I am brainstorming some game ideas and am interested in finding out what people would like/expect to do in a game that they play as a dragon (medieval times). Lets get creative!

Burn down the village, steal the gold, kidnap the princess, and get killed by the knight.

escape dragon slayers who lay ambush to you in your cave

maybe aid some friends against another army

fly through large underground caverns where goblins shoot arrows at you

i guess it's hard to come up with stuff cause dragons are so powerful and everything is so small in comparison to them.

what about fighting other, larger dragons

maybe you start the game as a baby dragon (the size of sheep maybe) and grow until you are a huge dragon?

I like my dragons to be ancient, brooding creatures of legend, that spend most of their time in a sweet lair, sleeping on a hoard of treasure, and emerge once every few decades to kick butt, take names, steal additional treasure and generally rock out.

If I was going to design a dragon game, I'd base it very much on what the world is doing around the dragon. Dragons don't form alliances, get married, or go on quests. They aren't looking to build faction standing or obtain honor, and they couldn't care less about orphans, kittens or rat infestations.

So here's my advice: Have a player's turn involve pillaging and burning and destroying and carrying off young girls, but have each turn end with a long period of hibernation, during which the kingdoms and families of the world advance according to the conditions at the end of the dragon's turn. If you killed the king, slaughtered the army and stole all the lewt, then in twenty years when the Dragon Moon rises and you awaken from your slumber to terrorize the countryside again, that kingdom is still broken down, poor and without good leadership, plus you've got a bajillion twenty-something orphans that have been levelling up their dragon-slaying skills for two decades and crave your death.

The quality of your rest translates directly into your character growth, so you want to use the time you have in the world at large effectively. Get character points for amassing loot, devouring virgins, pwning wannabe dragonslayers or devouring livestock, and then spend them on upgrades before you hit the gold for a long nap. When you wake up, your skin has molted, so you might be a new color or have sweeter horns, and you're ready to head out and look for trouble.

Maybe you can find a nice war to get involved in, turn the tide of a battle and get a warlord to emblazon your image on his banner, and then as long as that kingdom flourishes they'll pay you tribute in the form of sparkly gold and delicious virgins, but there's really no telling what'll happen while you're not around, so maybe they lose a couple battles and assume you've forsaken them, and when you get back to your altar it's not overflowing with treats, and you have to go take money and sheep from somewhere else. Maybe they had a bad decade, and think they don't have to hold up their end of the bargain just because their children are starving or they are down to one healthy young girl. There shouldn't be any constant political entity that you can get tight with and be taken care of, because you're the baddest mother in the world and no puny mortal civilization should outrank you.

So gameplay would be a world-exploring exercise, punctuating by resource harvesting and fighting, and then a trip back to "base" to end the turn and cash in your points. Add in a minigame for selecting and upgrading an awesome lair, maybe a chance that a slayer or thief will get in during your down time and you'll have to fight them in a weakened state. Perhaps you could recruit acolytes to a secret dragon cult that'll protect you during your slumber, reducing the risk that you'll lose beauty sleep to torch a few rogues or paladins yourself.

I just said "Dragon Moon" up there to sound cool, but thinking about it, I think it might be neat to have your powers link to a heavenly body or constellation or whatever, so that your power can wax and wane through your turn. You start out a little groggy, and just fly around keeping out of serious trouble and getting a feel for where the kingdoms are at, in terms of fruitfulness, and as you go you get beefier and beefier, hitting your zenith with army-crunching fury and castle-melting powers, and then you start sinking back down into less-awesomeness, so you know it's probably a good time to head home.

I'm envisioning situations where your first order of business might be to head to friendly kingdoms and collect the cattle they owe you, since a good breakfast will get you fighting fit in a hurry, but that requires you to go someplace where people expect you, and in a weakened state, so an ambush is possible. Maybe you've allllmost eaten enough mages to scrye the location of a huge load of gems that you've been trying to find for the last hundred years, but the moon is down to a sliver and you're so sleepy that a dozen armored humans might be too much for you, but you know if you quit they'll build up the wards and it'll take another hundred years before you get a chance at that booty.

Lots of fun things to think about here. Dragons are rad.

Does Spyro count as playing as a dragon? I always found that series to be more enjoyable than not. Or are we talking about the more stereotypical extremely large scale dragon here? What's the context?

Thanks for all the great ideas so far guys! As far as the context I am making an iphone game with the main character being a dragon. Planning on having it a typical large dragon...by the way I used to love spyro...good times.

maybe you could make a game where you fly as the dragon 1942 style ( ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1942_(video_game) )

ie a top down view game where the ground scrolls underneath you in a level as you fly left, right, backwards and forwards on the screen and press a button to shoot fire out of your mouth.

people scrolling by on the ground are attacking you and running away from you, your goal is to make a bunch of destruction (ie destruction = points and you want the high score), and maybe at the end of each level is a boss you have to fight, Each boss having it's own attack patterns.

there could be powerups too that changed what type of dragon you were and what kind of attacks you could do (fire, ice, poison etc) or maybe you can change which dragon you are whenever you want, and you have to change for the right circumstance.

you get what i mean? one of those old arcade games but in this one you are a dragon :P

Quote:Original post by Atrix256
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You just spent five paragraphs to say "dragon themed vertical shoot'em up".

Quote:you get what i mean? one of those old arcade games but in this one you are a dragon :P

There is nothing "old" about shmups. More commercial games come out in the genre every year, and it's one of the more innovative genres around because the top devs do not rely on presentation to sell. New mechanics, systems, playstyles are the rule, not the exception.

Quote:"dragon themed vertical shoot'em up".

I did a Dragon themed SUMP for a competition several years ago (we came 4th) called Draconia.

The game's plot was that you (a dragon) had been asleep for 1000 years and wake to find all your gold stolen and so you set out to find who was responsible and get your gold back...

One of the features of the game was that when you took damage, or collected powerups you would increase your rage meter. You could use this rage meter to perform powerful special attacks, and some of these attacks strength would vary depending on the amount of Rage in your rage meter.

You could also gain "experience" to upgrade your abilities (more powerful attacks, better defences, etc) and spend gold to heal and recharge your rage meter in between levels (and as gold was your score, it meant that you could sacrifice some of your score to gain more life - it was my twist on the extra life at certain scores in the old school SHMPS).

We only had time to put in two weapons (with special Rage mode attacks), but we had planed on many more (including a lightning weapon that arced between targets, and a wing flap that knocked enemies and their projectiles away form you).

We had quite a few enemies for the length of the game (3 levels). There were the constant Gargoyles and Demons which were weak enemies that had protection against certain attack types. These were in every level.

Each level had their own special enemy as well as a boss enemy.

The first level had Crossbows that were slow firing but could do a lot of damage (and would wait until you were in front of them before firing). The boss was a castle which had several crossbows stationed on the walls and as well as demons and gargoyles defending it.

The second level had Insects that squirted a spread of acid at you and the boss was a giant Insect that fired a web which paralysed you for a short time, and also spawned baby insects that squirted a single blob of acid at you.

In the last level there were dragon hatchings that that came in two types. One that fired a fire ball at you and another that shot out a spreading sheet of flame at you. The boss was an Ancient Dragon (called Draconia). It could fire a spread of fire balls (which was the equivalent of the player's rage power attack from their fireball weapon - and it could do it constantly) at you, or fire a sheet of flame at you. It also tried to home in on your position so you had to constantly avoid it or it would get close enough to use it's flame sheet and quickly roast you.