Hi there!
I am currently working on a simple iOS game with small team (my first real game designing experience aside from some mods).

We started with idea to make a simple runner game with smooth controls and good dynamics like Jetpack Joyride or Temple Run.

Backstory is pretty simple: you are super bird Swift who must chase evil Raven to bring him to justice and stop his reign of terror and stuff.

The concept of the gameplay is pretty much your basic endless runner stuff: you fly down avoiding or destroying obstacles on your way.
Controls based on tilting for evasion and taping for using your powers.
The pitch is that you have multiple weapons and that after some time you get to Raven and have to beat him in various boss fights.
After that you warp to next world with new art and harder challenges.

Now when we have alfa on our hands there are couple problems that we are trying to solve:

Problem 1: People don’t want to lose progress.
Although game designed as endless runner it don’t quite feels as one. All testers expected to keep their progress after reaching world 1 (in current build all progress wipes after death and you start over) . I guess that happens because we focused on travel between worlds too much with boss fights and warp zone.

Problem 2: Wrong genre
Nobody really wants to release endless runners right now. We knocked couple of doors, but all publishers told us that although game looks pretty good they don’t need even more endless runners.

So instead of falling into desperation I came up with cool solution Im not quite sure how to pull off =)

I want to turn this endless runner game into game that will play and feel like adventure game with level progression. Each world will last for 5-10 minutes instead of 1-3, there will be checkpoints inside and between worlds and everything will be nice and dandy right?
Wrong.
As soon as we prototyped first world with checkpoints new problems emerged:

Problem 1: Game became boring.
Since we cant use pace of difficulty progression from before, we had to slow it down. Now what was first 20 seconds to “warm up” is 5 minutes to bore you to death.

Problem 2: Not enough content.
We have breakable obstacles, unbreakable obstacles that kills you, moving breakable obstacles and rotating unbreakable obstacles + we have “enemies” that add difficulty by blocking safe passages.
And that’s about it. Though we can draw new versions of this objects fort each world im not quite sure it will be enough. And there is only so much things you can add into game with only one axis for player to move. (if anyone have ideas on new obstacles or events I would be enormously grateful!)

Only solution that comes to my mind at the moment is to make powers more interesting to use, by changing controls from taping to swiping/holding etc. But im not sure that would be enough.

Im kind of lost here. What do you think people?

Problem 2: Not enough content.
We have breakable obstacles, unbreakable obstacles that kills you, moving breakable obstacles and rotating unbreakable obstacles + we have “enemies” that add difficulty by blocking safe passages.
And that’s about it. Though we can draw new versions of this objects fort each world im not quite sure it will be enough. And there is only so much things you can add into game with only one axis for player to move. (if anyone have ideas on new obstacles or events I would be enormously grateful!)

A reverse function -- scroll the world backwards
warp gates that throw you back on the map or forward
Achievement icons -- collect X amount of icons to unlock achievements, new spaceships designs, new weapons etc.
random rick-roll or similar type spoof/easter egg events that pop up in 1 in a 100 games or so
Random novelty spaceships design unlocks i.e. suddenly your spaceships becomes one of Monopoly tokens such as the iron or top hat (obviously avoid copyright issues)
The ability to download an icon or mini-photo as your spaceship -- i.e. your mother-in-law
Puzzles requiring the back and forth using warp gates to obtain entry into them i.e. create the ability to re-utilised the same map in a number of different ways.
Parallax mode - your ships phases into another reality with different types of obstacles i.e. using shifts back and forth to avoid impassable situations etc.
Bizarre mode -- unbreakable object become breakable and breakable objects become unbreakable.
many more ideas but am being dragged away to shoot zombies irl - hope this helps.

[quote name='Demonocrat' timestamp='1338043160' post='4943491']
Problem 2: Not enough content.
We have breakable obstacles, unbreakable obstacles that kills you, moving breakable obstacles and rotating unbreakable obstacles + we have “enemies” that add difficulty by blocking safe passages.
And that’s about it. Though we can draw new versions of this objects fort each world im not quite sure it will be enough. And there is only so much things you can add into game with only one axis for player to move. (if anyone have ideas on new obstacles or events I would be enormously grateful!)

A reverse function -- scroll the world backwards
warp gates that throw you back on the map or forward
Achievement icons -- collect X amount of icons to unlock achievements, new spaceships designs, new weapons etc.
random rick-roll or similar type spoof/easter egg events that pop up in 1 in a 100 games or so
Random novelty spaceships design unlocks i.e. suddenly your spaceships becomes one of Monopoly tokens such as the iron or top hat (obviously avoid copyright issues)
The ability to download an icon or mini-photo as your spaceship -- i.e. your mother-in-law
Puzzles requiring the back and forth using warp gates to obtain entry into them i.e. create the ability to re-utilised the same map in a number of different ways.
Parallax mode - your ships phases into another reality with different types of obstacles i.e. using shifts back and forth to avoid impassable situations etc.
Bizarre mode -- unbreakable object become breakable and breakable objects become unbreakable.
many more ideas but am being dragged away to shoot zombies irl - hope this helps.
[/quote]

Wow some nice and simple to implement ideas here! Thanks!
Good luck with those zombies!