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[Graham.]

I like Mega Man gaining enemies' powers. He just needs to use them for strategic variety, like the powers you get in a well designed RPG.

Even cooler: have an open-like world - similar to Mega Man - and have lots of powers for the hero to collect. The game would be like Minecraft - not - but with platforming challenges, and instead of getting treasure - ok, so like Diablo ... - the player gets powers from defeated enemies. ... like Pokemon, except of course in Pokemon the powers are the monsters; you defeat one and gain it (not its power).

So Pokemon, but you kill the Pokemon, take their powers, and use them somehow. Maybe you can't level powers. You can only get new ones. So you get the level 3 wind one that pushes enemies around, to take out fast guys on cliffs more easily, to get the level 2 agility one... to get the other one, to get the other one, to get the level 6 wind.

Also not turn-based combat. Normal action-type stuff.

So then like with Minecraft, you build the house to stay the night, to go mining tomorrow, to get the iron, to make the pick, to get the coal, to torch the depths, to get the gold. Blah blah. ... But! You get the wind to get the ice, to go deep in the lava place, to get the berry, to feed the dragon, to ride it to victory! And get the wind, to fight the other dragon, to build your house, so it looks pretty.

The advantage of this format, compared to regular Mega Man - well one advantage anyway - is that the player enjoys playing both the slow and fast way. He learns the world by playing, and gets better... but he also learns weakness chains, and interesting strategies for exploiting them, adapting to the world he actually finds himself in. Each time he dies, or replenishes his stock - goes home to sleep, report, whatever - he has to replay something, sort of, and can take the shortcuts he has learned about. Nothing ever breaks because all the player is doing is saving time.

[Graham.]

Here's an idea: you can go back 5 seconds in time.

How many times do you play a game and just want to redo that last little bit there? In Prince of Persia it is stupid slow... not meant for quick backtracks, only huge errors. I'm pulling apart the same mechanics as Blow did for Braid....

You also charge fast. So you have a 1 second rewind, a 5 second, and 1 minute. You can get 5 of the first, 3 of the second, and 1 of the last. Each charges based on how flashy you do stuff. So an awesome move - like a perfect counter, or clever maneuver - refills a level 1 second rewind, a more complex one refills a 5 second one, and something even more awesome gets you the 1 minute one.

The important bit is to balance the game entirely off of these things, so the player is always gaining charges for all of them. ... There's some stuff you can do to ensure the player is using what he has, instead of saving it and so on - a problem with Prince of Persia.

Combat is fluid and fast, and the player uses all of his powers often, because the game is designed for it to be that way. Also the effects of going back in time are really sharp. Iterating on that so rewinding feels cool is super important. Rewinding needs to feel like the proper punctuation in a sequence of events that it actually is. Snappy, elegant, like jumping in Mario.

This promotes experimentation, because the player is actually not punished for trying things out, and redoing them feels cool. And of course there are always opportunities to use the high powered rewinds.... So there is motivation to get them. You build up the low level ones, to try out some tricky moves to get the higher level ones, to get enough to do something really crazy and own someone.

Often games punish you hard for trying stuff. I like the idea of taking away that stuff. With the above idea the player is only owned if he makes many mistakes in a row, and refuses to pull himself back up. If you (the player) follow up some bad plays with some good ones you end up right where you started. "Get out of jail free" cards. That's what gaming is all about!

... Or maybe the high powered rewind isn't a rewind at all. Doing something really well earns you rewinds, and doing something perfectly earns you special moves - that do fancy/extra damage/effects. So you earn your rewinds by playing well, then try riskier things to get the super powers, probably having to use up your rewinds in the process. You cycle between gaining/expending rewinds until you're good enough to nail a guy and get the thing you want to own him with. Or maybe you just beat him regularly in the process.

The powers/charges don't carry between battles. You earn and use them in one. Maybe if you have some excess after a battle you get some proportionately valuable buff/exp bonus or something, something, but not enough for the benefits to be as good as using the charges in combat.

Visually, the rewinds show on the player avatar. They are like floating orbs of light around him or something, that flash around as he is doing moves. So maybe like 5 small yellow ones and 3 larger orangey-red ones are there. When the player uses one up, the ball of light pops and "pushes" the player back through time, undoing what he just did. The action slows down a little during this, then transitions back to full speed smoothly, giving the player 1/2 second of lead-in that he can't do anything during, before the 1 second window opens that he can change.

[Ridley]

"Real time tactics games where you can control one of your soldiers directly" - While I don't see anything bad about this idea, it's not really interesting either.  The tactics part of the game has to be pretty dumbed down for everything to be running on auto-pilot while you're playing hero with one of your guys.

Batallion Wars was an underrated franchise that could be most aptly described as a third-person shooter Advance Wars, that did this really well. The game was still very tactical, having incorporated the familiar mechanics in an intuitive and smoothly designed way, and it retained that element because you had a personal stake in what units survived, vs. most strategy games where they're picked off by calculations under the hood.

"Mega Man style acquiring the enemy's powers." - This is actually one of the worst things about the classic series, as once you know the hard ability counters to each boss (and they sure aren't hard to figure out), the boss fights after the first one become trivial.  In order for this to not suck, the abilities would either have to be non-combat related, or not do extra damage to certain bosses.

I think they can still be combat related, the advantages and elemental rock-paper-scissors just don't need to be so extreme. Kirby does this really well, especially The Crystal Shards--where each power you get feels special to use because they have functional variation, but none are inherently overpowered in certain circumstances...except the example-specific Kunai, that was a somewhat poorly balanced weapon.

"No fail states should be explored more. Arbitrary "Oh no you got seen and now the mission is over forever" moments are lazy and completely immersion breaking." - The eventual result of failing a stealth mission would be reinforcements which would kill you, so the game is kind of skipping all that.  If it didn't just fade out on you, you'd probably just restart at that point since you're doomed.  Unless you mean some alternate game path that opens up once you're caught, like you can fight your way out, but then why were you even bothering with stealth in the first place?

Thief and Mirror's Edge did this very well--the stealth was somewhat more optional in Thief, in a lot of circumstances. Like Deus Ex, it really most impacts how lethal you want to be in your maneuvering. But in Mirror's Edge, I remember this one part where I was fleeing from what felt like the entire city police force from different angles, and I being spilled out onto a big open highway area. I didn't know where to go, so I just ran, and was eventually chased and gunned down by rifle soldiers and gunships. It was really cool that the game let you do that, instead of just being presented with an invisible wall or kill screen.

"Abilities that use your health as energy" - This wasn't cool in beat-em-ups and I don't particularly like the idea.  Cooldowns, limited supply and limited energy are all better ideas.

I don't know, it worked really well in F-Zero, where you had to gauge and rely on your skill to risk sparing health towards increasing speed, which in turn made it more dangerous. I think it just has to be balanced well, so that the player recognizes the choice they're making when they sacrifice the health for the power. That's something things like Mana can't really pull off, the relationship between vitality and power.

"Logic puzzles." - Doesn't Prof. Layton series do this pretty well?

Perhaps meant logic puzzles incorporated in other genres, games that don't explicitly focus on those kinds of puzzles. But this can be really badly done, like the obtuse puzzles in Devil May Cry which broke up the rest of the game horribly.

"game that constantly changes up the gameplay before things get stale" - Very hard to do this right or well at all, since you have to playtest and balance almost 4 times as hard.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron lets the player get to grips with the controls of each character quickly, and every few missions puts them into a different robot. They're not really balanced towards each other, and it's an oddly satisfying way of pacing--like taking a loaf of bread, a head of lettuce, and 2 tomatoes and making a big interesting sandwich. In other words, gameplay variety, just not subtle and undercooked like when designers throw oddly contrasting minigames into an otherwise consistent game. That's more like finding an unpleasant surprise in your loaf of bread.

"Attacks that focus on disabling/wounding certain body parts" - Problem with this is that if it's real-time, it's difficult to aim for a certain body part unless the game is going in slow motion, and if it's turn-based, you just select the most optimal part to wound every time.  Also, didn't Dead Space series do this?

Fallout 3 comes to mind, but didn't utilize it do it's full potential, as healing still had the same implications that it would've had otherwise.

"Deathmatch based FPS games like Quake and Unreal" - Yeah, these kind of disappeared after Quake 3 basically perfected the genre.  Maybe it's time for another one.  But what would you do to make it new/interesting?

Halo recently revived it with new L4D-ish twists of Infection gamemodes. I think gamemode customization really helps spur this kind of game, too.

"Story progression and character development/interaction happening during gameplay" - Annoying, gets in the way of things and the player shouldn't be paying attention to that while the game is going anyway.

Bastion is popularly what perfected this method of storytelling, via active and well-voice-acted narration. It's not distracting from the gameplay when seamlessly integrated with what's going on. When there's gameplay and story segregation, however, and the story being developed has nothing to do with what you're trying to accomplish in-game, then there's a bad contrast and that's where you've made a design flaw.

"Parkour-style map movement in a FPS that also equally utilizes good gunplay." - How are you supposed to aim or carry a gun when you're vaulting off walls and stuff? D:

Again, see Mirror's Edge, does this very well.

"Parallel worlds" - Cool, but very hard to pull off well.  I should attempt this at some point, it seems like it's right up my alley.

Games that do this well, like the recently released Giana Sisters indie title, or Metroid Prime 2, are most notable in the way that switching from one world to the other has implications on the level design, and often is a way of circumventing obstacles between two dimensions. Very cool.

[Zest]

I'm not quite sure where else to put this, but I had some interesting thoughts about feelies.

In retrospect, they were a way of compartmentalizing a part of the game experience that couldn't be handled by the software alone. Where we now have access to full voice acting, cinematic cutscenes, polygonal 3D models and highly detailed 2D sprites, older games had none of this. Instead, they offloaded the visual aesthetics and the storytelling onto media that was better established and cheaper to produce. Game manuals are the most obvious example, and once you take this tack it's easy to see what happened. As games have gotten better at incorporating their story and visual aesthetic into itself, it doesn't need the manual anymore to prop itself up. Indeed, as games get better at teaching players the mechanics through tutorials and hint devices, it doesn't even need the manual to explain how the game is played. This is the reason why so many manuals for games now are paper-thin or even non-existent; they're no longer needed, their vital information has been absorbed into the game experience.

However, I think this relationship between the physical and the digital is a very interesting one and still worth exploring. That there is a revived interest in printmaking and book-binding as a craft is no coincidence; as more of society becomes digital, we are interested in the tangible, the hand-made. Indie game devs might not be able to afford to print cloth maps for every copy of their next roguelike platformer, but exploiting that relationship could yield some really interesting results. A short zine with illustrations of the baddies you're facing, or a hand-made diary with scribbles from the madman who placed you in this infernal maze, or a simple letter requesting your help to Save The World.

This is still a very loose idea in my head, but designing a game around that relationship could also be worthwhile. The idea that sparked it was reading a bit about the Book of the Dead. Here is a tome that guides the deceased through an enchanted realm, containing a list of spells that'll help them overcome obstacles and tons of information about all of the challenges they'll face. It's essentially a strategy guide for the afterlife. Now imagine a game with that idea in mind, the player depending on a small book for help- but what if the book is missing pages? Or some parts are translated poorly, and some are just outright fabricated? Now we have a metagame, where the player is interacting with the physical media to help them interact with the digital media. I have no idea if this would even be fun.... but it could be.

[Graham.]

I love hard copies. I plan for my current game to do (hopefully):
  . hard copy manuals, that read like instructions/art book etc. players order these. they are given out for special editions etc.
  . a board/card game that lets players engage in the same mechanics, though slightly altered.
  . the ability to print/buy hardcopy versions of your special items/characters, which can work with the board/card game
  . a paper-only card/board game that lets player play most of the actual board/card game with stuff printed out at home.

I'm also very interested in "helpful" co-op, or back-seat driving. One player is playing, and the other player is helping, without actually playing. The second player is reading a book, or looking at their phone or whatever, and only "plays" by communicating.

One trick for digital media, based on your idea Zest. Create a special code, and print it on the book. Then generate all the number data in the book based on several functions that take the printed code as input. That way the book is unique. Then the player enters the code into their console, tying their book to it, and must rely on the book to do certain things.
  . This is tricky. Would not make a necessary feature.
  . No idea how this works with printers, since each book is one of a kind.

The simplest solution is just to make the book really helpful. Maybe there are times when the player can sort of take a back seat in the game - like flying between cities in WoW - and can read the book then, flipping through menus in the game too, while waiting.

The wiki for Minecraft is one of the most important parts of the experience. I would love to have a book for playing Minecraft beside me, or something, that's suited for how much I know about the game i.e. beginner book, advanced book.
  . the idea is the book has everything the web has, but is professionally organized. of course you can put redeemable codes in the book for game content. then package the book in with deals.

I really like the idea of winning books. Like in the game you give out X books for players who are awesome. The give-away books are special edition. Hello strong community.

[Zest]

These are all fucking choice ideas. A video/boardgame hybrid could be crazy cool, and fulfill what all of those DVD boardgame hybrids attempted to do. Not totally sold on sealing a book to a single game, though- that's basically a single-use-install DRM. I like the line of thought, though, of personalizing the experience. Maybe the book would be better suited for it? Allow the user to sign a contract in it or something before they started playing, to get into character and make the book their own.

[Graham.]

Yeah, I don't like the one-copy book idea either. It just has the core thing you want, making the book a necessary part of the experience. Though that might be over thinking it. Maybe the book just need to be super interesting.

I was a camp counsellor for 2 years. Kids would carry around these pokedexs, that were little pocket electronic toys that just told you pokemon powers when you typed in their number. they would quiz each other on them, just because they liked pokemon.

The value of a book is two-fold:
  1. You have a physical representation of your appreciation for a product.
  2. You can carry the book around, use it anywhere etc.

The reason I like old instruction manuals is because they told me things about the game, that I needed to know. They set the tone for how to play. Now we just jump in, and often to a detriment, because we don't take the care to become absorbed. We don't digest before we consume. Also, I could read the manual when my parents were watching tv, or it was past my bedtime or something. Games were only sometimes. The book was every time.

You can sit at a desk and pour over your math homework with a friend. It's more personal than at a computer. Because the emphasis is on you and the other. The pokedex was an excuse to bring the social connection pokemon could create with you on the go. It is hard to get someone to play a game with you. It is easy to get them to glance at a page. It is non committal.

You can bust out a book beside a pad and pen, and take notes. You can have it with you while you are playing, while the computer is over there. You can have it beside your computer while your monitor is tied up playing the game.

Wikis are extensive. They will always be more extensive than what devs produce, unless no one cares about your game. Devs can do these things:
  1. put in artwork
  2. customize the presentation to suit the vision of the game
  3. customize the information to be the perfect pocket companion

If you have to look in a book a lot, like an explorer checking his notebook for maps and clues and riddles, then the careful planning of its construction becomes very valuable, and thus irreplaceable by the internet.

And of course, you create templates in the book, or in a separate book, that the player can fill in with their own notes, that they take from the game - which can have some uniqueness to them, for the individual player - or from the web, or from their own calculations, that they must reference while playing, or suffer. ... That's how you make the book forcibly unique. You make the player "sign it" with unique information that shows up only in their campaign, over and over.

They must take great care in how they take their notes because the book has limitations (a physical length). They can print off extra pages on their computer, or buy new blank books/appendices in the store, but they'll want to keep what they do have as pristine as possible.

I would probably make two books: one that is all filled, and one of templates. So a player won't feel afraid of ruining their "main" copy. The template books are more replaceable.

The main book could have all this stuff that is needed to interpret some of the things recorded in the template book by the player, like an encoder ring. It doesn't have to be annoying or whatever. It can be simple. The point is that the player will often need the main book to make best use of their personal book.

When players play local co-op with a friend, or even online, they bring both books with them, and reference both. Occasionally on adventures the players will encounter challenges for which only one player may have a certain kind of valuable information (in their personal book) to help meet it. That player will have to study his own notes, confer with others, and express his ideas so the team can get the best results.

[Zest]

What's really interesting is what you're describing is what I feel has made Skylanders so successful. It's a physical object that has value within the game and without. The games are designed for co-op, so you're encouraged to socialize with other players (I'm not even sure if the games have online play), which increases the value of the overall experience. The persistent leveling of the figurine and the simple branching paths makes your figure yours and yours alone, personalizing your experience and giving extra value to the physical object.

Man, we could do a whole compo around using a physical object alongside a game.

[Zest]

Some more ideas: Maybe a pre-existing text could be adopted to a new game, to cut down on time and money spent creating prose content. How about a wargame where the player can anticipate an enemy's attacks based on their monologues at a given point in the story? Or an adventure title that relies on unorthodox interpretations of passages from the King James Bible? Or a House of Leaves-style game where parts of the book appear to be speaking to the game, or directly to you?

[unsilentwill]

These ideas are super great Theo and Graham, but probably on a small scale. Ni No Kuni tried its hardest, and it sounds like the book is barely implemented, and only for certain versions. I'd love to see a game do this though, and with self publishing/handcrafting it could work very well on a limited run. As much as I hate games that are only available to some people, this might be worth it. Heck, you could even through a little AR in there.

[Zest]

Thanks! I'm thinking small-scale would be best for this sorta thing, and omigosh the potential with small-press works could be so cool. You could make a standalone comic with clues for a tiny Flash game that revealed more story bits and encourage a different reading of the story and omigod stop I need to start ftzing with this shit.

[Rabbit]

a game where you have to balance various birds on the edge of a chocolate fountain until they are covered. you cant let them fall in/off until they are covered in chocolate.

[rivon]

A flight simulator which would "feel" just like this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEe3xfWfkG8

The existing simulators are all too perfect whereas if you look at the video, you can see that the planes move in all directions all the time yet they are stable. The motion in the video just looks so much more natural (well, it is natural but that's not the point) than the flight sims where you go pretty much straight where you are pointing at.

[Landshark RAWR]

die hard: the metroidvania

[char68]

Has anyone pitched: Gun-totting dungeon-crawler rpg with an environment where everything can be used (or destroyed).

I'm thinking of Nox (or even Diablo for that matter) for the dungeon-crawling elements, and Spelunky for the ability to manipulate objects such as breaking down walls and making rope traps with various weighted objects.