2. A Space style take on the MC genera, you have to fly to different planets seeking out resources and so on...although I guess there is a danger there of becoming too much like Salvage...so yeah...number 1!
This sounds like a fun idea, even though I've never played Salvage.
You could make an outrageously crazy and chaotic platformer where you have to jump your way up those randomly placed cubes in the sky while at the same time avoiding cubes falling from above
This is a great idea for testing out the physics engine. It should be easy enough to implement.
I had a couple ideas for directions in which to take the game:
Grow meets Harvest MoonSome of you might not be familiar with
grow. It's a flash game where the order in which one applies upgrades determines how the world grows.
So, imagine you start off on a very small world, say 32x32x32 blocks. You then have to grow and harvest crops a la Harvest Moon or Minecrafts mining. The harvested crops are then "fed" to the planet somehow. Maybe through a magical well of some sort.
Depending on what you feed the planet, it will grow in different ways. Maybe it will increase the size of the planet. Maybe it will change the planets biome. Maybe it will cause different types of crops or mobs to randomly spawn.
The point is, no two games would be the same. The world will dynamically change depending on the players actions.
An Acrobatic FPS PlatformerOne of my favorite things to do in an FPS is rocket jump. QA3 was great at this. When friendly fire was turned off, a player could perform some amazing maneuvers by rocket jumping from wall to wall. Here's a
showing what I mean.
I think a puzzle FPS platformer similar to Portal where rocket jumps are the main tool would be fun to develop.
A Tower Defense -- Minecraft MashupI can imagine a game similar to
Desktop Tower Defense where you have to run around in first-person mode placing blocks to direct mobs. You could also "build" towers by placing blocks in correct configurations. Perhaps the player would be able to commandeer any given tower, allowing them to fire when and where they choose.