Game & Mechanic Ideas

I had this urge to share some game ideas and mechanics that I would like to see made in Quest so here they are. I like sandbox and emergent games so that's what most, if not all, of my ideas are going to center around. If anyone else has ideas, feel free to share them!

Guildmaster (Game)
A game where the player manages a guild. The player has to recruit and train guild members in order to send them to complete contracts. The guild member's stats will determine whether or not they complete the contract. There should be serious consequences for failure that affect the guildmember and the guild. Giving the guild members personalities to make the player care about them is important.

Let's say the player is running a thieves guild. A guild member is sent to pickpocket someone that has an important artifact but they were caught. The guild member didn't have enough gold on them to pay the fine to the guards, so they were placed in jail. Now the player is faced with the choice of paying their bond so that they can return to the guild to continue working or let them sit in jail until their court date.

If the guild is already suffering financially, paying the bond could affect things later down the line. Leaving them in jail may not be the best answer either as they may not even make it to their court date. They could be taken out by a rival thieves guild.

I think that this game has great emergent storytelling potential if done right.

Dragon Hatchery (Game)
Dragons are a common pet just like cats and dogs. The player has decided to open a dragon hatchery where they raise, train, breed, and sell dragons. The four base dragons the player can start with are the Air, Earth, Fire, and Water dragons. In order to get new dragon types the player has to breed specific dragon types together. For example, an Air and Earth dragon may make a Dust dragon.

A game like this would benefit from a dynamic economy and some type of genetic system.

Body Part Based Health (Mechanic)
Instead of representing the player's health with a singular health bar, add a health bar to each of the player's body parts. You can make it where some body parts cause an instant game over when their health hits zero, take the player's head for example. Or you can make it where some body parts affect movement speed like if the player's leg takes too much damage. Or you can make it where the player completely loses the body part when its health reaches 0 and allow them to replace it with a prosthetic. There's really a lot you can do with a system like this.


Disclaimer: These are games I like, I know coders and mrangel can give me the codes but generally I dun have much time or learning capability to actually make them


Planet exploration game
Similar to No Man's sky (I never played this game though, lol)

  1. Spaceship
  2. Able to enter different planets
  3. Different planets have different lifeforms and architectures

Advanced

  1. Randomly generated planets for spaceship to find
  2. Able to upgrade spaceship and build survival buildings at planets like oxygen room or gold mining rig
  3. Full economy system with automated traders, pirates or kings (Giving quests)

Cube survival game
Similar to Cube movies (18+, bloody)

  1. Death traps with hints in previous rooms
  2. Giant maze like infinite maze but with a twist, you can now go up and down
  3. Changing maze, every few minutes, the maze layout changes leading to different rooms instead

Advanced

  1. Able to control multiple people, so you can strategize sacrificing one person to see if next room is safe or not
  2. People with personalities, some people might be resistant to be used as sacrifice, others get angry, others have secret agenda
  3. Actually an ending/exit, example a: Reincarnation, example b: Prison, example c: Background room operators finding genius

Simcity building and politics game
Similar to simcity 2000 and removed environmental games

  1. The building of commercial, industry and residential areas in text-based but make it appealing to play in a design city layout
  2. Energy and money income focused, you need to build buildings that increases income but buildings uses power supply from the energy generators like coal plant or nuclear power plant which can be very expensive
  3. Environmental and politics varied strategy, you need to balance your government policies, make sure your country is green while the tax is not too heavy which of course are both opposite sides of the spectrum

Advanced

  1. Randomly generated landscape challenges like mountains, desert, island with little land size, these forces you to change your strategy like building a ski slope for mountain, building a train on desert, building a shipyard on island
  2. Pollution, policies and immigration as more controlling panels for the governer
  3. Rare but periodical disasters or golden age or population boom or technology transcendence

Butterfly effect game
Similar to until dawn game and a sound of thunder film

  1. Many characters or interactable stuffs
  2. Places to explore which changes according to butterfly effect or the stage of the game you are in now
  3. Letting the player unwind his choices and see the alternate pathways or endings

Advanced

  1. Scary monsters like shapeshifters that perhaps chases you down to give the game more momentum, but peaceful games are cool too, maybe like a school romance thing
  2. Some great inspirational movies are tarot, abigail, no one will save you, the watchers
  3. Give the player some psychic abilities to even the match between the player and monsters

Superstar dancing game!
Idea came from those real life arcades

  1. Basically player have to click up, down, left, right, diagonal, etc to dance with the music
  2. There will be a huge selection of different music or game modes
  3. There is a timer and button pressed recorder that determines whether the player had clicked according to the tune

Advanced

  1. When player click correct buttons for 5-10 times in a row, display how the player dance in text form (This will be a lot of work, so streamline it to simple dancing movements.)
  2. Add in some real music
  3. Give the player money according to their highscore which they can use it to buy fashion clothes and just go shopping in the imaginary world

Infinite quest world game

  1. An open world
  2. There are randomized infinite quests (To simplify it, you can make it kill 5 goblins/orcs/dwarfs)
  3. Card enchantments system like from ragnarok online, 1% chance to loot card from enemies can be boring, you need to make slaying monsters fun, I have no idea how as text-based monster slaying is hard to compete with 2D/3D monster slaying

Advanced

  1. Create strategical maps and intelligent enemies, for example castle, luring the enemies outside the castle makes them stop auto mana regeneration, another example prison labyrinth, luring the enemies into the prison bars makes the melee attackers miss their attacks on you more often
  2. Create dungeons and dragons quest, rather than fighting you have to test your relevant attribute strength, agility, intelligence or charisma to win the obstacle or complete the quest
  3. Some fun pictures of monsters, battlefield, cities, mangas (To explain quest artistically), can take some inspirations from ragnarok online, dragon saga game, 2.5d games

Fantasy war game
Similar to Dota

  1. Train fantasy creatures like griffins/elves, they will automatically travel to enemy's base and attack them
  2. Build tower defense or utility buildings to protect your base or upgrade your heroes
  3. Equip your hero with artifacts that gives auto skills or powerful stats

Advanced

  1. The enemies are more intelligent, beside training creatures, they can now build tower defense and send in heroes to fight against you as well
  2. Create scenarios and campaigns, give a short story before each game to shape the game and define the enemy's stats, strategy and objectives
  3. Collect advanced fantasy creatures upon completing campaigns like phoenix and dragons, they dun just have powerful stats but also have strategic response like phoenix evades 50% of enemy melee attacks, dragons deal aoe damage to all visible enemy units, and to be fair, these fantasy creatures have a longer spawn time compared to simple creatures like skeleton archer spawner

Fantasy creature card game
Similar to magic the gathering game

  1. Most possibly offline, online is too hard to achieve, and even if online achieved, there might be a lack of players
  2. Game creators will most possibly start learning from designing card games like poker or tarrot games
  3. Player draws a card, places lands to generate mana, summon creatures, creatures auto fight an opponent whom does the same activities on his next turn

Advanced

  1. Pictures of fantasy creatures or sorceries, to make it less than 20mb, they only open image when click at, which will shows a popup from an external picture link, using 0mb
  2. Ability to micro change decks (card by card), and not just selecting a different deck to play with
  3. Ability to let player control the opponent, so players can manually make the opponent fight smarter because enemy intelligence is hard to achieve, this have an issue as it reveals the opponent's hand cards as well

Chess game
Similar to international chess or chinese chess

  1. This is probably the hardest game to make as it is more visual than text-based
  2. This possibly uses the overlapping pictures mechanic and etc that Jennifer Wren is so interested in
  3. I would prefer a new set of movements than the traditional ones, generally, their power should be toned down in order to create a variety of chess pieces with valid different movements which creates more strategies

Advanced

  1. Randomly generate terrain pieces like sea or mountains, these stops some pieces from moving while allowing other pieces to pass through
  2. Let the player become the admin and design the chess map, chess pieces and manually play as both the player and opponent as well
  3. Players might have 3 skills per game, example a, use 1 skill and 1 turn to revive a chess piece, example b, use 1 skill and 1 turn to upgrade your chess piece, it now respawn once when killed or can move twice the range, example c, use 1 skill to create castle or walls piece, these stops your opponent pieces from passing through while your troops can move through it fairly easily

Those are some good ideas @daeun. I don't really deal with space games like that but I would love to play the planet exploration game you described.


Atlantis (Game)
A dungeon crawler where you explore the decimated underwater city Atlantis in hopes of finding out what happened. You can play as either a human (hard mode) or Atlantean (easy mode).

Playing as a human is considered hard mode because they'll need to find sources of air to keep from drowning while exploring. Humans are also weaker than Atlanteans and don't have access to their magical abilities.


Exponential story game 2x2x2x2x2
Similar to Detroit Become Human

  1. You know why many story games gets boring? Because they are predictable, because the exponential outcomes gets in the way, therefore game creators resorts to lesser different outcomes or routing back to the same main storyline after a few story divisions
  2. I want a game that is truly individual and gives me a very unique pathway and ending, this can only be done by the exponential storyline
  3. 1 question, 2 choices per pathway = 2 stories x 2 stories x 2 stories (Continue this about 30 times) = 1,073,741,824 stories required to be written

Auto farming stardew valley
Similar to country story

  1. Yes, yes, we all love the vibe of old school harvest moon, click and harvest crops and berries, we want to feel the nostalgia, however our real life body has become old and is not dilligent to do the clicking anymore
  2. Click auto farm, and the player will automatically plant available seeds and harvest available crops and water crops and even feed your pet dog!
  3. Another method is to add a skip a month function, there are approximately 4 rainy days per month, enough to water most crops and become ripe for harvest
  4. If logic is wanted, directly allow players to loan money and build seed spreader, watering spray and harvester drones at the start of the game and not gatekeep them until the very late stages when the player has already grown bored of farming
  5. I like Doraemon Story of Seasons art style

Sword art online random dungeon game
Similar to Sherwood Dungeon

  1. The dungeon is semi-randomly made, basically the monsters, side encounters, quests, npcs, shops are all the same in the generator function, however there is a level variable that changes everything, you will see lizardman atk 1 hp 10 at level 1 and lizardman atk 20 hp 400 at level 100
  2. To those who dunno, Sword art online is an anime in which "real life" players gets trapped in a video game, they die in "real life" if they die in the video game, the only know way to escape the labyrinth is to reach the level 100 of the tower
  3. Although the dungeon keeps going up, the difficulty can randomly spike, therefore cautious players that grinds at lower levels before going up is rewarded for their endurance, and charismatic players can find knowledge of an easier xp grinding spot at certain higher levels through quest rewarding npcs

Play as a cat game
Similar to Stray (Never played before)

  1. Command parser games, yes I still haven't figured out how to make command parser games lol
  2. Since other players love shrinking games, why not make transform into a cat games instead, Im pretty sure cats, dogs and etc will be more fun and have an unique playstyle
  3. Generally, this can also be a tutorial game that teaches the player how to type parser commands, for example, every 3 minutes, the cat will auto move to another room or do a possible activity in a room while the "cat" auto types out what parser command it wrote to initate this command

Shadow of colossus game
Similar to shadow of colossus

  1. If you had played Shadow of colossus, you would have realized it is not an ordinary game, rather than hack and slash, it requires you to climb the giant enemies and attack the weak spots, but what I really appreciate is the different ways the enemies will react, trap, hide or attack the players
  2. As expected, there will be lots of deaths or falling down from giant enemies, therefore a heart system will be more recommended, rather than dying, the player can die 5 times with 5 hearts or etc
  3. The environment have to be immersive and correspond to the giant enemy's likes and dislikes

Blind man arkam horror game
Similar to Arkham Horror: The Card

  1. Arkam horror are basically the monster recipes of a game, in a deepen sense of fear and adventure, the player dun lose health, rather, he loses his sight instead
  2. But upon reaching 0% sight is not the end of the game, he will find "friends" or "artifacts" or "braille maps" to help him, but yes of course, you wonder why there is a "", because the man is blind, what he perceives might not be true, his "friends" could be horrifying monsters, his "artifacts" could be a tree branch sold by another, his "braille maps" could lead to a feeding ground for monsters for a ritual
  3. Well, how the player wins is completely up to you, from my point of view, most such games have players with detective knowledge and holding a pistol, but with that blindness, perhaps, these advantages are barely enough

Rng puzzle breath of the wild game
Similar to breath of the wild (Never played before)

  1. Breath of the wild game have wide open fields for players to explore natural scenery, but what I am interested is the occassional ruins that the player has found, in these ruins, there are many ancient contraptions that can be solved like puzzles which opens the main door leading to an amazing treasure chest or a deadly boss which locks down the whole ruins, making it an unescapable dungeon, forcing the player to fight rather than finding all treasure chests at all ruins then defeat all bosses strategy
  2. An insane idea is to have randomly generated puzzles in these ruins, although it sounds like a far-fetched idea, basically each solved puzzle can call a number flag, when the puzzles are solved in the correct order of number flags, the whole puzzle is solved and the main gate of the ruins will be opened

Detective dee game
Similar to Among us

  1. Judge Dee's Mystery is a pretty cool show, most detective shows are pretty cool, but the difference in this drama is that the criminals actually have a chance to act, for example, burning off the evidence, killing/delaying/misleading the detective player or bribe the crime witnesses
  2. Although there will be a timer to scare the player into taking action fast before the criminals act, in all possible situations, the crime should be solvable, just that the difficulty to solve the cases will be harder as the days passed
  3. Optional is that the player can travel to different areas of the country like crowded city with double-faced ruler, desolate hill village with moral dilema ruler, seaside village with comedic but cunning ruler, mining village with oppressive ruler

Adrenaline game
Similar to Grand Theft Auto V (Never played before)

  1. Yes, it is a simple game but with moral issues, I dun dare to make such games that lets the players commit crimes and get away with them
  2. The hidden point of the game is to let the players to experience adrenaline and emotions is a safe way and understand when you feel an impulse to do something, it might be dangerous and you dun actually have to do it, it is all just an adrenaline/emotional cause and effect
  3. Another point is to show the possibilities of how the player might run into crimes in real life, this helps them to prepare their mindset and defenses in advance

Biodiversity game
Similar to simpark 1996

  1. Basically a rough nature reserve park is pregenerated at start of the game, the player play as a ranger, introducing beneficial species or exterminating invasive species
  2. Species can be either animals or plants or whatever (I understand the knowledge of the true forest is deep, and even the water/soil/fungus/algae could be different based on its composition, but turning those deep knowledge into a gameplay might not resonate with the players whom have no idea such interactions exists)
  3. An evolutionary gameplay, a group of species can spawn another species, for example, birds, bees and butterflies will spawn new flowers (They carry seeds from elsewhere out of the park), another example, fishes, foxes and rabbits will spawn wolves (Their food resource from elsewhere was diminished by overlogging and came here for food), final example, cats, dogs and dolphins will spawn human visitors, these human visitors will pay park entrance fees or donate wilderness protection fund which unlocks new species for you to access and play with

Wizardry game
Similar to Frieren anime

  1. I dun really care about the objective, it could be default slay demon king, or it could be anything else
  2. The fun part about this show is that wizards are fighting but with wits rather than prowess, unfortunately, I have already watched the show, so game creators needs to come up with new ideas, new enemies, new rogue ways or witful decisions to win other wizards or stop a calamity
  3. If you really like more strategizing, players can pair up to 4 wizards/warriors/etc, different teams can bring down different types of demons faster, also more companions to chat with could be fun and unlock their personal story quests as well

Critter Forge game
Similar to Critter Forge
https://cforge.fandom.com/wiki/Breeding

  1. Basically fantasy creatures can be hybridised with each other, creating a whole new species, I understand that there is a creature diversity limit in the above links, but in our game, we ignore this limit, because everything is text-based anyway, you can conjure as many fantasy creatures as you like, or winks, cheat with the AI

Idle RPG (Game)
This is a project that I'm currently working on but still wanted to share in case someone else was interested in making something like it. I think a game like this is a good way to learn how to use The Pixie's NpcLib as the AI is going to require most of your attention.

The basic premise of the game is that the player creates their character, releases them into the game world and watches what they get up to. The only thing the player controls is the play/pause button to resume or stop the game.

The player character will explore the world and complete quests on their own. When the player gets tired of the character or if the character dies, the player can create a new character in the same world.

Maybe your first character was a town guard who was killed while trying to stop a criminal. You could create a new character who is a bounty hunter in the hope that they'll avenge your first character by catching the criminal.

Depending on how complex you're willing to get, you could make it where upon death, if the player's character had any offspring, the player could select one of them to continue the game with.

While I'm personally doing fantasy (because its been done so much that I don't have to do any world building), a game like this can be done with any setting.


Food Delivery (Game)
A game where you play as someone who does food delivery for a living. Start out having to make deliveries while walking until you make enough money to afford faster forms of transportation.

Players should be able to use public transportation also. Of course, having to pay fares will eat into the their earnings and bus they're riding may not take them exactly where they need to go.

I was reflecting on my terrible experience of being a Dasher and this idea popped into my head.


Qwertille have this delivery game
https://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/aAFvzm1hPEGlJNo-CJ0TSw/queen-city-couriers


Just wanted to share some story ideas for gamebook creators
You are recommended to create new and different pathways and endings instead of railroading

Alice in wonderland (Story)

  1. Main character is a cute and bubbly child, being abused, she/he have the ability to fall into the escape world, something like daydreaming, except it turns out to be a real superpower, she can escape into people's minds, and that is when things get scary
  2. Trying to escape from her abusers, whom turned up not to be her actual family at all, she feigned mental illness and got into a hospital, as she wandered through the many varieties of the dream worlds of the other patients and doctors, she realized the stories does not match their faces
  3. Example of a dream world, part a, lollipop trees, fresh watery sand, horizontally flat clouds, miniature castles. The man was holding a wrench, he was supposed to hold onto the car while another guy was repairing it, but a cockroach spooked him, he let go of the wrench for a few seconds and the car landed onto the other mechanic, afterwards, he fall into mental illness.
  4. But somehow in real life, the accidental killer turns up to be an old granny in lame clothes, after the main character navigates through many real life rooms of the hospital, the evidences stacks up, and something odd is indeed occuring, especially the patients' files proves that the main character's daydreaming aren't false delusion.
  5. The doctors were experimenting on brain surgery, when a patient is deemed unsavable, he traded their organs to another, and that includes brains. All these were done without the patients' knowledge or consent
  6. When finally, the main character tries to eliminate the main doctor, she realized she is a kid, so she used her superpowers instead to kill the doctor in the dream world, as she conjures more and more scary entities and shapeshift the environment while the doctor retaliates with flexible body and sharp mind, the truth was revealed, the doctor was not a human, yes, the doctor had a human body, but his brain was taken from a monkey's corpse

Grudge (Story)

  1. A man was ridculed and scolded for cheating in gambling by his cousins. It is normal for asian people to gamble lightly on happy new year. So, the man only participated out of goodwill and to entertain the visiting cousins. But he could not prove he was not a cheater, and soon, he became isolated.
  2. Isolated from cousins, ridiculed by his siblings and ignored by his parents, he eventually seeks the comfort of fake friends and rented friends, yes, you can rent people to be your friends in some asian countries.
  3. But, the family and cousins was weirded out by the cheater not visiting them on happy new year anymore, so they started to leave an empty seat for the delicious reunion hotpot dinner, and took photo while leaving a blank space to pretend the cheater was standing there, they kept talking and talking as if they were still the cheater's cousin and family, but one day, a child spoke to the empty air, his parents asked him who is he talking to, the child calmly replied the gambling cheater cousin, but that is not true, the cheater never visited anymore.
  4. The child insisted he is seeing someone eating from the hotpot, he is literally sitting on the chair right now. The sun turns into dark, the eclipse began and the electricity ran out, lights were gone, maybe because of saving earth day, but nobody truly knows why, everyone panics in the dark, they were pacing anxiously and arguing with each other, some even still talking about the cousin becoming a ghost and attacked them, but the family said the cheater is still alive.
  5. When they left the house to check the electricity box and returned, the lights finally become on, so they did a quick counting people session, and there were 22 people out of 22 people, which should not be the case, because the cheater never visited them anymore, it should be 21 people out of 22 people, one of them is a fake, but everyone's memory seems to decline and despite checking everyone and asking background questions, nobody could find out who the imposter is.
  6. The elders started to setup a trick to find the "cheater", so they started the gambling session again, and pretty soon, they discover the cheater again, because it has been 10 years since the cheater visited, they thought the cheater's face has changed shape, and this is how he looks like right now, but when the family was asked, they simply replied, they dun truly know, they have isolated him so much, they can't tell if this cheater is him in real person or not, a ghost or not, or an uninvited guest or not.

Antimatter (Story)

  1. A cube was sent here from outer space, but no governments dared to open it, they feared it is a sorta nuclear bomb, a weapon to end all of humanity, as was told by the bibles of many religions and faiths.
  2. A group of teenagers, each representing a different country to take part in the international science competition got bored after the lame science knowledge battle, they lusted for more, they wanted to interact, discover and explore the possibilities of science, and what better could it be than to open the pandora's box that the government dun dared to?
  3. But upon reaching the area, things were completely different from the news, every building neared the alien cube had collapsed, some areas even had sinkholes which you could not see the bottom of. Each step they took, the smell of blood and debris starts to hits the senses, they realized they had entered into uncharted territory. No daddy, mummy to say no, no security guards to lead them out of the way, no police to ask for help. This is a completely deserted area.
  4. And soon they know why, everything here feels different, so out of space, some objects are seen gravityless and suddenly dropped from 1km in the air, almost killing one of them. Eventually one smartas teen ride on the gravityless boulders and were able to glide through the dangerous terrains, the other teenagers followed suit.
  5. The cube was here, except it was no cube, it was bright red, sharp like a star, and oozing weird gas out of it, and when one of them touched it, the alien's knowledge, intelligence and history courses through his body, he got enlightened and asked everyone else to touch it too, it is the key of knowledge.
  6. Of course, the other teens aren't as dum as that egoistic teen whom needs attention, they simply asked him what have he attained? He simply replied, "The end of humanity is the next evolution".

Amazing scary ideas daeun.


Tile-Based Combat (Mechanic)
Combat takes place on a tile map. This could force the Player to make more nuanced decisions regarding what weapon they use rather than just picking the weapon with the highest damage output.

For example, longer weapons should allow the Player to hit enemies that are 2 or more tiles away rather than be in an adjacent tile. This system also allows for the use of ranged weapons.

Dual-wielding would work well with this also.

I imagine that something like this would be used in a gladiator game or a game with tournaments.


Zappy game

  1. Tower defense, build different range of towers that helps protect your space city, I dunno why must towers always be built on earth to defend against aliens, I think the vertical advantage of towers would definitely make the weapon of choice for aliens as well and possibly many other planets
  2. Unfortunately, this game shouldn't be about conquering other planets, since when you move rooms, you can't really monitor your tower defense situation, so rather, it should be about "expanding your empire", you have to build road, water reservoirs and food plantations to get more empty slots to build your defense towers
  3. Usually tower defense enemies are pretty stupid, they just go in one line towards your tower maze, this game should not be the case, the enemies can have hovercrafts, land tanks, laser drones, military operatives planting bombs, horde of rifle walking units, this means you have to build different types of defense towers to encounter different types of enemies
  4. Examples are:
    4a: Sentinels - Detect faraway space vehicles and mark their gps, increasing your distance strike for all defense towers you have
    4b. Bullheads - Explosive shotgun towers, sends a blast of bullets downwards the dirt, effective against horde of enemies
    4c. Triangle anomaly - Build a triangle field of defense zone, any enemies that enters this zone gets emp blasted, rendering their communication systems unavailable and stopping all of their supportive buffs
    4d: Nuclear wastes - Build pitfalls of radiation pools, any enemy tanks that tries to pass through these pools, might sink, might corrode or explode, only one way to find out

Infestation story

  1. Long ago, the zombies have purge the area of humans and destroyed countless of buildings
  2. But eventually, earth's evolution have triggered a chain effect of positive virus
  3. This viruses feeds on the zombie viruses
  4. You wake up, in a bunk, realized you have been a zombie for days, or maybe years
  5. Unfortunately, now you have to survive, you need to find food supplies and find other survivors
  6. Explore the dystopian planet, creepily silent city skyscrapers, corpses filled vast desert, the never ending river that leads to the open ocean, what is inside the river are free food like fishes, but upon consumption of it, your friends turned ill and became zombies again

The Elementalist (Game)
The Player starts the game off with choosing an elemental shard. As long as they have that shard in their inventory, they have access to that shard's elemental powers. The goal of the game is to travel the world and collect all of the elemental shards in order to become The Elementalist.


Also thanks for mentioning Qwertille's delivery game @daeun. I just had a chance to check it out and its pretty cool!


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