This post is here just for people to have fun creating bizare, creative and just plain unique ideas for the heck of it. The objective of this post is to try to help people think out the box and to share ideas on how to think out of the box. Here''s a few ideas of mine: A platformer (like the super mario brothers) where your a scout getting in and out of enemy areas and cannot directly hurt your enemies. A side-scolling space game (like galaga and galaxian) where you are transporting cargo and trying to avoid pirates at the same time. Just a few ideas. Have fun.

Okay, here's an idea that some of you might like to incorporate. Many of the treatments and ideas for games on this forum seem to attract justifiable criticism because they are derivative of other stuff, an example of this would be the: 'lone hero sent to kick ass against a huge army or powerful enemy'.
Of course to make this work, the hero has to be some kind of cardboard cut-out Jean Claude Van Damme type bloke who is 'a one man wrecking crew'. Hardly original, so I was thinking about how you could get rid of this cliche, but still retain the concept of being one man against a seemingly unstoppable or unbeatable enemy, because if you keep the player's perspective as a single character, you'll retain the player's involvement, and he will essentially 'become' that character, particularly in a first person shooter type game. Which is good.
So how do you do that without your character being that cliched 'one man wrecking crew'? Well here's what I came up with:
How about having a character that's the complete opposite of that, i.e. more like you and I. One who has to use skills of persuasion, guile, cunning or bribery to get others in the game to help him get the job done? Maybe have him as a complete coward! Or have him needing to persuade characters in the game to teach him the necessary skills to be able to get the job done. This is sometimes briefly touched on or hinted at in games, but it is rarely the game itself.
I'm just kind of 'thinking out loud' here and this style of gameplay might require a bit of thinking through to get it to work, but it strikes me that if your game character has something more in common with the game buyer and his dreams and aspirations, then you'd be halfway to having a hit on your hands.
After all, why should your character have to be 'the chosen one' or 'the only man who can get the job done'. That's so goddam corny and about a million years past its sell by date!
Just an idea.

[edited by - Chock Holocaust on July 7, 2003 10:10:28 AM]

A quick little idea that could add new gameplay, how about a rt/tbs game that focuses on battalion vs. battalion strategy directly per army. A little clarification:

An intruding battalion consisting of 40 swordsmen and 20 archers (all a single unit with a total of 60 hits) heads towards the enemy base. The enemy spots them and sends out a battalion of 50 cavalry (again a single unit with 50 hits). They engage each other on the battlefield and both sides begin to take hits (losing soldiers) but at a relatively slow pace.

Now, both sides send in reinforcements, which can either add to the current battalion or be used to attack the same target from a different strategical position. By adding, you strengthen the original battalion (regain hits) and when attacking seperately you increase the attack power towards the target.

Now we have 80 swordsmen and 40 archers (they added 100 all together) against a single unit of 35 cavalry (the previous unit now) and now an extra 50 archers flanking the intruders from the west.

The intruders have a couple new options, they can either split up their army to deal 1/2 damage but per round (divide army), or hold their position and concentrate on attacking two seperate armies one per round at full force (multi-targeting). Of course, they can continue to focus on just the cavalry as well. Lets say they split up by 50/50 (they can opt to split differently, even by army type ).

Now, the cavalry is being slaughtered by the army attacking it (down to 18 hits) from the archers attacking them, but they have finally ''built up'' around the enemy to deal their melee damage rating (which is tearing appart the archers and dealing better damage than the swordsmen can handle). The archers were gaining an advantage on the first few rounds considering their range bonus.

The new set of archers introduced by the home team have also been granted a bonus to their defences because they entered the battle by flanking a surprised army with ranged attacks. Since they were both in range though, that disappeared once the intruding army split and began engaging them on the next round (50 archers against 34 swordsmen and 17 archers, taking only damage from the archers as the swordsmen close in for melee).

The next round, the cavalry have proven their strength remarkably! The tallies are now at 14 cavalry vs. 10 swordsmen and only 5 archers... The defending archers have now decided to focus on both of the split armies and have further increased the threat to the intruders first army! Now, from shock and considering their chances (they were only a low level force to begin with), the intruder''s army disipitates and abandons their position (effectively defeated they were scared from the battlefield! ).

As you see, it''s an idea for a different combat system that could add some interesting strategy. Not really anything too groundbreaking, but it does add some fresh gameplay and strategy:

Turn-based ideally, but can be used for RTS as well.

Enjoy :D

- Christopher Dapo ~ Ronixus

This idea is based off of Chock Holocaust concept of a weak hero. Like Chock Holocaust saying that the hero will need allies what if the hero could gain allies through acts of kindness to neutrals and enemies alike. Also what if the hero couldn''t directly attack his/her enemies. Having no weapon, he/she must defeat the bad guys by having them accidentally hit each other or run into thing (bike chase). Wouldn''t that be cool.

I had this really strange idea for a 2D side-scrolling platformer the other day. Your character can do all the normal platform things...jump, attack, grab things and the like. A rough "plot" i came up with to compensate for the gameplay gimmick I''ll explain in a moment is that your character was supposed to be babysitting a cat for his evil relatives while they go on vacation...or something like that. The cat escapes, and your character has to catch it. So, cut to the game, where the disgustingly cute (and euqually naive) cat is standing a few feet in front of your character. Every time you move closer to the cat, however, it runs that much farther away. Technically, you can''t "catch" the cat unless the game lets you. Instead you end up chasing the cat through the game''s levels, and if the cat gets killed then you lose a life/have to start over, whatever. The way the game works, you actually have a somewhat outside control of the cat, and the player has to know and realise this to progress through he game. Some ideas I had to capitalize on such a wierd gimmick is to have to actually use the cat to open doors when two switches have to be simultaniously(sp?) stepped on (simple example), or a level where you run across several "see-saw" type platforms in a row. The cat, not knowing any better, will stand on the end of one if you let it, eventually fluxing the balance of the see-saw and falling to its death. So this part becomes a game of trying to get across the platforms all the while trying to counteract the weight of the cat where ever and whenever neccessary. Add some enemies to that same scenerio and you''ve got something pretty crazy. You could come up with all sorts of scenarios to maximize the core idea.