future technology. Imagine that instead of human nations you would play as fantasy races. Some have already been done in a future setting like Warhammer 40k, but there is still room for some interesting ideas, like undead cloning bodies and improving skeletons with cybernetics, or orc soldiers taking advantage of their endurance to take large doses of combat drugs.
While not all were bad, good WH 40k shooters are surprisingly rare. The space marines are of course the most popular choice for them, but developers often struggle to make them and their weapons feel right. It should be easy, really. Just start with imperial guard instead. You could make a Call of Duty like title with them or even something more tactical like SWAT but with occasional cultists and aliens. Making a loot based shooter around orks should also be an obvious idea. Or a stealth game with imperial assassins. There is plenty of material to work with.
We are quite familiar with both the big animals and small insects in our world, but there are many much smaller creatures, which we don’t see so often, like tardigrades or hydras. It could be interesting to shrink player into this microscopic world or even play as one of these organisms.
Mythologies all over the world are full of monsters with weird behaviors and convoluted ways of getting rid of them, like finding out their name or warding them off with various objects and materials. So, how about a folklore accurate game, where players are asked to hunt them? Yes, we have games like Witcher, but the monsters there are usually less weird than in the real world mythology.
I’m thinking Spelljammer or something like this weird ancient Greek story. It could be a strategy game, it could be an RPG. It has some fun possibilities of applying fantasy things in space, like using golems or undead to build in vacuum conditions.
For how many seasons this TV show had, there are not many games adopting it. There is some multiplayer shooter, bunch of mobile games, a card game and a MMO game that never released. Which I find a bit surprising because it has a lot of material for a good story driven shooter or a strategy game. Speaking of which, some kind of tactics game is being made now, so hopefully it turns out to be a good one.
Some mythologies are used all the time, like Norse or Greek, but there are many more than that in the world, so why not use them more?