@Wilson: I couldn't even begin to write server code, which is why I'd let someone else sit with the hassle of doing so.

This will (unfortunately) only happen if you can hire a team of highly skilled programmers. So unless your budget is huge, you should probably listen to Thrustwolf's advice

Even if you aren't a programmer, you have to acquire an understanding of what's feasible as a hobby-project. Many parts of your project sound incredibly complex -- really cutting-edge stuff. Something only a big company could hope to accomplish.

Yup, and purposefully so. Like mentioned in my first post I knowingly didn't take any technical aspects into account, and even though I'm more from the visual/artsy side of things when speaking game design I do know a bit about programming and about the extends and limits of what is possible when creating computer games. And you're completely right. It's unthinkable that the idea in this raw form could currently be turned into an actual game.

Emphasis on the word "currently", though - 'cause who knows what computer games are capable of in ten or twenty years? Or what -we- are capable of? Heck, maybe some genius figures out a way to let even someone like me write server code. Not that I'd want to do it then, mind you. I'd still rather be left with the artsy stuff, having no interest in programming whatsoever...hence the quote. But maybe something happens that would bring this idea closer to being feasible, and I guess there's no reason to wait with the wild ideas until they are made possible.

So maybe I win a gazillion dollars and thus the ability to create the most expensive game in the world, or maybe in time this kind of game would be incredibly cheap to make. Who knows, who cares. This is my little computer gaming dream, my "What if..?" project. It's all just in the mind.

For now. Because, again...who knows.

I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts on how to take the limits we currently have and still make this game possible, though. In your opinion, what kind of game mechanics are actually achieveable, and what kind of compromises could be made while still making this a fun game to play?

@Thrustwolf: I haven't played Far Cry, unfortunately, but now I'm very interested in what you mention. Perhaps I should do some research.

Yep. There is a nice game mode in Far Cry Instincts where the predators hunt down all the humans, and they have powerful abilities. One of them being a scent type thing.

Check this out if you want (really cheesy)

Wow, that was cliché-tastic! I was just waiting for someone to cry "Game over, man, game over!" :D

Still looked like fun, and I see what you mean with the scent-trail thing. I think a similar thing was used in the WolfQuest game, if I'm not mistaken, and I'm still undecided what I think of it. Definitely a possibility though. Thanks for the link.

@Wilson: I couldn't even begin to write server code, which is why I'd let someone else sit with the hassle of doing so. But you're right, and it's something I have thought about - I think the game could do wonderfully as a single-player experience as well.

However, one of the core ideas of my concept is the changeability of the world and the adaptability of the player due to this - and playing online games I have often become amazed at how having other people to interact with can add entire new dimensions to the gaming experience. If at all possible I would love to be able to add a flavor of that. Like you say, it would be possible to go the Spore route and have players create elements for the game world for others to download and use. I just don't want to end up with database filled with penis trees. But there are definite possibilites there.

I'm attracted to the idea of continously being able to add content (to always give players purpose and reason to explore/interact), and for that I think there would be possibilities both for single and multiplayer.

@Omgnoseat: What I would like for this game is not realism, and definitely not realism for the sake of realism ("But it's a dog, it HAS to have two eyes!", no sir). What I want is immersion - enough rules to maintain believeability that this is a real world, but still allow for fantastical creatures and events.

I think relying on each others sense is an awesome idea! It would give players incentive to band together, not only for company but for their own gain as well, which is always a great motivator.

I'm not sure how the mechanics of GameSense would be. All I know is that I would like it to be as intuitive and unintrusive as possible. Visually I have no idea at all, and perhaps there could be visual clues to the different senses. I would like to avoid too many arrows and blinking lights in the interface. I'd rather theres no skill saves to make or fail - say, a Hunter player is hunting another creature that is in hiding, the Hunter makes the check and is rewarded with a big glowing arrow showing where the creature is. I'd rather the player of the Hunter had to actually spot the creature themselves. Like playing a hunting game, really. ^^ So maybe senses could be utilized, but it should feel natural and not like playing a board game.

@Thrustwolf: I haven't played Far Cry, unfortunately, but now I'm very interested in what you mention. Perhaps I should do some research.

And yeah, this whole idea is actually built around a game that I've always wanted to play, always been looking for, and never found. I like to think it's original because if it was already out there I would definitely be playing it! And I'm glad you like the idea of discovery, it is definitely one of the cornerstones in the concept. I imagine the game in 3D, but I am sucker for beautiful 2D platformers (played Aquaria through 3 times) and could see this game translated to both styles.


Thanks for the positive feedback guys! Keep it coming! :D

Alright, first a little intro...

I'm not a regular but I've been here a few times and I play a lot of indie games, some of which I have found here. I'm an avid gamer, and I've also designed graphics for video games and am currently interning at Daedalic Entertainment as a background/character artist. So I'm mostly on the artistic side of things (which, mind you, will be painfully clear very soon ).

Today I was revisited by an old idea of mine for a game, and once I decided to write it down a lot of stuff suddenly ended on the page. I really want to share it with someone and figured this would be the perfect place.
I was a bit uncomfortable labeling my game concept as a "Life Sim", though. My general experience with life sims is that you are more of an observer than an active part of the game. I want to make a game where you experience actually being another form of life.

This idea of mine is outrageous from a programming and game designing standpoint, but for this new-born idea I allowed myself to not think restrictions at all and just go with what would be the most fun, interesting, exciting to do. This is literally something I just wrote up in a fit of over-excited imagination, and I just let the ideas without restraint.

So please, tell me what you think of my idea - tell me how incredibly unachieveable it is, how impossible each aspects is, tell me exactly where the game will fall apart - and please, tell me "What if...?", and don't hold back! Take it really seriously, or don't take it seriously at all. Nothing is set in stone. I want crazy suggestions! Tell me what could make this game appealing and fun for you.

Thankyou in advance for putting up with my rambling and crazy concept.

Alright, here goes:




What's it about?:

You are a creature/dinosaur/animal. You live in an open, wild, natural world with forests, mountains, rivers, deserts, and all other kinds of thinkable environments. The goal is to survive and grow. From the beginning of the game you choose your species, gender and colors. Then you are born into the world as the creature you chose.

The game is all about making survival strategies, exploring, and perhaps banding together to form packs. Each animal species is very different from one another and has a set of skills. It's up to the players to figure out how to use these skills to survive.

The world is not empty even when no other players are around - npcs of all the creatures exist, some might be your parents, others will most likely be your food.

So far I've thought of two creatures, but there will be many more.

Gliders: A tiny feathered lizard with claws and a long tail. It is able to glide through the air and climb trees. It lives in small openings, like those found under rocks or in hollow trees. It eats berries, beetles and other small insects. It is a very fast creature, but also very frail. It communicates by making a high pitched sound.

Hunters: An allosaurus-inspired large carnivore. It is about 2 meters high and hunts other animals for food. It is not very fast and must rely on good carmouflage and surprise attacks to kill other creatures. It needs a lot of food each day and requires a large territory to hunt, which means that it is unlikely to see these creatures band together in large groups (too hard to keep several of these fed within the area they can travel in a day). The Hunter can issue a large roar that can be heard over several kilometers, but usually it emits a low growl.

GameSense:

This game has no artificial point-based system of skill and stats. Instead it has a system called GameSense which is the equivilant of your creatures senses in the world. Different creatures have different senses, but some are basic, like sight, smell and touch. The effectiveness of each sense varies with the creature. For instance, the small gliders have a great sense of sight, but they are less skilled at hearing and smelling. The Hunter is not as great at seeing, but it's sense of smell is formidable.

GameSense is not a stat-based system and no points are given or can be achieved. Depending on what creature you chose to play, the game will feed you information about your different senses, and more acute information if you decide to focus a sense by using it.
The amount of information is determined by the creature you chose to be - a glider may not be given any information about smell, or it may only be given if it is very close to the source. The information is given via text.


Here is a situation that explains how GameSense is used:


You are an adult Hunter and interested in finding a mate. You hear the mating call of another Hunter and follow it. You get to the Hunter but cautiously stand back - it is of the opposite gender, but much larger and could potentially be a danger. You are told that you can smell something significant. You use your sense of smell and GameSense tells you that the Hunter has the smell of Hunter blood on them. Did they just kill another Hunter and eat it, or was it self defence? How do you choose to use this information?

The game has no chat, and you do not choose a name for your character. But how, then, do you recognize other players? The answer is simple - you get to name them. Example: You are a Glider and run into another Glider. You want to remember this Glider if you run into it again, and give it a name that can be anything (say, it's a blue Glider so you name it "Blue"). The name will appear above the head of the Glider, and will always appear whenever you meet it again.

The game is about the experience of living a life as another creature. Your creature will be unique not based on their stats or levels, but by the way you choose to play. Will you be very aggressive, or very subdued? Will you establish and maintain a territory, or will you travel far and explore? Will you settle and have many kids, or will you remain a kid yourself forever? Aging is earned through playing, but it is a choice - After a certain period or a certain amount of meals you are given the opportunity to grow, but you are not forced.

There will be two major aspects of the gameplay - the way you are affected, and the way the world is affected. A huge variety of game world conditions exist and are influenced by each other, the players and the other animals. The world is ever changing - every now and then a natural disaster may occur, or a specific species may be abundant, for better or for worse. The seasons change as does the landscape. The game is all about adapting.

Your creature changes as well. Maybe you find yourself lucky enough to find a lot of food, and you can try to stash it away (if your species is capable) or you can eat until you're fat. A fat character may not starve, but may also be slower, worse at certain abilities (Cannot glide as far due to extra weight) or a more attractive meal for predators - npc's as well as players.

Likewise, a starved creature is faced with a set of choices as well. The creature may become a cannibal and turn on it's own kind for a quick meal, but may then appear hostile to others of the same race due to their scent. This may exclude them from mating and teamwork, which might make it harder to find food in the future. 

The game should not force you to take decisions, but the way the creatures are designed should serve to nudge you a bit. For instance: "Your creature can fly. So why not make a home high up in a tree where it is safer from predators?". But nothing stops you from trying to make your home in a whole other place and try new strategies, in fact you are encouraged to break the norms, since this is how you define your creature.




Why is this game amazing?:

Because no other game like it exists, literally. There are a lot of life sim games, but I feel they're too much sim and too little game. Too many MMO's focus on grinding. This game should be about the experience, about finding something new and being surprised at how things affect each other - how players affect players, how players affect the world, and how the world affects players. The game should be like playing the creature of a BBC nature show. Just with more dinosaurs and alien landscapes.



Features:

- Be a creature with unique abilites: Climb, glide, swim, fly, dig and fight your way to survival
- Encounter other player creatures and form packs, create hierachies, rivalries, or shun everyone as the loner you are.
- An astounding array of emotes and interactions. How will you treat others? Show affection, contempt, fear, hate, love, scorn, happiness, playfulness and much more.
- Start new generations. Find a mate and bear young - play as the new generation yourself and leave your old self behind as an npc - bear npc young and raise them - or have other players be born as your young and form lasting bonds!
- Explore the world - no human structures, only organic environments of all kinds. Forests, deserts, mountains, swamps, rivers, valleys, meadows, lakes, oceans, islands, iceworlds...every new place will take your breath away, and require a whole new strategy for survival from you. Hope your camouflage holds up here!
- Build your home. Establish a terriotory and set up a perimeter. Clear a patch of forest or use a tree as your nest. Dig yourself into the ground or live in an underwater cave. Stay in one place and make yourself the best home you can imagine, or learn how to quickly utilize your surroundings. Use the materials around you to make a safe shelter for you and yours.
- Use GameSense to get an edge against the dangers around you. Your creature has unqiue senses - how will you use them to survive?
- An amazing fantasy world with creatures, environments and vegetation never before seen. Step into the vibrant, colorful world and make it your home.
- Permadeath. Once you are dead, you must begin anew. Choose your actions carefully.


Game inspirations:

Spore - This game is what the creature stage of Spore SHOULD have been like - just a LOT better!

Alien vs Predator - How cool was it to climb on walls as an Alien? How about climbing around a tree, swimming deep into an ocean ice cave, or digging far into the ground?

Minecraft - I mentioned digging, right...? Also, the world is ever changing and can always surprise. The world of this game may even be generated on the fly as well, just with much better graphics.

Ecco The Dolphin: Defender of the Future - The controls were pretty shitty, but the animation and the way the dolphin moved was phenomenal. You really felt it was an alive, organic creature. It's the first and one of the only times I've played a 3D character that felt like taking control of a real creature.

The Endless Forest - also an MMO where you play as creatures (deer) and cannot text, only emote. I think it's a good concept, but the game is way too limited.

Horizons: Empire of Istaria - Those dragons!! Why is this the only game where you can play one as a race? The animation of the dragons is amazing. It's almost like actually being a dragon.

Wolf - it is, to date, the best animal sim ever created. But after a short while it lacks purpose. This is something I want to solve in my game, though I don't yet know how exactly.




Game requirements:

- The environments need to be extremely varied with hundreds, maybe thousands, of different event combinations. I'm thinking in such detail as landslides and ravines, of water creating flooding and lakes, or droughts drying up entire stretches of land - forest fires making a landscape barren, volcanoes erupting, cave-ins and rivers/waterfalls forming. Other than the natural events the landscape just needs to be something new every time you explore a new place. I don't want extremely clear sections - like, here's another forest that stops right where another desert begins. How about the desert being red, where the one you found earlier was white? A pine forest or a leaf forest? And any combination imaginable. The combinations could even be pretty wild, as long as they are plausible from the gameworlds (alien) mechanics and the set rules of nature.

- The animals need to have stellar controls. This is even more important than the looks of the animal - you have to -feel- like the animal. No shitty gliding controls, you need perfect controls of where you grip that tree when you land. When you turn your view to look, your creature turns it's head, and if you turn more, it turns it's entire upper body. Less idle animation and more direct control of the creature. Anything that looks mechanical is a no-no. Other players should be able to see even your subtle movements, no idle avatars. Just being able to shake your head or nodding intuitively by shaking your mouse/view would be an amazing feat.

- This is one of few games where the landscape really has to offer something in beauty. I want the game to invite the player to stop and look, and explore, and experiment. Touch the flower, or smell it, or eat it. See what happens when you step on it. Everything must be organic, and coded to be so, right down to the animation.
 
- The game and world needs to be BIG, and it needs to FEEL big. Ever see those games that say that have huge worlds, and they do, but you after a short while you feel like you're walking like a giant in a wasteland? This game needs every forest to feel like a forest. Wether you are dodging trees as a big creature or hiding in the undergrowth as a small one, you need to feel the vastness not just of the world, but the very environment you are in. The vastness does not come from how many environments we can stuff together - it comes from the atmosphere and the sheer scale and detail of everything surrounding you.

- MMO's are, at their core, community based and this concept is not very community friendly as of now, especially with having no in-game chat system. I have yet to figure this one out.

Thanks for the feedback, guys!

Kayamon, awesome link! I'll definitely be using this as ref for future projects. :D

Hi everyone,

So, I recreated the Test Drive scene from How To Train Your Dragon in a pixel/retro game kind of style, and I'd love to show it to you guys. I'm not really sure what to call it - a demake? In any case, the scene is awesome and after I found a 8-bit remake of the score from the scene I just had to make it. It comes complete with pixelated graphics and flashing sprites when taking a hit.

Here's the video:





On my blog you can find the sprites and graphics created for the project:

http://fivehoursleep.blogspot.com/

Feel free to tell me what you think.

Awesome game! I'm especially impressed not only with the gameplay and original idea, but with the sheer amount and variety of the levels. Not being a big tetris fan as it is, you've still managed to get me hooked with this concept. 

Loved the style, the physics and the variety of tasks! Well done!

Love the game, especially the style.

Tiiimbeeeerr!!

Love the game, the graphics are really cute, and those fast-growing trees are going to haunt me...so many trees...

Well done guys. 

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Always nice when people likes your work.  Also thanks for the emails about possible projects, they sound very promising and I'll make sure to reply back to each of you later today.

Hi, my name is Karen. I'm from Denmark, currently doing my Bachelor in Computer Graphics Art, and I have a dream of working with concepts and designs in video games, movies and other media. I've been following the Independent Gaming scene for a while and I love watching and getting inspired by the games of the community. I think it's wonderful that independent games have gotten an increase of recognition on the recent years, and is one of the best things that have happened to the world of games as well as art in a long time. Not just because it adds so much new to gaming, but also because it gives me and people like me a way to connect to projects and people with the same interests as I.

I look forward to stalking these forums, now as an actual part of them, and to see what you creative people are cooking. 

Here's my blog for anyone interested: http://drawnhorizon.com. Feel free to PM or email me anytime.

Let's connect.

I'll gladly admit that I get stuck there on regular basis, and by stuck I mean 100 tabs, XKCD style (http://xkcd.com/609/). I love that site, love reading what other people think of the media I like, and love finding new tropes.

Hi, I'm new to this forum but very much into independent gaming and the development of games in general. I'm a budding artist looking for a sparetime project (or two), to gain some experience, keep my inspiration high and have some fun.

My art blog: http://drawnhorizon.blogspot.com

I'd very much like to be involved in the concept and design of a game. I love creating atmospheres and worlds, and would love to put my skills to use in creating environments, characters, props, whatever necessary, on scales large and small.

If you're working on/planning something and find this of interest, drop me a line at [email protected]