Awful game ideas.


Going to the local railway station this morning gave us a "good" game idea. Unfortunately some of the less salubrious streets in the area sometimes have dog poo, broken glass, take-away meals and their containers, and on some occasions, vomit. Also, on bin day, the gulls may have helped liberate the contents of the bins across wider areas adding to the fun.

So, here are a few ideas to get the ball rolling for example:

* Your late to catch the train to work - get there quickly without slipping over on dog poo, vomit or kebabs, and on time with clean shoes / trousers
* Walking your dog - try to guide your trusty companion through patches of broken glass to the park, where there can be other hidden hazardous items, such as rotten meat or some local individual's untrained pitbull terrier
* Around the supermarket - try to find your items as quickly and efficiently as possible: the staff may point you in wrong directions or bring you incorrect items, or sometimes drop items in the isle, or perhaps put items in the wrong place - like bacon on the shelves next to the crisps (you also lose points if you get food poisoning). You get bonus points for glancing disapprovingly towards other patrons who are eating the products before paying for them at the till, or opening items to find out what they smell like.

There could be bonus stages where you have to avoid engaging in conversation with any of the locals who may shout incoherent, inebriated messages towards you - if you fail to respond appropriately then they may begin pursuit or throw other hazards in your path. Or other fun ideas, like kids with bicycles who may also cause other hazards along your way.

Fun fact: if you're unfortunate enough to find yourself - in real life - on a street with dog poo, broken glass, vomit among other items of garbage, it can make your time relatively fun by pretending it's also a game, and humming the tune to Mario while jumping and dodging over said items.
 
Man, some of my old posts in this topic are weird. I have trouble with providing context.

I had a new awful game idea yesterday. "Bluedudes versus the Forces of Redness". It's not a strategy game though, it's an adventure game and racial allegory. You play as three bluedudes tryin'a make it in a red man's world. Yeah, this one was even more awful than usual, considering that I'm white.

I wanna get back to working on games instead of talking about it, but I can't get a computer until at least July. Oh well.
 
Well, I can get FUZE4 Nintendo Switch at the end of May and use that for prototyping.

I could probably even softmod my Switch right now if I looked up how, but I'd rather not get on Nintendo's bad side.
 
Dude, stay at fucking Löve.
Löve is awesome.
Löve is holy.
 
Well, Love2D does beat SDL2 on features, but it also runs more slowly, from what I remember. Not sure what I'll use when I get Pyra. Maybe Godot?

Also, don't derail my thread. :p
 
Did someone say keyboards?
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Guys, I've been having more awful game ideas.

One is called "Ten More Commandments". It's a platformer with a sin meter instead of a health meter. Break in-game rules too many times and a demon will pop out of the ground to claim your soul. Yeah, it's been done in Roguelikes before, but thinking of commandments for a platformer could be interesting.

The other is "Too Many Pets". It's a virtual pet game, but with seven pets instead of one, for frantic arcade action. If you thought one Tamagotchi beeping was annoying, just wait until you hear seven.
 
A Chinese clone of the game "Too Many Pets" named "Many Pets 2" (许多宠物2) that has 8 pets. You control everything with a single push button. Push 1 second to select the first pet, 2 seconds for the second, etc. etc.
Has special volume knob for setting the sound to: On, Loud, Hard and Extra Hard.
Comes with a replacement battery, wrist strap, pouch, Engrish manual.
 
One is called "Ten More Commandments". It's a platformer with a sin meter instead of a health meter. Break in-game rules too many times and a demon will pop out of the ground to claim your soul. Yeah, it's been done in Roguelikes before, but thinking of commandments for a platformer could be interesting.

that doesn't even sound like a bad game idea, let alone awful one. one example commandment -- don't step on red blocks. stepping or touching it it 10 times will pop out the demon. you could also make it more frantic, like the demon doesn't immediately grab you, but will chase you down (like the abominable snowman in "ski free").
 
My daughter came up with "barf chess". You start with 2 queens, and they are pregnant, and thus, barf all around. The idea is to lock the opponent from moving. Your previous spot becomes inaccessible as you move to a new spot. The place you barfed on can be filled with a chess piece, to mark that field as occupied/wall.

don't step on red blocks.
And then, the rules change, and you can access previously unaccessible spots. Like: 11th rule displaces 1st rule. Sometimes, with luck, you have double rules (so, 1 rule repeating 10 times).
 
My daughter came up with "barf chess". You start with 2 queens, and they are pregnant, and thus, barf all around. The idea is to lock the opponent from moving. Your previous spot becomes inaccessible as you move to a new spot. The place you barfed on can be filled with a chess piece, to mark that field as occupied/wall.

Sounds like Achtung, die Kurve! on a grid.
 
Guys, I was thinking about how to take the math out of strategy games. There are already hundreds of abstract board games and chess variants like that though. I wonder if I should even bother with mine.

Basically, my idea would be for each unit to have a rank, and units can only be killed by equal or higher rank units, but can also be stunned by lower rank units, causing loss of the next turn for that unit. You can also have a unit guard itself until next turn, which turns other equal rank or higher attacks on that unit into stunning attacks, and blocks lower rank attacks completely. The only math would be in comparing unit ranks. Units can gain a rank when killing an equal rank, but not lower rank, unit.

Really, this is just my roundabout way of saying I'm not capable of balancing the math for a strategy game. :(
 
Tactics games are rarely balanced.The AI usually is overpowered like shit and you have to win using strategy against the dumb AI.
 
my idea would be for each unit to have a rank
Ok, so we begin with a Stratego kind of game, make the play pieces reversible (upside down, from the back, the opponent sees nothing, but you can see attack or guard/defense mode. That twist can be interesting enough to churn a new version of it.
 
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