Social Anxiety Survival Horror. You're a guy at a friend's party trying to avoid conversations while putting in an appearance with your friend so they know you were here. You can deflect conversations with small talk you pick up by eavesdropping, but it won't work on drunk people, so you also need to run and hide. Your ex-partner eventually shows up and is hunting you down to have a frank conversation about your relationship, which is instant game over.
What about Panic Disorder Survival Horror? You have to get through a full week, including 5 work days, 2 social events, and an errand...except you can have a panic attack at any time but also have a heart condition, so you're not sure if you're really having a panic attack or heart attack. If you guess wrong, you lose. Also you have to have a completely empty bladder and colon so you don't soil yourself at work and get fired or in a social setting and lose friends out of embarrassment if you happen to have a panic attack in those settings. Easy mode comes with a script for xanax. Hard mode comes with an abusive stalker ex and their family.
I had a very similar idea but it's about avoiding contact and conversation out on the street and on public transportation. May or may not be influenced by real life experience.
I haven't played it - and the "social anxiety as horror"-slant feels more metaphorical than literal in its marketing - but this makes me think of the game "Homebody" a bit
Good. Someone, please make this. And make it first person for the full effect.
Other ideas for people to pinch:
You can only use each snippet of small talk once before collecting it again, because you're afraid of repeating yourself.
The game is filled with collectibles, but they're all located on the floor, so you're more likely to find them if you're in character and looking at the floor the entire time.
To pause the game, you have to look at your phone while standing in a quiet area.
Your ex-partner has a lengthy list of grievances you can hear when they're hunting you. This includes "you always run away from me at parties".
I actually thought of a ridiculous concept for an mmo, not so much an mmo, but a response to my frustrations with World of Warcraft, and how the most play race was human and the most played class was warrior. You know the one combination that you can actually be in real life, human Warrior.
It gave me an amusing thought, then if I ever ran a fantasy-based mmo, there would be absolutely no human option, and no realistic class options, like you wouldn't be able to pick a class that you could definitely do in real life.
And the first major expansion would introduce the scientist class, and be all about humans finding this fantasy world. And just make that the main selling point you could play as boring Mundane Human doing real world stuff. Just a little social experiment to see how people would react... The humans would definitely have a mad scientist vibe, so it wouldn't be completely boring.
A driving (either racing or GTA-style) game that generates the roads from real-world geospatial data/street view imagery similar to how Microsoft Flight Simulator does.
NOTE: Someone probably has developed it, but I’m too poor to buy a decent computer.
I’ve been wanting the shittiest, most grindy military logistics game possible for a bit now. Like, “oh you didn’t upgrade your Sock factory? Fuck you now your platoon has trench foot” type Grindy.
Not really military logistics, but you might check out Captain of Industry. Everything sort of depends on everything else. You need food for your workers. But you need building parts to make farms. So you need bricks, iron, wood, and concrete. Each of these has a building and process associated with it. You need trucks to move materials. You need excavators. So you also need factories making vehicle parts, and maintainence parts. And all of these machines and processes make a waste product you have to deal with.
An urbanism focussed city builder where you start with an existing city in the current car-centric style, possibly including a couple of dozen kilometers around the city so rural problems are included as well and have to transform it, with realistic building project times, into one that is more walkable, has safe bike paths, good public transport,...
In particular I would also like it to take verticality in to account both for transport (people and bikes and trains have a harder time going up and down than cars, boats need locks,...) and for buildings (stores at the bottom of a building, residential above,...) and that accounts for the huge amounts of space car-centric cities waste on parking as well as the ongoing infrastructure costs for maintenance and replacements of all that infrastructure in sprawling cities.
Mirror’s Edge-style gameplay (specifically first person) for experiencing Spider-man’s first few weeks of having powers, including the time prior to having built the web-shooters. I have wanted this ever since the teaser trailer for the first Andrew Garfield movie.
This is so close to what I'd want, which is basically this + somewhat accurate recreations of real life places.
Imaginary places would work too, but the main thing I'd like is to have more maps to explore than I can deal with. I could spend hours just exploring and goofing around
Black Flag was getting there, it had good vibes, but unfortunately they had to make it an Assassins Creed game and Ubisoft doesn't know how to do it right anyways. Rockstar does.
Factorio-like game where you focus on sustainability rather than being the bad guy in an alien landscape. Need wood? Better replant or there won't be anything for higher levels of the game. Need metal? You can get it, but only in a few places and then you need to think about recycling what you have.
A spaceship captain game with an AI crew that follows your orders, and is focused on problem solving and exploration rather than combat and resource gathering. Kind of like ongoing episodes of star trek, but in game form.
Possibly, but I was picturing being able to move around the ship and you would have to manage your crew by assigning roles. Almost like rimworld meets bridge crew meets star trek online.
Planetside 2, but in Warhammer 40k. I want to be an ork running around krumpin gits with a hundred other boyz, smashin up some humie tinboyz or them big bug wotsits
Bonus points if you can be a psyker and blow up your whole squad
A game where you play a reporter in a pre-internet open world, digging through meetings, documents, connections and surveillance to get information to create stories.
You could have relationships with people too, and test them. Go with a private story on someone that will get big views and make the rent but piss them off, or keep it private and maintain your relationship to access their connections to try for a bigger story.
I have a horror game concept, based around the old days, back when used game stores actually were a good deal instead of just a price gouging den of collectors. Back when buying a copy of a game pre-owned meant that you got the save files of the old user with it.
So this is a harvest moon type, there is already a file here, the game yells at you if you try to delete it, you get characters telling you that you can't hide from what you have done. And when you play the game everyone is pissed at you, the world is in ruins, and making any real progress is next to impossible due to the horrible state the world's in and no one wanting to help you.
The object of the game would be to convince the people of the game world that you are not the original user, and that you want to set things right. And the new game plus would just be what the game is supposed to be like under normal conditions.
Admittedly I got the idea from hearing about a Harvest Moon friends of Mineral Town Creepypasta called The Goddess Has Not Forgiven You, which I can't actually find. But it was described by a harvest moon iceberg video. When I couldn't find the story that it was talking about, this was just kind of the idea I had for an indie game based off of it.
If you are an indie game designer who wants to do this, feel free to steal my idea, Just credit me for it and shoot me a copy of it if you can get a hold of me.
Honestly? Just a modern, improved take on an old WiiWare game called Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King.
There is nothing all that special about MLaaK on the surface: It's just a management sim with a Final Fantasy theme to it. Place buildings. Get soldiers (well, here 'adventurers'), send them out on missions. Get resources, invest them. In fact taken as a management sim it's very barebones and not that great?
The thing is, no video game ever has, in my eye, captured the feeling of being Fairytale Royalty. You have direct control over the king character (who is a 12 year old because. Final Fantasy) -- You walk around town. You want to see an overview of incomes and expenses? Go talk to your assistant and she'll give you a report. Want something built? Point to the plot and ring the chime to call a servant and say 'Magic college here'. Sending adventurers on their quests involves directly talking to them, and you can read their mood on how they react to the assignment, with motivated adventurers doing better. And when they return wounded you can visit them in the hospital for a boost to their morale and your popularity.
Also the higher the happiness level in the kingdom, the more citizens choose to stop and salute you, and the later you can wander around your town without your servants going "you're underaged and royal and it's dangerous at night, back to the castle now", because your subjects like you.
Idk, these small touches made the game feel very special for me back then, I've been chasing that high since. Shout out to Fable 3 for the variety of nice royalish clothes your character could try on, but no shout outs to it for anything else.
I want a game that is a standard sci fi/fantasy RPG, except the main characters each suffer from a mental health condition that affects their gameplay (and of course the story).
My brother (now deceased) had both schizophrenia and numerous personalities. He had visual and auditory hallucinations thanks to the schizophrenia. On top of that, in my last conversation with him, he mentioned that all his personalities ‘shared information’ except for one that was in denial. Because of that, when a different personality took over after that one, he would have no idea what happened during the time that denial personality was in control. Sadly, my brother passed after he had stopped taking medications for a week and decided to use computer duster (something he had finally got clean of) to sleep and never woke up.
Now, imagine that in a high sci fi or fantasy RPG. You might begin fighting and wasting energy on enemies who aren’t actually there, but you think they are. You can go into battle and no other party members will help because, as you find out after, those enemies weren’t really there. Maybe you become weak because of a would and have to get through a dangerous area to get to a hospital. There you find you never had an injury, it was a hallucination (based on a 911 call my brother made thinking he had slit his throat when he had not). Maybe you go to learn some key information from a character who then dies dies suddenly. However, you don’t remember any of it.
Most important though, in the end, you are still the hero and still save the day. The idea being that yes people with these mental health challenges struggle, but they aren’t monsters. My brother was one of the kindest people I know and loved to help people. A game like that, if done right, could help players understand what these conditions are actually like (not hollywoods bs) and show that they can still be heroes. I think that would be cool
You should play Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. I've finished it and it's awesome. Wear headphones. It's on Gamepass if you have an Xbox.
The game's narrative serves as a metaphor for the character's struggle with psychosis, as Senua, who suffers from the condition but believes it to be a curse, is haunted by an entity known as the "Darkness", voices in her head known as "Furies", and memories from her past. To properly represent psychosis, developers worked closely with neuroscientists, mental health specialists, and people living with the condition.
So kind of like some of the simulations that exist to allow people a glimpse of what it is like to suffer from schizophrenia with audible and visual hallucinations, constant repetititious dialogue in your head etc, that I have seen videos of. I don't think they're widely available, but if someone made an actual fleshed out game with that, I agree it would be really cool. Unfortunately the stigma that still exists regarding mental illness would make it hard for anyone to really go for it, unless it was entirely indie.
A co-op game set in a open/sandbox fantasy world that is truly alive, driven by AI. You can do as you wish, join a Kingdom as a soldier for example, set up a village somewhere maybe. Become a trader. Hunter. Whatever you want. The ultimate open survival game I guess.
But the key part is behind the scenes an AI will change the story of the world as time passes. Perhap on the other side of the continent a war wages between 2 factions that threatens to pull the whole region into termoil. Maybe you'll hear about it from a passing traveller. Maybe you won't hear about it at all and the next time you go travelling far and wide you realise a new Empire is rising.
Perhaps the AI decides to slowly bring about the collapse of society through climate change. Perhaps you become embroiled in a plot to assinate a King. The AI decides all the variables, you can only react to them, maybe you can try and change the story with your actions.
One day you are out hunting and you see in the distance an army marching to war. Maybe you decide to catch up and join the army. Or maybe you'll hide and hope that wherever that army is going, it won't come to your neck of the woods.
The AI continuously evolves the world around you to keep things interesting. Every game will be completely different.
It'll probably never get made, it is massive in scope.
That's fair. I hope they tone down the difficult in the sequel. I was able to get through the base game, but the extra content is just way too difficult.
Assassin's Creed Black Flag (aka AC: The Pirate Simulator) meets Sid Meiers Pirates! Live The Life.
Basically I want a giant open world with dozens of cities and even more small villages, modernish graphics, and be a pirate. And be able to lead a fleet. And swap ships.
I'm gonna be honest, due to my niche game preferences, if they could add in ability to upgrade and customize every ship with tons of options, including crazy ass "I zip tied a rocket motor to a group of hot wheels cars to see if I could skate" type things. "I replaced one mast with a trebuchet, and because I like to tempt death it also launches flaming oil soaked things" energy.
Maybe toss in a ship editor like starfield had, but with sloops and galleons and shit. Things like fake guns could add to intimidation factor, and while fake guns don't shoot, they need only good from afar. By the end of the game, hopefully your branding will allow you to win some fights before taking a shot.
And because I like games like Sim city/ cities skylines, building and management games and the like, I'd love if that could somehow be incorporated into things. Both on the ships themselves, and as your "pirate fortress" home base. And I'd want to be able to set up multiple bases, all working together.
All of the addons being an option but not required to finish since having to micromanage the happiness of Pegleg Dave because he ate in the dark without a table again would get old quick.
The downside is, because all these elements don't really mesh all that smoothly in a game setting, I don't even think it's possible to make a good game like that.
Basically I want to be a pirate king in a modern game, and actually feel like a king. In both ability to command what is essentially a rogue nation, and the mild headache that comes with managing it.
I have this concept for a VR team battle game where you have to learn to actually cast spells through complex real time action. Like a mix of moving your hands in patterns and adding elements via hot bar in sequence and saying words via headphone. 1 on 1 or team vs team strategy game where complexity makes stronger team spells and counters. You could have casters who specialize in defense, offense, healers, traps and counters and how you build your team makes for strengths and weaknesses.
Reminds me of Arx Fatalis. I think it's the only game I've seen where casting spells requires you to trace a rune in the air instead of pressing the cast button.
Drakan: Ancient Gates was my inspiration. Their magic casting blew my mind back in the day and I never understood why no one else has utilized that system. I will have to check out Arx Fatalis.
Harry Potter: Wizards Unite had spells you cast by tracing a shape on screen, representing wand movements (and it was graded on how closely you matched that spell's shape as well as on speed.)
Not a complex system, but some of them took some effort to get a good cast.
I'd argue twin stick shooters like this are VS grandpa.
Random-ish waves of enemies, bullet hell, increasing difficulty.. The main differences are the powerups instead of permanent level ups, usually the lack of autoaim (right?) and maybe lack of meta progression.
Crypt of the Necrodancer lets you add custom music. I don't think it is able to handle music streaming though it is a bit of a manual process iirc. The gameplay is pretty different from Vampire Survivors. Basically enemies all move and attack in patterns that increment based on a beat, and you need to time your movement and attacks to the beat as well. Fun game
A metal gear type game where the AI is trained on how all players play worldwide and it adapts and evolves over time in how it stations and uses its soldiers against you and for patrols. Every time you go back to play, the layouts and movements and gear and reactions of enemy AI differ.
Any type of game (sandbox, RTS, etc) where the landscape changes dynamically.
All games are either player vs player or player vs mobs or player vs game-mechanics-that-affect-your-stats. But I have never played a game where I have to consider a river overflowing and destroying a village, or an avalanche, or earthquakes.
Even when there are environmental hazards, the base map never changes. Rivers never change their course, islands don't appear or disappear, oceans don't dry up, dams don't burst, quarries aren't excavated.
The world and nature are always dead and static.
Edit:
Actually, Dwarf Fortress does tick those boxes quite often.
Check out Timberborn, it doesn't check all of your boxes but a lot of it revolves around water management - building dams and reservoirs, diverting rivers, surviving dry seasons, etc. At its core it's just a fun city building game and I highly recommend it if that sounds good to you. It's 20% off ok Steam right now too.
A singleplayer open-world sandbox RPG in the vein of Skyrim, but you have powerful abilities on cooldowns like in MOBAs/Overwatch, command troops like in Mount & Blade/Blood of Steel/Conqueror's Blade, and can go around conquering cities/developing your own nation culturally/socially/technologically/economically/etc. like Civilization but more open-ended where you can do things like decide actual religious doctrine and encourage specific aesthetics/music/social norms.
Obviously, though, such a game is incredibly ambitious and I don't think it'll ever be made, as it takes the most unique and hardest-to-make parts of several other games and then combines them. Still, I'd love to play it.
An open world, survival, party based rpg. Survival elements are light and focused away from micromanaging every crop placement and every floorboard. Player parties build cities, forts, roads.
It's like:
Minecraft without the block gimmick or detailed building capabilities.
Skyrim with more playable characters in a player built world without a set storyline.
Valheim without the heavy focus on survival elements or linear progression.
Party management and diversity like a tactics RPG.
I'd love it to have several for game loops to bury yourself into. City building, character builds, crafting, gathering...
And multiplayer capable, self hosting if desired.
This is a pipe dream. A game that huge is too difficult to make for a game that wouldn't have larger appeal.
A good community-focused Rocket League clone. Ever since RL was bought out by Epic and it went F2P, the game has felt more and more soulless, and the community interactions have been super tonedeaf. As a small company, Psyonix gave out cool stuff like white hats for those who found bugs and custom titles for people who found their significant other via the game. It sucks that the best content in the game came the summer before and the summer right after Epic bought it. Since the game went free to play, though, it seemed like RL was just another accessory for Fortnite to grow.
Tl;dr: RL was freaking amazing when the devs were allowed to care about the community. Now, it's slowly losing the stuff that made it so special.
Creating a game is simple, maintaining a popular multiplayer competitive game is super hard and super expensive. There were plenty of attempts, both open source and commercial indy. For example, the community was really hyped about Diabotical, but the game died pretty soon after the release. Even major studios with huge budgets struggle, for example Quake Champions.
Steam is full of competitive multiplayer games and most of them are dead.
Some kind of stealth shooter where you and the bad guys have very realistic anatomy and no healthbar. You can't be killed by being shot in the foot but you're disabled. Shoot someone's finger off and they might not be able to use a rifle, help in pain, leave a blood trail to follow. Chest shots generally kill you but it's the lungs it's not instant like the heart or central blood vessels. Bone shots are agonizing and totally debilitating.
Caliber and velocity are all calculated and what damage is done.
I know this is kinda grim, but lots of video games have done parts of this, especially Sniper Elite, but also RDR2, the Resident Evil REmakes, MGS:R, and more. I just want it even more detailed and collected in one game. I've been thinking about this since PS3-era and I think the tech is ready now.
How about something like Overwatch 2, but 6v6, and no battle pass. Maybe it doles out rewards like skins and sprays and stuff for playing? Just spitballin' here.
Heck, add an annual subscription to pay the devs, but don't go all in with the overpriced cosmetics...
Anyway, I loved that game. I haven't touched OW2 yet and I am not planning to. Greed took over, they axed half the fun mechanics, and added a battle pass that plain sucks. Fuck that.
I want a third person single player Superman game, where Superman is actually as OP as he should be. No squish whatsoever unless kryptonite is involved (and kryptonite would have to be very rare). Because he’d be un-killable and have the edge in almost every situation, the game would have to be pretty creative in order to keep it challenging. And no, I don’t want a Clark Kent journalist simulator. I want to have full 3D flight, invulnerability, super-speed, and everything else. The whole shebang. With some creative storytelling and game mechanics, this could be so awesome.
HP=moral+collateral damage, which would make it somewhat of a Hitman style strategy game to get done what you need to within the bounds of what Superman is... A giant moral pussy.
So while you can melt someone from space or fly through the building instead of around it, you cannot if you don't want him to die of sadness, and managing that when you easily can, is likely hard.
Now that’s a clever concept, very cool idea. It could even scale based on the difficulty or world-ending significance of the mission. Like, it’s okay if you cause a bunch of expensive damage by bursting through the roof to disarm a bomb because it’ll save a city block and hundreds of people. But you better not cause any damage or break any bones to save someone from a mugging.
Totally forgot about this game! I messed around with it for a few hours a couple years ago, but the lack of a real narrative turned me off. Was definitely a fun power trip though!
I would also take a bizarre, reverse tower defense game, where you have increasingly large hordes of bad guys at your disposal trying to take down an ever more powerful single Superman.
Not really a game, but playing Minecraft has made me wish for real-world modeling software with a similar first person interface. Select from standard off-the-shelf components, use real-world tools, and craft stuff. Then test it out. I've got ideas in my head for all kinds of stuff, but going from there to an actual model is tedious with standard CAD and modeling software. Why can't I (virtually) take an 8' Douglas Fir 2x4, cut it with a saw, drill some holes in it - you get the idea. I could make something like a shed, then stress test it in a windstorm, pile 4 feet of snow on it, or drench it with rain. Or build a go-kart and see how it would perform. Tweak the design until it does what you want. Make the app user moldable and let the community go wild adding capabilities and virtual materials. Maybe it could eventually generate real parts lists, fabrication data for 3D printers and CNC machines, and assembly drawings.
A game that captures the feeling of when Arthur Dent crash lands on that primitive planet in "The Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy" and makes a sandwich. I want The Sandwich Maker.
You crash into this procedurally generated world. All the plants and animals are new every playthrough, and you slowly learn about them through experimentation and from the native population who has never heard of a sandwich and really doesn't do much except eat raw ingredients. When you cook the meat from an animal instead of eating it raw, they all lose their minds with wonder and you become the town's chef.
You harvest wild crops and cultivate better ones. You find ways to use the animal fat and meat and "milk", you find plants that work as food, maybe their seeds are great crushed up with a little water into a paste, maybe you need to dry them out, maybe you need to de-seed them and mix them with another plant to make it taste better.. on and on.
You need to work with the people there to make tools, and together you iterate out exactly what you need.
Eventually you have to find something that matches your randomised flavour pallette for the perfect sandwich. You assemble all the ingredients you've collected, cultivated, or created, with the tools and techniques you and the townspeople have developed, and you take a bite. It's perfect. You win.
Medieval Total War meets Crusader Kings. No MMPOG!! Single player or co-op only. Start in an uninhabitted land and lets factions and titles grow organically. Make your own history and make the map as immersive as possible.
I want to build various types of orbital and planetary megastructures like Isaac Arthur describes. Ixion has been the closest fix for me, but I want much larger structures than just a Stanford Torus. No idea how Ixion ends yet. But I'd like to see a lot more interior space available, vastly more green spaces, and experimentation with other styles of governance than capitalism. I want to walk and fly around whatever I build, preferably in VR. And while I wouldn't object to the option, I don't really care about fighting in this setting. I just want to build out a Dyson Sphere.
As in... You fight on the usual 3 lane DotA style map with towers, jungle, a main base, etc. but you control a small platoon of units you produce from a barracks instead of a champion. Your supply limit starts at 15 but can go up to a small army (maybe a cap of 50) by late game.
Your main form of income comes from killing minions, creeps, jungle camps, towers, etc.
I originally wanted to make it as a StarCraft II custom map but the map editor is more complex than actual fucking game dev software to use.
A game where you play a spider in a variety of environments (forest, city park, front porch, basement, etc) where you control each leg with a different keyboard key, maybe spacebar to jump, hold a back leg to access your web, etc. you have limited energy to move/create web, and you need to build webs and traps to catch bugs.
i want to first person, in VR frolic in the fields as a small furry animal, along with others MMO. could sweet fun sunshine therapy or watership down traumatic violence or crazy furry social scene.
can i be a young squirrel chasing others around a tree in the lazy afternoon?
A game where there's a mundane task like fishing or gardening, but it gets kinda minigame-y and trippy and it branches into maybe some kind of either party game or some other super complex shit. The closest someone has come to this was with Dave the diver.
A spiritual successor to the Black and White series, but VR. Who wouldn't want to pet your pet mammalian Kaiju before tossing a fireball at the nearest enemy town with a spell gesture just because you can? =D
I want to combine a Fallout game (an open-world RPG with a branching narrative and multiple ways to solve problems, and that actually presents moral quandaries to players beyond "is killing an entire town good...or bad?") with FTL: Faster Than Light (a game in which you play as a space ship, and have to manage targeting and timing of weapons in combat along with shuffling power and crew attention between ships systems...which is also a rogue-like and the "correct" solution to most of the problems you face are randomly selected).
Instead of putting points into stats and skills, I want to hire different crewmembers and buy/upgrade ships systems. And I want to be given a meaningful choice where the consequences are apparent up front.
FTL will present you with a space station overrun by giant alien spiders, and your options are 1. Just leave (no risk, no reward), 2. Send a crewman in to help (Either save the day and get rewarded with fuel, ammo and scrap, or lose a crewmember and take hull damage, this is random every time you get this encounter) or if you have the right equipment/crew you unlock an option to get a guaranteed small reward.
No, give me the choice to send a crewmember to their deaths to save a bunch of civilians, OR keep my crewmember because as captain I'm responsible for his safety, even if it means civilians die.
Let me choose to align with different factions, build a warship or a diplomatic ship or a trade ship. Let gunning down the entire rebel fleet to the last ship be equally as valid a solution as negotiating a trade agreement with the federation or whatever.
Give me a Fallout game with the primary loop of FTL.
My dream game has always been a game that combines the most impressive technologies with open ended gameplay. So like impressive modern graphics and; physics and; Red Faction-like destructible environments and; procedurally generated content. All wrapped in a good-enough gameplay package like an RPG or something.
I realize all these technologies come at great trade-offs, but the dream is a good balance.
It's mostly the destructible environments from Red Faction Guerilla that I'd want in other games.
A fighting game where you play an average Greek soldier on his way to becoming a hero.
It starts where you have to kill 5 enemies in a battle and you get promoted. Then you have to kill 10 etc.
You can upgrade your hero and the soldiers fighting under you. So you can choose to become a powerful lone hero or a hero and his men. If you don't kill enough of the enemy you don't advance. But if you go on a rampage and the battle is lost you also lose. Your performance influences the battle. So it might be that holding a bridge is more important than total kills for example.
I've been cooking up an idea for a smaller style MMO with as few NPCs as possible. It'd take a large skill tree in which you can't possibly put points into everything so people have to specialize and work together. NPCs might fill in jobs while a player is offline like taking sales at the store or unattended crafting but all quests and rewards come from other players. Something unavoidable is that I think there has to be an end or else people either 1) can branch out and become so skilled they don't need other people or 2) stagnate. So after X real world days, an apocalypse happens. Plague, dragon attack, aliens, zombies, blight, pirates, whatever. If you win, you can rebuild and get a benefit before your next go around. If you lose, you migrate to a new place (generate a new map) and try again.
I want a simulator game like lawnmower simulator, power washing simulator, euro truck simulator, and other games like that, where you plow snow from an area. Seems like it could be fun.
I like plowing real snow but that is fucking exhausting, cold, and can't be done year around.
I have no idea if it would be fun or not but maybe.
Give me RCT2 or Zoo Tycoon, mixed with Hitman against any random visitor, and you have to build the park around decent ways to stay hidden and the like
Asynchronous turn based game where each person plays a single character. Like Fire Emblem if all the characters were players.
You wouldn't all need to be playing at the same time, and you could have lots of games going at once. I want that nice slow-burn play by mail feeling for a co-op RPG.
I want a pokemon RPG game. Give me a type- specific skill tree that I as a trainer can earn xp and level up. Fire moves deal +10% dmg, burn chance up +5%, water moves deal -10% dmg, etc. Maybe some general ones too like catch chance +5%, wild pokemon encounters -10% (or +10%), money earned +10%, etc.
So many trainers seem to be focused on one or two specific types, why not encourage the player to do the same? Allow players to re-spec with the professor if they want to change things up.
So tired of the same gameplay just being given a new coat of paint.
I miss having a hero I can directly control in an RTS game. Rise and fall civilizations at war was the closest there was, but it won't even run on windows anymore
An RPG where all the characters are LLM-powered with their story baked in, so you can actually have a free conversation with them and they'll be basically chatGPT pretending they're an actual real character. Bonus points for it being a VR game.
Next iteration: a game that's generated by an AI while you play it so every playthrough is absolutely completely different.
A magical school sim/manager. Imagine how cool it would be to build your own Hogwarts with moving staircases and hidden rooms and passageway, and watch the world of magic come alive as students go about their daily school life.
I would like something halfway between Snowrunner and European Truck Simulator, with a well written single player RPG story mode where you get to help people by delivering stuff.
Or, something like Breath of the Wild only without fighting.
A realistic singleplayer shooter game with multiple settings from WW1 right through to the Vietnam war. Extensive maps, vehicles, and weapons. You can play anything from an infantry soldier to the captain of a battleship or pilot of a bomber.
A wizard duel game. 1v1. The gimmick is that you have to do the somatic (arm waving) component for your spells to fire. Could work with VR controllers or even a Kinect. The longer your arm travels, the stronger the spell becomes. You, as a wizard, can "create" a list of somatic components and attribute them to an effect, like "fire" or "darkness" or "lightning". By mixing and matching your waving, you could cast a variety of spells with different effects, like a lightning bolt that sets the enemy on fire and engulfs them in darkness. To avoid being hit, you could either finish a counterspell faster, hit the enemy with an appropriately strong spell (at least 1 somatic component less than his current casting) or set up shields that will absorb a number of damage before dissipating.
To make the game fancy, you'd be able to customize your wizard and your wizard tower, both of which would be the centerpieces of the duel. Everything you'd unlock through gameplay, no battlepass bullshit, no microtransactions, no bullshit grind to make it last longer than it should.
Okay bear with me as I go on an unhinged rant about a game I've wanted for years but is very unlikely to happen. For this we need to go into the deep Elder Scrolls lore, which I am going to butcher mostly because my version is amusing to me and all ideas are canon.
Imagine a magic steampunk world completely alien from our own, none of this Skyrim nonsense but truly alien. A time traveling thousand foot tall Magical Murder Mech decides 'yolo I'm destroy the planet', and almost does too, until Some Demigod shows up in their own time traveling magical murder mech (this one isn't nearly as impressive though). They go fisticuffs with each other, a bunch of the planet is destroyed. Some normal people with hopes and dreams or whatever are like 'this blows' so they build a magical space ship. Not like a magical space rocket; I mean like a Sailboat on Steroids. They decide to fuck off to the moon because where else would you go. Anyway Some Demigod gets mangled by the other, better Magical Murder Mech who then follows the normal people with hopes and dreams or whatever to the moon, because that's the most obvious choice for them to escape to because where else would you go. They show up ready to fuck up the moon colony when Complete Rando walks up and back-sasses the time traveling Magical Murder Mech to death. He then wanders up to Guy In Charge and is like 'hey I want to fuck your daughter', but surprise! The daughter is actually an intersex pansexual enby, oh and also they're a god. So Complete Rando takes one look at that Gorgeous Deity (who is also maybe a lot a bit fascist but that's a different story) and is like hell yeah, with our libidos combined we can repopulate the planet together.
Now that we've got that out of the way, I want a game that takes place from the perspectives of multiple normal people with hopes and dreams or whatever. Different characters follow different sections of the story. So the first character you might be learning about the Magical Murder Mech that's running loose on the planet. You're trying to prepare, you catch glimpses of the thing while fleeing your home. Another character could be someone who is in the Sailboat on Steroids and trying to get by on limited supplies while looking for people you were separated from in the chaos. However many characters there ends up being though, it would be crucial that the last scene in this game is watching Complete Rando suck face with Gorgeous Deity because I also want a game that tilts phobes.
Complete with the intersex pansexual enby who is also a god who gets going with some rando who can talk robots to death? Because I can't stress enough how crucial that detail is.
An actual good survival zombie MMO. Ala what day z and h1z1 were supposed to be. H1z1 had the idea to be a procedurally generated middle america setting that sounded amazing. But it turned into a battle royal. Day Z was supposed to be the hardcore survival zombie but it's too just turned into essentially a battle royal. I don't know. I know there has been so many in that genre but I don't feel like any of the ones I've played hit it right. 7 days to die is maybe the closest and I also really liked project zomboid too. I guess I thought dayz captured the realism of the combat with it's arma roots.
If you haven’t played it, Battlefield 4’s commander mode sounds kind of like what you’re describing. People are still online (at least on PC) and welcoming to commanders.
An insectoid themed MMORPG! I'm not even a fun of insects, it's just such an endless creative potential given their variety. Can have different classes and factions, for instance a Rhino bug tank, mantis-assasin, druid ladybug, Butterfly magician; The Ant Insect's Republic, Wasp Protectorate, Holy Bee Empire! Also underground cities, tons of them!
Unfortunately won't ever be made since an average player needs to be able to play as a human warrior to be interested...
A sandbox, but with realistic in-world physics and ability to do anything.
Wanna burner? Boom, take this tin can, make some holes, put in alcohol and burn. Wanna learn how telephone works? Construct it yourself! Game should simulate real-world physics and just store properties of various objects and materials, allowing you to completely unbound from game mechanics and developer's intention. Maybe you'd literally be able to conduct scientific experiments in game, and this would be a great in silico model. Maybe you'd be able to understand how things around you work. Maybe you'd be able to reverse engineer other player's creations. Possibilities are endless, you're having an entire world in your pocket.
...but yeah, we'd barely have enough developers and computer resources for that.
Probably because it was the last PSX title. People often forget games released at the end of a console’s lifespan, especially when they aren’t also released on next-gen systems.
All I want is a mod for Left 4 Dead 2 in which you choose one of the Team Fortress 2 mercs as your character instead of the normal survivors. All weapon pickups just become ammo / metal, etc. Not quite sure if being downed should just be eliminated, due to easy healing from the medic, the dispenser, the sandvich, etc... But the respawn closets should function the same.
I don't care if it breaks the difficulty curve or dialogue, I just want it to function and be fun.
Parking lot designer. Get hired to design a lot for some kind of business or entity (park, etc) and see how it plays out. Drive thrus, parking garages, stadium events, apartment lots, etc. Basically a city simulator focused on parking.
A mix between world strategy like europa/total war, management of dynasty/kingdom/territory like crusader king, that can lead into invasion with advantages due to planning/bonuses in an RTS like like rise of nation bonus, extra armies etc , and rts like age of empire/mythology rise of natio , etc. That you can then further go into a single player hack&slash like mount & blade, or an fps like CoD or battlefield, where you are a singular soldier/leader.
And with a significant time progression, such as going from stone age with clubs, to medieval, to modern with guns, to futuristic with space age and all.
And it'd be very cool if you can basically hotswap between those. As in, you can go into the overworld, manage your empire, go back to rts to make units in a settlement getting attacked to defend it, and then realize you are losing on a front somewhere so you go full try hard with solo fps to try to hero your way to victory yourself.
Will real time progression between all the environments ( not at the same scale of speed tho ), so you would be hard pressed to play on every front at once yourself, you gotta make choice on which part you do yourself to 'guarantee' a win, and what you hope the ai will do enough to win by itself, or maybe pop over there shorty to give yourself a boost or massacre a bunch of enemies in fps mode to make sure your ai can make work of the rest itself.
Don't think this will ever see the light of day. Waaaaaaay too big. It's litterally multiple levels of very different games/genras mashed together, at once, and in parallel
An open world game but the world is just a few city blocks, every single room in every building must be detailed & explorable, there would be a hospital, apartment, houses, businesses, shops, tunnels, parkland, garages etc etc.
The game would be a group of survivors, their needs for food, water, medication , clothes, fuel would be satisfied by exploring the environment and buildings, you need insulin? Search the hospital or medicine cabinets in the homes, you need food? Search the shops and kitchens? Water? Collect rainwater ...
Each game day would present a list of priorities for the survivors to manage.
Risk and jeopardy would come from the environment it's self, other survivors who you could trade with or fight. Packs of wild dogs, maybe a few zombies but certainly not hoards, perhaps a Lion, escaped from the zoo. There are no long guns in this apocalypse but perhaps a pistol with limited ammo.
Importantly this must be a 1st/3rd person open world, the look and feel of the Last of Us 2.
I would love something like Hellgate London (I think that was its name?), doesn't have to have the same premise, but needs to be a lot less buggy, no p2w, and more production value
I would love a game with a timeloop built into the discovery, combat, and storytelling mechanics, a la Deathloop and Prey: Mooncrash, but instead of a first person shooter about murder, make it an isometric heist game that doesn’t hold your hand. You gather clues and tips and tricks through each loop and through exploration, until you build a final plan of attack to end the loop.
Deathloop’s biggest flaw was not playing into the fact that it was, at its core, a puzzle game. The objective markers and notes kind of ruined the climax of the game for me. Absolutely incredible otherwise.
Loop Hero has some interesting time loop stuff that is very well merged into the story and mechanics. It isn't a particularly complex game and is a rogue-lite
A game with the time travel self interaction and self saving mechanics of Super Time Force Ultra. Doesn't have to be a side scroller. Bonus points for getting multiplayer to work reasonably. I've been theorycrafting ways to do multiplayer like this for years (and ultimately most of it feels disjointed in theory so IDK). I've only seen one super low budget game using this mechanic (as a main game mechanic, not a side puzzle like the Ratchet and Clank time puzzles) and the reviews weren't great.
I've been considering mixing it with 5D Chess with Time Travel mechanics and Advance Wars gameplay as a proof of concept and see how far that gets me... But I don't have time or energy to work on it after work...
Like 5 to 10 seconds for a turn, everyone lodges their turns and over the next 10 seconds the characters play out their actions with complex complications for unplanned conflicts. Like a guy running though someone elses thrown grenade or two guys trying to run through the same doorway.
I really love, and really miss, healing in wow raids circa WOTLK through Cata, specifically using healnot and custom keybinds to keep people alive. I don't have time or budget for an MMO in my late 30s, nor do I see that easing up anytime soon.
I think a game where you had to do raid mechanics/puzzles while keeping NPCs alive through healing could be really fun, even without a loot grind. Or a game that dropped you into a multiplayer raid encounter without the crap around it. Either could be great.
Some sort of magical game that people with radically different skill levels can enjoy together. I tried to get my friend to play nioh2, but she just doesn't have the practice to be any good at it yet. If we put in 100 hours she'd get competent, but that's a big investment. I want someone to figure out a way that I can play like Nioh2, and my friend can play like Bejeweled, but we're doing it together and it's fun for both of us.
A lot of team games can have something like this. I'm throwing my pitch in for Deep Rock Galactic because it is one I know well. I'm a decently good player at this point and I still have a blast joining games with greenbeards. I get the challenge of carrying and teaching the younglings and they get to see the kind of magnificent bears they'll have one day. There is decent variety in how you can approach the game with different classes and the roles people pick for different challenges. As for two different genre of game where you're playing together, I'm not sure. I think that Age of Empires 2 could do something kinda like this. You can assign multiple people to the same faction and everyone has control of everything in that team. It is a bit clunky but you can do i teresring things like one person is tasked with infrastructure, another with combat.
I almost also wrote that I wanted something like dark souls, but built for co-op from the ground up. The dark souls games typically have a fair amount of stuff each player has to do alone, and you'd have to do the game twice.
It's still fun and I actually coop'd the franchise with a friend, but I don't think I could get my "plays bejeweled" or even "plays Mario games" friends to do it happily.
(There is Remnant, but it didn't really do it for me)
Adding another potential thing here, I just learned of a game called Silica. It is a hybrid play where some people play as RTS commanders and some people play as on the ground FPS soldiers. Haven't played it yet but could be interesting for mixed skill level based on which genre someone is good at
I'd love a VRMMO like an actual Sword Art Online. Of course, I don't even have a VR system. However, if there were a nice VRMMO, I'd shell out the money for one.
Either a proper sequel to Chu-Chu Rocket that isn't that Duckmarines or the one exclusive to apple, or a modern Vib-Ribbon inspired game where I can pause without having to quit my session.
I especially want the Vib-Ribbon one so I can just have the game scan my music folder on my desktop and create custom tracks without me having to do anything.
Bring Chromehounds back to console. AC6 was close, but not quite there. Dial the sweatiness back to 5 or 6 instead of 11 and gimme the factional MP w/ dynamic comms. I know MAV or whatever exists for PC but I want my comfy console experience dammit
A demolition derby game like wreckfest but without the racing. Leveling, gear, competitions are all focused on destroying other cars and being last one standing.
Bonus if some shenanigans are allowed like you get out of your car and fight other drivers.
Something like Retro Game Challenge, but for Western games. The idea behind Retro Game Challenge is that you play clones of NES games with achievement challenges to "advance" the story, as clones of games in the style of later NES games would come out. It had clones of games like Ninja Gaiden, Galaga, Dragon Quest. It also had game magazines written much like those of the time. The whole thing is a nostalgia trip.
In this case, it probably would have to be PC games. It could even have a cute minigame where you unbox and drop in your first 3D card.
Closest thing I've seen to it has been Arcade Paradise, but the games (along with the rest of the gameplay) weren't as good in that one. They also weren't all retro-inspired, as there's clones of match-3 games and Vampire Survivors.
I once had a dream where I played a game like warcraft 2, but with mythical animals. Basically age of mythology, with better controls, and a darker aesthetic. I still wish that existed, so I could play it.
As a kid who loved Kingdom Hearts and The Matrix, I wanted to make a game where you could choose from the standard Magic, swords, guns, OR you could whip out your keyboard and hack the game.
It's not nearly as exciting in retrospect, as it's basically just Skyrim with console commands, but the thread brought it back to me so I thought I'd share. It felt like a cool idea in 2002, though.
I've also been writing and designing a Pokemon game in my head for the last 25 years, but I'm keeping that one closer to my chest even though there's no universe where that happens.
A sort of real time game that starts in third person, as a single character, and expands over time to a whole village. Set in a post apocalyptic world, where you wake up after the apocalypse and have to survive, eventually meeting other survivors and either fight them off or band together to form societies. Each person modelled like an rpg character, with skills sets and capabilities (electrician, plumber, computer geek, radio amateur, farmer and all the other things that make a self-sufficient village). It would need to model the dynamics of politics and how society was governed and the run-ins with other villages and roving bands of survivors.
A sort of mini civilisation but themed around rebuilding capability rather than discovering it.
A business sim that models a country and you can run any business you want, and see if you can build a successful business. I'm talking a sim that models every other business, every city, every street even. The whole economy. Way beyond what's realistic for sim games at present.
More arcade style multiplayer hack and slash RPG stuff in the spirit of gauntlet dark legacy or even something that stretches the concept like Armada 2 and makes it a space-based drop-in drop out multiplayer free-for-all frenzy that's just for fun.
man I have suggested the first - gauntlet same screen multiplayer couch style w/ fuck any theme (sci fi, fantasy, grindhouse fuck I don't even care) - for so many gamejams.... instead, yet another a dating farming single player 2d topdown gets made. lol. but I totally agree.
An open-world game made by actual satellite mapping in 3D of the entire Globe, so you not only can virtually in-game visit replica's of friends' places across the world, but also find your own house in your own city with orientation of the direct surroundings coming naturally to you. Should be decently interactive enough not to just be a gimmick that bores easily, but some GTA-style thing maybe, that allows you to keep yourself busy virtually doing things while either being in a instinctively familiar environment, or to discover new spots and places that will actually be there irl then too, expanding your actual real-life world horizons while gaming. 😅
Been something I wished existed ever since SecondLife started and was explained to kid me... The few times I tried SecondLife however have been nothing but disappointing, cause I obviously already expected a whole lot more from that than was even possible at the time. 😅
Aight I got one I think is oddly specific, and another that's just odd.
I'd like Starport: GE but as a fantasy RPG theme, instead of ships and colonies it's classes and villages, work the reputation system into a good/evil alignment and change some gameplay.
Not sure about this one but I would like a hub system, only thing that comes to mind for me is realm of the mad god, allowing you to go from one server to another with limited items.
On that note I should probably try to play starport again, has been a number of years.
Other than that, maybe a 1v1 auto battler? A mix of part of a dream into hazy dozing in and out put an idea for an auto battler where you have four incubators and six chicken eggs and each incubator changes what type of chick hatches, where they then fall into the arena to start combat. The choice of incubators and which ones your remaining two reinforcement eggs go in to I think would make an interesting head to head game.
An isometric or similar perspective CRPG with turn based combat, and the freedom to build characters and think up alternate ways to complete quests that is comparable to the original Fallout games.
Set in a slick scifi space opera, adventure universe. Where the player character controls their own ship and can fly from place to place, while also upgrading the ship and participating in space battles (also turn based). Lots of main planets to explore with bespoke elements, but also a good amount of tasteful procedural generation of minor planets to help fill out the game world.
A few games come close, but nothing quite gives me Classic Fallout + Mass Effect + No Man’s Sky that I want.
Person has an idea for an X-men RPG, conceptualised a little too well and loves it so much they cursed themselves with the awareness of difficulty of game development and it's non-existence.
Decides to make a video and spread the curse to X-men and JRPG fans alike.
Warcraft III had maps called "RP Maps", which were kindof like D&D placing things, except everyone had the same control over the map. So it became more about telling a story rather than one person leading a group's game for them.
When wc3 kindof died off that kindof game along with many others didn't leave it. SCII mapmakers tried but it had issues with the complexity, and with SCII not allowing traditional saving for long sessions.
A lot of sandbox games are cool, but built around FPS engines instead of anything third person.
Hey I made a roleplaying inspired Starcraft 1 map back in the day! Player 1 was the DM, I had different ways to spawn and send units to various parts of the map, or resources to players. So I would do things like spawn in a neutral and a hostile faction and be like 'there are bandits fucking with the locals' or whatever. Whoever went in and saved them I could pop another trigger to gift the neutral units to that player, or I could gift resources. It was clunky but a lot of fun.
I remember some of the roleplay maps with automated 'DMs' were really interesting. I was much more interested in playing with a live DM though so I built that map in the hopes that the style got enough traction for me to be a player. It did not take off though compared to the auto roleplay ones
Harvest moon like game, but survival horror. It could be first person, but would be cooler if it was like Stardew Valley. Terraria is KINDA like this, but it's vibe isn't really horror because it is too colorful and goofy. I'm thinking older RE vibes
A "Build a house for your friends" game: Take the construction and resource gathering from a game such as (for example) Valheim and combine it with an Animal Crossing - Happy Home Paradise style gameplay that tasks the player to design houses for various characters.
This comment is definitely not inspired by spending countless hours building houses in Valheim for purely aesthetic reasons. /s