So, because me and my game dev friend had been working on some tech related to top-down view games over the weekend ... when the WoA II announced their "topic" I was influenced to focus on ideas for top-down action games (the vision I had been using while working on the weekend was Time Pilot 84 style action).

So the topic was revealed on Monday - "The Toys are Alive" ...

Which got my creative juices flowing, but initially not in an action game sort of way ... but after a few minutes I honed in on my first idea with legs:

The toys are alive, but enslaved - and most people don't know it. Santa Claus is EVIL!!! More specifically an evil mage. Even more specifically Santa Claus was originally St. Nicholas, which everyone knows. However everyone didn't know that he was a mage from a dark and vicious order - bent on controlling the world - and enslaving the toys.

In the fourth century AD the toys aligned with St. Basil sought freedom, but St. Nicholas and his order defeated and ensorceled them. As a side note - St. Basil's Cathedral stands as the only remaining hallowed ground built by the toys. (that might be a setting for the third installment of the game series ...)

Rasputin was the third most powerful mage ever (after St. Nicholas and Count Dracula) and eventually sought to take over control of the order by draining the life energy from humans (previous mages has used toys or animals as familiars ... only Rasputin had broken the sacred vows not to draw magical energies from Human hosts) ... so St. Nicholas sent members of the order to kill Rasputin, but they failed, until finally St. Nicholas had to go personally - fighting Rasputin in an epic mage battle ... but at a heavy cost to himself. After the battle he fled to the arctic with his remaining army of elves to set up a base of operations out of reach of the Russians, rebuilding his power while the world descended into World War I, he also changed his name and appearance in an attempt to avoid retribution for some of his past crimes.

Look at these images if you never noticed the similarities between them:
http://www.whychristmas.com/i/st-nicholas.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:G._Rasputin.JPG

The game's point is simple. Lead an assault on Santa Clause's north pole base to free the enslaved toys.

BTW. The 3 "planned" games are:
Episode 1. The North Pole - (where the player learns that St. Nicholas is the most powerful evil mage in history and frees the toys from his evil machinations). the game involves using toys to defeat a magical army including Santa's elves and eventually himself.
Episode 2. China - Where the player learns that chairman Mao was Santa Claus' apprentice and leads an assault on the major toy production companies and factories in China to free the toys (again)
Episode 3. Russia - Where the player learns that the order has not gone quietly into defeat and has built an army to assault the toys in their place of power (St. Basil's Cathedral) ... this episode is a game of defense as the toys are assaulted by the army of the dark order.

Now if only I had an army of programmers, artists and sound engineer's to build this game in a week.