The Path

The Path is out.

I've bought it. I haven't played it yet. I haven't even watched the trailer. I haven't read any reviews because I don't want to risk reading any spoilers.

This is the new game by Tale of Tales, the indie game development studio that brought you The Endless Forest and The Graveyard. Neither of which I have really played. But I've been a follower of their blog for years now.

The Path looks poised to be their breakthrough game. It's been getting a surprising amount of critical attention. And it may be the first real example of the kind of game they've been talking about in their Realtime Art Manifesto.

"The Path isn’t much of a game. But whatever it is, it’s one hell of one of those." (Fidgit)

Try it out.

Google Is the Future of Games

It seems to me that the future of game development, in terms of minimizing the barrier to entry so anyone can easily make a game, would look a lot more like Google than like Photoshop. And it wouldn't look at all like Visual Studio. ;)

I can imagine a knowledge network of algorithms and components and behaviors, built up by people searching a space, as in Electric Sheep, and then organized and filtered by people participating in some kind of social network metagame.

If I am putting together an environment sketch and I'm looking for some procedural water ripples for a fountain, I'd be able to search for these procedural components as easily as I would for a web page. I'd be able to navigate through the space of algorithms at a finer level, too, like Biomorphs, to tweak an existing component without ever touching any code. And if I wanted to, I could modify the code directly.

Whatever social rewards I'd gather through my creation would automatically trickle down to those who created the components I used to make it. In this way, there would be an ecosystem of people creating, evolving, filtering, and combining this procedural material from which games are made and recycled back into.

I'm not saying it will happen, but something like that will have to happen before creating games becomes a mainstream activity. It's a tough problem, but I'd love to see it solved. How do you turn software engineering into an art form?

*image from one of my favorite flash animations, Pencilmation*

Instant AI - Just Add People

Even today, in the age of the Wii, video games still have a predominantly male image. To explain this historic lack of games that appeal to girls, many people point to the extremely high complexity of social or emotional systems compared to the movement of objects and projectiles. Making Space Invaders is a lot easier than making an interactive adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.

This may be true, but this complexity gap need not stop us any longer. Why bother simulating any social or emotional nuances when real live humans are so easy to co-opt into willing participants in a social space facilitated by web technology? Don't waste your time writing advanced AI, just use people.

Say you have some item, like a virtual item in a game. If you are making a social game, you might be tempted to try directly specifying its effects on a player's social network. This would be hard to do effectively. But if instead you structure your players' social interaction and communication to meaningfully involve and be affected by this virtual item, these players will construct a much more nuanced meaning for it themselves. There is no need to abstract it away.

Provide opportunities for the players to create significance themselves out of the elements you provide. Come to think of it, this approach can even apply outside of social games, sort of like how Tale of Tales would like to see more games as instruments.

Now I think that abstracted formal simulations of social dynamics have their place, particularly for educational purposes or to illustrate a certain point. But I wonder if either of these goals might still be compatible with the structured socialization approach, using real players. It's an interesting idea. How far can you go in simplifying these interactions and dynamics before people are unable or unwilling to play in your world?

*image from the excessively cute and catchy Less Than Three*

Planet Earth Is Awesome

And I mean that literally. It inspires awe. Have you had the chance to see any episodes of Planet Earth yet? Amazing. I really want to start watching those again.

The Earth is a beautiful place. I never realized how out of touch I was with the rest of life on this planet until this film brought it home to me. The sheer scale of this world, and what it means for all these millions and billions of species of plants and animals to exist. They're not just pictures in a book. Each one of them must do, and be, in a different way, every day.

There is life being lived beyond the human world and even if all humanity faces extinction, I am content that life continues to live, fragile but vigorous.

I should make a game about that. ;)

Game Idea Giveaway - Pique

...continued from The Game Idea Giveaway Thread

Request by Incrue:

• what sort of game idea you're looking for
  A puzzle that dont looks like a tetris variation, something like gimme friction
  

• what your goals are in making this game
  To make cool game ;)
  I mean, it would be a puzzle very very simple to learn but the things that are going make the game more complex came from the movements of the player, not from a level pre designed
  

• what games you've made already
  Only one point n click
  

• your favorite Flash games
  samorost,gimme friction, sylvaniah, heli attack3
  

• your abilities in game design, programming, art, and sound
  This game is not suposed to have sounds, i dont like sounds.
  Also, im not good with phisics engines, so no advanced phisics or falling blocks
  

• your preferences in game design, programming, art, and sound
  Anything but sounds.

The idea: Pique

In short, this idea is a Minesweeper-like puzzle game about the processes of evolutionary search. Your goal in each level is to find the highest peak of an invisible height map, by taking peeks at one spot at a time.

a height map...

At the beginning of each randomly generated level, you are presented with a blank and unknown map, a grid waiting to be filled in. It is like Minesweeper, but instead of randomly placed mines, there is a hidden landscape of peaks and valleys to chart and uncover. Your goal is to locate the highest Peak. You start by clicking a spot on the map to place a Peek, revealing the height of the landscape at that point. Placing several Peeks would allow you to have a rough idea of what the landscape looks like. The challenge is essentially in inferring the shape of the terrain based on limited information, as fast as possible and with as few moves as possible.

This would be a good opportunity for a simple 3D display.

might look a bit like this...

Now this could be the entire game. In fact, I'd encourage you to start by just getting this basic system up and running, and see if it's fun. I don't know. It might be fun, or it might not. I suspect a lot of the fun at this stage would depend on the particular algorithm you use to randomly generate the height map.

There's a bit more to the game though. This is supposed to be about evolutionary search, remember? Here, the player takes the role of evolution in the search for the high peak in a fitness landscape. Each point in the landscape represents a simple genome, and the height represents its fitness. Let's give the player a few extra tools to help them out. The two most basic tools used by any evolutionary algorithm are mutation and crossover. So, let the player use them.

Here's how it would work. You start off with a limited number of Peeks at your disposal. When you place a Peek, in addition to revealing the height on the map, you get some amount of money proportional to the height you just found. You can then spend that money to use your special abilities. One ability would be Mutation. You select the Mutation ability and click on a Peek that's already on the map. Then a handful of new Peeks pop up around it, scattered randomly within a short radius like mushroom spores. Money from these new Peeks would be added to your total, as usual. Some testing would be necessary to ensure that the cost of a mutation is balanced with the likely payoff.

Crossover is the other basic action. You'd select two existing Peeks on the map, and several new Peeks would pop up somewhere in the line between the two. Just like Mutation, it would cost some amount to use, and each of the Peeks created by it would earn you money based on their height.

The controls for this could actually be very minimal. Click an empty space to place a new Peek. Click an existing Peek for a mutation, and drag from one Peek to another for a crossover. Though you'd have to be sure that you give plenty of information by the cursor icon and text. If you mouse over an existing Peek, it should tell you clearly that this is a Mutation, and how much it will cost, and in what radius the new Peeks will be distributed. If you start dragging, it should tell you that you are starting a Crossover, and how much it will cost. You'll need to introduce each new tool through the introductory levels. It might be better to have a toolbar on the side where you can select Peek, Mutation, or Crossover explicitly, with some explanatory text that comes up when you mouse over them. Otherwise the players might not realize what options are available to them.

Once the player finds the highest Peak, the level is won. It would be nice to then reveal the landscape with some sort of nice 3D rendering, perhaps using ray casting.

Let me know what you think. If you're unfamiliar with the idea of evolutionary search, I'd recommend that you read this interesting excerpt from the book Out of Control.

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

Game Idea Giveaway - Bacon Frenzy

...continued from The Game Idea Giveaway Thread

Request by Mini Chris:

• what sort of game idea you're looking for
  A platformer that has a different element then the normal platformer or a creative twist on current platformer elements
  

• what your goals are in making this game
  To create my first great game, as so far all my ideas have been not so good and I end up stop making them before they are even finished.
  

The normal idea: Swan Song

The weird idea: Bacon Frenzy


In short, this idea is physics-based platformer (like Gish) with graphics consisting of photographs of food from restaurant advertisements (kind of like And Yet It Moves except with food). That's right. I'll start with the first part.

First of all, you must play Gish if you haven't already. There's a demo. Play it. If for some reason you cannot download and install the game right now, at least watch this excellent design tour video to get an idea of what it's about.

So, now that you understand why it would be desirable to make a physics-based platformer, like Gish, in Flash, we may turn our attention to how. The blob of tar that stars as your avatar in Gish is a mass-spring system consisting of a large number of particles, too many for our poor, overworked Flash Player to reasonably handle. So, for our character, we will use the smallest mass-spring system possible - that is, three particles connected into a triangle. That, as luck would have it, is precisely the shape of a corn chip (or if you prefer, tortilla chip). Thus, our character is a corn chip. With a face, of course.

Here is how our corn chip moves: rotate left and right with the arrow keys (to roll along the ground) and compress into a very short triangle (and make a cute scrunched-up face) when the space bar is held down. Release the space bar and the corn chip jumps. If you want to get a feel for how this would work, try this suspiciously similar physics demo and hold down the left and right arrow keys at the same time, then release them. To get a feel for how the rolling along the ground movement would work, try this other physics demo. Not quite the same, but enough to show that it works.

Here is how our corn chip fights: (there's gotta be fighting, right?) corners are deadly, edges are vulnerable. Pretty simple. Mario can land on a Goomba anywhere as long as he's going down, but our corn chip has to land on a corner. Perhaps some corners are more powerful than others. Anyway, here you've got the basics for a vaguely Gish-ish platformer, where our triangular hero may jump and tumble around a playground of platforms, massacre entire species of innocent food items, collect salsa or something and rescue his girlfriend. Whatever. You are free to flesh out the story and actual gameplay as your inspiration takes you.

Here is how our corn chip is rendered: three lineTo() commands and a beginBitmapFill() with a photographic corn chip texture. You could even crop a rectangular piece out of this image and just use that for the texture bitmap. Anyway, the point is that everything in this game is made of food (or rather, images of food). And not just any food, but that hyper-real, airbrushed food that seems only to exist in advertisements for big restaurant chains. You want the player to be drowning in saliva after just a few minutes of playing this game. Frolicking among rolling hills of crispy bacon glistening with cholesterol, leaping from atop gloriously shiny apples to land on a golden-crusted loaf of artisan bread, obliterating a hostile crowd of sentient jello cubes... There are so many possibilities.

so many possibilities...

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

Game Idea Giveaway - Swan Song

...continued from The Game Idea Giveaway Thread

Request by Mini Chris:

• what sort of game idea you're looking for
  A platformer that has a different element then the normal platformer or a creative twist on current platformer elements
  

• what your goals are in making this game
  To create my first great game, as so far all my ideas have been not so good and I end up stop making them before they are even finished.
  

• what games you've made already
  A racing game, fighting game, text based RPG, 3x Unfinished platformers, Destructible Landscape engine, a few avoiders.
  

• your favorite Flash games
  I love RPG games and platformers
  

• your abilities in game design, programming, art, and sound
  I have trouble designing games thats why I need your help =), programming i'm getting alright at now (waye sent me sourcecode of his to study :P). Art I am not really sure because I leave it till last and they are usually rushed , and sound I either make my own or buy a license.
  

• your preferences in game design, programming, art, and sound
  programming

The weird idea: Bacon Frenzy

The normal idea: Swan Song

This idea came about when I watched the trailer for The Unfinished Swan and thought, "Hmm, I should try doing that in 2D." In short the idea is a 2D maze game in the form of a platformer beat-em-up (like Rage 3). Here's the twist: like in The Unfinished Swan, the playing field is completely and undifferentiatedly white, glowing like the Matrix with full-spectrum light, infinite possibilities. Where are the walls and ceilings and floors? How do you find the right path? Here's how: the blood of your enemies. A continual stream of baddies comes in through the maze to attack you, and the resulting bloodstains (theirs, of course) outline the topography of the level. You want to coordinate your perhaps physics-based attacks to direct the particle sprays of blood into the most illuminating positions. It would look remarkably similar to this animation.

The goal could be to get to the end of the maze, as quickly as possible. Extra points through skillful combat, collectable powerups, and acquirable upgrades could certainly come into play. If you could come up with a way to procedurally generate the mazes that would be cool too. I imagine you'd want to have a scrolling tilemap with support for angled surfaces like in N, but the idea would still work with just a single-screen map and only square tiles. Likewise, it would not be necessary for the combat to be complex or physics-based, but some way to direct the sprays of blood would be necessary (at the least with a forward, upward, and downward attack). I'd be glad to advise you on the art direction or design of the game. Let me know. :)

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

Game Idea Giveaway - Paint Physics

...continued from The Game Idea Giveaway Thread

Request by kcaz_rel:

• what sort of game idea you're looking for
  I'm not quite sure, something simple but with a twist an idea I had was a sort of physics RPG.
  

• what your goals are in making this game
  Again a new twist that is completely different from what you would expect.
  

The normal idea: Monk Tactics

The weird idea: Paint Physics

This is a game born of hatred. Or at least disdain, for the legions of Crayon Physics clones that have so shamelessly made their success, most notably Magic Pen. So, the player starts up Paint Physics, anticipating perhaps some delightful fluid dynamics and colorful creative fun with paint. They are soon dismayed to see that this apparent Crayon Physics clone does not take fingerpaint as its nostalgia-inducing motif of choice, but that the Paint here is in fact MS Paint, the maligned instrument of art noobs and of course, Satan. The word for today is anti-aesthetic. Clicking the inexpertly scrawled play button, they are greeted with the sight of a familiar blue ball and yellow star, rendered in MS Paint's distinctive style. Oh, how cute - the mouse cursor looks like the pencil tool from MS Paint. A line of text at the top, artfully displayed in an aliased Times New Roman font, suggests to the player that they use their mouse to trace around the dashed outline of a square placed above the blue ball.

Here is where the fun begins. The player dutifully proceeds to trace a line around the shape, and there it is - a messy but passable square hovering in the air above the blue ball. Now, will this shape suddenly solidify and fall to the ground with a graceful crash, nudging the blue ball delicately toward the waiting yellow star? The player releases the mouse button, expectantly. Nothing at first, but then, slowly, this squiggly outline begins to peel away like a wet noodle thrown on a wall, until the whole thing collapses into a limp, tangled heap on top of the ball. Oh dear. The player mouses over to investigate. Oh look, the cursor changes to a drag icon when the mouse is over the blue ball. Can you drag the ball? The player drags the ball around, and shakes off the ropes. Drag to yellow star - level complete!

Now, if this were the whole game, it might be somewhat amusing as a parody but not really worth all the work necessary to develop it. Fortunately, that's not the game. It's just the intro. The true game would be a physics-based mouse avoider combined with a physics construction toy. Given that the basic action is to drag a blue ball all the way to a yellow star in order to beat each level, you've got a lot of options for mouse avoider obstacles and puzzles right there. And given that you'd be using a physics engine like Box2DFlash or similar, there are lots of creative physics-based ways you could take this without having to simply imitate an existing avoider game. But anyway, let's just say that certain shapes, as well as perhaps more actively swarming enemies will result in you losing the level if the blue ball touches them. Let's say that these are all the red shapes. Well, how might the player ease their way through the hazards that lie in wait, using the humble limp noodle pencil tool that is their sole accessory?

Having the ability to create flexible, perhaps stretchy, ropes is more useful than you might think. If you draw a rope with either end inside an existing object. like a floating platform or a box sitting on the ground, the end of the rope will stay attached to it. If you draw a rope from the blue ball to, say, a heavy black box, then all of a sudden you've got a weapon against your reddish attackers - pick up the ball and starting bashing them away with the heavy black box, a la Hammerfall. Basically, you use the stretchy ropes to connect the objects that already exist in the level, rather than drawing your own. I haven't seen this mechanic used anywhere yet. But if you really feel like the player must be able to add shapes of their own, I guess you could also make use of MS Paint's circle and rectangle tools, or even the others if you can figure out how. ;) Either way, I imagine that level design and testing would take up most of the development time of this game, at least if you're using an existing physics engine like you should. The success of Paint Physics will hinge entirely on its level design.

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

Game Idea Giveaway - Monk Tactics

...continued from The Game Idea Giveaway Thread

Request by kcaz_rel:

• what sort of game idea you're looking for
  I'm not quite sure, something simple but with a twist an idea I had was a sort of physics RPG.
  

• what your goals are in making this game
  Again a new twist that is completely different from what you would expect.
  

• what games you've made already
  A tower defense, a few small platformers, I tried a physics game.
  

• your favorite Flash games
  Games with choice. TD's
  

• your abilities in game design, programming, art, and sound
  Only really programming, but I'l prob. get a partner to do art.
  

• your preferences in game design, programming, art, and sound
  Programming, :p

The weird idea: Paint Physics

The normal idea: Monk Tactics

You know tower defense games. They take one aspect of real-time strategy - base building - and extrapolate it out into a full game. Base building is fun, but why don't we try taking another component of real-time strategy gameplay and turn that into a game? Something kind of opposite and complementary to tower defense, maybe... I know - how about the part where you command a squadron of soldiers to invade an enemy base? But there has to be a little more than that - after all, we've see that sort of thing before. How about this - have you ever played Age Empires? In the first level of the Babylonian campaign, Holy Man, you start out commanding a single, vulnerable priest unit on the edge of an enemy village. Priests convert enemy units to your side. So in order to build up your army, you must sneakily convert units from the enemy base, penetrating further into their defenses as your squad grows, and being exposed to stronger and stronger enemy units. Sound fun? That's the basic idea behind Monk Tactics.

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

Game Idea Giveaway - Selexion

...continued from The Game Idea Giveaway Thread

Request by venomblood:

• what sort of game idea you're looking for
  Shooting, action, evolution, strategy
  

• what your goals are in making this game
  A game that brings a new idea to the internet, with unique emotions, themes, and gameplay

The normal idea: Bubblebomb

The weird idea: Selexion

In short, the concept is abstract top-down shooter (like Geometry Wars) exploring the dynamics of evolution by sexual selection. Uh, yeah. If the game Coil offends you, don't read the rest of this. ;) But really, this is meant to be as clean and abstract as possible while retaining the core of the evolutionary dynamics that occur between the two sexes of a species.

There are two types of creatures in the world: males and females. Males look like triangles, like the outline of a slice of pizza that's been cut into eight or twelve slices. The pointy end is forward, as in Asteroids, and the males shoot from the pointy end (hence the shooting-ness of this game). Playing as a male, your creature would rotate to point toward the mouse cursor and accelerate toward it if the mouse button is not pressed. Pressing the mouse button would both put on the brakes to slow down your creature, as well as shoot bullets like a normal shooting. Females look like a pizza or stop sign with a slice taken out of it (so a male and female together would make a single circle or octagon). The opening is forward, which rotates to point toward the mouse cursor and accelerates very slowly toward it if the mouse button is not pressed. Much like in the game flOw, pressing the button accelerates the creature toward the cursor somewhat faster, rather than shooting.

The point of the game is to accumulate as many offspring as possible. Gameplay occurs in timed rounds, for each generation. For the first round, you can choose your creature from a small random set of individuals. All your offspring that survive to the end of the round are added to your total score, and one of them is chosen randomly to be your creature in the next round. This motivates you to choose your mates a bit more carefully, to ensure that you are not stuck with a sickly and weak creature in the next round. And of course, it forces you to experience the game from both the female and male perspectives. During a round, your creature could be colored blue, other creatures in red, and your juvenile offspring in purple, perhaps. There would need to be at least three colors, anyway - maybe you can come up with a better scheme. :p

Creatures can attack each other. Females are larger and stronger than males, though less nimble, so they attack by ramming (avoiding the opening, which is not armored). Females cannot shoot. Males can ram too, but they are smaller and usually just shoot to attack. As you may have suspected however, bullets serve a dual purpose. If the bullet is shot into the opening (the missing slice) of a female, there is a chance that the female will be impregnated. If this occurs, a baby creature is formed from the genetic material of its two parents, plus a mutation or two. As in the game Cultivation, the new creature gestates for some amount of time (more than a few seconds, less than a minute) inside its mother before it is born and takes its place in the world as a nonreproductive juvenile creature. A pregnant female is slower and more vulnerable than normal.

There is also food in the world, in the form of small squares that spin across the screen like in Evolites. Creatures can eat food by touching it, which they must do every so often to keep their energy meters high. These energy meters drain very slowly over time (faster during pregnancy) and also serve as a creature's heath bar when shot or rammed. When it reaches zero, the creature dies. All these physical properties of the creatures, like energy meter size, draining speed, armor strength, body size, acceleration rate, maximum speed, fire rate, bullet speed, bullet size, fertility, gestation time, would be variables in the genome of each creature.

So we have here a minimal but quite expressive system in which many interesting evolutionary dynamics may emerge. The problem is that in order to take advantage of it, the creatures must have some quite sophisticated behavioral AI that also can be encoded within their genome, or you must design a multiplayer game in which human brains take the place of evolution in exploring the strategic space. I have some ideas toward a solution but nothing completely defined. If you are sufficiently interested I would be glad to elaborate on how this system could be turned into an actual game. :)

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

Game Idea Giveaway - Bubblebomb

...continued from The Game Idea Giveaway Thread

Request by venomblood:

• what sort of game idea you're looking for
  Shooting, action, evolution, strategy
  

• what your goals are in making this game
  A game that brings a new idea to the internet, with unique emotions, themes, and gameplay
  

• what games you've made already
  TopDownShooters, Sidescrolling shooting games, life simulator, card game, puzzle game, minuscule platform experience
  

• your favorite Flash games
  Games that entertain me from the beginning, and possess a consistent style. The gameplay element of "shooting"
  

• your abilities in game design, programming, art, and sound
  Game design = %60, Programming = %80, Art = %60, Sound = %50, in terms of how well I am with them
  

• your preferences in game design, programming, art, and sound
  Prefer making a game involving coding. I prefer to avoid animation/sound/art as a required part of the main gameplay. I also would like to avoid physics based games for coding purposes.

The weird idea: Selexion

The normal idea: Bubblebomb

In short, the concept is top-down arena shooter plus match-three bubble popper (like Puzzle Bobble). Instead of shooting normal bullets, you shoot colored balls that stick to your opponents and accumulate Katamari-style on their bodies. When a ball hits, if it creates a group of three or more adjacent balls of the same color, those balls explode, dealing damage to the opponent they're attached to. Any balls that get detached are then sucked back toward that opponent so that they reattach, possibly setting off more explosions that do even more damage. The strategy of setting up combos of explosions just from one shot is exactly the gameplay of most match-three casual games, motivated by impressive score multipliers (in this case damage multipliers) for each subsequent explosion in the chain reaction.

I had originally imagined this as a simple multiplayer arena game, where each player is running around with a bunch of colored balls on their back, trying to trigger explosions on the other players while avoiding getting shot themselves. However, I think it could work equally well as a single player game, with waves of different types of enemies, and bosses and such. Enemies could vary in their base body shapes, resistance to certain colors of balls, shooting pattern and bullet type, movement pattern and speed, and of course the basics like health and armor. Bosses might be able to shake off or clear balls from their bodies, in addition being bigger and stronger and having more advanced AI. Hey, if you want, you could even have the enemies evolve in a simple genetic algorithm-ish way, since you're interested in evolution. Let me know if you want ideas on that.

I can imagine lots of possibilities for powerups, special abilities and upgrades. The concept is pretty easily extensible, and would be compatible with most special abilities found in normal shooting games. One simple variation I'd add to the player's arsenal is the ability to lay down balls like mines, instead of just shooting them, which would attach to whatever runs into them and possibly trigger an explosion like a normal bullet ball. There's also the question of whether the ball bullets bounce off walls and objects or whether they'd stick. Maybe certain objects would be sticky, or instead maybe certain weapons would shoot bouncy balls. There's also the question of how ball color is determined. If it's like most match-three games, the color of the next ball would be randomly chosen, displayed prominently perhaps at the end of the player's gun. Often, the color of the second ball is also shown, to help the player plan ahead, and also so that there can be a special button that will swap the current and next ball color. If you'd like to go with this idea, I'd recommend downloading and trying out a bunch of free demos of casual games in the match-three genre. Let me know if you want recommendations.

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

The Game Idea Giveaway Thread

Early in January, I created The Game Idea Giveaway Thread on the MochiAds community forums. Since then, I've been pleasantly surprised at the amount of encouragement and interest that this endeavor has attracted. I thought I'd start publishing the ideas here on my blog as well, to bring them to a wider audience.

Status Summary

So far, 16 developers have requested an idea.

• venomblood: Bubblebomb, Selexion
• kcaz_rel: Monk Tactics, Paint Physics
• Mini Chris: Swan Song, Bacon Frenzy
• Oknavi: Drifter
• Incrue: Pique
• freelanceflashgames: Lava Land, Garden Chomp
• TobiHeidi: Gridslime, Random Lulz
• IvyGames: Randori, Salmon Song
• FullerGames: Collink, Tumblestack
• triqui: City Basher
• kokosan: Metastability, Prejudice
• Geekman: Freetrace, Databomb
• rudy_sudarto: City of Reeds, Spherecraft
• Cam: Scale Up, Can Has Cake
• Danny: Refreshment Defense, Poong

Check back for updates!

Introduction

I recently decided to write a list of all the Flash game ideas I've thought of over the past few years. I was somewhat alarmed to find that I had a frighteningly large number of them - close to one hundred distinct ideas, some good, some bad - and realized that I'd never have time to make them all. So, I went about putting the games into various categories in order to prioritize and figure out which ideas are most important to me and which I don't really care about so much. I ended up with maybe 45 ideas that are special to me, plus a couple from other people I'm collaborating with.

That leaves me with around 50 ideas that I most likely will never make. I've decided that I'd like to start giving them away to game developers in need. If you're a developer who needs an idea, this is the place to post your request. Tell me what you're looking for and I'll see if I have a game concept that fits your need. And if any other developers would like to join in and contribute their own ideas to the pool, that would be great too.

I'm doing this because I'd hate to see all these ideas go to waste. And if I can help some people out by giving these ideas away for free, great. Just to be absolutely clear, I don't want money for this, but I do ask that if you use an idea that I give you, please have a credits page in your game and put "axcho" in it somewhere. Somewhere visible, preferably. ;)

Instructions

Looking for a game idea that you can implement, modify, or just be inspired by? Let me know and I'll do my best to provide you with the concept that's right for you.

If you want me to send you a game idea, please tell me...

• what sort of game idea you're looking for
• what your goals are in making this game
• what games you've made already
• your favorite Flash games
• your abilities in game design, programming, art, and sound
• your preferences in game design, programming, art, and sound

The more specific you are in describing what you want, the easier it will be for me to help you. In particular, it would be very helpful if you could let me know how comfortable you are developing with multiplayer, physics-based, music-based, and 3D gameplay.

Update:
The Game Idea Giveaway Thread is currently closed to new requests! I'll consider opening it up again once I've finished filling all the existing requests.

Global Game Jam Notes

The Global Game Jam begins today! Game developers are convening in major cities around the world to spend the next 48 hours collectively cranking out some intriguing new games. That's the idea, at least. Sadly, I won't have the time to participate in this exciting event, let alone journey to some far-off city for this purpose.

However, there is one consolation for us who must watch from the sidelines. That is, the most excellent keynote presentation video by Kyle Gabler of World of Goo and Experimental Gameplay Project fame, with seven tips on How to Make a Game in 48 Hours. It was awesome. You must watch it.

I wrote up some notes on it. I did it more to help myself remember and process the information than for anything else, but I thought I'd post them here as well. Maybe glance over them before and after watching the video. Or better yet, write up your own. :)

My notes on
Kyle Gabler's 7 easy tricks on
How to Make a Game in 48 Hours

7. "Adjust Expectations"

• Don't compete with big-budget games.
  
• Create a new category and excel in it.
• Introduce one new idea quickly and clearly.
  

6. "Create a Low Barrier of Entry"

• Make it fun in the first fifteen seconds.
  
• Title screen, one sentence instructions, then play.
• Or combine two of those. Or have all three at once.
  

5. "Feel Something"

• Find a song that inspires an emotion in you.
• Choose graphics, sound, and design to reflect it.
• Use the mechanics to present a deeper theme.
  

4. "Make the TOY First"

• Find out whether your idea is actually fun.
• First test the mechanics with placeholder art.
• If it's fun, then add graphics and sound.
  

3. "shhh..."

• Make use of sound as much as graphics.
  
• It can be just as effective, with less effort.
  

2. "harmony"

• Don't create a lot of graphics and sound.
• Use few elements that work well together.
  

1. "Never Fall in Love"

• Embrace the possibility of failure.
  
• Feel free to mangle and transform your original idea.

Kyle Gabler's 2nd Theorem of DESTRUCTION

"as love and effort INCREASE,
the probability of SELF DESTRUCTION approaches 1"

There you have it. I've tried to rephrase his advice into direct, concrete actions that you can easily begin to put into practice. I'm definitely eager to see how I might apply these to my own projects. :) I'd say I'm already pretty good with tips 2 and 5, but I'm still struggling with that number 1... :p

How about you?

Story in Games

Henry Jenkins is one of my favorite authors writing about games, along with a few others such as Ian Bogost and Daniel Cook. But you're not as likely to find his writing on the web. Well, maybe you are, but that's not how I came across it. :p

One piece of his, which you may not have encountered since it was published as an academic paper rather than a blog post or online article, is called Game Design as Narrative Architecture. It examines four ways that story can be expressed through gameplay, and I found it very inspiring when I read it. I thought I'd share my notes here. :)

Spatial Stories and Environmental Storytelling

Evocative Spaces
ex: American McGee's Alice

• play on existing mental mappings
• fill in broadly the spaces and moods to evoke earlier mental images formed by previous storytelling experiences
• story information spread across books, film, television, comics, games, etc.

Enacting Stories
ex: I Fell in Love With the Majesty of Colors

• let players perform or witness narrative events
• broadly defined goals and conflicts
• obstacles and affordances facilitate player's movement to resolution
• enact specific, localized incidents or micronarratives - shape emotion
• compelling framework vs. local freedom

Embedded Narratives
ex: Myst

• linear backstory separate from nonlinear experience of player
• find bits of evidence to reconstruct understanding of the backstory, and test these mental maps against game world
• distributing information across the game space, redundantly
• can mix enacted and embedded narratives
• melodrama based on the external project of internal states - spaces of mood, feeling, not just factual information

Emergent Narratives
ex: The Sims

• stories emerge from player's experience with the system
• the system is simplified, designed to maximize narrative possibilities
• characters with desires, needs that can come into conflict, with emotional responses to events, and consequences to their choices
• designing spaces to have poetic and symbolic potential

In Summary

evoked - new perspective on existing story

enacted - story about movement through space

embedded - discover and reconstruct story from clues

emergent - create new stories from experience

I think that games have barely scratched the surface in storytelling. If someone tells you that games can't tell stories, or that there's only one way for games to tell a story, well, I'd say they're not looking very hard. There is quite a bit of interesting experimentation going on if you know where to look. The Path and (I Fell in Love With) The Majesty of Colors are just two recent examples. Distributed narratives make up another intriguing offshoot. It's all very fascinating to me.

Another paper by Jenkins, very thought-provoking, is "Complete Freedom of Movement": Video Games as Gendered Play Spaces. It's fairly long, but well worth the read. Take a look! :)

The Dejeweled Development Blog

So... Dejeweled.

This is a project I've been involved in for a while now. It started way back in June of 2007 when I was still looking for game ideas featuring ragdoll physics. One forumgoer, then known as Exilement, presented to me the idea which would soon go by the name of Dejeweled. The next day, I created a forum thread to begin collecting more feedback and suggestions on this new concept. The response was unprecedented, unanimously positive, and the thread began filling up with praise, ideas, and impatient demands for a release date.

Nearly two years and over 800 posts later, the game is still without a release date. I had thought I could seriously get started at the beginning of 2008, but nothing much came of it. Now, 2009 has begun, Exilement is now known as Prospect, and I'm thinking there's a chance that I could actually make some progress on the project this year. Like, starting now.

So I've set up a blog, where I can post updates, concept art and prototypes for the satisfaction of the project's hopeful fans, disillusioned as they may be at the moment. I present to you the Dejeweled Development Blog. I've been working on some prototypes lately, so with any luck there will be some new stuff there pretty soon.

Oh, I haven't actually explained the idea yet. Here:

Dejeweled is a rather excessively violent game wherein the player is compelled to construct mechanical contraptions which contrive to cruelly kill, destroy, and slaughter innocent jewel-filled ragdolls in clever and amusing ways.

More questions? Read this. Let me know what you think! :)

An Inaugural Experiment

You know those annoying forum signatures, those chain letter-ish ones that say something like, "98% of all teenagers have smoked pot. If you are one of the 2% who haven't, copy and paste this into your signature." Or the old classic, "I believe in Jesus Christ my Savior. If you do too, paste this into your signature."

Well, how about this?

I believe in Barack Obama as my personal savior. If you do too and aren't afraid to admit it, copy and paste this into your signature.

Time for me to update my deviantART sig and spread the word! ;) Feel free to join in.

I'm very curious to discover who will be offended by this and how much. Let's see what happens. :D

Making Murder Less Satisfying

I haven't ever seen this done before. What if there were a game, a violent game where you shoot your enemies to incapacitate or kill them, but instead of collapsing or exploding when shot, these enemies fall to the ground screaming and writhing in pain, like worms in a frying pan?

• I would never put a worm in a frying pan. In fact, I'm starting to feel horribly sick just thinking about it... *shudder*

In most games, the visceral feedback of a kill is satisfying because there is a finality to it that tells the player they've accomplished something, that there is now one less danger to worry about. But what if the incapacitated enemy did not simply transmute into a passive, inert background prop but instead continued to thrash violently, screaming and crying out in agony? Despite now being completely worthless in gameplay terms, this enemy would remain, loudly demanding the player's attention. I imagine such a reaction would render the act of killing much less satisfying.

As writhing, wailing enemies accumulate on the screen, tension would increase almost unbearably, like the music in the game Lucid State Dreaming. I wonder how easily a player could become desensitized to such disturbing consequences. Is it inevitable? Could you design a game to prevent such desensitization?

*image from the sublimely horrifying Madness Combat 4: Apotheosis*

Adventures in Lucid Dreaming

Lucid dreaming is a pretty fascinating phenomenon. You may have heard of it. A lucid dream is one where you realize that you are dreaming and thus can consciously control what happens to you. They are often more vivid than normal dreams, depending on how "lucid" or self-aware you can be throughout the experience.

What I find particularly interesting is the way that you influence a dream. To make something happen or come into being in the dream world, you expect it to be so, until it is. This says a lot about how perception operates. If you're interested in learning more, I'd recommend starting with the book On Intelligence, by Jeff Hawkins. It presents what is probably the most viable hypothesis that I've yet come across for how the brain actually learns and makes predictions. Read it and reflect upon this connection between expectation and perception in lucid dreaming. Perhaps you will notice some similarities in your waking life.

Training yourself to have lucid dreams is not easy. I have had only one lucid experience that I can confirm with any certainty, and it happened without any planning on my part. Apparently, it was triggered by what they call the wake-back-to-bed technique. Fortunately, I keep a notebook by my bed for moments like these, and upon waking, I was able to write down what I observed before the memory of the dream vanished completely. You may find it an interesting study. :)

2008/10/24
I had a lucid dream. Or at least, I dreamed that I was having a lucid dream. The experience was considerably less lucid than my true waking state, but it was more lucid than my usual dreaming state. I had this dream after going back to bed after my alarm went off, so I must have had that idea of lucid dream close to mind when I went to sleep.

When the lucid segment began, I was imagining that this was a French king's house, whose cooks were one by one presenting dishes and desserts they had made and were not going to let me eat, me being no guest of the king. But then one of the cooks seemed to recognize me as the king because he let me in and started telling me about all the various dishes he could prepare for me. During this time I was wondering whether I'd be able to taste anything while dreaming, and then managed to conjure up the taste of salami. This was my first lucid act.

Shortly after this, I found myself in my own familiar kitchen, frantically looking at all the digital clocks to test for dream-ness, increasingly ignoring the cook talking to me. Sure enough, the clocks would show drastically different times upon subsequent inspection, with the exception of the microwave time whose dial was being turned and whose numbers were increasing regularly while this motion occurred.

Then I decided to look out the windows and conjure up a lush green setting. It took a moment or two for the view to solidify, but when it did the weather outside was raining hard and the trees were leafy and wet and lush. Sitting on the fence were several turkeys, calling. They may have been vultures. I'm not sure where they came from - I certainly didn't ask for turkeys!

While in the kitchen I found that I had to keep moving my attention, or a sort of blankness of mind would loom where I rested my gaze, threatening to toss me into a new dream devoid of any lucidity. The experience of lucidity in the dream was thus like the experience of being deep in the computer screen, tired, on the web for several hours - I had some capacity for conscious decision-making, but much less than normal.

I don't remember dreaming of falling asleep afterward, but I do remember dreaming that I had woken up. Not that I bothered to go through the experience of finding myself in bed and getting out of it - I just seemed to have hit a switch that told me I was no longer lucid dreaming, and therefore concluded that I must be awake, which I was not.

Eventually, I really did wake up and immediately wrote all this down before I forgot what happened. And so, here we are.

Interestingly, I often find that while dreaming I implicitly understand that I am in a dream, though I only rarely become explicitly conscious of the fact. So if someone in the dream were to say to me, "Are you dreaming?" I would be likely to reply with, "Yes, of course," and then continue on as if nothing unusual had been revealed. About a year earlier I had one dream that illustrates this fairly well. I thought it was rather poetic. :p

2007/09/10
At one point in my dream, I was outside on a sort of grassy ridge or hill overlooking a large, dark brown building that had been the focus of the dream events previous. I climbed up onto the top of a chain link fence there, and looked up at the bright, but cloudy and overcast sky. I had an implicit understanding that I was dreaming, but was not particularly conscious of it.

I decided, perhaps to get away from the place that I was in, that I would like to fall towards the sky if I let go, rather than back toward the earth. I knew that since I was dreaming, it would happen that way if I believed it would. So I imagined myself falling up towards the sky and convinced myself that I would do so.

Then I let go, and fell through the sky. It didn't hurt as much as I expected. I'm not sure, but I believe that I ended up in a new dream place then.

Dreams are pretty awesome. They make for a good discussion topic if you want to have a meaningful conversation with someone you don't know very well. Strangely enough, I've found that people are often eager to share their dreams and hear about other people's dream experiences even when they might be bored or uncomfortable discussing other topics.

Games and Perceptual Apathy

A while ago I had an interesting discussion with Krystian Majewski on his blog post about The Hardships of Location-Based Games. He's been working on a game called Illucinated, which uses real photographs for its graphics so he has to actually venture out into the real world, at night, and sneak past security guards and giant spiders and such to acquire these precious goods. Someday, I hope to be as cool as that.

But in the meantime, I can write about it. One reason games are cool is that they change the way you look at things, as this article suggests. At the very least, they change the way you look at things on the screen, which goes from a confusing mess to a dazzling field of opportunities and dangers. And if the game takes place in the real world, well, that's where things get interesting. As Krystian Majewski commented about his game-like outdoor excursions, "You start seeing places in different ways. Going by some piece of architecture you wonder how it will look in the night and you start appreciating seemingly mundane routes in the cityscape."

That sounds like fun. Wouldn't it be cool if there were games specially designed to enhance your experience of the real world, designed to let the fun from the game itself spill over into your real life? Let's see what we had to say about it, way back in 2008.

axcho said...

• That sounds so much more exciting than anything I'm doing. Thanks for that 10 Gnomes link - really interesting. I never realized people were doing things like this, except maybe IvoryDrive. I like these games using real-world environments and visuals and such - lets you use your perception to a much fuller extent than usual on the computer.
  
  Speaking of perception, I really like that last paragraph, about the activity becoming like a game and restructuring the way you see the world around you. In fact, I'll quote it right here because I like it so much:
  
  "But the experience is amazing at the same time. It brings so much physical experience into the Game Design. It becomes almost like a game itself. Like a strategic version of Parkour. You start seeing places in different ways. Every time you see a path in the bushes your reflexes to investigate kick in. Going by some piece of architecture you wonder how it will look in the night and you start appreciating seemingly mundane routes in the cityscape."
  
  This way that games can force your perception to come alive and appreciate what's there is something I'm really excited about. Once people have a framework of goals and interpretation of affordances and obstacles, their perception starts popping out in ways corresponding to the game structure. I'd even say that all of perception can be thought of as structured and brought into being by games, for a rather loose definition of "games".
  
  One thing that really opened up my perception with respect to appreciating the world around me, particularly plants, was when I started making musical instruments out of bamboo. I'd start noticing bamboo wherever I went, evaluating based on size and quality for harvesting and such, practically salivating at the sight of the better specimens. It turned me on to the aesthetic qualities of bamboo.
  
  Then as I learned about L-systems I started noticing the aesthetic qualities of other plants. And once I started browsing deviantART and doing photography I became even more aware. Going through the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain opened it way up, and so the process has continued, until I can see just about everything around me as beautiful, if I take the time to do so.
  
  I want to use games to help people see the beauty around them (among other things). A few games to start punching some holes in one's perceptual apathy, and hopefully the process will accelerate... The interesting thing is that it often takes exposure to a new environment (like a new game, or a vacation to another place) where your old perceptual habits and blindness does not apply, in order for you to start opening up. At first I would take photos only on vacations, but then I eventually started seeing the beauty of my everyday world. I want to be able to make games that allow people to transfer their transformed perception back to daily life.
  
  In short, I am inspired by your bold exploration and reinterpretation of the real, physical world you exist in. I wish I would let myself spend more time in the real world instead of squeezing my mind into such a small computer screen every day.
  
  I think that's my cue to stop typing. ;) Thanks.
  August 30, 2008 11:28 PM

Krystian Majewski said...

• Wow, thanks for the detailed comment! I've noticed IvoryDrive over on Kongregate. Interesting how he seemed to have similar experiences. These 6 messages could come just as well from me.
  
  I noticed too how getting out - especially on vacation - usually inspires me to do games. I know that I'm not alone too - the first Prototype of Braid was also created on holidays.
  
  As for noticing things. I guess this is some kind of reverse-inattentinal blindness. I noticed it too on several occasions but it never occurred to me that you could use games to intentionally to "teach" people to see things differently. Good thinking! Another good reason for using real environments.
  August 31, 2008 3:37 AM

axcho said...

• Oh, you're welcome. I guess it had been too long since I had written a decent blog post of my own, so I went ahead and relieved myself on yours. :p
  
  IvoryDrive's an interesting guy. I don't think I'm cool or exciting enough to be like you or him, but at least I can admire from the sidelines. ;)
  
  Reverse-inattentional blindness is basically what I'm talking about, yes. I've come to believe quite strongly that being able to put more conscious effort into perception, and to be rewarded by finding beauty, is a very important skill to have.
  
  As another dA artist artbytheo said to me, (and I hope he doesn't mind if I quote him here)
  "...I think what's happening in our world today is that 'they' are trying to convince everyone the world is a horrible place. 'They' want us to keep our eyes closed and not see the world is actually a beautiful place, so we keep watching 'their' stupid tv shows, news broadcasts, and buy endless supplies of clothes, cars, and other useless shit.
  
  The goal of the game would then be to make people realize this."
  
  And as he clarified later,
  "There really isn't a 'them' as an evil body of powerful rulers that is actually controlling the show. It's all of us working all together in a huge body called humanity (and smaller cultural bodies of course)."
  
  Reading books such as Awareness by Anthony De Mello, and Beyond Civilization by Daniel Quinn, is what has really focused my thinking on this subject.
  
  You'd think I'd have enough on my plate trying to make cool new experimental games and games to transform education without also trying to use games to get people to open up their perception and save the world... :p
  
  Anyway, I still owe you an email about the Adopt an Invader concept. I'll start on that right now.
  September 2, 2008 2:56 PM

How about that? The world is a beautiful place... if you can learn to see it. Are you ready? :)

A few games to start punching some holes in one's perceptual apathy, and hopefully the process will accelerate...

Designing for Virtual Item Sales

Interested in making money through selling in-game items directly to players instead of relying on advertising? Flash portals like Nonoba and Kongregate are starting to make it possible to easily integrate microtransactions into your games. But I've never really seen a discussion of the special design issues that come up for a game using virtual item sales. What follows are my notes on the subject from a presentation by a GoPets representative a few years ago.

Role of Items (in multiplayer games)

Why would a player want to buy an item? Here are a few reasons.

• to Enhance Status
  ex: clothing, medals, pets, houses
  
  May also affect the UI, like a game replay recorder that you wear.

• to Provide an In-game Advantage
  ex: enhanced weapons, armor, speed, accuracy, food
  
  Usually provide a mild effect, for the sake of balance.
  Often they are consumable, rather than permanent.
  
  ex: new skills or combos
  

• to Provide Deeper Controls
  ex: extra spell slots, advanced hotkeys
  
  Allow harder-core, more skilled players to have more nuanced control, with a cost of increased difficulty and complexity.
  

• Rare Items to Sell Back
  ex: special premium items, items from raffles or lotteries
  
  Special occasions like holidays are good times to give out limited edition items.
  

Item Duration

Not all items last forever. Keep that money flowing! :p

• Consumed - use once (but may buy large quantities)
  ex: food, potions, grenades
  

• Charge - buy refills in order to use
  ex: bullets for a gun, batteries for a calculator, armor that must be repaired
  

• Rent - use for a limited time period or duration
  ex: demo skis, effects of a magic spell
  

• Permanent - unlimited use
  ex: clothes, decorations, tools
  

There may be a leveling tree to unlock access to new items.

Balancing Methods

Don't let the items you sell upset the balance of the game.

• Defensive items (temporary shields) should be bought, while offensive items (missiles) should be found in game.
  
  This is psychologically more acceptable than the reverse.
  

• Rental items, limited edition items, and item buyback by the game can be used to minimize the effect of poorly balanced items introduced into the game world.
  
  Item buyback is when players can directly exchange their items for game currency, and the items are then taken out of circulation completely. If an unbalancingly powerful item is mistakenly introduced, it is often better to offer players appealing amounts of game currency in exchange, rather than doing nothing or forcibly removing the items.

Multiple Currencies

In order to prevent gold-farming, players must not be able to simply convert from one currency to another. They should be able to trade with other players however, such that the amount of currency in circulation remains stable. See this article for further explanation.

• for time-rich people
  ex: green shells in GoPets, awarded through normal gameplay (an equivalent of experience points)
  
  This is the simplest, most obvious sort of way for players to earn currency. Basically every game uses it.
  

• for money-rich people
  ex: gold shells in GoPets, directly acquired by putting in real money
  
  This is the way you actually make money. Any game relying on an item-based business model must use it.
  

• for idea-rich people
  ex: pink shells in GoPets, awarded for creating icons for the pictographic communication thing
  
  Currencies can be derived from any sort resource a player might have, whether it's creativity or free time.
  

General Guidelines

In designing, first make a good free basic game and get an audience, then add real-money items carefully.

Most people just nibble media, so the real-money items should be subtle enhancements that harder-core players will want.

Think of item-based games as selling bits of service, bits of UI, a metagame - not just a game design.

Players must be able to trade items with each other. Otherwise, their sense of ownership is not complete.

Players will often sell micro-stories to each other, even if it's not explicitly built into the game.

• In GoPets, players would take different food items and sell combinations of them as a meal, with a blurb of text to explain. They might take lettuce, tomatoes and spinach and call it a garden salad (or whatever). I really like this possibility.

User-made Items

Players set their prices too low when selling to other players! They don't care about money. So set a minimum price.

What do you think? I personally find this design space fascinating. I'm eager to try it out someday. :)