Game Ideas

Sooo, I've been knocking around some ideas for games for a long time. I hope some day to be able to make these games, but it will require me to find a system that can support it and actually be non-lazy enough to make them. In the meantime, I'll just describe them here. Feel free to steal any/all of my ideas or at least comment on how awesome they are. (Oh, and try to ignore that I blatantly rip off the Metroid formula for BOTH games. I'm sorry, but it just makes the best stuff.)


Game #1:
Concept: A space exploration game with the core mechanic being energy management. Similar to Metroid games in the sense that there will be areas you can't go until you have the right abilities.

Gameplay: I was thinking it would be a 2-D top-down shooter style game similar to Geometry Wars in gameplay. As you found and acquired your abilities throughout the game, the areas you could go would expand and you would meet numerous enemies with different abilities and vulnerabilities.

Core Mechanic: Your ship has two main stats. Hull Integrity and Energy. Obviously these are HP and MP. Your hp would NOT regenerate under normal circumstances, however there may be drops from defeated enemies or something similar. ALL of your abilities and even your simple movement would use Energy. There would probably be energy expansions throughout the game or at least energy regeneration upgrades. You can customize everything about how your ship fights and moves. This is where the explanation gets difficult. I'll just give an example of what you might see in your customization screen. (And obviously you wouldn't start with all of these abilities, it would be introduced slowly over time. Some of these might not even be good examples and would never be given to the player.)

Shield Strength: A sliding bar between 0% and 100%. This changes what % of incoming damage is dealt to your energy instead of your Hull.
Main Thrusters: Another sliding bar. 0% renders your ship immobile but saves significant power even compared to 1%. (The thrusters are turned off entirely and don't even use idling energy.) At 100% your ship moves very fast and uses a great deal of energy while moving. Anywhere between changes your movement speed and energy accordingly.
Magnetic Hull: Pulls anything metal towards you, including certain enemies and certain power-ups. If something is larger than you, it pulls you towards it. This could also potentially be a sliding bar to change the strength. Uses a significant amount of energy per second.
Plasma Shield: Deals damage to anything you touch like a melee attack. Uses massive energy per second to the point that it would be very hard to keep Shields or Weapons active while using this and you would probably have to reduce movement. Combos very well with Magnetic Hull if you can manage the energy consumption.
Main Cannon: A sliding bar for your gun strength between 1% and 100%. A lower % gun could be easily rapidly fired, a stronger gun will use the majority of your energy per shot and won't be able to be fired quickly.
-Photon attachment: Adds a great deal of power to your main cannon but decreases it's rate of fire. Adds an explosive radius to the aoe. Also increases energy cost greatly.
-EMP attachment: Adds a disabling effect to your gun. Enemies that are hit will be unable to do anything for a duration. Increases energy cost per shot greatly.
-Nova attachment: Increases the damage of your shots. Also adds a damage over time aspect in the form of burning/overheating. Increases energy cost greatly.

So basically, the core mechanic is dealing with all of your numerous abilities and sliding bars around until you find a power out-put scheme that uses your power the most efficiently and/or in a way that fits you. There is a huge amount of customizability. Some people might want to hop into a fight and blow everything on pure offensive show of force with maximum damage and Photon+Nova equipped. If they didn't manage to get the kills, having no defense afterwords and being out of energy would be very bad. Others might be more conservative with a semi-rapid fire gun style using relatively low power and the EMP attachment. Probably also using high speed and shields. There might also be other abilities with less combat applications such as Hyperdrive to reduce backtracking through a map teleportation system or other abilities useful mostly for puzzles.


Game #2:
Concept: Super Mario Bros. 2 (especially the underground levels) smashed into Metroid.

Gameplay: Few games have used the grabbing and throwing mechanic of SMB2, and that's a real shame considering how fun it can be. The gameplay would be mostly platforming and combat SMB2 style. But, instead of being divided into small levels, it would use the Metroid formula of one big game that requires different powers to navigate differently. Teleporters might also be included and there would be a large emphasis on sequence breaking and/or playing the game in whatever order you wanted. (Few of the abilities would drastically effect combat, so you could go the hardest area right from the start if you could manage to get there and have enough skill to survive.) I think using the exact same controls would work just fine.

Core Mechanics: Obviously old-school platforming is the main theme. One of the other mechanics that this game would make even more use of than SMB2 is the tunneling. Using your pick up ability while standing over certain kinds of dirt would lift up and destroy one block of floor. Some kinds of dirt would be just like the sand in SMB2 and will let you jump through them from below. Others will be solid blocks that cannot be passed through. (Which means you can only tunnel straight down through them.) Leaving rooms will reset the room and there will be obvious markers when your passing a reset point. It won't be possible to get stuck, but tunneling down a long way without paying attention could lead you to a long walk back unless you have the right power up to get out easily.

Characters: There would be three different characters to choose from that each have different sequence breaking abilities which allows you to play the game in different ways. Additionally, there might be a New Game + which let you pick your own stats and put whichever ability you wanted on it.

Speedster: High speed, medium jumping, low friction. Special ability: Floaty similar to Princess Peach from SMB2. Due to the high speed and floaty jump, this character would be able to cross gaps in the early game that others require Double Jump or something similar to get across.

Fatty: High friction, medium speed, low jumping. Special ability: Invulnerability similar to the Tankooki suit in SMB3. If he holds down for a few seconds, he becomes invulnerable until he moves again. This would allow him to gain access to extremely hard areas that normally deal damage no matter what, without having extra health or protection abilities. For example, there might be a lava area that the characters couldn't enter unless they had enough HP to run through very quickly or were holding a special protection item that can't be found until later. By using this ability on a block that breaks while you stand on it, he would then fall into the lava and remain invulnerable there. Where he lands, there would be a power-up that gives lava protection.

Gardener: Medium everything. Special ability: He can "plant" most items in the ground if there is dirt of the right type while keeping the one he is holding. Basically this lets him duplicate items. Certain uber powerful/unique items would obviously be excluded. This can be used to sequence break by duplicating limited items to solve puzzles. E.G. There might be a room that had a 3-layer thick wall of bricks only breakable by bombs or by a late-game power. There is only 1 bomb in the room. He can get through the wall where the others couldn't because he can duplicate the bomb.

Abilities: The standard two button lay-out with most of the abilities from SMB2 would be the starting set-up. You can run by holding a A, jump to varying heights depending on how long you mash S, pick up things your standing over or dig with A, climb up ladders with Up, and go in and out doors with Down. In addition, you would have your character's special. Then you start getting new abilities as you find them.

#1 Wall-grab/jump. Lets you slide down walls slowly and jump off them. Similar to the Megaman X wall jump and single-wall jumping would probably be allowed for advanced players to sequence break even more. This lets you advance through many sections and climb higher. It also makes tunneling straight down safer because you can wall jump back up the narrow tunnel easily.

#2 Double Jump. Pretty simple. Lets you jump a second time in the air. Very useful for jumps through open air without walls around or complex jumps that require you to be in just the right spot. Can be COMBINED with wall jumping to allow very very high jumps.

#3 Drill. Allows you to tunnel through certain kinds of rock to the side. Opens up many new possibilities and areas that you might not have expected. This probably also tunnels through blocks meant to be blown up with Bombs.

#4 Ground Pound. Just like any other Mario game. Since by default in this game you don't kill things that you jump on due to the necessity to grab and throw them, this finally gives you a combat option to actually KILL single enemies. Also breaks certain blocks that normal digging can't get through.

#5 Slide. Megaman style again. Hold down and press the grab button to slide forward along the ground. Allows you move through small tunnels and kills/stuns certain enemies that are vulnerable to it.

#6 Life Upgrades. There will be many through the game. You start with only one health point and die from any hit. Probably a total of 10 hp allowed. Not necessary to beat the game.

#7 Strength Enhancements. (Steroids?) Increases your throwing distance for items. Also increases how fast you pull items, especially large ones, out of the ground. Probably around 5 of this upgrade in the game. Not necessary to beat the game, but very difficult without it later on due to big items and far away enemies.

#8 A mysterious man that you can find. He gives you some sort of quest. If you complete it, he will let you transfer one of your main 3 stats into another one. (E.G. High speed, medium jump, low friction could be come medium speed, high jump, low friction or medium everything or uber speed, low jump, low friction.)

Items: All the stuff you can pull up from plants and pick up on the ground. Pretty much copying SMB2 here.

#1 Small attack objects. Pulls up instantly, throws far, deals low damage.
#2 Large attack objects. These come in multiple sizes that deal more damage the larger they are but also take longer to pull up. Doesn't throw quite as far as the smaller counterpart.
#3 Bombs obviously are needed for many puzzles and as a weapon. They would probably be similar to bombs in Zelda rather than SMB2. (Don't start their explosion timer until you throw them.)
#4 Health Canister. These are how you heal normally. It is used automatically when grabbed. If your health is full, you can carry it and use it as a weapon. If it hits an enemy, the enemy is fully healed and increases in size.
#5 Teleporters. Useful for puzzle solving. They only activate in pairs. You can throw one somewhere that you can't get to and then put the other near yourself and walk through. They could also be used to loop a patrolling enemy so it can't get at you or to send an enemy's projectile back at it. (Anything that passes over the teleporter 2-3 squares high gets teleported.)
#6 Jumping pads. Can be used as weapons. Anything that hits the top of them jumps higher. Especially useful before you have any enhanced jumping abilities.
#7 Time Stopper. Uses instantly when pulled up. Stops time for everything but you. Useful for pwning enemies or doing platforming that would be otherwise impossible.
#8 Etc. Pretty much whatever item is needed at the moment. All kinds of unique and context sensitive stuff that would depend on the level lay-out.


What do you guys think of these ideas? Am I stealing too much from Metroid? Is there such a thing? Would these be good games? Do you think it's possible to develop either or both of these in Flash? Any other comments on any of the ideas are welcome. All names and numbers are made up on the spot for example purposes and obviously wouldn't be finalized until the game was made.


P.S. Both games would be planned to be a minimum of a 1 hour experience. Assuming you were playing for the first time and didn't have a plan or know where anything was, the exploration and back tracking could easily add 2-3 hours. With a speed run, I would assume the SMB2 style one especially, would be beatable in probably under 30 minutes. However, part of the point of the style of gameplay in both is that the replayability would be very high. Due to the non-linear nature and different character builds, you have to play the game at least 3-4 times before you have truly experienced every path and every possibility.

They do steal a lot, but I think they'd both be good games none the less. I started skimming part way through however.

To be honest, it's quite hard to be original in games anymore. I think making something that mixes multiple other good games in a unique way is already about as original as you can get.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing. Originality doesn't mean it's a good game. Some of the best games are franchises....Mario, Zelda, Final Fantasy etc etc.

What do you mean SinisteRing? I think I made it pretty clear that skill is definitely the deciding factor in both of these. (Well, strategy somewhat in the first one.)


If your referring to Metroid style games as being Time > Skill, then myself and a few million other fanboys will have to disagree. Metroid has many uber advanced techniques and a smart or skilled player can do tons of things that a player who merely has time on his hands cannot. But, if you lack those skills, you can fall back on simply using more time to become more powerful. It's a nearly perfect formula because it rewards EVERYONE according to their skill level.

But no, it wouldn't work at all in a PVP setting if that's what you mean.

He's trolling you, if you didn't catch it.