Old sci-fi RTS idea

This game was partially the product of playing a lot of starcraft and trying to rethink the concept of RTS, and particularly how one might rethink strategy other than in terms of set unit attributes and knowledge of position. My idea was to build a strategy game based first and foremost upon AI, where the player used a relatively simple programming language to set up routines for all of the units. The player would further be limited to a single one of these units and so would have to trust the AI’s that they created to say defend a base, patrol an area, press a button at the correct time, or any number of tasks. The game would be well fitted to some kind of post-apocalyptic world, and I would be interested in exploring this game as a post-human world (post-human meaning in this context after the extinction of the human species). What would be the dramatic possibilities of an all robot world? What would be the uncanny echoes? How would the single and multiplayer work? I’m not entirely sure of these answers but it wouldn’t be too hard to build something like this I imagine – the scripting tools would be the majority of the work.

Autobiology

There is a lot of talk about the narrative side of games which also seems to take it for granted that this is also the fictional aspect of games (Juuls). Fair enough, but it would be interesting to bring the whole question of autobiography into games, to force the question of what kind of representations are real – and what kind of rules are fictional (the question of cheating, soft rules, etc). To that end, the game would be an autobiographical one, where my own life and the decisions I made would be represented. However there would also be room to explore other possibilities – while the people I spent most time with would be most fleshed out, there would be the opportunity of interacting with less developed characters more than I did, or differently with those key people.

Old Board Games

Here are a few old board games from my last blog:

1. Slippery Slope
This game is for two players, played on any x by x board (chess board of 8×8 dimensions would be pretty standard)
Each player has X pieces (8 for a chess board) and places them in the row closest to them.
Each piece can move one square initially forward-backwards and sideways.
After the opponent takes a piece, all of the players pieces get an extra move:
so with 7 pieces left, each moves 2 squares
with 6, 3
ect…
Finally, so that the attacking player isn’t at a total disadvantage, pieces move diagonally when there are an odd number of them,
and straight when there are an even number.

Could easily arrange a board of icehouse pieces too.

2. Forests
Two to Four Players
Played on a 8×8 chess board using IceHouse Pieces (15 per player, 5 small, 5 medium and 5 large)
One counter is needed to represent the direction of the sun.

-On each turn, all players place, or grow one ‘tree’.
-Trees start out as single small icehouse pieces and grow -> medium -> large -> small on large -> medium on large -> small on medium on large
-At the beginning of each new turn, the sun moves counterclockwise around the outside of the board
-The players then determine whether trees are in the shadow of another tree (trees cast shadows either one space, or the number of spaces high they are)
-Trees in a shadow are reduced by one size, starting from the side opposite the sun.
-Players may grow another players tree with their move, but the tree remains the originators
-The first tree to full height wins

Also trying to think of some additional ‘forest fire’ rules which would damage trees connected to each other.

3. aMaze (?)
I was thinking it would be fun to have a roll the dice, get to the end board game where the board was being built as the players moved around. Sort of a cross between the tile-based carcasonne games, and more traditional snakes and ladders style.

It might play something like:
Players roll to move, and then place a 3×3 grid tile, with various rules, or letters corresponding to variable rules on the them.
Players don’t know which way they’re going initially, the ‘exit’ wouldn’t be there at the beginning.

To make it more strategic, players might get 2 or 3 pieces? Winning would be the first to get either one or all of their pieces out and dice rolls could be split between them.

4. Mountaineers
Mountaineers!
The game consists of a number of thin wooden tiles, in curved edge pieces and square tiles.
The game progresses as players draw tiles from a bag (ala carcasonne) and build a relief map of an imaginary mountain range.
There are six colors of tile and each player is given one or two colors depending on the number of players.
Any player can play any color tile, the colors determine where the player with that color is allowed to play.
A player playing a tile on an existing mountain must play the tile on the lowest level where a tile of his color has an open slot next to it.
At the end of the game, tiles only at the highest height are scored (with bonuses for different heights). So players try to play higher than other players, while simultaneously forcing the others to play on the lower levels.
Finally, any player can always start a new mountain, but height 1 mountains don’t get scored.

Haunting / Guardianship

The idea for this game is in many ways similar to what inspired the ideas for Never Forget, particularly finding a way to make a compelling emotional game without drawing the player into the emotional situation (from which a lot of problems develop in terms of how to deal with all the myriad possible responses and indeed how to understand the players emotional state. However that kind of maping might be a powerful tool in another context). The idea with haunting would be to create a ghost character who is somehow tied to a person in the world (who has no idea of the ghost’s existence). The ghost character has some minor means of interacting: moving objects around, locking doors, maybe reading and changing peoples minds. The ghost character also is made aware of dangerous situations to the player prior to them happening. However the ghost doesn’t have a particular investment in either the happiness or sadness of the main character, as a simulator the poles would be something like benevolent/sadistic. The ghost character may or may not have their own issues to deal with in the ghost realm. Some of the motivating tensions for the game would be

- A question of what the meaning of fate would be if it existed (does it merely become the free choice of another agent, in this case the ghost)

-The tension between the characters’s and the ghost’s interests

-A question of why this particular ghost has been singled out, and why to this particular person

There would be a voyeristic pleasure in the game, and a certain kind of omnipotence which would be a satisfaction to a childish fantasy.

Kinetic/Potential

So one major source of inspiration for games seems to be changing around different types of physics – people adjust gravity, space, time, but has there been a game that has exploited Newton’s third law of motion: that forces have an equal and opposite reaction. This could be made into a very interesting design principle, obviously objects that didn’t have any reaction would be boring (and further already exist as unaffected areas. What would be interesting is some kind of mechanism where the player could postpone the reaction – either giving or absorbing energy for a certain period. This could be used to, say, push a block over for a while and then have it accelerate over thin air. Or, absorb a certain amount of damage/impact in order to generate more powerful moves. Further, this seems like it would be a pretty simple physics system to create.

Voracious Gardener

Trying to think about 2D games that would be possible with the Game Maker engine and that would have some unique gameplay. Something about trying that and playing the Legacy of Kain games made me feel like game mechanics are such a small selection of the possibilities.

Voracious Gardener is an attempt to turn platformer style gaming on its head. First, there would be few if any enemies to encounter. Second, levels would be designed for both horizontal and vertical progress. Third, you would return to each part of the level many times over. Finally, there would be a number of puzzles to solve in different ways. The mechanics would essentially be finding and collecting seeds, watering your plants, digging up roots, collecting more seeds when plants bloom, and using their special properties to move your way through the level. There might also be animals that could help you, or have secrets etc. Much of this would be based on level designs.

Never Forget: Elephant Simulator

Thinking about games with emotional mechanics, this came to me as an interesting way of distancing the player from the personal interaction and dialogue that might be particularly difficult. An elephant simulator!

Never Forget is a game designed to highlight some aspects of time, memory, and memorialization. It is a slow-paced game where the player controls and interacts with a herd of elephants as they live their lives. Four elements make up the crux of the thematic and design elements: 1) The basic life-cycle of the elephants which includes: feeding, drinking, traveling, excretion, sex, birth, nurturing, predation and death. 2) The emotional interactions between the elephants and with their environment. 3) A puzzle solving engine reminiscent of old item based adventure games. 4) A post-apocalyptic world. The core goal of the game is the creation of meaning by the player through acts of memorialization of the dead. These acts have a game-play value as well as an emotional one – serving as some kind of beacon.