Game Idea Giveaway - Random Lulz

...continued from The Game Idea Giveaway Thread

Request by TobiHeidi:

• what sort of game idea you're looking for
  strategy, action (often a problem in Multiplayer games cause of lag), open to anything
  

• what your goals are in making this game
  Create a Multiplayergame that creates a community, keeps players coming back, forces players to interact (attack, but also help each other).
  I like to have the players to be able to upload s.th. (i.e. graphics) and autmatticaly intergrate them in the game as gfx / or maps
  

The normal idea: Gridslime

The weird idea: Random Lulz


In short, Random Lulz is a collaborative rhythm game based on the innovative Dark Room Sex Game, but with a more kid-friendly theme.

In Dark Room, each player has a button to press, which makes a particular sound. When you play, you are paired with one other player, slowly alternating button presses with each other. Your goal is to accelerate the rhythm of your button presses as quickly as possible to an exciting climax. This works best as a competitive team game, where two teams of two race to finish faster than the other team. The limitation is that you cannot press the button too soon after the other player - there is a minimum amount of time you must wait between presses. If you press too soon, you have to slow down again. This minimum time limit gets smaller as your rhythm accelerates.

With Random Lulz, the gameplay is similar but somewhat more complicated. You press a button to make a sound, a single laugh or chuckle. You are still trying to accelerate your rhythm as quickly as possible to reach full, hysterical laughter. But there are some extra limitations. There is a minimum time limit, but there is also a maximum time limit - you don't want to wait too long or the energy of the laughter will die away. And more interestingly, the time interval between your button press and the other player's last button press must be different than the previous time interval. In other words, the rhythm of the button presses must be random, because no one laughs like a metronome - that would just be awkward.

The requirements of this game are very minimal, assuming you have a basic multiplayer system set up. All you have to do is send a message with a timestamp every time a button is pressed, and lag isn't a big deal - it just makes things a bit more random. Graphics are completely optional, but if you want you could give players customizable avatars, or different arenas in which to laugh, or let them upload their own background images. Sounds can be recorded - just get a bunch of friends together late at night and loosen them up with some sugary or alcoholic beverages, and start having laugh contests. Record a range of sounds for each person - starting with low-energy grunts, chuckles, or giggles, and gradually moving up to knee-slapping guffaws or full tear-streaming, rolling-on-the-floor hysteria. Guffaw is a weird word. Anyway. The Dark Room team did something similar for their sounds.

The idea is pretty loose - there's a lot of ways you can take it. If it appeals to you, I'd encourage you to at least try it out, since it should be very easy to prototype. See if it's fun with simple beeps and no graphics, and then add in the recorded laughs and teams and scoring and all that. I'm looking forward to playing it. ;)

Want an idea? Make a request on The Game Idea Giveaway Thread!