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[Cray]

Speaking of simulations, what about Funeral Tycoon? :D Manage cemeteries, funeral services, etc. - keep the families happy and watch out for randomized zombie events that can wreck your plans! (Hint: Make sure to invest in enough groundskeepers to combat an undead horde.)

I've actually got that game half-done! Almost the same name too. Not sure if we'll finish it yet or not

But we went with a more "weird" version... the zombies come out every full moon, and you can sell corpses/raise the dead (and get more customers that way!). Zombie horde = profit

Semi-related: Funeral Quest from the Dink Smallwood guy

[Loren Schmidt]

Ha, I liked that funeral management idea when first posted, and I'm glad someone's making something similar. It sounds really fun.

[Kneecaps]

I had an idea last night.  It'd be called "new PlatformerGame()" or something.  It was partially inspired by the visualizing data thread.  Here's the almost design doc I wrote up:

This is a platforming game that mirrors its source code.  You explore the world while simultaneously exploring the game's programming structure.  The gameplay would allow you to run, jump, and pick up objects.  Variables in the engine would be real objects in-game.

The "world view" of the game is the step() function, which leads to stages/functions such as moveHero() and tileCollision() (those are names that I normally give to my functions, because I'm weird).  A spinning mechanism in the center of the step() level takes the player from function to function sequentially and eventually loops back to the beginning.  Whenever a player reached the end of a function, as in programming, they would return back to the larger function that called them.

Within the functions, every statement would be displayed literally.  As an example, for the moveHero() function, there is a line that says "if(left){".  In game, it could appear as a gate that is only open when the main character is moving left.

It would probably end up having a collecting element to the game as well, to encourage the full exploration of the world.  I hope this idea makes sense.

Two other ideas: Hungry Hungry Hobos and Concentration Camp Tycoon

[shig]

You are Isaac Newton. You're abducted by weird alien things from another dimension and you are now stuck in a world with completely different laws of physics.

As you go through each stage, Isaac will be taking notes and writing down formulas explaining how the physics work in that world and you'll have to use these to find your way out.

Perhaps by the end of the game you'd be able to even alter the laws of physics?

[Lyx]

I read the first 4 pages and the last, so i'm sorry if this has been mentioned already.

As far as i know, no "game" went all the way to NOT being a space "game", but instead about giving the impression of being in a living universe, traveling through space, and your actions not being about "winning" something or pursueing some kind of "goal", but rather just doing "boring" everyday stuff and exploring the environment. So, a bit like a mix of: Space sandbox-game, life-sim, exploration-game.

There are a handful of games which approached that direction a bit, but AFAIK not a single one went all to making it the core of the game, instead of it being a halfhearted "additional feature". Elite2/3 had the "living universe" aspect, but the game was still mostly focussed on combat and "leveling up". Noctis had the pure focus on exploration, but the gameworld was lifeless and there was no such thing as life-sim aspects. Stranded II significantly has the life-sim aspect (though, imo its too much biased towards construction and there is almost no interaction which doesn't serve building, killing and eating), but well 'um - its not a space game

To qualify for being such a game, it to me wouldn't even need to have a "large" gameworld, as long as it feels alive and the player not being at its center, and has the life-sim and exploration aspect. Heck, the player wouldn't even need to leave his spaceship - it could describe just the journey of the player in a spaceship from one planet to another - then the game consisting of what the player does in the spaceship and about background information regarding the world in which the game plays (that would give it the "living universe" feel, without the player directly interacting with that universe, except of the stuff in his ship).

So, what i mean for example is something like this: Player is on some kind of space taxi, flying a passenger from one starsystem to another. Onboard is the crew consisting of the player and two other persons, the passenger and some strange alien-pet. The game then just tells the (dynamic!!!) story of what the player does during that single travel. The everyday stuff he does, interaction with the two other crew-members, the passenenger, the strange pet, etc. While doing all that, the player also learns about the world in which the game plays. This could be further amplified by a single meetup with another ship and some communication happening, plus some communication with far away places via some kind of space-email

[Dr. Kylstein]

- A space battle game where a couple of rooms are set up like a battleship control room in a movie; screens around the place showing sensor data, logistics, communications, engineering and so on.  Some chairs for gunners, with goggles and joysticks.  So you have a team of people taking on different roles, working together to control the ship, and as the battle goes on you could have equipment malfunction as the ship gets hit; screens go out, things shake, flashes, concealed smoke machines activate.. Totally epic.  I'll definitely do this if I'm ever rich.

I thought of that too. I decided that it should be developed as a LAN-party game for normal hardware first, then add support for custom I/O so that dedicated users can build their own sets.

[Gauss Jordan]

I have some vague ideas that i've been thinking about lately:

1. A zombie survival game where you have to use everything at hand, like yard tools, workshop tools, thinner or other chemicals with the combination of matchsticks... yeah, there are lots of possibilities. The idea is that not every tool works very well so the player has to be creative in what to use and how to use it. Also the "weapons" should break or run out often so that the gameplay changes rapidly.

2. A game that starts out seemingly innocent but suddenly something happens and you have to figure out what has happened and solve it. An example would be a game starting as a ski simulator where you can go everywhere on the ski resort. Suddenly the mountain explodes and magma bursts out. This is based on the time you've played, so the game is like a sequence of 20 minutes that you play over and over again but in differend ways. So now you have to restart (or possibly rewind the time) to figure out what happened.

3. A zelda like game where you play in different ages of a world starting out whith the world being just created. You play as the worlds hero's soul that reincarnates in different ages. The world will change growing more and more complex. You will be able to recognize areas, events (but perhaps somewhat distorted into more epic legends), artifacts and so on. I believe something similar has been sone before, for example Terranigma, but still, i don't know of any game that is spot on this concept.

4. A metroidvania platformer with the style and gameplay being based on that the game is "beta". Common bugs will be recognized and used in advantage for the gameplay. You will learn "abilities" like wallswimming. The common windows error message will pop up when you die ^^ Hints will be revealed in the games "todo" list.

Hope this inspires someone

[shig]

Proceduraly generated survival game.

You're in some procedurally generated facility/factory/building/city and then some random disaster wich is also, to some extent, procedurally generated happens and you have to survive.

[Loren Schmidt]

Turn Based Platformer
We are a tiny person in a tile based, turn based environment with pits, platforms, enemies, and timed obstacles. Time moves forward in discrete steps, one step for every action we take. Certain moves (possibly only jump) take several actions, and require planning ahead to make sure that they will land at the correct time. For instance there might be a patrolling enemy on the other side of a pit we need to jump over. We might need to wait a couple of actions for the enemy to be at a point in its cycle where it's clear of the landing zone. There could be timed obstacles like patrolling boxes, diagonally bouncing objects, crushing ceilings, floors that cycle in and out of existence, dodgeable patterns of projectiles (2, 3, 2, 3 or high, low for instance)...

Tactical Monster Versus Adventurer Game
We play as all the monsters in a procedurally generated dungeon, and we have to try to keep a computer controlled adventurer from plundering our domain and wantonly killing everything.

[Jesseyay]

A game where the world is set on the inside of a sphere and gravity pushes you outwards, rather than the world on the outside where gravity pushes you inwards.

[Pishtaco]

A game where the world is set on the inside of a sphere and gravity pushes you outwards, rather than the world on the outside where gravity pushes you inwards.

Halo?

[shig]

Tactical Monster Versus Adventurer Game
We play as all the monsters in a procedurally generated dungeon, and we have to try to keep a computer controlled adventurer from plundering our domain and wantonly killing everything.

I once had a Dungeons&Dragons game where the players were the monsters and had to kill invading adventurers looking for loot.
I was a troll and hid behind a door and one-hit killed some poor dude with a club to the head.
It was awesome.

[Alex May]

A game where the world is set on the inside of a sphere and gravity pushes you outwards, rather than the world on the outside where gravity pushes you inwards.

Halo?

There are also levels like this in super mario galaxy.

[Draknek]

Turn Based Platformer
We are a tiny person in a tile based, turn based environment with pits, platforms, enemies, and timed obstacles. Time moves forward in discrete steps, one step for every action we take. Certain moves (possibly only jump) take several actions, and require planning ahead to make sure that they will land at the correct time. For instance there might be a patrolling enemy on the other side of a pit we need to jump over. We might need to wait a couple of actions for the enemy to be at a point in its cycle where it's clear of the landing zone. There could be timed obstacles like patrolling boxes, diagonally bouncing objects, crushing ceilings, floors that cycle in and out of existence, dodgeable patterns of projectiles (2, 3, 2, 3 or high, low for instance)...

There was a game like this in the last Ludum Dare competition:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2009/04/19/snap-to-grid/

I really liked it but there's unfortunately only one level.

[Saint]

A game where the world is set on the inside of a sphere and gravity pushes you outwards, rather than the world on the outside where gravity pushes you inwards.

I would like to say Terranigma here as the very concept was actually an important part of the story, but then again it didn't have any effect on the actual gameplay - only some weird inverted Mode 7 effects.

[mewse]

In the Sims example, if you went back in time and told everyone all about it, still nobody would care because it hasn't been proven to be successful yet.

I worked at Maxis for a while, long before The Sims..  but there was a game prototype called "SimDollhouse" on one of the internal servers;  it was basically a rough prototype of The Sims (with rather glitchy and unintuitive controls).  One of my co-workers told me that it had been there for about six years, abandoned.

Moral of the story:  Sometimes even the creator doesn't care, because it hasn't been proven to be successful yet.

[moi]

Turn Based Platformer

There was a prototype in one of the compos, I think it was B compo

[Kadoba]

I had an idea before about a dungeon crawling RPG where you play as a merchant. The game was half about exploration and discovery and half about enterprising. At first you start off by just collecting random loot from animals such as leather and ivory and peddling them in a public bazaar. People would walk by and buy certain things depending on their interests and professions. For example a blacksmith may buy some ore or a noblewoman may buy a necklace. Eventually you work your way through dungeons and once you clear a dungeon you "own" it and it produces resources for you. You can hire third party craftsmen to make products from your resources for you to sell. Eventually you can purchase shops and hire employees to run them (or man them yourself). Depending on the town's demographic certain items/products sell better than others.

After a while monsters would creep back into dungeons and take over. You can clear them out yourself or post bounties for other adventurers to go in and clear it for you.

There would be a lot of third party hires that would help you in your entreprenual domination, such as an explorers guild that will discover new dungeons for you or find items you missed in old ones.

Of course this was all way too ambitious.. Maybe one day.

[Anthony Flack]

- A space battle game where a couple of rooms are set up like a battleship control room in a movie; screens around the place showing sensor data, logistics, communications, engineering and so on.  Some chairs for gunners, with goggles and joysticks.  So you have a team of people taking on different roles, working together to control the ship, and as the battle goes on you could have equipment malfunction as the ship gets hit; screens go out, things shake, flashes, concealed smoke machines activate.. Totally epic.  I'll definitely do this if I'm ever rich.

I thought of that too. I decided that it should be developed as a LAN-party game for normal hardware first, then add support for custom I/O so that dedicated users can build their own sets.

It wouldn't have to be fancy.

You could set it up as an explicitly multiplayer game, where rather than displaying the entire bridge of the ship in first-person perspective or whatever, each player's screen simply shows what would be shown on their character's console's screen. I think the takeaway idea from this is that each player's display, and available commands, would be different, but inter-connected. There would be some overlap as to which functions could be performed by each player, and one player having problems would have a flow-on effect to problems for other players. Part of the captain's role would be to  route tasks to different players and make sure nobody was overwhelmed by too many tasks, etc.

Tactical Monster Versus Adventurer Game
We play as all the monsters in a procedurally generated dungeon, and we have to try to keep a computer controlled adventurer from plundering our domain and wantonly killing everything

Like Dungeon Keeper? (Perhaps Peter Molyneux's best game design, that one).

[zacaj]

What about a multiplayer cooperative FPS over the internet, where one player is the movement, and the other player is the injured soldier he's carrying on his shoulder, who can shoot.  But, the game would choose your partner randomly, and you would have to work it all out through text/microphones