Ideas for games that you know would be absolutely brilliant

[Beagle 2]

Every year I'm baffled by the lack of decent Santa-based games. Sure, you're not selling many copies from Jan-Nov, so call it "SEASONS CHANGE" and reskin it for February - you're delivering love hearts, Easter - choccy eggs, summer - lager and insect repellent, Autumn - spiders, you get the idea. Future Islands do the soundtrack. Profit.

[seepage]

That seems to be Cannon Fodder with comedy voices?

I didn't think Cannon Fodder was a stealth game?

[Lemming]

Japanese Knobhead

Enter the life of a general incompetent and unpleasant knobhead from Japan

Shenmue

[shoulders]

Yes, I made that a bit too obvious then

[Emotional Support Peacock]

I didn't think Cannon Fodder was a stealth game?

As I recall it kind of was a lot of the time. You didn't get anywhere going in all guns blazing.

[gabrielconroy]

Bit more strategic than Cannon Fodder, more stealthing around and blowing stuff up with dynamite, that sort of thing.

Wasn't Cannon Fodder basically Ikari Warriors except you could go backwards? It's been a while since I played it (about 30 years)

[Papa Wheelie]

"Orphans"

Lemmings but with orphans.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Disturbing Football

[Mister Six]

I'm sitting on two guaranteed belters, so listen up games industry:

1. A game based around acts of sabotage. Could be WW2 or something else, but disrupting plans of evil bad guys by derailing trains, blowing up munitions factories etc. Missions would involve a fair bit of stealth to evade guards, barbed wire etc., need to gather up materials, meet with co-conspirators etc. Satisfaction at seeing your plans come to fruition. I've searched and can't find one like this.

Commandos?

2. One where you're being chased/pursued/hunted. Moments of respite where you manage to hide out for a bit but always having to move on. Might meet various people who either help or hinder along the way. Would be stressful.

Outlast? Amnesia?

A Doctor Who game where each new "life" is the next regeneration of the Doc in TV order.

Lego Dimensions: Doctor Who?

A game with no visuals at all. The story and action are only communicated to the player with audio and controller vibrations. On a proper console. Has anyone attempted this? I don't just mean a low lit section of a traditional game.

That would be really interesting. From what I've read, consoles have the capacity to change audio to represent distance and sound occlusion in a much more complex way than usually happens (where at most there's an effect to make it sound like there's a wall between you and the person, like in Last of Us) using more or less the same systems that are used to figure out whether to display a polygon to the player based on what's between it and the camera.

But because humans are - as a species - very visual creatures, most of the processing power is spent on graphics, so there isn't enough oomph to do the audio thing properly, nor much cause for it if they could.

So this... theoretically could work. I think you'd need specialist multidirectional headphones or something though (Apple's earphones are incredible for this when paired with an iPad). The other issue is how you'd know what your character is doing. Obviously blind people can feel not just the space around them, but also their own body movements. With no graphics, that would be really hard to express to the player, so maybe input would have to be relatively uncomplicated.

It's a fascinating puzzle though. I'd love to see what someone much smarter than me could come up with.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

You can get Dolby Atmos through headphones on modern consoles, so the tech is there.

[Papa Wheelie]

Cooking Papa

[letsgobrian]

Cooking Papa

He had a bunch of pachinko machines.

[Papa Wheelie]

Great minds and all.

[Critcho]

A few ideas that have been knocking about in my head for years:

* A movie studio management game. There have been at least a couple of attempts at this, but as far as I know none of them go in the level of details my version would have, which would basically be like Football Manager only where you're hiring actors, writers and directors instead of players.

You'd have a giant talent database where everyone has stats for how good they are at comedy, drama, action, romance etc, and their popularity, recent track record, asking price etc.

You decide what kind of film you want to make and how much you want to spend on it, hire the talent accordingly, and the game will crunch the numbers and come up with reviews and opening weekend, and awards at the end of each year.

If you hit the jackpot it can increase everyone's stats, if an actor has a run of flops their stats might go down. You could thrown in random events like a star getting caught up in some scandal that tanks their popularity. Maybe you want to take a gamble by hiring some talented veteran who's career is on the skids, and they get a surprise Oscar out of it.

I would be so obsessed with this game if someone got it right.

* A rock star management game, sort of like a modernized Rockstar Ate My Hamster. You'd be a Peter Grant-style rock manager in the 70's, where you have to take care of the band's career moves, public image, drug addictions, interpersonal dramas and so on.

* An open world game made out of old 2D arcade genres. So you'll go around doing your usual GTA style open world stuff, but missions would be things like a Chase HQ racing section, or a side-scrolling shooter like Midnight Resistance, or a brawler like Streets Of Rage. Just cram in a variations on every old arcade game format you can think of. I'm sort of amazed no one's tried to do this.

I have Gamemaker and can use it a bit, and still delude myself into thinking I might one day make these.

[Shaxberd]

Re, visual-free games, I was sure I'd read about something like that before and yes, it's certainly been tried:

http://www.blindsidegame.com/

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vanished/id687744410

https://store.steampowered.com/app/437530/A_Blind_Legend/

I also found a game called Perception where you play as a blind character, but it cheats a bit by giving her very good echolocation abilities which are represented visually.

[Emotional Support Peacock]

There was a game called Papa Sangre that was audio only and tried to used clever tricks to recreate a 3d environment.

The game has been described by the developer as a "video game with no video" — its environment is rendered exclusively in sound via binaural audio

I played it but can't remember if it is any good.

[popcorn]

2D LucasArts-style point and click adventure based on the His Dark Materials novels. Your cursor would be Pan the daemon as a moth, "flying" around the screen, clicking on things and giving Lyra instructions.

[gabrielconroy]

A few ideas that have been knocking about in my head for years:

* A movie studio management game. There have been at least a couple of attempts at this, but as far as I know none of them go in the level of details my version would have, which would basically be like Football Manager only where you're hiring actors, writers and directors instead of players.

You'd have a giant talent database where everyone has stats for how good they are at comedy, drama, action, romance etc, and their popularity, recent track record, asking price etc.

You decide what kind of film you want to make and how much you want to spend on it, hire the talent accordingly, and the game will crunch the numbers and come up with reviews and opening weekend, and awards at the end of each year.

If you hit the jackpot it can increase everyone's stats, if an actor has a run of flops their stats might go down. You could thrown in random events like a star getting caught up in some scandal that tanks their popularity. Maybe you want to take a gamble by hiring some talented veteran who's career is on the skids, and they get a surprise Oscar out of it.

I would be so obsessed with this game if someone got it right.

This one actually sounds like a great idea. Think you wouldn't be able to use actual actors or real-life IP as it would be eye-bleedingly expensive.

[Mister Six]

* A rock star management game, sort of like a modernized Rockstar Ate My Hamster. You'd be a Peter Grant-style rock manager in the 70's, where you have to take care of the band's career moves, public image, drug addictions, interpersonal dramas and so on.

Didn't Bullfrog or some other UK developer have a spiritual successor to RSAMH lined up in the 1990s, only for it to become vapourware? I remember the preview screenshots having pre-rendered graphics, but the characters were all 2D-looking figures, maybe like walking newspaper clippings?

[madhair60]

A game with no visuals at all. The story and action are only communicated to the player with audio and controller vibrations. On a proper console. Has anyone attempted this? I don't just mean a low lit section of a traditional game.

you probs know this (and it's not a proper console so to speak) but there's a Game Boy game named Soundvoyager that's designed to be played without looking at the screen and using headphones

[Old Nehamkin]

They should make the game from the Californication video.

[copa]

A rock star management game, sort of like a modernized Rockstar Ate My Hamster. You'd be a Peter Grant-style rock manager in the 70's, where you have to take care of the band's career moves, public image, drug addictions, interpersonal dramas and so on.

This sounds great. An open-world type of thing, set in a scuzzy 70s city.
Cruising around in a battered Jag or van. Having to round up band members for gigs.
Persuading venue owners to pay up. Sticking up posters. Hiring and firing. 

[boki]

An open world wanking simulator.

Or, as I call it, Sainsburys.


Horace Goes HD

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I know they did some turn-based strategy thing, but you'd have to think a proper action game of John Wick would be a big seller. A virtual Ian McShane could have more realistic teeth than the real one had in the last film.

[Thursday]

They should make the game from the Californication video.

https://comandogdev.itch.io/califonication

[Famous Mortimer]

Home Town Destruction Simulator

Photo-realistic depictions of the small towns you grew up in (game ships with Nuneaton and the Amber Valley, the rest will be DLC), which you can blow up any way you see fit. Send us a photo of your school bully and we'll add them as a character so you can drop a dinosaur-sized shit on their heads.

[Emotional Support Peacock]

Pizza Tycoon remake

[Critcho]

Didn't Bullfrog or some other UK developer have a spiritual successor to RSAMH lined up in the 1990s, only for it to become vapourware? I remember the preview screenshots having pre-rendered graphics, but the characters were all 2D-looking figures, maybe like walking newspaper clippings?

You've triggered a long dormant memory... I think it was Sensible Software and was going to be called Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll. I can't remember anything else about it though, might look it up.

[Mister Six]

Yes @Critcho! That's the one! Blog by Sensible Software's Jon Hare on the topic here.

[Cold Meat Platter]

There's a brown guy that wants shooting. He has a Russian mate.