View Full Version : Casual Game Ideas
Fengol
01-10-2007, 11:12 AM
Continuing the topic from the Group Discussion at rage, what casual game ideas do you have?
The only real criteria is "The player should be able to finish the game in 5 min" (Thank you Nandrew)
Personally, I keep worrying that my game ideas are too simple and pointless to play...
A couple people may remember on of my really old game attempts called Nova War. I was working on it for one of the early comps but never finished it because I don't understand how to build an AI for it. Dislekcia tried to help me but I don't really understand the theory well enough. Everything else in the game works though, so I'm thinking of trying to put the time in to complete it.
It's an RTS, but very scaled out. I was thinking of how to do a game using no graphics (no sprites, just draw calls), and came up with the idea of doing an RTS where the scale is so big that entire fleets of ships are a single particle on the display. So the idea kinda worked itself up from there.
I made a random board generator that makes a bunch of stars (basically just circles now). You click to place your starting system, and you basically have a population that increases with time based on its current size. As the population increases, particles of the player's color spawn around the star to show how populated it is. It also shows the population count when highlighted as well as the star system's state.
You left click to select a star and right click another one to act on it. There are roughly four states for a populated system. Idle, colonize, attack, move. If the target star system is empty, it will get colonized and become yours. The excess population the selected system would generate gets sent to the new one instead, and particles of your color fly that way. If it's populated and yours, it will reinforce (essentially the same thing, population transfer). If it's populated by enemies, you will attack it and the excess population from your source will get subtracted from the enemy's population. If you get it to zero the star becomes uninhabited and you can colonize it. The last case is if you select an empty star and right click on a populated one. This will move the population there (all of it, not just the excess production). This is important for the part I'll explain next.
There are 3 star types, by color. Yellow, blue, and white. each has a limited lifespan which is randomly generated within a range at the game start. Yellow stars turn red over time and eventually become red giants, which aren't inhabitable. Blue stars become unstable and explode in supernovas, wiping out nearby stars. And finally white stars will flicker and eventually collapse into black holes, which form a barrier to ship movement, so they can block colonize/attack streams. So the population move thing is so you can escape a star that's about to become uninhabitable.
As for the 5 minute rule, the board is randomly generated and size and percentages of each star type can be adjusted. Since all stars eventually become uninhabitable there is a continually decreasing amount of territory, but the exponential population growth gives continually increasing resources to attack, move, or defend. So the game will force to a conclusion pretty quick, as I didn't set the star lifecycles very long, but they can be adjusted along with the board size to lengthen or shorten the game. It was designed for 5-15 min play from the ground up, and with zero graphics (not a single sprite, all draw calls), it's essentially all vector so it can be ported to a limited device like a cellphone pretty easily.
Fengol
01-10-2007, 12:31 PM
Do you happen to have any of the original code lying around?
Do you happen to have any of the original code lying around?
I have the entire thing in a .GM6, but I haven't gotten around to sorting out file hosting yet.
Tr00jg
01-10-2007, 03:21 PM
I have a puzzle casual game in my head. Its only a "concept"... Nothing concrete.
It is based on Quantum Mechanics. ie in QM, the act of viewing a particle changes its state (or something like that). Sooo, in this puzzle game, you can't "see" the puzzle, but only whatever effect it has. If you are unsure of the puzzle, you can choose to "view" it, but changes certain things about it.
That is how far I got. >.<
Fengol
02-10-2007, 07:27 AM
I have the entire thing in a .GM6, but I haven't gotten around to sorting out file hosting yet.
You don't need hosting, just put it on the Game.Dev FileCloset like the rest of us :D
http://www.gamedev.za.net/filecloset/
Nandrew
02-10-2007, 12:50 PM
I can't stop thinking about cairnswm's Oasis-esque idea. A "minesweeper RPG" would be totally win, and I have some similar ideas which I think would work fantastically based on that particular premise.
dislekcia
02-10-2007, 01:38 PM
The basics of a casual game are:
-Gameplay that is instantly understandable. You have to be able to just jump in and play.
-Copious reward mechanisms. The game has to be "juicy".
-A focus on progression and very well tailored difficulty curve.
-Shorter play-sessions, although "being able to finish the game" in 5 minutes is a little misleading. You should be able to leave the game after 5 minutes, if you want to.
-D
Nandrew
02-10-2007, 02:07 PM
-Shorter play-sessions, although "being able to finish the game" in 5 minutes is a little misleading. You should be able to leave the game after 5 minutes, if you want to.
Fair enough.
I also agree with the point on jumping in and being able to play immediately.
The other two points are valid, but seem generically applicable to most good games.
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