[Sky Squid]

Sky Squid

A squid flying using guns.

Seq Breaker

Finding and abusing glitches and breaking the game sequence using them.

Counterintelligence

A top down shooter where your enemies shoot when you do

Do you ever do local multiplayer games or only singleplayer?

It depends on if you're going for the moral consequences or the mystery-solving.

You could have interrogations in-game where you choose what to ask after they've been apprehended to try and prove they're guilty/innocent, and never tell the player how they did at all, specifically because a detective IRL probably doesn't know for sure that the apprehended person is guilty unless/until they confess. And even if they confess, could they be doing it as the path of least resistance rather than because it's true?

Just some food for thought.

Try doing score based on enemies killed but giving them half of that if they die.

A first person shooter where you record the actions you're going to take for 1 minute, then watch the results of your actions vs your opponent's actions for 1 minute. Rinse and repeat.

I really like this. So it's more of a strategic game, isn't it? Like an "anticipate the movements of your enemy" thing. Right? I like it.

Right. I got the idea from the Shovel Knight streetpass mode for 3DS, but I think the format would work really well for a FPS game with more possible places for your opponent to be. Unless the maps had a LOT of chokepoints/ small hallways, the weapons would have to be heat seeking, rapid fire, or have a large cone of fire for it to not drag on forever. Plus there would have to be objectives for the majority of the gamemodes, because in a deathmatch setting there's no binary choice to predict "Are they going for my Flag or guarding theirs? Are they going for the control point or not?" Unless you had weapons sprinkled around the arena, like Quake. But then we have the issues of ammo conservation and weapon respawn timers and designing maps to facilitate specific movement patterns.

It would need symmetrical maps, including any items and spawn points. Also, it would be really cool if it had a minimap with your position shown and where they started that "turn" from but a circle growing from their start position showing a circle of where they "could" be. Naturally this would get bigger over time and restart with each turn, so the best time to attack them would be at the start of a turn unless you knew where they were going.



Somebody make this. 

Mail-ificent

Summons the Disney character.

 

Fee Mail - charges the people it hits money :p Maybe it will make you a Maillionaire
Mailbox - use an envelope as a boxing glove
Junk mail should be an envelope full of trash cans
E-mail should be an envelope full of computers

I find pixel art a huge cliche in indie games, and it's something I've never wanted to partake in. I think it's nobler and a lot more fun to see people exploring their art skills and finding their own style, however crude or unusual.

You can have "your own style" in pixel art. You just have to avoid the "use graphics capabilities from a specific system" thing most indies tend to do with pixel art and make your own palette and limitations/guidelines. Obviously if you have a hard limit of, what, 4 colors it's going to be hard to have your own style- so if you want your own style, just don't do that.

A first person shooter where you record the actions you're going to take for 1 minute, then watch the results of your actions vs your opponent's actions for 1 minute. Rinse and repeat.

"One Man Army"

"Myself and I"

"Two of a Kind"

"Procedural Regeneration"

The last one is my favorite. It gives the genre and the clone mechanic at the same time.

Well, for starters, it sounds like it's in a major key, which usually sounds good but also isn't very good for the dramatic tension that you seem to be looking for.

If you are looking for unique ideas, I'd suggest a horror game that doesn't try to immerse you so well that you're scared even though you aren't in danger in real life. Instead, go for fourth wall breaking horror, where the gameplay isn't so much about survival but how messed up it is.

A few examples:

Some people get so scared by jump scares/the atmosphere that they pause the game. Use this to your advantage by having a jumpscare AFTER they're the game has stopped.

Do something original with the thing you're running from. Maybe it causes the game to lag when you get near it. Maybe you can only HEAR where it is. Maybe you have to TURN OFF YOUR MONITOR or HEADPHONES to prevent seeing its eyes or hearing the bloodcurdling scream that causes death. Maybe it only moves when you move. Maybe it freezes while you're looking at it. Maybe it looks like a distorted version of the player. Maybe you enter zero gravity near it.

Jumpscare during an item collection cutscene/immediately after respawning.

Respawn the player somewhere they've never been when they die, so they not only feel lost but also have no idea where they are or how they got there.

Have the flashlight do something very, very weird. Naturally it will drain battery power over time. Yes, it increases tension, but it also doesn't lend itself to the supernatural very well. Maybe battery power actually INCREASES when you're close to death. Maybe the flashlight is distorted by the creature. Maybe the creature also has trouble seeing in the dark, and can only find you when you're using the flashlight, and can only hear you when you're nearby and moving. Maybe, instead of a flashlight, the creature produces light and whatever the current flashlight button is instead lets you see through the eyes of the creature.

Another suggestion: have absolutely NO jumpscares, or scares of any kind, until after the player has found all the items they think are required to win. THEN spawn the creature. They're probably so tense by that point they almost WANT to be found.

Have elements of permadeath- lose something (items/money/whatever) whenever you die but allow the player to get it back if they can return to it.

Floating things are creepy. Flickering lights are creepy. Sounds playing BACKWARDS are creepy. Video game glitches *can be* creepy if you aren't the one who found them. Complete darkness is extremely scary, but nobody seems to do blinding light. Having to solve puzzles while something's tracking you is creepy.


I've actually only ever tried 1 horror game but I've played enough creepy games (mostly Metroidvanias  ) to know what makes me jump. Basically go for the unexpected, but do it in a way that no other horror game has- pure jumpscares do not good horror make.

  Boo!

 

As few as 6 competitors would still work- as long as they're relatively active.

What about a crowdsourced game compo? Have a thread for each participating team's game and whenever three or more people that aren't members of the team suggest including something in the thread, it MUST be included in the game, and the same for excluding things. Threads would be locked on the final stretch (between a day and a week, I'm not sure exactly) so that the last bit was just for polish/finishing adding things. A moderator would probably have to keep track of what things are required to be in the game, and teams should probably be required to post daily/weekly updates on progress- so that people know what the game they're suggesting stuff for looks like. Call it
Mostly Independent Game Jam.

This looks really cool, especially the transition between different bullet aim types and hud toggling. Can't wait to see more gameplay!

Will this have a level editor of any kind?

I'm not sure that a finite number will be enough.

Everything is looking great. Even the placeholders are good enough for me.

For the toggle walls could you collision check with the walls that are OFF but NOT the ones that are on when wrapping, so that you just become incapable of wrapping in such a way that would toggle them off?

And if so does that open up any puzzles based around it?

And if not did I just type up way more words than I needed to?

i hope it's not a lazy excuse to not fix everything 

If it was a lazy excuse to not fix everything I wouldn't have spent a whole day fixing screen wrapping. It's more of a  way to give the game depth.
Level 1 of play: action gameplay
Level 2 of play: strategic gameplay (less risky behavior, more thinking)
Level 3 of play: experimental gameplay (figuring out how game mechanics interact)
Level 4 of play: meta gameplay (playing the game differently than the way you're supposed to by using quirks and bugs)
It's similar to what Super Metroid did, only I'm trying to make the bugs less like secrets and more like puzzles (when, not how, to use them)

From a design stand-point, metroidvanias require so much planning and polishing on a level-design and mechanical level that I just can't see how using bugs would work.

I am still going to be planning and polishing, but it's planning and polishing for multiple possible paths- no different in that regard from a game like Megaman that lets you choose the path you want. The difference is that I'm not giving you the explicit option to choose a different path, you have to figure out a way. Yes, there will be paths I didn't even intend. But that's what makes it real Sequence Breaking instead of just secrets.

Looks good.

Try using puush. I'm not sure what the limit is but it's worth a shot.

...

And no idea what is going on.

But I like being confused so keep it up, I guess.