1 Open World, Exploratory RPG
I want to make an Open World game focused around exploration and story telling through the environment. It would be a dense urban environment cut up into sections for the player to explore.
Combat would either be like an Undertale as a mini-game or a turn based RPG. I want something to be gained by exploring the world. This project would also be a means to expand my Art Portfolio.
2 Edited DnD Podcast
I listen to a ton of DnD podcasts, but they’re hard to get into because even the edited versions are huge chunks of content that are intimidating for new viewers and listeners.
For the those who don’t know, the appeal of a DnD podcast is that because the players have control over their characters, there’s no telling what will happen. They could even fail or die.
The video below is similar to what I want to do. The difference with what I would do, the artwork would be more polished, there would audio from the players and would feature a self contained story.
3 Organized Beat’em Up
This last idea is based on a game I saw years ago and was fascinated by, Streets of Fury EX. Its a Beat’em Up where Vertical movement is limited to 3 lines. The Beat’em Up genre has fallen into a rut as of late. I believe this is because people are used to action games being faster than the Beat’em Up would allow in addition to local multiplayer becoming less common. What I want to do with this game is experiment with the line movement system and make a faster Beat’em up game.
I like that your ideas are explorative. In your third idea, you identified a potential problem with the beat’em up genre and proposed a fix. I could really see this idea benefiting gamers out there that enjoy that genre and want to see it improve! It’s definitely worth looking into and seems to have a manageable scope.
I have in my notes here that your most passionate project idea is the first one (Open World, Exploratory RPG). I may have said some of these comments in class, but I also wrote some stuff down. I like the idea of story-telling through the environment and relying on exploration to advance through the game. My main concern is what you would do in terms of direction so the player doesn’t get lost. Also, you would have to be sure that this is different from other games that have similar concepts (i.e. games that have exploration or a no leveling up system). Someone had mentioned a concern of scope during the class and whether this will be feasible for you as a solo game designer.
As for your most original idea, I would have to say the visual DnD podcast stands out amongst the others. No one else in the class is tackling this idea and I feel like many people outside of the DnD world don’t know what it’s about or how it works. It would be very interesting for me to see how you would visualize a podcast for DnD. As someone who doesn’t know anything about DnD I would like to see how you would cater this to beginning players.
Overall, you have some really fleshed out ideas and you definitely have a lot to work with! Keep up the good work and I’m excited to see which idea you choose.