With how the B-Game Competition was so interesting, successful, awesome and FUN, I thought of creating this thread in order to discuss ideas for new competitions that Mr. Yu and the other Big Men of TIGS may be inspired to hold in the future. I'd like to discuss more unusual ideas, and not the "make a shmup/RPG/platformer/etc" or "make a game in 48 hours" kinds of compos that are very common around the indie scene. Though you may try to create a twist to them, but it better be a very good one.
Oh, and the next compo totally needs to have a free Aquaria copy as a prize, when the game's released. XP
I'd like to start with an idea inspired by the "Games from Games or Games from Life" thread started by rinkuhero.
EDIT 2: New updated list:
1.Video Game Name Generator
Make a game named using the VGNG! It’s that simple.
2.Abstract Real Life
Taking inspiration from a theme or element existing in real life and abstracting that concept into pure gameplay mechanics and game design. You should not, however, do the usual method of creating a "raise your virtual child"-style simulation game, or in any way make it painfully obvious to the player how the concept was applied. Points would be given for how subtly and effectively you applied the concepts to your game's design.
3.B-Games
Games so bad, they’re… good? But just being bad isn’t enough. You gotta be bad in a funny way. It’s kind of hard to explain, the best way to understand it is to play some of them.
4. Giant Naked Men
Make a game featuring… giant naked men.
5. Plot-Gameplay Mash-Up Comp
Let's say that every game has two parts: a plot, and a gameplay style.
A typical game might look like this:
Plot: You are flying the only starfighter in the solar system. Now you must single-handedly stop the alien armada before it reaches the Earth.
Gameplay: A side-scrolling game where you can move up or down and send little yellow blobs shooting towards the side of the screen.
An entry to this competition, on the other hand, might take that typical side-scroller gameplay and try to convincingly make it depict the plot: "You are a single parent in a deprived urban area struggling to make ends meet and give your child a loving, nurturing upbringing." Alternatively, you might take the plot about being the only pilot who can stop the alien invasion, and make it a point-and-click adventure game.
6. Random Google Image
People get a random google image and have to turn it into a game. How this image is turned up is a mystery. Perhaps the developer asks his forum colleagues to vote on the phrase that should be googled, and the developer must then use the first image that is returned.
7. Chinese Bootleg Demakes Compo
A demake of an existing, commercially produced game, with bootleg Engrish and paper-thin modifications to avoid copyright infringement.
8. Sprite hack, a two stage competition.
The first stage lasts a week or two where everybody and their mother generate sprites along a chosen general theme (ie High Fantasy, Sci Fi, 1930’s Detective, World War 2, Steam Punk, Victorian Colonial, ect …). At the end of the first stage all the sprites are made available to all competitors.
The second stage is pure programming. The contestants are only allowed to use the sprites generated in the first 1/2 of the competition.
9. Courier Woo!
All art must be composed of characters from the Courier font family. No restrictions are applied on scaling, rotating, colouring etc, so games needn't look like pages of ascii art. It's like the 2 phase compo idea, except the graphics are already available. Arty types can amuse themselves by glueing characters together.
10. Games based on webcomics.
UNICORN POWER!!!
11. Drunk-friendly games
For best results, test them on real drunks.
12. 2D game Intro Competition
Create a short animated game intro cinematic, using oldschool 2D techniques (sprites and scrollfields for example)
13. Match 3 me baby.
B-games focusing on horrible portal cloned game genres? Then throw in seedy themes and piss poor production values.
Then we submit them to every portal on the interwebs and post the hopefully amusing rejection notices and rofl at the ones that get a deal.
Winner by vote... or portal reply.
14. Cooperate with oneself!?"
inspired by cursor*10, it would be fun to see how else this mechanic could be applied.
15. "The Life and Times of L Ron Hubbard, and his Not-a-cult"
Games about the church of scientology. Participate at your own risk.
16. A religious-themed game compo
17. A Fables compo
where we make games using the various myth, fairy tale and folk type characters we can think of, such as Mother Goose rhymes.
18. ASCII versions of stuff you wouldn't expect to see in ASCII.
Fighting games, shooters, etc.
19. Someone makes a piece of music and everyone has to use that music in their game.
You interpret the music into a game and whoever's game seems to represent the music the best is the winner.
20. Blind cooperation contest.
People are split into three (or more) groups with tasks like developing art assets, recording sound effects or developing a game engine (presumably with placeholder art). Then people are randomly selected from each group and have to combine their existing assets into a finished game. Hilarity ensues!
21. "Rythm game" compo
22. movie-based game compo
Where you either have to make a game based off a movie that really shouldn't have a game based off it (ie: The Breakfast Club, or Dead Poet's Society) or we could make it games based off movies from a pre-game era (Casablaca the game, The Great Escape, Fritz Lang's Metropolis etc).
23. Procedural Generation Compo
Make a game which is absolutely different every time you boot it.
Which means:
-procedurally generated graphics
-procedurally generated music
-procedurally generated story/gameplay (more or less...)
24. Text Adventure Competition
Self-explanatory really.
25. "Best Gore"-competition
26. A competition that is about games where music plays an important role
27. a 'games for your wife' competition?
In which you have to come up with games that can convert the most determined anti-game person to a life of video game enslavement. There are lots of games out there targeting people who are ambivalent about games. But there aren't many for people like my wife, who actively averts her gaze whenever there is a game on a screen in the room.
28. a 'games for your sweetie' competition
where each game is a love letter to a person of the author's choice.
29. Games for a charity compo
30. platformer extravaganza
31. game based on your favorite song
32. Educational Software Compo
Make an educational game. It can be anything as long that it seems that the game is trying to learn you something. It can be a fighting game that tries to teach the player the vital points of a human body.
33. Real Life Graphics Compo
All the graphics in the game must be taken by you with a camera. Feel free to edit the pictures with photoshop or some other software as long as you edit what's already there, like adjust the colors. You are not allowed to draw wings or something on your characters however, if you build your own wings out of paper or something, you can cut and paste them on to your characters.
34. Rejected by Nintendo
Games rejected by Nintendo in the early days for having too much violent content. Of course these aren’t really such games, you invent your own.
35. Compo Mash-Up Compo
The goal for this competition is to choose a game submitted in a previous TIGS competition (not a game done by yourself obviously) and do a remake (or demake) of this game with your own point of view.
36. Commonplace Book Compo
H.P. Lovecraft didn’t have nearly enough time to make all his ideas into full stories so he wrote down these crazy notes in his ‘Commonplace Book’. You can see some/all (?) of it here:
http://www.lapetiteclaudine.com/archives/011196.html37. Nudity in Videogames
Game must involve nudity in some way. Obviously, compatible with Giant Naked Men.
38. Mobile Audiosurf Squad
For this competition we take on the role of the Mobile Audiosurf Squad. We do just what Audiosurf does, i.e. take a piece of music and turn it into a game. Audiosurf may be able to do this in about 20 seconds, but we have the advantages of creativity and originality. Don't let those damn robots outdo us!!
The song should be a commercially released one, not something you made yourself. The game has to run for the entire duration of the song, but if you need to, you can have short silent sections for the menus, starting/ending cutscene and so on, but obviously these should be kept to a minimum. The gameplay and graphics should both be connected to the song either directly through rhythm or through general themes.
39. Banner Games
Make a game to appear in a banner. Max resolution of 600x90, and without preference to a particular platform. I mean, geez, anything would be better than ‘CAN U OUTDRINK PARIS HILTON BY CLICKING THIS BUTTON QUITE RAPIDLY’.
40. Remake from an Ad
Remake a game that you never played, but saw an ad/ads for.
41. Multiplayer on One Keyboard
In the tradition of TigSource’s recurring articles on the subject.
42. Interpret a Phrase
You get a phrase. Where it comes from I don’t know but the examples we have are “An empty cup of tea” and “The doctor is in”. Then you make a game from it.
43. Obsessive Compo
Act like you’re obsessed with a certain thing in all elements of design. For example if you’re obsessed with cubes, everything is made of cubes, from the player to the enemies to the environment to the menu screen.
44. One Sentence at a Time
Like those stories where you say one sentence at a time, only with a game.
It could go something like
1. someone displays a background
2. displays a sprite
3. lets the sprite walk
4. adds an alcohol item that messes up the walking keys
Considered impractical unless there was a single developer who accepted suggestions from forum posters.
45. Boxart
You’re given the boxart of a nonexistent, untitled game, and then you make it.
46. Invincibility
A game where the player’s character is invincible, yet still challenged. See Wario Land for a great example.
47. Vs. Compo
Crossovers that should never have been (like Mortal Kombat vs. DC). You can even use my random crossover generator if you like. It’s not great though.
48. Rather Short Compo
Make a game that lasts a very short amount of time. Some sources say 20 seconds, others 5. I would recommend a little longer than that, but pick any number you choose really.
49. IMAGINATION!!
A game that uses the power of imagination. Text adventures and roguelikes are rather obvious examples, but I’m sure you can do better. I know you can, man, I’ve seen the talent behind your eyes and it’s just waiting to get out.
50. Book Compo
It’s like the movie compo but with a book. Books which already have games based on them are not allowed. I guess you could also do this with poems, comics, bathroom graffiti or whatever other artistic medium you like.
51. Text Demake
Take an existing game and demake it into a text adventure (though some would argue that this doesn’t constitute a demake, whatever).
52. Very Hard Games
Make them.
53. METACOMPO
There are so many contest ideas floating about here, and it's a real shame that there are some good ones we'll probably never get around to: so how about we have a contest contest?
Here's the basic idea: It's loads and loads of little contests running concurrently. There's a one week preparation phase: anyone may start a thread with a random, preferably esoteric contest idea. If at least three people are interested in taking part (and not more than five), then that contest gets the go ahead. Whoever proposed the contest becomes the judge, and selects the best game when the contest is over. You can't enter your own proposed contest.
At the very end, all the games are assembled together and voted for in the usual way!
It would also be cool because there would be so many winners, and everyone likes to win. It would almost be like the Oscars: "Best Game", "Best Procedural Game", "Best B-Game", "Best Giant Naked Men Game" and so on. And maybe we could have a separate vote for "Best Sub-Compo", based on the caliber of the games produced by the sub-compo. The more awards, the better. You could also have one for the person who enters the most compos with separate games, and the person who enters the most compos with a single game. Would anyone dare the challenge of a game that qualifies for every compo?
54. Keyword METACOMPO
Another approach is to make a list of, say, 100 keywords (giant, naked, coins, rutabaga) and run a contest to see who can write a game that uses the most keywords in an entertaining manner. Might be a bit easier to manage and would be fun to see how the mashups occur.
55. One Button Game
Game only uses one button. Other buttons used in menus is acceptable. See Fishy Fishy for a great example.
56. Least Generic Mascot
57. Minigame Collection Compo
A la WarioWare.
58. Every Button Game
Use every button on the keyboard, or failing that, as many as you possibly can.
Extra points for the following:
· Assigning different functions to characters in particular cases depending on whether they are accessed with caps-lock or the shift key (I've seen some badly-programmed software do this before :/ )
· Using up all possible modifier-key combinations as well.
59. Edgar Allan Poe Competition
I get the feeling he wouldn’t really approve, but what the hell.
60. Acronym Compo
Everybody has to make a game based off a single acronym.
61. Bizarre Shmup Competition
62. Emoticons Compo
63. Story Innovation Competition
This competition would concentrate on the use of story in a game.
Competitors must aim to create a unique and compelling story while presenting it in an interesting and creative way.
Games like Half Life 2 and many of Cactus's games are good examples of the innovative ways in which game storyline can be presented.
64. Sports Games
They are games of sporting. Realism not required.
65. Non-Violent Compo
Games without any violence. Completely abstract games are acceptable, but kind of missing the point.
66. Board Games
Remake a board game in your own image.
67. Creative Design
The games should offer the player a way to edit the protagonist/enemies/levels or other elements, as a part of the game-play (ie, in-game editing).
68. Moral/Legal Compo
Going above and beyond non-violence, a compo for games in which either everything, or all the player’s actions, are completely moral and/or legal.
69. Non-scrolling
No scrolling allowed, dudes!
70. Textless Compo
71. Choices
A game that focuses on the player making conscious choices affecting the outcome.
72. Dogma 2001 Competition
Most tigers agree that this list of rules is absolute crazypants, but perhaps it would be quite fun to have to conform your game to the scattered and illogical ramblings of a mad games journalist.
73. AI Competition
A game that focuses on the AI.
74. Missing Element
A game which is missing a key element from its genre. A shooter without shooting, a non-violent beat-em-up, or a platformer without jumping.
75. Co-Op Games
76. Multiplayer Compo
Any game for multiple players, whether local or online.
77. Not A Useless Compo
A game that actually does something useful, like defragging your computer, or maybe organising your files.
78. Scale Compo
A game in which the proportion and size of things is wacky, like SotC, or Chibi Robo, and anything in between. Changes of size? acceptable. Really huge things? acceptable. Really tiny things? acceptable.
79.Edugames
Educational games, that is.
80. Biblical/Religiously Themed Compo
81.Implications:
A game with implications of something - theme, meaning, or story-wise - that never actually explicitly states it. It could be an implied story twist at the end of the game, a style that evokes and reminds of a certain emotion, or something artistic; a graphical style where details are amorphous and inexplicit. It's hard to define, but you get it, right?
82.Seven Levels
Find an idea, flesh out the details, and then make seven levels that fully use the games mechanics. The idea would be to create a system which you could expand on later by adding more levels to it.
83.The Other Side
Games where you play what usually belongs to the computer. (I mean, what could be, for example, a shoot'em up where you control the large amount of ships flying to the bottom instead of the one climbing up, ...)
84.Autobiographic games
85. Palindromic games
Presumably one inspired by a palindromic phrase.
86. 10x10 pixels games
87. N+7 games
Replacing each concept of an existing game by the seventh following word in a dictionary.
88. Dreamgames:
make a game based on a dream or nightmare you once had. Doesn't have to follow events perfectly, just as long as it's in the same universe and with the same key characters, places, and goals as in your dream.
89. Roguelikes Compo
90. Mouse-Only Games
Extra points for not using the buttons.
91. VGSG Compo
Make a game based on a summary from the Video Game Summary Generator.
92. Namestorm Compo
Namestorm was another name generator we liked IIRC, but I’m not sure about the name. It was the one that output things like “Citys and Grits” or “Audioelectric Spirequest”.
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