Making a game? Pitch it here!

[BigJKO]

I did not know that!

[Merus]

I have two, because I have wildly divergent tastes:

 

A nautical clockpunk dockworking game, where you have to swap crates between perpetually spinning crane wheels to get them to the right ship, and on the right hook. Success gets you money, which you can use to improve your wharf (or have on hand to pay out compensation for damages). You have a reputation with the shipping companies you deal with, and you can recruit new shipping companies with bigger wheels by demonstrating your quality as a stevedore. This one, I think, needs the most time prototyping because I suspect it will need a lot of polishing to expose the fun bit.

 

A relentlessly cynical tycoon game about game development. You have a staff of developers filled with mostly rank amateurs (because they will work for long hours at terrible pay) and a few old hands that never had to do the bullshit work and so never burnt out. They make a game, which involves various 'systems' you hook together, which would encompass everything from gameplay to themes to the art style. Components can only be added if a team member knows them already, or they can be researched so long as the publisher is patient. Polishing each component costs time, depending on the skills of your team, and can introduce flaws, such as bugs, imbalances, and misogyny, that you have to spend time fixing (or ignore! because if your audience will tolerate the flaws that's more time to work on other things). Eventually you release it, and it is judged and sold - the simulation is weighted towards 'gamers' being unpleasable jackasses. You would also get news feeds from parody news sites like Ogamo to try and stay ahead of the zeitgeist, and be able to recruit 'rockstars' who are caricatures and combinations of known developers. You would have the choice of different funding models - a publisher, who would bail you out when you get in trouble but would also be a pain about everything you do; indie developers, who have basically no money but also no way to convince people their game is great other than an unusual art style and either gimmicky or nostalgic mechanics; or crowdsourcing, who have the pitch model of publishers and the funding model of indies.

[Reyturner]

Inspired by Dan Carlin's "Death Throws of the Republic", I want to make a competitive game where players take on the role of Roman aristocrats, each with differing strengths in the games various systems, who work together to build and defend the Roman Republic and then fight over it to declare themselves emperor. 

 

The players work together to solve problems posed by the game ala Battlestar Gallactica, but when players start feeling like they are strong enough to take on the others, they can turn on each other (the world events would keep happening though).

 

A big part of the the narrative Carlin built was of public officials taking the powers they had been granted by the Senate and corrupting them in innovative ways for their own purposes; because the foundations of government were built on honor and prestige, the system itself was ill equipped to self correct when its leaders became more interested in power and wealth (this is an oversimplification of course, but it makes for a good game... I hope  ). These front runners would take a hit in their influence, but eventually their tactics became normalized and became the way of things. This would probably manifest in the game as a Corruption resource, which you can generate with other resources (money, legions, rhetoric), but once you've created it, it increases the base level of Corruption in the game which allows for even more brazen acts of avarice by everyone else. This is most interesting mechanic I want to develop; players balancing their short term goals of growing and defending the Republic and then killing it in pursuit of undercutting people they were working with. 

 

Its probably more of a board game, but electronic board games are popular these days. Developing the AI would be the biggest challenge by far. 

[Zeusthecat]

The Truman Show: The Video Game.

 

You have a wife, best friend, job, etc. and your goal as you understand it is try to live your ideal, pre-ordained lifestyle. You go to work, spend time with friends and family, and do things that you supposedly enjoy to try to make the most out of life. As the player, you guide Truman through life and use your knowledge of his situation to steer the direction his life takes.

 

The player's goal in this game is to try to obtain the highest ratings possible for The Truman Show, which is done in one of two ways. One way to obtain high ratings is to try to live your life in a way that fits with the vision of the show. As you do what you are "supposed" to, you are rewarded in certain ways. Maybe the show introduces new activities for you to participate in or maybe new characters are brought in for you to get to know, opening up new options and relationship dynamics. As you reach major milestones or achieve some tough goal you receive even better awards that help keep the game interesting and open up new avenues for increasing your ratings. If you follow this path through the entirety of the game, your true purpose in life is revealed to you on your deathbed and you die with the new knowledge that your life was a lie and you were the most influential/popular person in modern history.

 

The other way to obtain high ratings is to try to break out of the confines of the show. You might do this by going places you aren't supposed to go or doing things you aren't supposed to do. By taking this approach however, the show's directors will try to throw weird and unexpected things at you to discourage you from deviating from the norm. These unexpected things could include radical shifts in weather, changes to the day/night cycle, and all sorts of unexpected interactions with other characters and the environment. Your ultimate goal in taking this path is to escape from the show and as you pursue this over time, Truman starts to piece together exactly what is going on and gets more adept at escaping from the cameras, which in turn gives him an opportunity to plan out and execute his escape from the show. This all culminates in a final push to escape where all kinds of shit is thrown at you as you try to make your escape. Then, at the end, you talk to the creator and a secret third option is revealed where you are given the choice to leave the show and make your triumphant exit or go back and continue to live your life, but with the knowledge of what your true purpose in life is.

 

Somehow throughout this game you receive feedback on how you are impacting the ratings and there would be some direct correlation between how high the ratings are and what you can do or how much awesome shit happens. And the soundtrack would be even more amazing than the soundtrack for the movie. I don't know, that's all I have right now. Also, this game will use Unreal Engine 4 cuz graphics r king.