Can we start being more stringent with the rules because I'm sick of wading through the 'profit share' posts! If they aren't paying you as a freelancer then it isn't bloody paid!!

Sorry to be a nag but it isnt 'paid' work if you're offering profit share. To be fair, and stand a better chance, you should amend the title of your post.

You could make it more sims or Animal Crossing like with poeple moving in an out - Perhaps fill a graveyard quota win condition?

A town where you are being given orders by the voices in your head to kill residents. It tells you which ones and how, and when and you have to abide. If you don't you become more mad and behaviour is unpredictable. The more people die the more the town becomes suspicious and security and paranoia become heightened. Part planning and sandbox, buying the tools for the kill, will the shopkeeper remember your purchase. Where will you bury the bodies, will they be uncovered if you choose somewhere that a man and dog go for a walk on a Sunday morning?

Why not just have a go at building yor core idea and getting people playing and testing. The type of game your taking a bout can be expanded and added to while it's already out there so don't hold onto it lookin for a key feature as such. If you find out that it needs and people want combat then add it it o later builds, but I'd suggest letting it shape itself according to feedback.

Hopefully this might be a popular new thread so to kick things of:

Wii Fit - Suggestions for an improved experience.

1) Wii Fit it what I refer to as a type one design. Type ones are typically toy like, possibly creative and open ended. Expectations and outcomes are only suggestions and one can 'play' without having to complete anything. Therefore they are the types that benefit from additional content added over time to keep them fresh but also to enrich the experience.

Type one's include Minecraft, Animal crossing, Tomagotchi, possibly Team Meat's Mew-Genics.

Unfortunately Wii Fit shipped with no online component and no update system apart from the Wii fit plus game released later. This was a huge oversight. The disc locks you into the same set of games and exercises presented in the same way, with the same visuals, time after time.

I would have included a system where new exercises and games were added as free dlc on a regular basis and existing one's were continuously improved.

2) exercise programmes tailored and/or generated each time the disc loads.

In the first game you literally had to be your own trainer and select the exercises individually. Why couldn't the game just put a program together for me after asking me questions about how I felt, how long I had, and what I felt like doing.

Additionally why didn't it spout some feel good quotes from time to time?

3) the bloody look never changed. I would have opted for some randomly colour themes each time the disc is loaded, with some new settings. Freshen it up a little each time, out me outside, take me to a different country to train. It presented a static semi-computer simulation setting combined with some slightly distressing trainer who to be honest could have benefitted from the dlc of more conversations. Heck even throwing in some costumes wouldn't have hurt. My trainer Steve could have dressed up as Tom Nook for a laugh.

4) Social Integration - only for those thy like this sort of thing...between exercises why not read some of my friends twitter or Facebook updates and show me their pictures. Or let me post about my progress.

I'm sure there are a lot more improvements that could be made so please share your ideas!

Brill, I'll PM my email if you want to have a chat

Hi Diego, are you still looking for a collaborative partner?

I usually build a level editor and get other people to have a go and then evaluate the results. It can be hard to critique your own designs, so having other people design an 'obstacle course' that you can then improve and decorate can help the creative juices flow.

[One.]

The battle is delusional. "high concept" games are touted by losers who don't know what they are doing. all revolutionary games are nothing. minecraft is revolutionary, and it was humble as fuck.

changing the way people play games is important. you need to do that. and you do that by making a good game. that is hard. and you can't find confidence in that in any other way than struggling to find it just like everyone else.

"there will be a lot of luck involved." this is basically bullshit. this is classic anti-"the man" propaganda. good games get noticed. if you don't see that then you don't understand what makes a game sell. it is not random. people have patterns. and you have to study that fuck out of them like anything else. business is like any other discipline, like engineering and so forth. I hate this shit because it pushes the blame onto the nebulous "community" instead of yourself.

Though by good here I mean sellable good, not critically good. Those are different things.

"sci-fi isometric roguelike." this is not enough. people want new feelings. play 50 games (and that I'm sure you've done, so go from memory), and ask yourself, "is my game meaningfully different as an experience?" Does it make you feel differently? Does it scratch and itch that no other games scratches. There are two ways to fail here. I'll cover them both.

One. You lie to yourself. You can scratch that itch just fine with other games. You like your game because you made it, not because it beats Ico and Minecraft and TFC.

Two. You don't lie to yourself, but refuse to change your game so that you can answer the above question with a resounding yes. I don't know which of these two problems indies stumble on more, but they stumble on both all the time, then blame the marketing, or luck, or whatever. Read a book on business whiners. Rome wasn't built in a day. (not you tanya).

Make something good, and keep improving it until you live and breathe the reason why it is better than everything else in one particular way, then market _that_ element of it. People want to play your game because if offers them something new. How you get there is up to you. There is no shortcut. Though you probably already know that.


EDIT

My rail isn't against any indie in particular, just the nebulous "indie" attitude that exists in some places. No one in this thread is the target. My apologies if you felt otherwise.

This right here.

[Base idea:]

Base idea: A series of connected space stations orbiting the sun during it's final days as it burns up it's remaining hydrogen. The role of the stations is to balance the chemical reactions and prevent the sun from turning super nova and destroying the Earth.

Interpretation one: A kick ass block game in a circle to the tune of Daft Punk's Contact. 6 pure minutes getting faster and faster. Each station jettison bombs of different atoms, and they must be rotated around the sun to drop. The faster the music, the faster the burn up, the more trippy the visuals go; from traditional to far out Space Giraffe stuffs...

Interpretation two: A real-time multi player simulator that lasts a few days and each person mans their own stations. They must work together through voice communication to control their individual station. Rota's, routines, companionship where you know that you will all die on this mission but you're doing it for mankind. The game will never allow you to match with anyone you've played with previously.

Hi - Bit of honest criticism meant for the best of intentions, and I'm a big platform gamer so I don't say this with any malice, but this looks boring at present. It's the sort of thing that we've all played a dozen times. It really needs a spark of it's own to make it noticeable.

The problem you will have here is differentiation; why do I need to play this when I could fire up say Garry's mod, Kerbal Space Program or even minecraft?

I applaud your work to date, so hopefully you can find the particular niche that makes your idea compulsive to try out.

Just my two penneth...

The core idea is really good but that whole 'select level 1, complete, now select level 2, complete..' is probably going to mean that few people will persevere in a game like this to completion.

I'd seriously prompt you to considering prototyping looking at a more arcade-stay-alive-type pulse racing game. You could still work in various stage types and your story based progression, and I'm sure that more people would see it through.

You've got a great idea, and lots of great art, it'd be a massive waste to not try to push for a more imaginative play style.