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[sublinimal]

"A zero rises to a hero and fights an evil organization. Everything he does is justified because he's the one being oppressed and anyone who opposes him is clearly rotten." This is a pretty typical template in popular culture, and could be subverted well in a game format.

Three powers govern the world: Mind, Body, and Technology. Followers of the Mind element come from a bloodline that is capable of using psychic powers. They used to rule the world for centuries. Lately, a power shift has occured: a group of rebels harnessed the power of ancient Technology and eventually managed to take down the Emperor. The world has changed a lot since. There are no more godlike rulers and people are more prosperous than ever, but Technology has destroyed traditions, suffocated nature, and promoted greed. The Mind culture has been reduced to a pathetic village.

You control either a grunt of the Technology faction who believes this is a golden age, a youngster from the Mind village who's sick of the new world, or a Body elementalist (one of "the common people") who gets dragged to their fight after a major event. You play through the same story from these three viewpoints. Every character thinks they're the hero and the others are out to destroy the world.

[Goodbye]

Minecraft and Age of Empires! Build towns, lead armies, and advance in technology using the resources of the blocky landscape.

[Droqen]

A graphical text-based adventure in real-time. Practically like your average RPG, but it rewards faster typists. There'll always be a WPM handicap, for those who are really slow at typing. Think Peasant's Quest, but two-directional and real-time.

Kanji Dungeon is that concept taken to the max and in a grid-based RPG kind of game

and also made for learning japanese kana (and kanji eventually), so if you're not interested in that you will (sadly) find the game to be rather uninviting

but it's amazing. So amazing.

[Nix]

You are a consultant who helps super villians protect their flawed evil fortresses from intrusion by 007-likes.

[JasonPickering]

You are a consultant who helps super villians protect their flawed evil fortresses from intrusion by 007-likes.

reminds me of this

[Droqen]

Think party rpg; maybe traditional dq-ish, or maybe tactics-i-er.

Originally thought of as X-COM & Disgaea minus any leveling up.

You can recruit characters with fixed stats and abilities: they are so strong, so fast, and can do these things. These things will never change, ever.

What does improve is your understanding of a character: when you first recruit a character their stats and abilities and ability costs and so on are all obscured. Characters may also have personalities and such.

You're given only very vague details about new recruits: as you use them in battle, you glean more information about them. You might have to actually fill these details in yourself (i.e. you type and fill in their character sheet with whatever you want) through observation.


When a character dies, they are forever dead. Gone. Their file can be kept on record, but you can never get them back (... probably?). You get a new recruit who is probably randomly generated, but because nobody ever levels up, your new recruit will be exactly as powerful as the old, dead member was -- possibly (likely) in an entirely different way. Your team will be thrown off-balance, however, because who may have been an important piece of keeping everything running smoothly is now dead. The new character is now a pile of question marks, and it takes time to get used to them again (and to tell what role they might play in the team).

[1982]

Think party rpg; maybe traditional dq-ish, or maybe tactics-i-er.

Originally thought of as X-COM & Disgaea minus any leveling up.

You can recruit characters with fixed stats and abilities: they are so strong, so fast, and can do these things. These things will never change, ever.

What does improve is your understanding of a character: when you first recruit a character their stats and abilities and ability costs and so on are all obscured. Characters may also have personalities and such.

You're given only very vague details about new recruits: as you use them in battle, you glean more information about them. You might have to actually fill these details in yourself (i.e. you type and fill in their character sheet with whatever you want) through observation.


When a character dies, they are forever dead. Gone. Their file can be kept on record, but you can never get them back (... probably?). You get a new recruit who is probably randomly generated, but because nobody ever levels up, your new recruit will be exactly as powerful as the old, dead member was -- possibly (likely) in an entirely different way. Your team will be thrown off-balance, however, because who may have been an important piece of keeping everything running smoothly is now dead. The new character is now a pile of question marks, and it takes time to get used to them again (and to tell what role they might play in the team).

I like this! Would work great in some management game  too 

[Vit]

More of a 'game mechanics' than 'game scenario' post incoming!

An RPG where the party is a bunch of summoners. You collect 'monster essence' by defeating monsters, then spend the essence to either get new summons by turning it into 'summon orbs', or power up your existing summons by turning it into 'essence gems' instead, which can be equipped to summons to either use skills during battle or simply boost stats (like FF7's materia, apparently; I've never played that game). Summons' stats are based on the party's level (shared amongst all members), so leveling up improves all of your summons (unlike most other games with monster recruitment).

Variation of timer-based battle system - each summon has an 'action gauge' like normal, but different skills use up different portions of the gauge, so you can either attack with quick, weak skills or charge up for a more powerful hit. Combine 'essence gems' for 'fused' attacks (e.g. combine water and wind gems = storm attack, or fire and sword gems = flame slash attack). Combined skills use up more of the action gauge, but are more powerful. Press keys/buttons at the right time for combo hits/criticals/dodging enemy attacks. Each character can switch between two or three equipped summons during battle, but doing so uses up a large chunk of the action gauge. Instead of health, the party has a 'focus' gauge; when the party loses focus, your summons disappear, and (as you're all mages) you have to retreat (respawn at a checkpoint?).

Your level affects your stats (bravery, wisdom, willpower, cunning) - as the player is a mage-type, I'm going with mental attributes rather than physical attributes. These stats reflect in your summons' stats - bravery -> physical attack/defence, wisdom -> magical attack/defence, willpower -> physical/magical defence, cunning -> agility. Each type of summon has different proficiency in each stat (as a percentage of the relevant player's stats). Each character can weight their stats in any way they want, and change the weighting any time outside of battle - this lets you customise the roles each character plays. Summons can gain 'ability points' which can be used to increase their elemental affinities, unlock more gem slots, and 'evolve' them - however, they have no effect on stats, so a newly-acquired summon will have the same stat as one that you've been using for a while.

A bunch of mechanics inspired by various modern RPGs: auto-heal between battles (no need for inns/healing items), instant travel from anywhere to previously visited locations, enemies are visible on the map and don't pursue you if you're significantly stronger (i.e. no random battles), collect/kill quests don't require you to go back to the quest giver.

[Sir Raptor]

You are God. Not a wimpy Pocket God, or a strange Black and White god, but the actual God of the world and everything living on it. If anything, the game is most similar to SimEarth, except while this game focused on the economic side of being an almighty god of everything, this game focuses on the religious aspect.

See, here you are a proper god, and by proper I mean almighty. And I mean ALL mighty. There are no limits to your power, and there are no rival gods of any kind to compete against for supremacy. As such, you have the entire game to try and get a feel of what the traditional view of God is like.

You start off the game with a planet, and right off the bat have the choice of either creating intelligent life or letting evolution take care of it. The choice you make has no lasting impact whatsoever, and no matter what you do, when people populate the earth, they will eventually argue over which you actually did.

Because the actual point of the game is the humans. You can interact with them in any way you wish, or even not interact with them at all. There's a little tab that determines what you believe is sinful and what is righteous, ranging between topics from abortion to zoophilia, so you can have people's karma automatically be lowered if they choose to be lawyers or whatever. If you wanna just smite all of them, there's a button for that too. You can even send your own son down to Earth, and you will be automatically notified when he gets killed by religious fanatics.

When you get bored, or angry because nobody believes in you anymore, you can just end the world. There's a tab for that too, with various ways to end all life, from zombies to earthquakes to pop music to just setting everyone on fire.

The game is called "Our Father Who Art," referring both to its religious nature and the fact that it's pretentious as all fuck.

[RCIX]

You are God. Not a wimpy Pocket God, or a strange Black and White god, but the actual God of the world and everything living on it. If anything, the game is most similar to SimEarth, except while this game focused on the economic side of being an almighty god of everything, this game focuses on the religious aspect.

See, here you are a proper god, and by proper I mean almighty. And I mean ALL mighty. There are no limits to your power, and there are no rival gods of any kind to compete against for supremacy. As such, you have the entire game to try and get a feel of what the traditional view of God is like.

You start off the game with a planet, and right off the bat have the choice of either creating intelligent life or letting evolution take care of it. The choice you make has no lasting impact whatsoever, and no matter what you do, when people populate the earth, they will eventually argue over which you actually did.

Because the actual point of the game is the humans. You can interact with them in any way you wish, or even not interact with them at all. There's a little tab that determines what you believe is sinful and what is righteous, ranging between topics from abortion to zoophilia, so you can have people's karma automatically be lowered if they choose to be lawyers or whatever. If you wanna just smite all of them, there's a button for that too. You can even send your own son down to Earth, and you will be automatically notified when he gets killed by religious fanatics.

When you get bored, or angry because nobody believes in you anymore, you can just end the world. There's a tab for that too, with various ways to end all life, from zombies to earthquakes to pop music to just setting everyone on fire.

The game is called "Our Father Who Art," referring both to its religious nature and the fact that it's pretentious as all fuck.

I'm both intrigued and insulted by this at once. 

[eyeliner]

I have an idea brewing, but I think my limitations will prevent me from bringing it to reality:

Feudal Japan

Long has your village been living with the immemorial tale of the end of days, by an evil purging entity that will destroy everything.

One day you wake up, with your village on fire, invaded by dark faceless monsters, pillaging, destroying and burning buildings.

You pick up your sword and in defense of your village and trying to save your fellow villagers, you hack and slash towards the first monsters. They become more and more aggressive as more and more you progress through your saving rampage.

You kill bosses, faceless monsters and at the end you face the biggest of them all.

He was the chief of the village, and the faceless monsters you attacked were your fellow villagers. You were victim of a delusion, with you murdering everyone, realizing what you have done when the village chief grabbed your robes and the terrified scream of her daughter woke you from your trance.

On the realization of your deeds, you, unwilling to endure the pain, with the village daughters cry on your ears, kill yourself.

T%he prophecy was made true.

[ntdb]

I have an idea brewing, but I think my limitations will prevent me from bringing it to reality:

Feudal Japan

Long has your village been living with the immemorial tale of the end of days, by an evil purging entity that will destroy everything.

One day you wake up, with your village on fire, invaded by dark faceless monsters, pillaging, destroying and burning buildings.

You pick up your sword and in defense of your village and trying to save your fellow villagers, you hack and slash towards the first monsters. They become more and more aggressive as more and more you progress through your saving rampage.

You kill bosses, faceless monsters and at the end you face the biggest of them all.

He was the chief of the village, and the faceless monsters you attacked were your fellow villagers. You were victim of a delusion, with you murdering everyone, realizing what you have done when the village chief grabbed your robes and the terrified scream of her daughter woke you from your trance.

On the realization of your deeds, you, unwilling to endure the pain, with the village daughters cry on your ears, kill yourself.

T%he prophecy was made true.

This touches on a topic that my brother-in-law has been kicking around: deceiving the protagonist/player and inflicting an existential crisis upon them at the end of the game. There may be some but I'm unaware of any existing games that take such a theme as far as you have here. I'd love to see it done well (and not ruined for most players by the combined griefing power of the internet).

[jeffrobot]

I think it would be more interesting if the "trance" you were under wasn't just a magical trance. That's pretty obviously just a weak plot device. How about your character is some super self-righteous guy and takes his morals to the extreme and for some reason that obligates him to do all these terrible things. Only afterwards does he realize his folly, or whatever. Basically he's like Hitler, but realizes that his acts were immoral before he dies. I as a player would appreciate something a little more relatable than a trance.

Also, Shadow of the Colossus had this theme. It wasn't quite as visceral and brutal as this though.

[Player Ʒ]

I think it would be more interesting if the "trance" you were under wasn't just a magical trance. That's pretty obviously just a weak plot device. How about your character is some super self-righteous guy and takes his morals to the extreme and for some reason that obligates him to do all these terrible things. Only afterwards does he realize his folly, or whatever. Basically he's like Hitler, but realizes that his acts were immoral before he dies. I as a player would appreciate something a little more relatable than a trance.

The Tragedy of Julius Caesar is an example. Brutus was deceived to kill Caesar for nationalism, just to find out he was a tool for Cassius. Maybe this plot device could use work.

[Aik]

'You are one of few surviving humans holding command of units capable of fighting off the alien threat. The alien forces hold overwhelming firepower - the only way to defeat them is through strategy - anticipating their movements and laying traps. Up until recently, this has been an easy process - all alien communications were in plain text. Slowly, however, they have begun to develop the science of cryptography. Can the remnants of humanity break these codes and co-ordinate their forces to repel the invaders? '


I'm envisaging a persistent multiplayer game where the interface is a command-centre consisting of a forum, chatroom, message interception screen, scripting testbed (to write programs to help decode stuff), and a method for directing units or delegating them to another player. The players intercept messages encoded by the aliens using various algorithms (of increasing difficulty as the aliens realise their codes are broken, probably starting very simple). Of course, there would need to be human intelligence on the side of the aliens to write the messages and stuff, but perhaps as the game goes on that could be replaced with normal players through inciting defections or setting up the situation as one where game-politics lead to in-fighting on the human side.

I really doubt I'll make this, but it's interesting because it's both fairly simple and fairly complex, and could either be really cool or really terrible. Ideally it would capture the sort of atmosphere I remember from the Year Zero ARG, with everyone pitching in with ideas and clues to solve the problem, with added pressure from knowing that if the riddle isn't solved a fleet of alien battleships could slip in and wipe out humanity. Maybe throw in a bit of that feeling from the end of Ender's Game directing space combat at a strategic level.

[Sir Raptor]

I think it would be more interesting if the "trance" you were under wasn't just a magical trance. That's pretty obviously just a weak plot device. How about your character is some super self-righteous guy and takes his morals to the extreme and for some reason that obligates him to do all these terrible things. Only afterwards does he realize his folly, or whatever. Basically he's like Hitler, but realizes that his acts were immoral before he dies. I as a player would appreciate something a little more relatable than a trance.

Just plain ol' schizophrenia works too. Just because your game takes place before the condition had a name doesn't mean the condition didn't exist back then.

[Vox]

I had this weird game idea where you play as a zombie or something that can be cloned/is in a large quantity and you use yourself as a platform to get through a level. So it is a puzzle platformer game. So the level would be start out to be impossible then u would have to strategically kill your self/place yourself in locations that would allow you to make it to the end the level progression would be like vvvvvv where it is a room based system,because I really love that game and i think it would be a good style for the game style. Im not really sure what the story would be I just wanted to get this idea out there for some criticism.

[wademcgillis]

So here's the idea... JFK, Nixon, McNamara and Fidel Castro... trapped in the pentagon fighting side by side against... ZOMBIES!
http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20101101

[majormel84]

A One screen adventure game with some huge monster!

[Sir Raptor]

So here's the idea... JFK, Nixon, McNamara and Fidel Castro... trapped in the pentagon fighting side by side against... ZOMBIES!
http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20101101

You do realize that is an actual game, and that the comic is, in fact, referring to the game, right?