Factorio-like game where you focus on sustainability rather than being the bad guy in an alien landscape. Need wood? Better replant or there won’t be anything for higher levels of the game. Need metal? You can get it, but only in a few places and then you need to think about recycling what you have.
You should try Timberborn. It’s not exactly what you’re saying but one of the big parts is managing renewable resources like trees. If you cut them all down and don’t have someone replanting, you’re screwed.
I really love, and really miss, healing in wow raids circa WOTLK through Cata, specifically using healnot and custom keybinds to keep people alive. I don’t have time or budget for an MMO in my late 30s, nor do I see that easing up anytime soon.
I think a game where you had to do raid mechanics/puzzles while keeping NPCs alive through healing could be really fun, even without a loot grind. Or a game that dropped you into a multiplayer raid encounter without the crap around it. Either could be great.
This is awesome, thanks!!!
A magical school sim/manager. Imagine how cool it would be to build your own Hogwarts with moving staircases and hidden rooms and passageway, and watch the world of magic come alive as students go about their daily school life.
That, or an actually good AAA Barbie game.
Social Anxiety Survival Horror. You’re a guy at a friend’s party trying to avoid conversations while putting in an appearance with your friend so they know you were here. You can deflect conversations with small talk you pick up by eavesdropping, but it won’t work on drunk people, so you also need to run and hide. Your ex-partner eventually shows up and is hunting you down to have a frank conversation about your relationship, which is instant game over.
You’ve just proposed the next indie game of the year
Good. Someone, please make this. And make it first person for the full effect.
Other ideas for people to pinch:
- You can only use each snippet of small talk once before collecting it again, because you’re afraid of repeating yourself.
- The game is filled with collectibles, but they’re all located on the floor, so you’re more likely to find them if you’re in character and looking at the floor the entire time.
- To pause the game, you have to look at your phone while standing in a quiet area.
- Your ex-partner has a lengthy list of grievances you can hear when they’re hunting you. This includes “you always run away from me at parties”.
NOTE: Someone probably has developed it, but I’m too poor to buy a decent computer.
I’ve been wanting the shittiest, most grindy military logistics game possible for a bit now. Like, “oh you didn’t upgrade your Sock factory? Fuck you now your platoon has trench foot” type Grindy.
I want to feel pain
Foxhole? I’ve heard that that game has hella logistics
Thanks! I’ll look into it
the grind got so shitty the logistics players actually went on strike
Rimworld is probably the closest thing to that right now. Watch your village starve as their clothes wear out and they get frostbite.
Or dwarf fortress if you want to get medieval
Funny thing, I’m actually playing rimworld right now!
A driving (either racing or GTA-style) game that generates the roads from real-world geospatial data/street view imagery similar to how Microsoft Flight Simulator does.
An urbanism focussed city builder where you start with an existing city in the current car-centric style, possibly including a couple of dozen kilometers around the city so rural problems are included as well and have to transform it, with realistic building project times, into one that is more walkable, has safe bike paths, good public transport,…
In particular I would also like it to take verticality in to account both for transport (people and bikes and trains have a harder time going up and down than cars, boats need locks,…) and for buildings (stores at the bottom of a building, residential above,…) and that accounts for the huge amounts of space car-centric cities waste on parking as well as the ongoing infrastructure costs for maintenance and replacements of all that infrastructure in sprawling cities.
Basically “Not Just Bikes” the game.
Sounds a bit like cities skylines 1 on a suboptimal workshop savegame with the addition of more vehicle physics…
One can hope for cities skylines 2 to fill this gap in a few years time
Have they stopped making cars disappear when people arrive at their destination?
Cities Skylines 1 is actually sort of the anti-thesis of what I had in mind because it does all of the things I listed wrong.
I have this concept for a VR team battle game where you have to learn to actually cast spells through complex real time action. Like a mix of moving your hands in patterns and adding elements via hot bar in sequence and saying words via headphone. 1 on 1 or team vs team strategy game where complexity makes stronger team spells and counters. You could have casters who specialize in defense, offense, healers, traps and counters and how you build your team makes for strengths and weaknesses.
Reminds me of Arx Fatalis. I think it’s the only game I’ve seen where casting spells requires you to trace a rune in the air instead of pressing the cast button.
The old Lionhead game, Black and White, had a gesture system which was similar. Didn’t work very well, but the thought was there.
I can’t think of a game that deserves a modern VR remake more than Black and White. I wonder who owns the rights these days?
I’ve been saying this for years, game is like the perfect concept for VR. I think Microsoft would own the IP yeah they bought Lionhead?
A single-player fantasy game with no skill points/upgrades beyond equipment. I want the entirety of the progression to be the skills of the player. You end up losing fights to more than one goblin at a time, but then you learn to start dealing with groups. A long enough time pasts and you’re slaughtering hordes of enemy like clockwork. But if someone took control of your character they’d still lose to a goblin or two.
I want something where split second reaction times and skill determine how a fight goes. Both me and the enemy should be able to kill each other in 2-3 seconds given the right circumstances. I want extremely punishing mechanics for both enemies and the player. Something like a first-person Hotline Miami but with really good swordplay.
conversely, Battlefield: Lego
I feel like Battlebits gets pretty close to this?
Aesthetically, but imagine you’re waiting for a tank to spawn in, and a brick by brick building animation plays before it’s ready. And everything blows up to a spectacle of bricks flying
I understand your vision now
SimEarth remake with a proper geologic and climate model.
All the newer games in that mode feel like they’re all about growing the predefined lifeforms.
SimEarth was more about making the planet to support the lifeforms.
cries in Spore
That game was such a disappointment.
I quite like it, what do you dislike?
You are one species. I want to play god.
Spent all their time on a cool creature customizer, but the actual gameplay is pretty shallow.
In that vein, a remake of Sim Life using neural networks and all the latest “learning” and “evolving” tech.
Mirror’s Edge-style gameplay (specifically first person) for experiencing Spider-man’s first few weeks of having powers, including the time prior to having built the web-shooters. I have wanted this ever since the teaser trailer for the first Andrew Garfield movie.
I probably wouldn’t want this game to actually exist, but it’s been stuck in my head for years so here goes. I described this one a while ago. A friend of mine was on mushrooms once and described a first person WW1 game where you’re an Austro-Hungarian courier running across battlefields. There would be parkour, time management, stealth, stuff like that. Sneaking through trenches and whatever. At first the missions go ok, easy enough. But then you’re given more complex missions that waste your time, or are foolishly planned.
Your character begins mumbling under their breath about how the generals are doing everything wrong, the war is lost. Your character becomes more deranged as the missions become more fruitless. Eventually your guy will start screaming deranged conspiracies and wild racist shit. There would be a mechanic where you start to need amphetamines to function.
Then in the last mission you catch sight of your reflection in a puddle and you’ve been playing as Hitler this whole time.
Spec Ops: The Line prequel lol
