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Ask HN: What game do you wish existed?
859 points by jharohit on May 25, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 1839 comments
I have usually kept a short list of games that would be fun if they existed. Long ago one my bullets in the list was a procedurally generated planet-sized planet with a full diaspora to explore. No Man's Sky fulfilled that for me.

What are some games that you wish existed?




[Borrowers: The Game]

You live as tiny mouse-sized humans existing with regular humans who should never know your presence as you occupy the walls and spaces in their home. Every day you must hunt for food, which involves collecting gear to traverse spaces (paperclip + string = grappling hook and rope, matchstick = torch, plastic bag = parachute) to reach places where food is stored (i.e. the kitchen - defended by the cruel cat, mousetraps - easy to find but deadly to use, others). There's also more than one of you with time, where you can find and recruit others from outside the house, mate to create a family base of increasing members (prompting you to expand more into the walls which will increase your chance of discovery by normal humans), and most importantly - coordinate scavenger hunts with your crew (think: one Borrower leads a climb and trails a rope down, allowing others to follow, where more people == more food for the base). Due to the high death rate, there are no main characters, just Borrowers.

[Extras]

- Riding or rearing mice? (they can lead you to the cheese and help dodge the cat)

- Stealing and riding a drone? (perhaps not such a rustic experience anymore)

- Turning your tiny wall cave into a thriving Borrower city complete with electricity and beer? (might require killing the humans)


I can't believe no one mentioned It Takes Two.

The world is much different - but it has A LOT of the game play you're asking for.

Additionally, I found it to be one of the most enjoyable games I've played in... maybe ever?


We found the writing a little bit cringe at times, but ultimately it's a sweet story, and the gameplay and overall creativity is out of this world. Definitely a GOTY.


Except for the elephant arc.


Yeah the elephant thing was super weird and uncomfortable. I can’t understand how no one in the room pulled the plug on that.


My wife loves to play it, she is still learning how to use the right stick to aim but is getting much better. Know any other girlfriend friendly co-ops?


Unravel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unravel_Two


I think it’s on game pass so it should be easy to try out


Thanks, downloaded it in game pass!


Stardew Valley - a nice and cosy little farming sim, for a relaxed evening

Divinity Original Sin 2 - an entire RPG playable in split-screen co-op, with hard strategic turn based combat


Introduced my partner to both of these games. We completed DOS1 together and played countless hours of Stardew Valley - she would take care of the animals and I would take care of the plants.


For the King is a game I don't the mentioned a lot but it's great. It's much like divinity original sin but more roguelike. My girlfriend doesn't like divinity but absolutely loves For the King.


I've been wanting to check this game out forever. Glad it was mentioned in this thread. I think I'll finally give it a play [=


My wife is in the same boat. Here are some games we play:

- Narrative games. Think anything from Quantic Dreams (Heavy Rain, Detroit), lots of Nancy Drew games, Tell tale Games (Walking Dead). Note that none of these are co-op, but they're fun to pass and play. - Simple platforming games (we're currently playing Kirby and the forbidden land on Switch, will probably play Mario Odyssey after. I let her play the main character but take over if it ever gets tough) - Puzzle type games (Portal)

She isn't great at games, but she's getting better, and she enjoys playing them.


Lovers in a dangerous spacetime You are controlling a spaceship with up to four people, bit with all these weapons, shield and steering you have to swap between these or at least coordinate. Really enjoyed this with 3 other friends but might be even more fun with just 1 or 2 extra players as there should be more running around the spaceship


A Way Out, by the same developer - very campy and a bit shorter. Overcooked - test your relationship.


Portal 2 co-op


My girlfriend and I like puzzle games and would strongly recommend “ibb and obb” and “death squared”


Overcooked 2


My wife and I enjoyed Children of Morta.


The various Lego games are surprising fun and very forgiving to a second player.


Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons


Don't Starve Together on PS4, me and my gf have hundreds hours on it.


Goose Game


Cook, Serve, Delicious 1 and 3 will give you hundreds of hours of ~fun~.


See also Overcooked for more ~fun~

And by fun I mean CHAOS


Kingdom Two Crowns


It Takes Two is a masterpiece; I highly recommend it. But, as the title suggests, it indeed requires two players (only one needs to buy the game, at least on Steam).


Yeah indeed, I'm just playing that now with my girlfriend. She normally doesn't play games, but she even enjoys it. I like how creative the developers are with everyday objects.


wow, my wife and I literally just finished playing this (we are close to the end) and were thinking the same thing. Just a real treat of a game. We have really enjoyed poking around at all the extras and what not.


This.


It's not exactly what you're asking for, but you might want to check out the game Grounded. It's a crafting-survival game that's heavily inspired by "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids"


Not only is it a solid premise, but there is an ultrashort story by Franz Kafka that lends itself perfectly to a cinematic promo video:

TINY MOUSE-SIZED HUMAN:

"Alas! The whole world is growing smaller every day. [Close on the tiny person, panning out ever-so-slowly to reveal, bit by bit, the cavernous enormity of the room.] At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into."

[Corner trap now visible, the camera holds steady and dwells for a moment on this sad, bleak fate. Suddenly, there is another voice from behind -- this is not a monologue after all.]

CAT, SLINKING INTO VIEW:

"You only need to change your direction." [CAT pounces, and promptly gobbles him up.]


Oh man, the first time I read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH when I was a kid, I was enthralled. My best friend and I would always play that we were the rats and had to hide from the humans while improvising tools, gathering food, and building a base. This reminds me of that and of how fun/creative a game like that could be.


fuuuuuck this would be an amazing game. There are so many directions you could take it. Imagine having to get into the next door backyard, but there's a dog. You have to sneak into the bathroom, find some sleeping pills, then sneak the pills into the dog's food bowl.

It would be like a cross between The Last of Us, Hitman, and The Secret World of Arrietty.


Just a minor thing, but Arrietty is just a movie based on the books in The Borrowers series. Doesn’t matter, your point stands, just like to shout out the original inspiration for the film.


Oh interesting, I had no idea there was a connection. I thought "Borrowers" was just a name OP made up for the idea.


There are also a couple of old TV series based on the books.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0105957/


I would love this. I have played every Hitman - and am currently playing Hitman III... which basically just devolves into me simply killing every single person in the level.

I don't like the difficulty levels of Hitman III though -- I wish there were a hell of a lot more victims to go after.

But the levels are AMAZING and fun and beautiful.

But anything that can capture the Hitman gameplay would be great.

The thief series was also amazing, but its so dated it doesnt run well on my super high-end gaming machine...

But one thing that was super cool in Thief were the arrow types: Moss, Rope, Water... Moss arrows hit the ground and spawn a soft bed of moss to allow for silent walking.

I wish Hitman had some of these elements...


> The thief series was also amazing, but its so dated it doesnt run well on my super high-end gaming machine...

Do you have the NewDark patch?

https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=146448&highligh...

Though I would start with a compilation patch: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=149669


I am going to apply this advice and determine how much time I have missed wasting...

EDIT: Hitman and Thief are lit the only game-play-styles I prefer....

Whats weird Is that I dont know the difference bewteen I before SEE between Theif and Wierd.

---

Anyway.. if you actually evaluate (ovulate - Lets go deep on etymology!) the mental dopamine construct,

Gaming is a super interesting thing.

SOURCE I WAS THE LEAD OF THE DRG AT INTEL IN THE EARLY 90s...

I saw the first 'unreal engine' and worked on the first AGP platforms and blah blah...

None of that matters any longer.

That said; im not a person who is ignorant..

---


Agreed, the difficulty is way too low. I actually wouldn't mind if they literally made it realistic - get hit by one bullet and you're dead. I'd also like to see them experiment more with social engineering. Something like LA Noir, with branching conversations, where you have to talk your way into a scenario instead of sneaking in. Make the kills feel much more personal.


I've been looking at buying this for a while, you're shrunk and have to survive living outside in your backyard: https://store.steampowered.com/app/962130/Grounded/


It's alot of fun the whole perspective is really cool, can recommend however its still early in dev and content isnt that massive.


Makes me think of the Counter Strike map de_rats where you fought over the fridge, could hide in walls, use sponges as landing pads and iirc blow up the sink.


oldskool CS de_rats players represent!

loved that map. one of fave. and its variants. wish it was party of the current CS:GO distro


https://worldofpadman.net/en/


I was just about to mention that, loved that map. And yes, 5/5 would play this game


sounds like padkitchen.pk3 for Quake 3 Arena


Ah memories


If only we could get the people who made “Ni no Kuni” to make a game out of “The Secret World of Arrietty“ (I highly recommend the UK English dubs if anyone hasn’t seen this yet).

latest from that game developer: https://www.polygon.com/platform/amp/23141182/ni-no-kuni-cro...

movie trailer: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VlMe7PavaRQ


"The Secret World of Arrietty" is an adaptation of "The Borrowers" right?


Yep. And Studio Ghibli, that did Arietty, also worked on Ni No Kuni.


We need to get them to make dark cloud 3.


This reminds me of the game Prisoner of War. The setting is completely different (you are a POW in a german concentration camp) but the mechanics are pretty much there:

- Live in the "walls" (barracks) - Sneak out during curfew to do tasks and build things to open up more areas, and also for food - You nurture a relationship with the other prisoners and new ones arrive often

Check it out!


Not that it's what you're looking for exactly. But if you like the idea of being as tiny being in a home with massive humans, check out Mister Mosquito on the PS2, or Chibi Robo on the GameCube.


Hah, I thought of the mosquito game too, but for some reason I thought it initially was released on the Dreamcast. But I can't find any mention of that.


Wow great callback, I remember I only had this on a demo disc. I wonder if it is worth seeking out and playing the whole thing now!


There's a subplot from the show Solar Opposites (the show itself is just okay) where people who have been shrunk by alien children live in a segmented wall and form a society there - there's even mice.


Just to follow up: I watched this entire series and it really captured a lot of the vibe, ingenuity, brutalism, and collaboration that I was hoping for in such a world. Thanks for this recommendation!


I think that story in itself needs a show. In my opinion it’s better than the main storyline. The wall story has everything parent wants, going out to gather food, escaping dogs, riding mouse etc.


I can't seem to find it, but I read a description for a game in development that seemed really similar to this, a farming/crafting simulator where you start in the basement of a house and can expand to the kitchen etc. You have to avoid the house cat etc.


Totally different game of course, but this reminded me of Katamari Damacy! In many levels you start tiny in a room somewhere, and have to roll up paper clips and thumb tacks in order to grow and roll up successively larger things, while avoiding gigantic pets, and so on. Apart from being hilarious and sometimes challenging, I also found it an interesting psychological effect to come back to the same place when you're 100 times larger, now able to roll up humans, cars, the entire house... :)

Katamari is a casual game (I prefer this genre) but now I wonder if there would be some way to make a more "simulationist" game that uses this scaling effect somehow.


Elusive People. Supposed to be released next year by Chibig.


wow, thank you for recommending this - the graphics are not quite what I'm after, but the concept definitely is - albeit the tiny humans seem a bit too large to live in mouseholes


Sim Ant had some mechanics like that


Not sure if this idea was inspired by it, but if you haven't read it yet, definitely check out the Bromeliad Trilogy by Terry Pratchett.


It was probably inspired by the children's book series "The Borrowers", which was also made into an animated film.


There's a few live action films and series too.

I believe the Terry Pratchett one is currently being made into an animated film or series.


My partner and I enjoyed the Good Omens TV series, even though it was a bit silly.


So i'm guessing it would be a mix between isometric view for open space (like if you had a Borrower City or sneaking outside of the walls, for example) but for climbing through the walls it would be top-down (or i guess, out to in).

I really like the idea; i'm thinking much in the same art style as something like Arrietty just slightly more western cartoonish vibes, but only subtle changes.


My twitter feed showed me this fanart mockup of an Arietty game today so I thought I'd share it here since Arietty is based on the Borrowers. https://twitter.com/cloudtrumpets/status/1529465790247870464


You're describing Arietty by Ghibli, even "Borrower" is the English translation for the little beings :)


Well, no, obviously not. The Ghibli movie is a takeoff on the Borrowers series by Mary Norton; there is no reason to believe tetris11 had the movie in mind rather than the books he referred to by name.


There's a story called "The Borrowers" from the 50's. I'm not sure which pre-dates the other.


Arrietty is based on the book.


The micro machines racing games or the ps1 era game Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue, might scratch some of the exploring houses as a little thing itch.

There is a TTRPG exactly matching what you're after. Small folk setting for fate core. http://www.warehouse23.com/products/the-small-folk

Which has a brilliant play through in this podcast https://tabletoptales.roleplayingpublicradio.com/tag/top-of-...


Sounds like a DLC or sequel for "Grounded" from Obsidian Entertainment.


Somewhat similar: https://store.steampowered.com/app/962130/Grounded/


I've been playing this with my kids and we're having fun! It's also on Xbox Game Pass, in case you're a subscriber and want to try the game.


The idea reminds me to the game Sneaky Sasquatch (on Apple Arcade).

In that game you (a Sasquatch) has to steal food from campers, resolve some mysteries, play mini games, build your place, and go to work disguised as human.


special shout out to rat pack map packs for counter strike back in the day!!


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1487800/Little_Hats/


this is pretty close, thanks for the recommendation!


It sounds like a complex "Tom and Jerry". Interesting..


Something similar exists, it's called "Ghost of a Tale" - very beautiful game:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_of_a_Tale


It's more action-adventure than sandbox but you should check out Chibi-Robo.


I know it sounds insane, but this is honestly my favorite game of all time. I would love to see an updated version for today's systems.


It's a crime how few of Skip's games are possible to play today.


Very close plot to an all but forgotten 1960s American Sci-Fi TV series produced by Irwin Allen (Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, Poseidon Adventure) called Land Of The Giants imdb.com/title/tt0062578/


Also 'the borrowers', as OP makes referrence to


There's also an animated movie with the same premise, The Secret World of Arrietty

https://imdb.com/title/tt1568921/


It's the same premise because they're ideas based on the same thing. The OP mentioned The Borrowers as inspiration. Well The Secret World of Arrietty is based on The Borrowers. I think it's even called something like "Borrower Arrietty" in Japan as well.


There was a very old tv show based on this exact premise

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_the_Giants


You mean like this?

Household, via @Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2lm/household


YES PLZ!

I loved reading the Borrowers books as a kid and would play tf out of this game haha


Aside from the end, this seems kind of similar to Stuart Little 3 'Big photo adventure' for the Ps2. From what I remember, I really enjoyed the game.


https://worldofpadman.net/en/


Reminds me of a wolfenstein map that was basically small humans in a large room. Honey shrunk the kids vibe.


Have you never watched "The Littles" growing up - this was exactly them.


This is almost like a cross between Pikmin and Little Nightmares. Cool idea.


Reminds me of Roald Dahl's 'The Witches', oh and Toy Story.


Reminds me a little of Chibi Robo on the GameCube.


Grounded?


Parasite (movie).

Sounds similar to the movie Parasite.


I want a sort of civilization-but-for-countries.

E.g. you are the newly elected president of Afghanistan/North Korea/Iraq/Other etc - now go rebuild infrastructure etc, set policies, see how the country develops as a result. E.g. do you invest in universal healthcare, or transport infrastructure? Is transport infra required while your country is still largely subsistence farming?. What about education - save money there and spend on natural resource extraction? How will that play out over decades and centuries?

It would be nice to have direct control over city-level layout etc - demolish this neighborhood for flood defences, put in railways, major roads etc linking different parts of your country (not sim city levels of simulation, more just at the major civil engineering level of that makes sense - happy for actual city population to grow organically as a result of major works).

Civ gets close, but it's too high-level and more focused on conquest. I want to zoom in and have more control over where major irrigation canals get built, where to best build a nuclear plant, where that bridge should go or which mountains to tunnel through for a railway etc. So instead of the grid being the entire planet, the grid would just be one country.

Edit: I am specifically interested in the "building" aspect (so think civ-style grid with units moving around doing things), and less so on simple a-vs-b decision game model you see in Democracy et al.


I'm currently obsessed with an idea of scaling SimCity-like simulation to a whole country. Since it's infeasible to place roads and buildings manually at such scale, it would have to have an AI to grow cities automatically based on simulated demand and higher-level policies.


You might be interested in what I'm setting to out build. I'm working on Archapolis, a city builder with real time traffic simulation and interior views of peoples homes (which you can customize/build yourself if you want). While the game wont scale up to the country scale, I do want the player to have a more hands on approach to managing the city. Im thinking it would be cool if the player could hire their own board if they wanted to, otherwise they would have to manually manage that aspect of the game (e.g. no fire marshal could mean manually sending out fire trucks to fires, scheduling building inspections, etc).

Here's a tech demo of what I've been working on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q0l87hwmkI

I created a path finding algorithm that can simultaneously path 300,000 units to random destinations at a comfortable frame rate. Units can choose from any of the shortest paths between two points (there are many in a grid), and from those paths, can also choose the path that matches any preferences they have.

Very early stages of development still!


This is really cool, and I enjoyed hearing explanations of your process and decision making in the video. It sounds like you have a lot of ideas on how to develop "personalities" for units, and that's something rarely seen in game AI, so I'm eager to see where you go with all of this!


Thanks! I appreciate it. The player connecting to the world they build is vital IMO.

I'll be using old.reddit.com/r/Archapolis if you want to know when the first release is out.


Have you Transport Fever 2? The AI manages growth of the cities while you work on building out the logistics. The better your network, the faster the cities grow. Since there are planes involved I would classify the scale as being nation-sized.


Yes, but the scale of things in TF2 is very symbolic. Cities are a couple of train lengths long at best, and grow by attaching new short roads at random. That's fine for the needs of the game, but isn't really a country-sized simulation.


Similar with it's predecessor, transport tycoon or the newer openttd


There's also Voxel Tycoon in the same vein. Early access but polished enough to have a go. It adds a dash of Factorio to the resources.


A game like this exists and has existed for many, many years. It's a relic of the old internet.

https://www.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgip?plogplay


Why sim city and not cities skylines?

(I don't have an opinion either way, just curious.)


I've just used a classic name for the genre. I'm a big fan of Cities: Skylines.

At a country scale some simulation techniques need to change. For example, tilemaps become ridiculously inefficient (a byte per 10m^2 becomes tens of GBs), so they either need some form of compression, or the simulation has to use vector-based maps instead (more like Cities Skylines).

Another quirk is that at a country scale agent-based simulation becomes less interesting, because individual agents don't influence much, only their collective behavior is big enough to matter, and that starts looking just like a normal distribution of the simulation data you put in.


>at a country scale agent-based simulation becomes less interesting, because individual agents don't influence much, only their collective behavior is big enough to matter

This is very untrue, which is why this problem is infeasible.


For example rush hour is an emergent phenomenon. But it's something that is happening pretty regularly depending on typical work schedules. You can simulate thousands or millions of agents with their intricate goals of their daily lives to have it emerge naturally (and it's very fun to program that), or you can just hardcode fixed times for rush hours. In a big-picture view of country-wide statistics the difference between these approaches is underwhelmingly small.

It's sort of like simulating every atom of an object vs using Newtonian physics. There is a difference in accuracy, but it may not even become apparent or matter for gameplay.


Why do you say it’s untrue?


https://duckduckgo.com/?q=emergent+behavior+agent+based+simu...


I'm pretty sure they're using SimCity as a trademark-turned-common name like Kleenex, band-aid, etc.


The techinical term is "genericised trademark" IIRC. Same goes for "Civilization" upthread, and for things like "Tetris" or (edit: to the extent trademark offices are corrupt enough to register it in the first place) "Chess".


CivMC is starting up tomorrow. It's a Minecraft server with 100+ people organizing into nations, building out their facilities, and arguing over land. The planning level decisions are a little simpler than you're looking for; where to put farms, roads, housing, vanity projects, and military structures, and when to replace them. But the fun is that you're working with real people to make it happen, instead of doing everything yourself.

Nominally it's an experiment to see which government and organizational structures are the strongest, though being a multiplayer game it can devolve into who's fighting skills or automated bots are the best.


I think Paradox's games would be up your alley, with the upcoming Victoria 3 probably being the best fit due to its focus on economic details and sociopolitical dynamics.


Victoria 2 was an absolute favorite of mine. I'm excited to see what they'll manage to do with Victoria 3. Vicky 2 unfortunately suffered from a pretty rough UX beyond even what EU3 & HoI3 had in terms of information visibility and user interactions.


Yeah, I'm really excited too. Vic2 is my favorite concept of the Paradox games; simulating economics, industrialization, and mass politics like it does is a great idea, allowing for a grand strategy game where the everyday lives of your populace still very much matter. But the UI's not great, the economic simulation is kind of janky, it's much more railroaded and inflexible than the modern games, and it's extremely Eurocentric.


I think the Tropico games covers a lot of this.


I have been thinking about this concept / similar concept for a long time.

My chief complaint with Civilization games is that they've become a history-themed board game. A fun board game, but less and less it doesn't feel like a history simulator.

The problem with "country" simulator is that countries are a more modern concept, the vast majority of human civilization doesn't feature strong nation concept. How do you model a country that goes from Villanovans to Romans all the way to Italians?

How do you model a civilization which can boom and collapse? How can you set the systems up to support things like the mayan collapse or the bronze age collapse? The fall of the roman empire? Technological regression? How technology truly transforms culture, engineering, politics, etc? Adding +1 to a score is nice and dandy but how you simulate your nation having dynamic classes enjoying luxuries based on location, industry and technology?

I want to see that the urban elite are using silver utensils while the farmers are stuck on wood. I want to see that the civilization used wood too fast and used it all up, causing a collapse.

I actually envision the map as a grid with each grid holding information about the people there. Population, class, technology, industry, culture etc. A rural tile would have low population and be influenced by other tiles. An urban tile might be generating let's say `copper age 3` and in a radius around it for some distance, their tools would be upgrading towards that level. But invading and pillaging this urban tile might lead to those levels dropping, setting a region back in many ways.

The hardest part I have is that I just want a pure simulation with no user input. Gamifying it ruins the purity of my simulation and leads to civilization the game!


If you haven't already tried them out, I'd highly recommend the Rhye's and Fall of Civilization (RFC) genre of mods for Civilization IV. Civs spawn in their historical period (and location) and are given a set of historical goals. Maya may have been doomed to fail, but the historical victory goals make every country unique and interesting. A stability mechanic keeps countries in check and provides proper friction to nonsensical actions. Persia is much more capable of conquering and stabilizing the Middle East than say Japan would be. Economic downturns give instability; barbarians pillaging the Greek countryside could be the final straw leading to the collapse of Alexander's empire. Each civ also gets their unique power (before Civ 5 did it!) in addition to their unique unit(s) and building(s) that help them orient towards and accomplish their historical goals. Greece's Great Person generation bonus will help (and is probably necessary for) them to achieve their goals of being the research a number of techs. Persia's power helps them manage instability from maintaining a far-reaching empire.

Overall, RFC essentially builds a new game on top of Civ4. The best part is that there's a number of RFC-derived modmods with varying locales and mechanics. Here's a few that I would highly recommend:

* RFC Dawn of Civilization[0] - An actively developed fork of the original mod that keeps the "vanilla" feel and the global map.

* The Sword of Islam[1] - A Middle East themed variant that although is long-abandoned is one of the most polished modmods

* RFC Europe[2] - Self explanatory. Focused on Europe starting from the rise of the Franks ending with the Industrial Revolution.

[0] https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/welcome-to-dawn-of-ci...

[1] https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/the-sword-of-islam-rf...

[2] https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/rhyes-and-fall-of-eur...


I'm sure it will end up costing $10k USD for all the DLC, but Vicky 3[1] might come near this in some ways... probably still too macro though.

[1]https://store.steampowered.com/app/529340/Victoria_3/


Unfortunately, Victoria 3 is rather unfun due to a number of fundamental flaws. The trade system is even more tedious micro than HoI4's trade system. Plus, the simplifications to the economic simulation introduced (chiefly infinite supply and complete lack of stockpiles) remove most fun mechanics (and a sense of realism). In Victoria 2, a very strong strategy as an early industrializer is to stockpile machine parts to delay other countries from industrializing. Victoria 3 simply has no analogue intentionally. Heck, Victoria 3's embargoes can't even be country-specific, they're good-specific and not even absolute! To top it all off, the developers are very explicitly encoding their political biases into the game's balancing. There is simply no reason to not be woke in Victoria 3. The only benefit that you receive for not being extreme lib-left is the ability to magically make more infrastructure appear with more "authority" mana, but the amount gained is insignificant.

I'm sure mods will make the game somewhat more fun and I'm probably going to buy the game for that reason, but after playing the beta I have absolutely no faith in Paradox's ability to live up to Victoria 2 despite it being a heavily flawed game that ended up being mostly a commercial failure. The worst part about all of this is how much effort they're spending on completely inconsequential things, like replacing the icons for POPs with horrendously ugly, anachronistic 3D characters. Something tells me that it was just an attempt to recoup losses from CK3's development. But don't worry, I'm sure Paradox's newfound console audience will enjoy Import-Export Trade Deal Manager 2022 and keep the company afloat.


Well that's a bummer. Thanks for the info


I'm really enjoying Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic

It lets you control a small country and build basically everything from scratch, factories, railways, housing.

Honestly it hits most of the points you describe above.


You might enjoy Rebel Inc.

It's a bit more abstract and counter-insurgency focused than your description, but sounds pretty similar.

https://www.ndemiccreations.com/en/51-rebel-inc


Suzerain - does that, more from the political pov. You are elected president of a somewhat democratic country. Then you are presented with choices and the game starts.


I'd also highly endorse Suzerain - but I don't know if it's a great fit for them. Suzerain is essentially a political narrative game where the player is navigating through an amazingly deep set of pre-scheduled events and crises and trying to effect change.

It's also strongly influenced by Turkish politics, specifically the rise of Erdogan, which was a very complicated time for Turkey.


This somewhat reminds me of Majesty series of games. You built cities and paid for people to be educated, but the goal was to defeat monsters, but your only control was to place bounties on them. The populous would do whatever they wanted.


You might find Hidden Agenda interesting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Agenda_(1988_video_game...


For a more general list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_simulation_game

I recommend:

Conflict: middle East political simulator Shadow President

There's also an interesting one reflecting Stalin's challenges after world war 1 - he has to choose between guns and butter to prepare for the coming conflict with Hitler. Don't remember the name...


Stalin's Dilemma. https://www.old-games.com/download/4428/stalin-s-dilemma The author's "No Greater Glory" on the US Civil War is also very good.


That's the one, thanks!


Have you played Democracy?


The concept of the game of "Democracy" is nice, but the issue is that its main goal becomes quickly winning the elections. And once you start listening to the majority and adapt your party policies to whatever the population wants currently, you keep winning the elections, but can't do much to influence what you think is right.

If you really want to shape a country in your direction, autocracy, or dictatorship is the only way. Otherwise, you become just another populist leader that always wins elections but nothing changes.

Just like in real life ;)


> Democracy is a nice concept, but the issue is that its main goal becomes quickly winning the elections. And once you start listening to the majority and adapt your party policies to whatever the population wants currently, you keep winning the elections, but can't do much to influence what you think is right.

So... it's pretty realistic then?


Sounds exactly like the current implementation of democracy.


Except in current democracies there are lots of important popular issues that voters want addressed and yet politicians refuse to, because their owners are against it.


And the scalings are completely nonsensical. A strategy that is literally impossible to lose with is implementing every policy that increases patriot membership. Before the first election, you can make 100% of the population permanently patriots. With that, a handful of pro-patriot policies will guarantee every election's success. From there, you can implement whatever policies you want with almost zero backlash. I'm sure someone will tout this as "realistic", but that's hyperbole at best.


Someone should make a version of Tropico but it's a democracy and you're the media, deciding where things get built indirectly by choosing which stories to run.


"Headliner" is a somewhat similar concept, though it's lacking the simulation aspect


I played Democracy 3 and you didn't have to get elected the first time. I reduced funding to religious schools and then the religious voter demographic eventually went away after a few elections and then there wasn't any opposition to science funding.


Isn't that the point? It's harder to win while doing what is right? Or you want the game to reward unrealistic do-good scenarios?


This is why we need Sortition.


Nah, I actually won the game (Democracy 3) by building a libertarian utopia with zero taxes, no public services, ignoring the clamor for new laws etc, and had all KPIs on green.

Then was killed by a nun who disagreed with my no-state-religion policy. :D


These are not the issues.

If you were to 'take over Iraq' the first thing will happen is that one of your political challengers will use all of their means to usurp you.

The issues are power, control, corruption, clan loyalty, incompetence, dysfunction, bureaucracy, radicalism, laziness, embezzlement, short nearsightedness, lack of key resources, petty infighting, political inconsistency and duplicity from supporting nations, bureaucracy etc..

What happens when the entire system is corrupt? The Judiciary, Police, the Army, the politicians? Everyone is trying to embezzle, selling votes, stuffing ballot boxes, using multiple ledgers, giving their family members jobs, handing out MD's to the rich kids?

Some Billionaire owns the TV Station and is lying about you daily, destroying your ratings. There are protesters outside your door while you're trying to 'plan the buildings'.

The guy who funded your campaign to ascension wants special state-guaranteed contracts.

The rebels in that 'ugly border area' have killed some civilians and the locals want blood.

... and consider that many of the same kinds of constraints exist even in modern countries.

'Building Bridges vs. Schools' is completely pedantic exercise.

They should make the game called 'Saddam' and see how a regular person might fare at that 'job'.


Pull the rug with negative interest rates and land value taxes and general anti rent seeking policies to make corruption highly unprofitable.

If you get 10 million through corruption you are basically set for life in a positive interest/rent seeking environment because interest acts like a force multiplier on your original act of corruption that gets stronger over time. So your personal goal is to earn as much money as possible, as early as possible and through any foul means. I.e. the reward function strongly favours corruption.

With a negative interest rate, corruption no longer guarantees a high social status and automatic wealth accumulation which means you will have to do honest work until you retire if you want to keep your money. Automatic wealth accumulation is the primary metric that makes money laundering profitable or not. If you can only make 25% of the stolen money clean you can still grow it exponentially over time after it is clean.

If the land value tax is paid out as a dividend then everyone, even the destitute, would benefit from classic USA style homeowner corruption (artificially distorting the allocation of land by restricting it's use).

Another form of corruption would be to spend your student loan on Bitcoin when it was still under one thousand and then skipping college because you "made it". You earned money without producing anything, you are a net negative to society if you don't work for even a little bit.


Check out the Clarus Victoria games, especially Predynastic Egypt. It's not quite a city builder, but closer to Civ. You start from building a settlement - some basic fields, huts, cemeteries, temples, barracks, and so on. It's nice, the map changes based on progress, and you end up growing from a city to taking territories up and down the nile.

Marble Age is notable too and has some mechanics unique to the game. Story is mostly the same, but there's three city states with slightly different tech trees. E.g. you'd need to fight the Persians at some point. Athens would be the classic path of farming, making alliances, building a wall and armies. Spartans need to raid for slaves for growth, but hold off on killing neighbors before facing Persians. Corinth would be more trade based and consider buying mercenaries and buying out the other city states.

I've bought all of them because they're an excellent ratio of time for fun as far as games go.


U want victoria 3 game by paradoxplaza


Maybe City State? https://store.steampowered.com/app/774351/Citystate/


That would be a fun game. Do as well as you might, and then in the end, you get screwed over by one or more of the global powers. Would you like to play a nice game of Kobayashi Maru?


Heart of Iron 4 mixed with Millennium Dawn: Modern day mod is something that resembles what you’re writing about, but on bit on a higher level.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=27773...


Special bonus action subgame for Afghanistan: Exfiltrate stolen central bank funds from the US :-)

https://therealnews.com/afghan-central-bank-calls-us-theft-o...


Plus free equipment donated by the USA. Plus no media coverage at all covering your atrocities because the media is aligned with those that pulled out, so everyone's going to focus elsewhere (Ukraine as an example).

I lived there for more than a year and a half. The things happening there now are terrible. But you don't know about it, because it's politically incorrect to discuss it right now. It's a massive tragedy.


There are plenty of boardgames to choose from:

- World in Flames

- Churchill

- Fort Sumter

- Food Chain Magnate


Also

- A Distant Plain


a similar but smaller policy based simulation game:

You are the government leader of a nation and a new pandemic is starting.

The science is not clear yet. How do you manage as the leader? What policies do you set up? What research do you pursue? Along with variables of budgets, economy, population morale, upcoming elections, travel, etc.

If there was a good model of how the policies affect economy especially, it would reveal to the players how hard lock-downs are on the economy.

If the dynamic between the federal state and city governments are modeled, it would show us how actual policy implementation happens. Just even how hard it is to test and track the spread of a pandemic.

This could indicate to people how hard it is to lead in such a situation. At the same time help the player evaluate how things were handled recently.


It's somewhat old, but the Caesar series might be what you're looking for.


Isn't that more of a city builder, like Sim City? I only ever played Pharaoh, so I may be off.


It does start off like that, but I think after you start an industry within your city, you gain access to empire management, where you start organizing trade between other cities, building roads, managing armies, etc. It's been a long time though, so I might be misremembering.


It's really mostly the cities, outside of the city management is really secondary (at least in Caesar and Zeus which I have played the most). I strongly recommend the whole series, they are really great games.


What about Colonization?

I probably spent more time playing it (and Alpha Centauri) than Civ.


I would like to have a civilization where you start on earth and then mid-game you launch your rockets and colonize another planet with aliens.


Before we leave is somewhat similar.

Build up a civ on 1 planet, scale to multiple planets, survive space whales...

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1073910/Before_We_Leave/


This is basically what Civ 2 + SMAC/X is.


A true "MMORPG".

Back in the day when the genre was new, people were fascinated by the potential of virtual worlds and virtual societies. Social scientists did online studies on player behavior and the interactions people had online, on spontaneous self-governance coming into existence, on how communities formed and developed, and many other similar topics. That potential was never fulfilled.

Today - some twenty years later - the MMORPG has become a genre of checking off boxes and making numbers go up, along a linear way as laid out by the developers for you. Apart from PvP and maybe some forced grouping, most games would play absolutely identical mechanically, if you were playing all alone on your own private server. You'd do the same quests, fight the same enemies, get the same loot. All the other players you get to meet online - they don't actually influence the game mechanics at all.

You play next to each other. Not actually with each other.

I'd like to see a game, where the sum of players (and their interactions) are greater than just the sum of it's parts. A game with a virtual economy, a virtual society, etc. - that advance and evolve in a player-driven fashion. A simulated game world that dynamically adapts. Some glimpses of this sort of thing can be seen in games like EvE. Old games (pre-WoW) like UO and SWG had some of that magic as well - but were marred by limitations of the technology of the day. This kind of stuff has evolved very, very little since then.

I would assume that with today's technology we should be able to get a lot closer to fulfilling that potential.


The problem is, games like that aren’t fun. It’s been tried.

Imagine coming home from work and hopping online to go do your second job. A virtual economy implies work. And unless there’s something to hook people in, no one wants to do that work.

Hence you end up with the quest grind and the dopamine trail.

If you can find a way out, I imagine it would be very lucrative. But it’s not really a technology problem.


My best idea so far for addressing this is to give all players exactly three characters, which they can switch between at any point. The goal would be for most of your "boring" productive output to be determined more by (character) resource allocation rather than participating in the grind yourself all the time.

For example, a group of players might establish a small town with its own laws. The benefits of joining this group would include protection of your self and your stuff from bandits, access to resources, and potentially a place to train in your character's skills. You might in return be required to allocate a certain amount of your characters' combined time to boring scriptable work like tending crops or patrolling the borders of the town.

You would have to design the game so that most players would feel naturally inclined to join some kind of group, whether to avoid being picked off by other players in the wilderness, advance their characters, trade, or just to have something to do.

It might not be made super-obvious to other players which characters are linked to the same player, but I think there would have to be a way to discover it in-game, or too many players would end up as double-agents. Maybe some ritual to discover a player's "soul bonds", and if they don't consent to it when applying to join your township then you would probably treat them as super-suspicious. :)


I've whiteboarded some very similar ideas to this! If multiple people are coming to similar conclusions, there might be something here.

In my thoughts, my hesitation is that I think I might have a bias for unit management, which is a new "thing" typical MMO players would need to start doing and optimizing in order to keep up.

So I wasnt convinced it would stick.

I think the new V Rising game has a well thought out and related mechanic along these lines in that you still have 1 character, but you can get "servants" which you send out on missions to collect / farm materials from areas you've surpassed


If you can passively make more money with more characters what stops someone from having a ton of accounts and just funneling resources?


I'd like to pretend the cost of a license would mitigate this, but yes, it would probably be disastrous in practice.

The capitalist in me says "oh goodie, people will give me more money to get more power in the game", but the part of me that cares about making a game that's actually good thinks that outcome would be pretty gross.

I wonder if there are some other things you could do to mitigate it, like only allowing characters to operate autonomously for a time that is proportional to how long they are controlled for. It's a half-baked idea, but my hope would be that it prevents the "pay-to-win" model from scaling.


> A virtual economy implies work.

a game called foxhole has attempted this by making Logistics a real portion of the game (as many wars are). Players semi cooperate to collect salvage, build armaments/supplies/bases, and supply the front line. Clans/Guilds self organize to produce pushes into key fronts, provide roving security (people can sneak behind lines and attack logi) .

It's actually mostly fun. Until you see a newb drive a tank that took you hours to procure wildly into the enemy and you rethink how you're living your whole life.


>> It's actually mostly fun. Until you see a newb drive a tank that took you hours to procure wildly into the enemy and you rethink how you're living your whole life.

Wow, this is depressing ... they actually managed to recreate one of things that I hate most about work in real life (that a lot of our hard work goes to waste because of stupidity of others).


The difference between stupidity and genius: stupidity has no limits. — someone


Well it's fun until logistics goes on strike and demands changes: https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/foxhole-players-launch-...


Savage also mixed in RTS so you could have one player play StarCraft while the others were units


I would argue that this is the exact problem of current modern games. The parent is suggesting something alternative, fun with other people.

Almost every current MMORPG is oriented on getting that virtual cash or other currency up in virtual economy, to make some linear progression for pre-defined ending.


Love Ironman mode in RuneScape for this reason. Taking the economy out entirely improves the modern game experience.

Similar to D3 removing the auction house years back


I haven’t been into MMOs in a long time, but years ago, I remember desperately trying to find a good one, but I found that not only do a lot of them have some grindy linear progression, but even worse was it was always so limited. I got sick of games that looked amazing but had basically no content.


Puzzle Pirates was the best game ever for a number of years.

An MMO without experience points or levels. Everything powered by puzzle games. Ships operate by people playing the sailing game, the bilging game, the carpentry game, the gunning game and the navigation game. On a tiny ship a good player can do it on their own by switching rapidly, but almost always, you need a crew of people working together, up to 100+ people on very large ships.

Your skill in the game decides how much you contribute to the ship's performance. To improve, you must actually improve.

Ships can fight other ships (in two minigames, one before boarding and one after), a whole fleet can fight another fleet for control over an island, with 1000+ people involved, in another game.

And the in game economy was really elaborate, and worked well. Again, based on people doing games in jobs.

Of course, people got immensely rich and could buy things you could not. Namely, some colors for clothes and ship paint were much rarer and more expensive than other colors; black came from kraken blood and was most expensive. So you could see who was rich, but it didn't affect gameplay. Of course being able to supply a fleet of ships and thousands of cannon balls to threaten an island did, but only if you could also get hundreds of people working those ships for you.


Wow, thank you for this blast from the past. I remember getting rich enough to own one of the bigger ships and losing it in in a fierce PVP battle. Good times!


This is subjective. I played FFXI for over a decade and despite it being more or less a second job, I truly loved coming home and hopping on and see what we were fighting for that evening.

Some people want that experience. You grow close to people when you talk to them every day for over a year. Comradery is formed etc;

You couldn't level up without 6 players to a party. Needed a healer, tank, DD. Everyone had a purpose, everyone had a job. If one person died, we all died. They just don't make MMO's like they used to unfortunately. Everyone gets a trophy is new style of play. It's bad for the integrity/soul of the MMO's but money talks so it is what it is.


Is FFXI what the poster was describing though? I got the impression that it was a world where the economy was mostly controlled and defined by the community via trading, crafting and agreements.

That runs contrary to the sort of on the rails, guided narrative that modern mmos embrace (like FFXI and WoW but maybe not Eve online).

Or am I misunderstanding FF? I didn’t think PvP was a big factor.


Most MMOs are overly focused on player engagement. MMOs should have built in botting mechanics, so you can just let your player do the tedious stuff while you are asleep/working/living real life.

Let me set my character up to run in circles mining ores or chopping down trees or killing whatever enemies it sees in an area until your character dies. I'll farm easier areas than I could when at my computer, but feel delighted when I log on to a full bag of loot (loot filters please!) and a 1.5 levels of XP.


One of the Final Fantasies (I forget which one, 10 was the last one I personally played, so I only ever saw my sister play it) had a concept of actions you could program into your off-hand characters. You had only a basic number of slots to define command to begin with, but as you progressed in level, more slots opened up and you could program more complex behaviors.


I believe you are talking about ff xii with its gambit system. It's sort of a simplified programming tool to program your AI companions behavior without having to directly micromanage them. For example, a companion can be programmed to heal ally if their HP is less than 50% hp, cast specific spell if there 3 enemies or more, attack nearest enemy in that priority order. I wish more games have this system.


The gambit system was pretty polarizing. Programmer types liked it, but a lot of people perceived it as "the game playing itself" and didn't.


The key is to have your characters work while you work. Kind of like EVE Online.

In an MMO that behaves like a true virtual world, characters shouldn’t just disappear just because you log off. They should carry on in virtual lives making progress for you so you can log in during the interesting bits of their lives and do fun stuff.


Try limiting players to 60 minutes per day. In the BBS days this worked because you got two TURNS per day. 24/7 access is what kills this sort of thing, IMHO.


This could be interesting. I feel like the problem with MMOs that give you too much freedom is how players with more time will just completely dominate everyone else within days of any new content launching. Also, in my experience bad/unfun behavior in general gets worse the more populated an MMO is (FFXIV being a nice exception), and this solution could help keep traffic down. The only problem is that no dev trying to make money would ever time-limit their players.


Perhaps time limited but only per realm/server/world? That way someone trying to get their fix can play across multiple isolated economies but still allow players to play more if they really want to (lets be real people would multiaccount anyway)


This was usually done by having separate instances with different time limits. That way all the lifers with 12 hours a day to spare could play together and let everyone else enjoy themselves.


I was thinking of something similar recently as I am a big fanatic of PvP games of different kinds. Problem is as I get older I have less time to play to keep up with my enemies and would love to have "adult" servers which are only on at certain times of the day (maybe even with some auto grinding on the off hours). To allow people to be on more even footing. I bet there would be a decent chunk of people who would enjoy this.


Turn based games can work well.

There is a multi-player browser-based version of Mike Singleton's Lords of Midnight that takes everything great about the original and pitted you against real opponents.


I beg to differ, World of Warcraft is some of the most fun I've ever had in my life. It was destroyed when they changed the game to have multi-server raids etc. that ended the social aspect of "your server is your world." No longer did you have to make friends and have a life on your server that was as addicting as real life. You just had to queue up and let the computer match you up with people. And then the magic was gone.


Have you played any sandbox games more seriously and joined some guilds etc? I would say WoW was more of a "world" in the start (but not on a comparable level to others) and turned less and less so over time. The one thing blizzard always managed really well however is a crazy level of polish. I am sure they could make any kind of game really shine.


The one way I can see for true MMORPGs, as outlined by the GP, to work, as I can see, is basically having an AGI director to handle arbitrary actions, along with a BCI to actually take those actions.


I've also been thinking about using small containers in the cloud to basically run NPC lives inside a MMORPG. I thought this would be what New World would bring to the table honestly.


That’s actually a fascinating idea.


And basically stolen from a certain type of manwa. (Overgeared in this case)

addendum: also infinite dendrogram


> The problem is, games like that aren’t fun. It’s been tried.

Doubt.

I've seen hordes of online players grinding for anything. People spending years and years to get useless achievements on WoW or years and years of Stratholme runs to drop the mount from Baron Geddon.

Don't even get me started on more farmy mmos, or games like Stardew Valley and the countless job simulators.


I don't think it's a problem of fun, but of profit. I too want an mmo that is closer to a social experiment than a slot machine, but one of those is easier to make and has a more reliable business model to justify the expenses to make it.


Second Life was once this grand experiment. I recall you ended up with weird things happening virtual real estate tycoon Anshe Chung being chased by a horde of scripted dildos chasing her avatar around. All the money in the virtual world still can’t save you from trolling.

I don’t really know what Second Life is doing now. It damn near ruined my real life so I don’t care to check in on it.


The line between work and play is not are clear cut as people think. Look at farming simulator games, be it the Harvest Moon style ones or the proper farming simulators. Look at trucking simulator games. Some programming games have problems harder than what I face at work. Many jobs can be turned into play by removing certain parts. It won't appeal to everyone, but the idea with an MMORPG would be to have many such possibilities and a player can have fun even if only a few matches with their preferences.


Along these lines, I remember Skyrim once being described as "at heart, the world's greatest hiking sim." Maybe Minecraft shares some of that.


Isn't there a pretty broad swath of what people find fun? I mean isn't Eve Online called a "spreadsheet simulator" (Long before the recent Microsoft Excel Integration)


Not true, EVE, Albion are like that (and probably a good number of others). Some survival type games with PvP features parts of that as well although they are regularly wiped. While the demand is smaller than mainstream MMOs the following is way more hardcore, there is a reason some of these games are going strong after 15-20 years.


Isn't the OG Sim City something like "work"?

I remember that game being really fascinating, and yeah a bit of a chore sometimes. I get how those types of games might not appeal to the masses in the way that the dopamine trail games do, but is there not still a niche for sandbox type games?


I played Tera about 10 years ago, when it was good.

Free market economy, free looting (anyone can get anything) with random distribution, and people could pass on them so the one who needs an item can get it. Everyone could exchange anything person-to-person. It's what made the "mmo" part for me.

There were tons of mechanics that allowed a medium geared person to outdo people with the best gear available - if you invested in crafting, for example, you could craft things that were otherwise unavailable (unless you bought them from someone) and if you used them properly you could smash anyone in PVP and single handedly do 5-7 person dungeons. One mistake and you were dead, though.

I loved the interactions with people. Some of the first moments were one guy who asked to resurrect him, he was just killed by a monster and was like "bro, pls, I don't want to walk all the way here again". So I ressed him, he added me to the friend list, we later went on a lot of hunts and dungeons.

Another time I was sneaking through pvp territory collecting some shit from enemy bases and I got killed by two randoms. They were surprised at my shit gear and said "yo, come back, we'll give you this stuff, we kinda feel bad :D". Went there thinking I'd get killed, but no, they helped and we also became friends.

At some point I was rich and bored and was just running PVP tournaments with my own virtual wealth. People fight, the winner gets 5,000 gold (decent sum) or some gear I had in storage.

Helped a lot of new people gear up, and they helped me.

Dungeons were fun when anyone could enter and re-enter. If someone died, we'd have to be very careful and kite/heal until they come back, and it was a thrill, we liked it. People were thankful for not being called dumb and being kicked. We even gave materials that they needed because they needed it more.

But people have changed these days. The playerbases seem to hate the above mentioned free trade. "oooh, what about real money trading?" "why does he get free gear from his guildmates?" "he gets help, I don't".

You needed to be friendly and work together, and the newcomers just didn't want that. They wanted a single player game with other players in it.

Not to "log in at 7pm EST so we can do X and Y". It wasn't even mandatory in most groups, just log in if you can, apologize if you can't.

But no, people wanted to just log in whenever and work on their own whatever.

Which is exactly what modern MMOs have become. Single player, heavily developer controlled games with a chat.


Not even MMO. I play Apex Legends, a character based BR. There is a ranked mode where each rank have an entry cost and you get points by placement and kills. While it’s a team game, the entry cost was so low that you could play aggressively - killing a few people and dying soon after - or survive by hiding - ratting - and get to a high rank easily. It quickly became a solo game, where people abandon their team to push fights they can’t win, hoping for a few kill, or leaving their teammates in fight they could have win otherwise.

They’ve just changed to a new system where you have to get both high placement and kills in order to rank up. That means relying heavily on your team to win the fights or strategizing rotation around the map. And some people are still complaining about being forced to play as a team in a team based game.


Your experience with TERA is akin to mine. Not only the game was innovative, skill based and overall fun to play, the interaction with other players was like none I had ever experienced.

BTW, did you ever made it to exarch[1] in the alliance? I only made it as far as commander during my time.

[1] https://tera.fandom.com/wiki/Alliance#Exarch


Ha, I tried, but no dice. Too much competition (and people cheating with multiple accounts). Best I got was Assault Commander, but I kinda liked to stay Defense Commander, the buffs could make a good party unkillable :D.

Probably could've when the game started dying, but I lost interest by then. The mass PVP was really fun with hundreds of people, though often laggy.

The combat system (still haven't seen anything like it, the initial devs were brilliant), the scenery (Seeliewoods was fantastic), the decently balanced, prolonged PVP at the time, all the crafting stuff and absolutely free market, plus the early playerbase made the game great even if it did have a repetitive endgame. Oh and there was no region lock so people from all over the world could play, like Guild Wars.

Spent most money on that MMO, ever. But I guess milking people is overall more profitable.

I lost my account when Enmasse migrated them to Gameforge or something, I just didn't bother. They're shutting it down for good next month.

Kinda why I hate MMOs nowadays, I'd rather have it all on my computer even if I won't play it :D


>The combat system (still haven't seen anything like it, the initial devs were brilliant), the scenery (Seeliewoods was fantastic), the decently balanced, prolonged PVP at the time, all the crafting stuff and absolutely free market, plus the early playerbase made the game great even if it did have a repetitive endgame. Oh and there was no region lock so people from all over the world could play, like Guild Wars.

I couldn't agree more if I wanted to, TERA's combat system and ambiance was unmatchable. You spoke of Seeliewoods; me and my boyfriend at the time got "married" in the Seeliewoods chapel, it was a blast. I have such fond memories of the place, it always saddens me knowing that I can't go back.

>I lost my account when Enmasse migrated them to Gameforge or something, I just didn't bother. They're shutting it down for good next month.

Same here, at the time of the migration the game already felt like a shadow of its former self. And even though, just like you, I had spent a sizable amount of money on it, I didn't really bother migrating.

I deeply wish to be able to have a similar experience again. I have tried so many MMOs since TERA and none have ever offered what it did.


I think you underestimate the number of people who live their lives on these games.


There are probably a number of MineCraft servers that achieve this. Back about 10 years ago there was the /r/CivCraft server. Not sure which ones are active now, but it did feel like a real world with a real economy, since there were even shops you could set up to sell materials for a price. You had to be careful who you piss off also, since people could be "jailed" in the ender world. There was a large element of alliance making / political process in the game since you have strength in numbers.


Minecraft is indeed a great example of a game pushing the envelope on player freedom - and allowing emergent gameplay.

Tip of the hat to you, good sir!

Still, Minecraft is pretty limited mechanically. The game doesn't actually recognize any of the stuff you mention. The games' mechanics - all the technological progression and stuff - work perfectly fine in single-player. Also the number of players per server isn't quite on MMO levels...

But yes, some elements of Minecraft would be great ingredients of the game I'm proposing.


> The game doesn't actually recognize any of the stuff you mention.

To be fair, neither does real life. Real life shops, jails, etc, are just collections of atoms with certain emergent properties resulting from how players have set them up.


> The game doesn't actually recognize any of the stuff you mention.

With mods, it does.


I haven't heard that name in a very long time.

Tell me, what town did you mainly reside in? I was over in Chiapas with the crazy leftists, one of whom erected a wool statue of himself. We were largely untouched by the HCF invasion, except for when their skirmishes with the World Police got close to our borders.

I offer you this classic, and hope you recognize it: https://youtu.be/BAzsolKHJfc


Yep I remember that like it was yesterday! If I remember correctly, in the Civ 1.0 map I hung out a lot in Haven and in Mt Augusta


Mt Augusta was a little before my time. By the time I got into the server, it honestly felt like one of the most difficult places to get settled into. Crowded, property costs too high, chaotic.

Dirty Ancaps everywhere. </s>

I'm pretty sure it was somewhere between late 1.0 and early 2.0, but I ended up in Carson City for a bit when it was coming online. Where they made a hole in the ocean, and turned into a city. A fun place to hang out and talk shit.

Do you have any 2d world maps of that era?


Sorry can't find any 2d world maps from the time, I'm sure there are plenty on the subreddit if you go looking :-)


The best Minecraft MMORPG I've seen is Monumenta ( https://playmonumenta.com/ ), which is made in the spirit of Complete The Monument (CTM) maps like Ragecraft (which is also a great experience!). A good video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEK-djlOkqE


I remember playing on towny servers years ago and holy crap that was fun. The kingdoms and roles, and wars managed to be more immersive than games based around that concept (cough bannerlord)


Expanding on your idea, I thought it would be interesting to have an MMORPG with multiple completely different clients. The easiest example might be in a future/sci-fi game, you have a normal game client for people moving around the game, and a Stock market client for people who want to play the stock market in the game. You could have a business simulation client as well maybe for shop keepers. Maybe a news website to try and bridge the gap between them all, but you could play one game (the stock market game) while never logging into the First Person "MMO" client but you're completely integrated. If you could think of a number of these different clients, I think it would be interesting.


I love this idea for so many games, but I'll try to stay on topic.

From elsewhere in thread, heavily snipped:

  games like that aren’t fun. It’s been tried. [...] hopping online to go do your second job [...] implies work [...] no one wants to do that work
I wouldn't want to do data entry in an FPS game, no, but people love "bakery simulator" type resource management games. It would be cool to link my grocery-line-time-waster score into my overworld bank account, enabling me to shop around for gear in stores set up (but not manually run) by other players, to use in the FPS portion of the game where I steal morsels from the full-sized humans (or am I getting my threads confused?).


EVE tried this with Eve Online + Dust 514 which was a PS3 exclusive. There were cool concepts like having your space ships show up to air strike the planet as they were fighting on the surface. It was interesting but ultimately Dust felt extremely low stakes in the world of EVE. I can’t really speak to its other problems I only tried it once or twice.


Dust 514 was a really, really cool idea that was dead on arrival because CCP (the company behind Eve) released it on a platform that was nearing the end of its lifecycle, and refused to release it on any other platform. It also had to introduce the Dust players to a fair number of the Eve mechanics, particularly around loadouts (fittings) and the economy.

The fact that the spaceship game was intertwined with the team-based FPS was really cool. FPS players (on planets) could be in the same clan/guild/corp as the spaceship pilots, and could call in airstrikes. In the spaceship game, your corpmates could maneuver into position and rain down lasers. This interaction had an effect on the local economy, which was an incentive for the spaceships to show up for airstrikes.


Yeah, I imagine a challenge would be making a second really fun game in a different genre from the first. The different 'games' would probably have to be relatively lightweight and lean into the fact that it's the interaction that is the fun part. Having a space MMO developer somehow land a super popular AAA FPS would be near impossible. I like how the battlefield games let you fly airplanes, but then it's not really a full blow flight simulator.


I'm a huge fan of API-first design and would love to see MMOs embrace this. Anything you do in game could be doable via APIs and those could be open to 3rd-party clients. That would allow people to develop those kinds of specialized clients.


I agree, I've always thought it'd be cool to develop a game that, for instance, you could meaningfully play from a full fledged console or a mobile phone. They might be different components or aspects of the game, but both would contribute to your world/quest/whatever. And just like real life, some people might specialize, and only ever play one aspect of the game, while others focus on other parts.


WoW had its auction house in the mobile client for some time. I don't know why they removed it. I suspect that people just automated it.


I agree. The beef I would add with those games is that they feel like theme parks. There's no real frontier. Elite Dangerous came close, it was a thrill to be the first one in a system. Genuinely don't know how you'd solve that, though.

One obstacle you have to overcome is that there has to be an investment that is risked by the players. There's not much of a cost to gank someone usually, or it's simply not allowed at all except in a controlled way. One thing that forces people into social cooperation is to protect against the potential for loss. As I understand it, confrontations with other players in EVE Online are dangerous because of that investment of time and/or money. That's part of what makes roguelikes and battle royales so compelling. That said, you have to balance it against being appealing enough to more casual players--how do you encourage investment without making it a boring grind or too expensive?


There are other ways next to protection against loss.

SWG for example had all items being player-made in addition to slowly loosing durability and breaking eventually. That means, instead of finding loot you can then use indefinitely, you were dependent on economy supply chains. SWG also made you dependent on player services - like doctors, entertainers and such.

I think there could easily be many casual friendly playstyles, like farming, harvesting, herding, entertaining, being mayor in a player city, etc. - in addition to more combat oriented play. Players should be able to choose one style or the other, or mix and match to their liking. And every such playstyle should both need and provide "stuff" from/to other playstyles on a regular basis.


Elite Dangerous is one of the most fulfilling grungy space sims I've ever played. I'm not much of one for the dog fighting side of things, but I do keep coming back to Elite to just do cargo runs or swap over to an Adder and push myself into the dark - scooping fuel off suns and try to avoid space hazards while just ogling the beautiful scenery.

It is a very strange "game" though, so I understand why it's not for everyone.


I have a MUD open right now in another window. I still play it because despite the lack of graphics, the freedoms of player interaction are interesting and far beyond whats available in modern open world games.

Attack a same side player? Sure! You might get warranted by the local militia (which may or may not have real players in it), but you can do it.

Pickpocket players? Sure. Change sides mid fight? Yep. Be a spy or mole for the enemy? Chase people down in 'safe zones'? Completely ignore PvP? All up to you.

Another thing i really like is looting. If you die, anyone can grab gear from your corpse. If the enemy get it, you're gear is gone. Theres no perma death in this particular Mud, but losing gear adds stakes to PvP. It also means gear is a real in game commodity, but also people dont get too precious about it. Die in the fight? Reequip asap and get back out there.


MUDs are a class of game that is terribly underrated. I've played on a few different one (mostly toward the RP focused end of things) but I think the whole family of games shows just how effective imagination can be when coupled solely with text descriptions.

I have extremely strong memories from Shadows of Isildur[1] and met my spouse there!

1. http://www.middle-earth.us/


All of your points also exist in Renaissance era Ultima Online. There are a number of custom shards with playerbases that want this exact experience.


Yup! Ultima is another great game from when they were still 'figuring out' open world games, before they became stale.


In terms of mmorpgs, I'd love to see a game with actual human GMs behind the scenes enabling players to have far more latitude in their actions. I'm envisioning something like a cross of EVE and tabletop rpgs.


You should check out MUDs - MUDs (being entirely text based) are easy for any old person to modify and create within... no texture or graphics work - just writing. As a result a lot of MUDs have extremely dynamic worlds that have large ongoing plots being managed by the GMs.


The old Ultima Online had GMs pop in and create quests and random events. Non-scalable, but - oh - so much fun


"Non-scalable" is a rather medium excuse though. There's quite a few ways around this:

1. Raise prices enough to employ enough humans. I imagine there's quite a few people out there who'd be happy to spend a pint's price on a quality gaming experience.

2. Give the GM better tools. Higher level half-scripted events + better sentiment monitoring. I imagine a single competent GM can run in parallel a bunch of events keeping quite a few players engaged.

3. Recruit experienced players to do this job for you. I imagine there's quite a few people who'd do this job for in-game goods, as long as an hour of GM-ing gives a couple hours worth of grind of goods.


Currently building this. We're launching in August.


Give us some kind of link / mailing list so I dont have to remember 'til august. Spoiler: I wont remember.


Seconding maerF0x0, what's the game called?


Gemstone IV does this.


I'm currently building a game like this and it's pretty close to finish.

The game is a Space Survival MMORPG that takes place far into the future, where human civilization is stranded in an O'Neill Cylinder in space. No one in the cylinder knows anymore how they got there and why they are there in the first place since so much time has passed. Technology has also been lost due to the very long time periods, so life and survival is tough in the cylinder.

However, the longer someone survives, the stronger and the more rare their character becomes. We expect only a few percent of players to survive for longer than a couple of weeks and only 1% for longer than a month. However, those that have survived for longer than a month are very strong characters that can usually lead and provide protection to a village of 50 to several hundred people.

The biggest danger to the player are other players, since the entire game is PvP. This means, you need to quickly band up with others to protect against other players. There are no guns in the game, since there is no technology in the cylinder, so it takes several minutes of beating someone up to to actually get their health to zero. There is also voice chat, so it's quite brutal.

Here is our teaser trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg4GHUIXB8U and here is some pre-alpha gameplay footage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFHzg0R8sUo. We'll likely be able to go into early access in June on Steam, it would be great to get your feedback on it!


Gives me rendevous with rama vibes!


That's the one! :)


Can I piggyback on yours?

A true FPSMMORPG. Closest thing we have to this with a good community is Destiny. I wish for fully open worlds, good storylines and everything you said. I believe that was the original idea with the project that became Overwatch but sad it didn’t pan out.

I understand that level building and all is much harder when the expectation of detail is higher in FPS but hopefully that gets easier with better tools. I would think that it’s still Bungie’s ultimate goal. Hopefully Destiny can evolve into that. Whatever game does it right, has the potential to be one of the biggest games ever.


While Destiny fits the RPG portion better - Planetside 2 gets much closer to the MMO side and I really, really want to see someone else make a similar game without the terrible components. PS2 if the monetization was toned down and the global player interactions were ramped up would be an amazing experience.

You'll get snippets of how awesome the game could be if you play in an active outfit and try and coordinate in platoons... but oh gosh does that game have its warts as well.


I don't particularly care whether it's first person or some other perspective. Whether it's a shooter (or some other form of combat) isn't really relevant to my point either.

Open world yes - that's totally an ingredient that goes in there.

Storylines rather not. The thing is that storylines are pre-written, canned content that's just identical for every player that consumes it. In order to fit my bill, the "plot" of the game would actually have to be defined by what players are doing (and the game simulation reacting to that) - it would have to emerge dynamically. Saga of Ryzom originally tried to go a little bit along those lines, but due to the technological constraints of the day, the game world would have to evolve through updates/patches mostly.


The issue with SoR was not really technological constraints. More budgetary and time constraints, and the people who had the creative vision left shortly after release.

The commercial game is now run by a finance guy and a web developer, pretty much. Neither of which seem to be interested in pursuing the original more daring vision.

The tech is definitely capable of being expanded into a real dynamic world.

What you see in the game right now is effectively auto generated placeholder content that got rushed in to have a deliverable by release.

Imagine if the tribes and mobs actually moved their locations dynamically, instead of being in the same spots eternally. Players could help out tribes, supply routes for trading goods between tribes would need to be maintained, mob populations would be affected by player activity, etc.


Destiny was amazing but good god the grind...

Wonderful screwing around game. An extroverted friend of mine during the pandemic made it his primary social network. Made a lot of friends.


You might enjoy Eco. It's not quite an MMO, but it is a multiplayer game that can have large server populations where everyone must work together to advance through a collective "tech tree". It starts very similarly to a Minecraft playthrough, but has a much deeper cooperative progression of advancing different trades and resource gathering methods until the server can construct a laser cannon to destroy the meteor en route to impact the planet. There are also pollution and environmental mechanics, and diplomacy and collective governance. So you may have a player who produces lots of ore, but poisons the oceans to do so, and other players can collectively lobby to restrict that through the government. But at the same time, everyone must rely on the production of ore to further advance the tech tree.

It can be a lot of fun with the right group of people. There's also a lot of flexibility for adjusting the game's parameters, so you can make it work with 2 people or 20 so that everyone needs to work together but the tasks don't seem insurmountable. It's one of the most novel and interesting multiplayer game concepts I've played in recent memory.


It's never gonna be a AAA game. The broader market just doesn't want this, and you'll need the broader market if its a AAA game.

New World hit on some of these points at one point, but they backed down pretty fast.

Ashes of Creation may or may not hit some of these points. But that game is... overly ambitious, to say the least. They're trying to go full tilt on everything and I'm skeptical as to whether it's gonna work out well in the end.


Ever heard of A Tale In The Desert?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Tale_in_the_Desert


Oh man, I loved this game almost 20 years ago.

My friend and I started building on the side of a pond far away from everyone. We would get home from school and tie our house phone to our heads with our dad's tube socks so we could stay in constant communication while we collected resources and build up our enterprise.


Yes! It's amazing that it is still going.


Most popular MMOs do have healthy economies and virtual cultures. You do need to participate though. If party play is enforced then party members certainly do affect game mechanics.

Maybe you want a pvp focused MMO? Maybe something like PlanetSide with more of an economy? Either that or maybe you want some big story points influenced by players?

Honestly I think you'd probably be disappointed unless you are personally part of the group that made the influential change. That takes a lot of investment as the mechanic would either be pvp or feel like its on rails.

Maybe you just want an RP wow server and a guild that is into grinding for Glam/RP loot according to their own stories?

I don't see how it's a technical problem at all. It sounds like your major issues are with story telling. Can you explain what technology you think is missing?


Some persistent world NWN servers might fit the bill. Some are heavy on roleplaying, and are more of chat servers with optional combat rather than a traditional MMO setting.


NWN is a great example as well. It's imho quite underrated/overlooked how ground-breaking that game was, considering it's editor- and GM-tools.

It's a bit too static though, to fit the bill of what I'm longing for. Needs less pre-made modules, more dynamic simulation - so that the game world actually evolves in response to what players are doing. ;)


The Mount & Blade Warband Persistent World mod servers are like this. All equipment and resources have to be mined, crafted, and used by players, and the only gameplay was player interactions - trade, banditry, war. Amazingly good fun when you're on the right servers with the right people. No idea if its still active or not.


I’m not sure how WoW isn’t/wasn’t just ticking off boxes? That’s all MMORPG’s ever basically. “Go here, kill boars, bring me 5 of their tusks. By the way it’s a 25% drop rate so really you’re killing ~20. Oh and they’re often by themselves across a large area. Oh and other players need the same amount too so you’re competing for the kills. Oh and there are baby boars harassing you that don’t count. Oh and there’s no quest marker until you’re mini map can see it so it’s going to take you 10min of wandering around a featureless field before you know you’re in their spawn area.

As obnoxious as I’m being, the thrust of basically any MMORPG is grinding hours of boring tasks to get minutes of awesome time with the fruits of your labor. That’s how they make you stick around - roadblock after roadblock after roadblock. You remove the grind (d3 auction house) and you remove your players.


FFXIV doesn’t really have mandatory grind. They instead make the main story actually good (better than most other FF games) and so people will buy the expansion packs even if they don’t stick around every other month.


I agree but there’s a reason I didn’t say “literally every MMORPG does this.” FFXIV definitely stands out as a notable exception. SE is also big enough that they don’t need FFXIV to generate insane revenue to justify its existence, and good on them for making good use of that. It’s a profitable title that has also built them a lot of good will as a company, good will that’s been sorely needed lately.

My point is, most MMORPGs depend on giving you relatively simple tasks but finding ways to make them take three hours.


> a genre of checking off boxes and making numbers go up, along a linear way as laid out by the developers for you

Feels like a FAANG job


So the largest public server (white tiger) for the game eco https://play.eco/ might scratch that itch.


I would be in your views on it's economy and settlments gameplay in SWG. In some ways, Star Citizen may shape out to be a good replacement for SWG, if settlements, economy and manufacturing come out well there would be scenarios that aren't possible without an organisation or cooperation and real benefits to being part of a settlement. Think manufacturing pipelines and trading routes that can't be handled by one person. There are also ships you couldn't possibly fly and afford on your own, capital ships and the like.

The caveat to a game like that, is it lives and dies by it's player count. You really want to be on the bandwagon when it kicks off.


For me, this is a role that MUDs used to fill. Text-based online games with player driven governments, economies, and theologies. You, as a person, could work your way up a ladder to be a renown combatant, or diplomat, or merchant; but, none of that had any value if not for the other people playing the game. You got dropped off in a virtual world and truly had agency to play a role.

Ultimately as I got older they became too much of a time sink and I just can’t play them anymore, but back in my high school days they were an absolute blast.


Check out Foxhole. There's one server with thousands of people fighting on one map in a massive war. All weapons, ammunition, structures, etc are built by players from mined resources. The "High Command" Discords for each faction have their own internal tools used for gathering intel with computer vision and stuff. There's also a live map of the war: https://foxholestats.com/


I've heard of some success with this where people using mods on minecraft to implement economies on private servers.

But yes, sandbox MMO's were a different beast than the themepark MMO's we have today, I had high hopes for Everquest Next when it was announced (like ten years ago now) but it ended up vaporware I guess, and that was the last I've heard of anyone actually trying. I guess metaverse might count but I've mostly ignored anything that facebook tries to do.


"Id like to see a game, where the sum of players (and their interactions) are greater than just the sum of it's parts. A game with a virtual economy, a virtual society, etc. - that advance and evolve in a player-driven fashion. A simulated game world that dynamically adapts."

This describe Soulforged perfectly: https://play.soulforged.net/

It's funny but if you drop by the Discord, we've been having lengthy conversations yesterday on why this might not be fun.

The short of it is that it hurts solo players and individualism. Communes are extremely powerful and necessary for progress. There are also certain professions that are popular (like mining) but gated because of the rarity of mining picks. So a lot of people give up on their mining dreams for the greater good. The mining problem was patched just this morning, but solo gameplay is still a problem - you need to be part of some group to get anywhere.

The other major problem with a sandbox is many have no idea where to continue. They chop wood poles and then chop higher level wood and making housing from that. And then don't really have much to aspire for other than hoarding wealth. So the dev is adding quest-like features: one classic MMO quest system and a player based system, where people can pay for say, ore, or a rare material found from certain beasts.

But the world is based a lot on the players, from settlements to the name of materials.

If you guys plan on joining, civilization is past the river. Head south outside the tutorial cave, then keep moving NE past the bridge. The roads are also player built but nobody got around to making roads for the newbies.


On a bit of a tangent, there was a prequel. A plague hit - it was very annoying but lethality was low.

Half the player base decided to quarantine. There was a route west, which involved a dangerous swamp and a climb up a mountain that most newbies couldn't make if they didn't have the right buffs. New citizens would be escorted to the mountain, quarantined for 4 days, then buffed so they could cross it.

The other group was the "gains" group. They figured out that sparring increased stats rapidly and they could buff stats to the point where the disease was no longer a problem.

So then there was a PvE war with the orcs, which hit an uneasy peace, where the player base decided to just give tribute of weapons and armor to them. A third faction spawned, the orc sympathisers, who snuck more steel weapons to the copper age orcs. A smith player unlocked the orc race this way and black market emerged trading iron to the orcs.

The gains faction were uneasy with this and broke the peace treaty. The rest of the game, unhappy with breaking a treaty, moved west.

The gains faction conquered the orcs. The orc god was impressed and there was a party involving player-crafted beer, and a brawl with a god that increased someone's dodge skills to superhuman levels. The orcs were assimilated and they created a warrior-murderhobo faction in the north. They took on small territory, near a rich mine and some rare leathers used in armour. By the end of the game, everyone up north including chicken farmers had the highest tier swords.

The isolationist faction had a larger block of land and established trading relations with the dwarves. They got access to many of the remaining dungeons and artifact zones.

Sadly the game died shortly after, because of tech debt, server costs, and a burnt out player base. After a year, it was rebuilt into what became Soulforged today.


> Old games (pre-WoW) like UO and SWG had some of that magic as well - but were marred by limitations of the technology of the day.

Tibia too. It used to be an extremely social game. Everything was hard so people had to play together. It's been modernized and made much easier, nowadays it feels like the magic is gone. The changes began with restrictions on player killing and spiralled from there.


I think it’d be cool if all the players in a server are part of a country in a constantly changing state of warfare and alliance with other countries in a huge world. Where your goal is not to level up, but to participate in actions that expand your homeland or fend off invaders or expand your economy.

The larger and wealthier your country becomes, the more you become a threat to other powerful nations who will want to stamp you out. Or maybe there would be revolutions, alien invaders, etc. if you become too powerful.

Alternatively, if the players of the realm fail to defend their lands or make peace with their enemies, they might be conquered and forced to live under another empire, fighting their wars and paying high taxes, until one day they can scheme to win their independence again.

Of course, this does essentially mean your world can become irreparably messed up, but that’s life. Maybe people would give up on a server and move on to a new world with new ambitions about how they can do better next time.


God I miss the glory days of Ultima Online.


This is happening right now, but in small MMOs, usually with 128 or 256 maximum players online. Most common in heavily modded Minecraft servers, but also in many other games. There are also some roleplaying focused servers in games like GTA5 or Rust, which generally reset much more quickly.

Also see this game, ECO: https://store.steampowered.com/app/382310/Eco/

listen to first 10 minutes of this podcast: https://podtail.com/en/podcast/brad-will-made-a-tech-pod/79-...


I have high hopes for the upcoming MMORPG from Riot Games (maker of League of Legends/Valorant/Legends of Runeterra/Wild Rift). So far all of their new games have been very solid entrants in their respective genres. They have consistently had strong storytelling and art/design throughout their games, and they've mentioned there will be a focus on co-op content in the RPG. It's probably still several years away, though.

That said, I think part of the problem is that we've all gotten older, and no one has time to spend 5+ hours a day in a game world anymore. The younger generation may be able to experience it, but for those of us who have memories of old MMOs, it's unlikely we'll ever truly relive those nostalgia-filled moments.


These aren't quite true MMOs but will scale up to 40+ people online at once, with totally emergent social structures:

+ Rust

+ Ark

+ Conan Exiles


I think the recently-released V Rising could be added to that list as well.

Seems a great game.


Can confirm. Is excellent.


Look for the Ryzom Core Discord or IRC chat. There's a couple of us in the open source community hoping to build such a thing, based on an existing MMO codebase and assets.

The key point is that all missions should be impactful on the world, and not merely reward oriented.

We have the tech for an MMORPG. We've been working on simplifying the onboarding curve for new contributors first. In a few months we can start exploring game mission mechanics. :)


Lots of games have dedicated "role-play" servers. When I read your comment i instantly thought of this: https://www.polygon.com/22512951/gta-online-new-day-role-pla...

Conan Exiles is another game that has RP servers of a different variety.


Some of the browser based games like Travian, Inselkampf and OGame had similar meta games like Eve Online where the diplomacy, alliance management and game tool building took up far more time than the actual game.

They were for all intents social constructs with the game as the centre point. I'm looking to build a new version with different scenarios but it is the social aspect that makes them so compelling.


This is basically what people mean by The Metaverse. Digital cash + social interaction + player created environment and content. Getting all three of those right will be a big winner since it will literally mean the creation of a second world that people can inhabit. I don't think it's possible without any of those three elements.


What about an MMORPG with Chronotrigger-like features where two or three players together can do a special move.


I have been trying to make one like this for a decade, kind of a next-gen UO. Right now it's big ideas and the beginnings of a world. I'm not promoting it but feel free to take a look! I have a discord for discussing these games as well, though it's not active.


I think the constraint here is that you need people to create novel objects with novel functionality in the virtual world and then sell them to have an economy. That might be tricky but if you could solve it well then, your imagination is the limit.


If people love the world they'll be happy to make things without financial recompense. Lots of folks used to run RP guilds in WoW and other games with entire worlds constructed out of whole cloth - if you build a flexible system and supply the players then DMs will emerge and create gameplay within the world - just like D&D DMs get into it for the fun alone.


I can see a couple of obstacles:

Complex simulation based mechanics are much harder to implement than more basic fighting mechanics.

Puzzles require more work and hand crafting than creating new monsters to kill.

The whole project is probably more work, harder to scale, and has an unproven audience.


- A low-brow, open world space sim. (Yes, I'm aware of Star Citizen, No Man's Sky, Elite and all the others, but hear me out):

I would love to fly my cheap, derelict Lada Riva equivalent of a spaceship into a space station. No landing sequence or wrestling away of controls, I want to land on my own and I want to land shittily. As I touch down, garbage is stirred up and space rats scurry away from the landing site. I get out of the ship (of course, the canopy jams and needs some hitting to open) and some spaceport employee alien comes running towards me to complain that I'm parked across two landing pads. I walk away, muttering "yeah, whatever" and head to the bar.

...you get the picture. This world, with trading, exploration, space and land combat and great characters and stories and I'd never stop playing it.


Star Citizen itself is my answer... I remember reading an article in Popular Science about it [0] when I was a kid, and specifically the sentence about "For example, designers modeled each ship’s landing gear to retract without interfering with the hydrogen fuel system that feeds the nuclear reactor." That sounded like the coolest thing ever.

So, now that I've gotten eight years older but still haven't seen the game release, it makes me kinda sad.

Relatedly, another PopSci article [1] promised that flying cars would be available by ~2015. That never happened either :-(

[0] I read it in print, but here's the online version: https://www.popsci.com/article/gadgets/space-game-gets-real/.


I, too, wish Star Citizen existed. It currently doesn't, despite periodic appearances to the contrary.


LevelCap has done some great star citizen videos recently, just him and some friends playing the game. If you're interested in the current state check out his channel:

https://youtu.be/ONYFCKdrPLs


Star Citizen was the first thing that came to mind too! I "pledged" in 2017 as a teenager and now I'll be graduating college next year. Unbelievable how poorly the game's been managed.


WC: Privateer is a little bit like that, especially if you played the WC (wing commander) games first. Moving from a military, "we have budget for everything" (ammo, missiles, fixes) to a "oh, should I fix my auto pilot or buy an extra missile?" setting feels a little bit like that.

Plenty of low-brow there as well, and basically being forced into the plot against your will is very on-point for a "I just want to make a buck" character.


Yeah - Privateer 2, the darkening got me into the whole genre. Five CD-ROMS in a multi disc case, Clive Owen, Mathilda May, Jürgen Prochnow, John Hurt, Christopher Walken, Brian Blessed and Amanda Pays and Dani Behr playing in the cutscenes. If you could have walked around the space stations and planets in3D it would have been as close as it gets to this.


I could see something like this being REALLY cool in VR.

Elite Dangerous supports VR but everything is too clean. You need that layer of dirt and wobbly landings for authenticity.

(Disclaimer - I've only played all of like 15 minutes of ED in VR)


In this same vein, I want a modern remake of Escape Velocity with the high quality choose-your-own story arcs, but multiplayer. The graphics could be absolute garbage and I'd still play it daily.


I think Mount & Blade: Warband is a bit like that, but in a medieval setting, of course.


Fwiw Endless Sky is a pretty good remake of EV, though it's fairly linear and single player.


Unfortunately development has been paused for over two years now. But yes, outside of Arpia + some other total conversions for older EVs, this is really the only thing out there that directly scratches the EV itch.

The closest contenders IMO are StarSector, the X series, Free Space 2 with extensive modding. Then many games that are similar to those 3.

I have still yet to find a space game holistically more enjoyable than EVN though.


Hmm, paused by the main dev? Probably yeah, but community continues to develop it if you check the discord group and git commits. There's some model/sprite rework and the coalition campaign that they were working on the last I checked.


Try the new Rebel Galaxy game. It does blue collar space game quite well, even if it didn't end up being my cup of tea


Thanks for the referral. The trailer sure looks like something I'd be into.


Not a video game but there's a board game called Galaxy Trucker that ticks a few of these boxes--low brow, space trash, best effort ridiculousness.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/31481/galaxy-trucker


You're describing the game X4, minus the land combat.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/392160/X4_Foundations/


I played the X series since X2, I found the latest X3 (TC, AP) more enjoyable than Rebirth and even X4. X2 had the landing part (quite annoying, in reality), X3 had the fun, later games had better graphics but not the same immersion. Unfortunately the universe is quite limited, even with 100 sectors, and very static endgame.


I'm imagining the 1970s but in space, like a Heavy Metal[0] video game.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Metal_(magazine)


Space Station 13?


Ostranauts definitely gets the "flying heaps of scrap" and manual landings down. Last run my first ship was a converted cargo container with no life support.


Problem with the space heap of scrap aesthetic is that in real life space, even aside from all the other problems you need a lot more radiation shielding than that to survive outside low Earth orbit.


Not if you know how to cure cancer ;)


Sounds like Space Quest but with modern game play.


This is what i want!! Space quest with Botw gameplay!


Lol... very much so!


> trading

How can that be enjoyable though? You're just hauling cargo from point A where it's cheap to point B where it's expensive. Even in Eve's player driven economy it's a grind.

> exploration, space and land combat and great characters and stories and I'd never stop playing it

Completely agree. I really enjoyed exploring planets in Elite Dangerous.


This is basically the Star Wars aesthetic, I hope we get a nice non-MMO open-world Star Wars game again. We probably will.


This is the exact vibe Anachronox (2001) had.

It's 86% off on Steam right now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/242940/Anachronox

But it's not a space combat sim, it's a sci-fi RPG.


I really enjoyed that game. Tons of personality.


Sounds like an infinite procedurally generated VR game of Red Dwarf.

But not this https://reddwarf.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Dwarf_XI:_The_Game


Beyond good and evil 2? If it ever goes out...


Holding my breath...and turning blue.


X4: Foundations, gets closest to this for me.


With a sidekick called... Murty?


reminds me of battlestar gallactica and landing without clamps


I want to play a real-time strategy game with a limit to the number of actions per minute.

Look, I'm an old man now. I can't compete on reaction speed against 13-year-olds micro-managing each unit to perfection. But I can macro. I can plan. I can strategize. I can do that better than those damn kids.

I want everyone to have a pool of 5 orders, refilling itself by 1 order per <time period> (1 second? 3 seconds?). Orders can be to as many or as few units as you want. And if you give too many orders, they queue up until you have more to give.


An alternative approach is to limit the precision and latency of commands.

For example, you can tell a soldier, "attack this general area" or "attack in this direction", but you can't actually micromanage their movement and other actions.

Then you introduce mechanics/stats like "communication effectiveness", "professionalism", "morale" which increase or decrease the precision, latency, and effectiveness of commands. For example, an elite special forces unit might have perfect command reception, allowing you to micro it. But a grunt would have very low reception and need a nearby commander's aura to boost their reception and allow even the most basic commands through.


And what about the grunt who reads the map upside down?


We don't call them grunts, we call em butter bars (2LT).


I always loved the experimental RTS game Liquid War: https://www.gnu.org/software/liquidwar6/

The only player input is to move a beacon. The beacon has the same movement speed limit for all players, so the only thing left is to strategize how to move the beacon so the "army" can engage in the best way.


This reminds me of an old RTS(?) game called Majesty. The interesting thing there was that you build buildings and such, but you have no control over individual units. You can try to motivate them by placing bounties and such, and different unit types are more or less receptive to those incentives. So speed/micromanagement have very little benefit, though strategy and efficient sequencing would still be relevant.


Turn-based strategies might suit you better.

There is a reason why they are a completely different genre of games.

I enjoyed playing Age of Wonders (all titles) because I was getting frustrated with Starcraft: Brood War.


They do.

But I also like the real-time aspect. I like the urgency. I just want something in the middle between "You can't move your hand ultra fast so you lose" and "I will spend 10 minutes considering the optimal move".


I agree 100% with this and havent found the right game for it. not exactly RTS, but friends and I play Civ5 with 1-2 minute turn timer and it's a pretty good balance.


I think there might be enough of a market for something in-between.

There is an itch to be scratched by people who want to fight with a balance of quick and strategic decisions. Where "quick" is fluid. For example, when your 1 second decision is a really good 1 second decision, and you realize that with 10 seconds you wont improve it much - then you want to be able to make the decision in 1 second and then not be punished by someone who took 5 seconds to make an equal decision, and spent another 5 making it only slightly better. You also dont want to be punished by people making your quick decision obsolete through brute force of action.

Basically, something that promotes thinking before acting - while also promoting thinking efficiently over thinking exhaustively.

I am not sure yet what design principles best bring this out in a game, but I have been thinking about it a lot.

turn-based is great (big civ5 fan) but it has the opposite problem - it favors the player who takes the most advantage of the turn timer.

Ive thought a lot about possible hybrids, but havent settled on anything really catchy yet. Some ideas are cooldowns instead of turns, or turn timers that are so aggressive that barely anything is accomplished each turn - but you get a lot of turns so it's okay to burn some rather than commit to a mistake


Age of Wonders was great! They've done some really good mods with new units, more maps and changing the difficult so the heroes are not too strong.


This (or, the experience you're looking for) is available now, by using compositions more suited to it and adjusting your play, but it does require departing from the meta (which I agree is over-focused on micro).

It tends to mean more: splash damage, retreating, turtling, bigger units, expanding, scouting, moving along side lanes. All of these work to get you more for your clicks.

There is a very real sense in which you can shrink your pool of tactics to those with "good UI", allowing you to play more abstractly, similarly to how you'd want expressiveness in a programming language. If you treat your strategic plan as an engineering solution, and then try to reduce moving parts and possible failure points...turns out that is in fact possible.

Retreating, for instance, is a much simpler (in the Rich Hickey sense) endeavor than attacking. It's just less likely to go wrong---fewer things behind you, simple movement rather than dismantling a defense, etc. Doesn't mean you should never attack, just that you should appropriately cost complexity when weighing your strategic options.

Splash damage lets you work on an area level rather than a unit level---another source of abstraction.

Expanding tends to give huge benefits per click compared to other things, and lets you afford bigger units which require less micro.

This doesn't come for free, you do have to play more conservatively and think outside the box ("moving along side lanes" is how you get space for free, which we are quite profligate about sacrificing when we retreat), but it's very possible.


This one looks interesting: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1309610/Line_War/


To extend this a bit, I'd love an RTS where I can create macros or programs and assign them to units. I'd love to watch them play out, then tweak or reassign macros to units in real time. I keep wishing Planetary Annihilation had an API.


This exists, it is called Screeps.


It's a 14 year old game at this point, but I enjoyed "Tom Clancy's EndWar". It's meant to be played with a gamepad, so it doesn't have much micromanaging. There can be at most 24 "units" on the map at any given time, 12 per side. Multiplayer splits divides the unit count equally among members of the team. Each unit is comprised of a bunch of smaller units (vehicle units are 4 vehicles, infantry units are 4 groups of 5 soldiers, etc.), but you control all of them as a single unit.


Why not just make it turn based then?


Because real time is more exciting.

I love turn based games, but there is definitely a different feel with a RTS that feels less ‘boardgamey’.

I know what OP means - ie StarCraft without the micro.


Age of Empires 4 removed a lot of the micro common in the previous games. You can now no longer dodge projectiles which is a major win for non micro gameplay.

I have played it for almost 50 hours now and I don't feel you have to do things too quickly if you aren't aiming to be in the top 100. If you have already memorized your plan and responses, it becomes pretty slow and stress free.


Because not every trade-off is best resolved by taking the extreme.


Personally I like the idea, it doesn’t need to be fully turn based - there would still be some skill involved in using your orders efficiently. Plus, there would be a new emergent gameplay mechanic to manage: not overflowing your order queue with extraneous commands.


Turn based games with too many players become boring when you're waiting for your turn.


I used to be very active in the Incremental/Idle game community and penned a few games myself.

At some point I toyed with the idea of an Idle strategy game. Battles would play automatically, and as a player your intervention was purely at the strategy level: manage your armies, resources, etc. Think Total War but every battle is auto.

This was a bit boring so I pivoted a little: battles would be mostly automatic, but players had a limited number of actions. For each battle players would set up their troops and these would fight automatically. You'd have a limited number of action points, say 6, that you could spend on things like spells or reinforcements. Also you would win 1 action point for every minute.

I wrote a prototype for this, but I never made it work. In my mind I imagined an epic struggle where two players would fight tooth and nail for several minutes until one just about won the battle. In practice battles were either an endless stalemate or one player quickly steamrolled the other.

There might be a good idea there, but it might require far more work balancing and pacing that I could put into it.


That's what World of Warcraft does, it has a Global Cooldown system to help account for unstable connections.

It's only 1 second or so, and lots of actions are off the GCD, but all you would need to do is extend that time and put more things on the GCD and you'd effectively get what you're looking for.

I don't think it'll slow things down as much as you're hoping for, though.


It's about the number of orders you can make for individual or small groups of units, e.g. split attack orders so each part of your army blows one enemy unit in one shot thus not wasting DPS. The best example is Brood War pro player Jaewong who literally had 70+% win rate in a rock-paper-scissors called Zerg vs Zerg.


If you’re not familiar, RPGs call a similar mechanic to this “active time battle” or ATB—more or less turn-based but the turns are asynchronous and constantly ticking, and if you miss giving an order before one elapses, it’s gone. I know that’s not what you’re looking for, but maybe the term will help in your search.


Honestly, it's a big conception that success in RTS games rely on high APM. Great strategy and macro will get you to the 99th percentile in most rts games. I notice that a lot of players that are in the lower percentiles are those who focus more on trying to improve APM rather than strategy or macro.


>Great strategy and macro will get you to the 99th percentile in most rts games.

... if you meet the bare minimum.

You won't have large success in StarCraft if you won't even notice the banelings running toward your marines, not even talking about splitting them.


There are some assumptions here:

- you made marines

- they are accessible to a-moving banelings without having to go around terrain and/or through tank fire, marauders, mines

It's quite possible to do low-apm styles in SC2, but you have to actually do them, rather than trying to be budget Maru.


Infamously, successful SC2 pro player Whitera only had about 100-125 APM. I manage that pretty comfortably as a middle aged dude. I think you could definitely do more to de-emphasize micro, but even the big bad SC2 isn't as high-APM as people think.


This isn't what you are asking for (sorry!) but the "Creeper World" series are RTS where you are encouraged to slow time down, or pause, when planning. Doesn't work like that in multiplayer, but I enjoyed the campaign. I'd just stat with the latest one (4).


Check out Winter's SC2 Low APM Challenge. He gets to the Masters league with all three races - using 100-120 APM in the diamond league, and way less in the lower leagues. He keeps emphasising how much of his "brain time" actually goes to decision making (he's also pretty good at explaining his thought process), and how much of the APM is actually just making units.

Most engagements are just: form a concave, pre-split/siege, cast a couple spells, a-move.


I want an RTS where you script / pre-plan unit response trees, and have limited intervention once executing. This would favor the clever and tricky over the fast.


You mean Screeps. The javascript rts


The game "Bang! Howdy!" comes to mind. There was a mixture of realtime and turn based where you could queue an order for each of your units, but it will be executed only after cool down from the previous order passes. All cooldowns were ticking down in sync according to global clock. The unit without queued orders and off cooldown was just staying in place and the orders issued to it were executed on the next tick.


There's an older game called Kohan you could check out. Click speed is not super important compared to positioning and company builds. Doubt there's a multiplayer scene, but I haven't played in forever.

Also check out Beyond All Reason, it's a modern Total Annihilation where you're essentially trying to automate economy and production and the game provides a lot of tools to do that.


You can look at mobile games like Clash Royale. It's like a mini RTS, you get certain amount of resources per time, and deck builder combined.


Try Northgard.

It's an RTS but with very calm/slow pacing and is very forgiving if you don't want to zone into it like other fast paced rts games.


I was thinking this same game. I quit playing starcraft/warcraft etc, because it is so important how quickly you can play and most of your focus is on the micro of your army, rather than how strategic you plan you base. While northgaurd is a very strategic city builder/resource management type with just enough fighting to keep everything interesting. Very small armys (12 is a very large army) so micro during battle is slower, less important at most for a few minutes. Putting the priority on how you have planned your base/resources. A much welcomed change in rts games.


I got this game because I thought it would be like that, but unfortunately there's still a lot of micromanagement available with units at war, something I specifically was trying to avoid. Your melee units will get kited around.

I would have preferred it to be either "enter tile and attack what's there" vs "retreat".


Oh, I would love this. I think it could work very well as a real-time game, but with the caveat that when units begin attacking each other the micro control is temporarily relinquished, so that you can direct the events via high-level orders and a strategy behavior for the AIs simulating the battle on each side.


1) Northgard isn't that, but it is a proper RTS with a way slower overall pace, so it might scratch the itch.

2) Anachron is a RTS with time travel, and issuing commands in the past depletes a resource, so it does something similar but for a very different purpose.


If you don’t mind learning a board game or a handful of UI quirks, Board Game Arena’s real-time mode more-or-less does this. And they have some great games on there, too.

https://en.boardgamearena.com/


Make actions have cost, and / or put cooldowns on orders. Still allow the ability to burst out a high APM for a short period of time, but design it so overdoing it is suicide.

Give the kids a fighting chance, ya know?


That's the point of a pool. You slowly regain them until your pool is full. You can burst 5 (or whatever k) moves at once, but it takes time to refill the pool.


fair enough, but pooling them assumes all orders are created equal - which could be a tight game-design constraint. but i agree what i am saying is in the same spirit as that


I also want an RTS that doesn't turn into a RSI speedrun. Your idea for APM limits is great, but my idea is that AI could handle micro. Let Deepmind control each unit while the user gives high level commands.


A lot of the newer RTS are designed so that micro matters a lot less


Yeah, things that were powerful micro in StarCraft I, such as moving marines apart to reducing incoming splash damage, can be done automatically by the AI (either with formation commands or with “incoming baneling, spread out”).


Offworld Trading Company is a real-time economic strategy game. It does have a fair amount of things to manage, but having no units means the APM is far lower than a traditional RTS.


I would recommend the Total War series. Rome II and Medieval II are my favorites. Both are slower RTS games that rely more on strategy than on APS.


HUGE +1 In a similar vein, I want an FPS game where there's no benefit to having reaction times over some modest baseline like 300-400ms


You may enjoy Grand Strategy games over RTS then. EU4, CK2/3, HOI4, are the Paradox titles; Total War games have that aspect as well.


Fancy to try chess?


I want a persistent 2D space game. It has two modes of play.

Mode 1: You create an account and are given a small ship. You and your dinky ship fly around the universe making trades and doing missions. There are pirates and you tend to get exploded a lot and flying around is tricky because the planets have gravity. You trade and get rich and buy bigger ships. Then you become even more rich and start buying automated ships that will make trades and go on trade runs 24/7 while you're not playing. Pirates blow up those ships and steal the loot, so you buy bigger routes with guard ships. You start posting missions for new players to guard your fleets. You become very very rich and start buying on-planet real estate or maybe whole planets and customizing them. You're managing your fleets and missions and contracts and stuff mostly from your mobile phone at this point without actually logging in and flying around.

Mode 2: you don't create an account. You're just a pirate. Nearly the whole world is hostile to you. It will only take a couple of hours of play to grow from a tiny pirate to a universe-threatening dreadnought the likes of which the average account-holding players couldn't afford, but as soon as you stop playing, your pirate ship is lost and you must start again.


https://endless-sky.github.io/

> Endless Sky is a 2D space trading and combat game similar to the classic Escape Velocity series. Explore other star systems. Earn money by trading, carrying passengers, or completing missions. Use your earnings to buy a better ship or to upgrade the weapons and engines on your current one. Blow up pirates. Take sides in a civil war. Or leave human space behind and hope to find friendly aliens whose culture is more civilized than your own.


I quite liked Endless Sky (which is no surprise because I quite liked Escape Velocity). Last time I tried it, the storylines were far from finished, but it was a good time.


It's got that... "in progress" feel -- and probably always will.

I love how many people it has fiddling with the code and storyline.

I know it's not something that can realistically happen, but I'd love for all games to switch to open-source after a few years of being available commercially.

It's cool to see continuous development on Endless Sky. At times... wish some features and improvements would go faster, but hey... that's part of playing with a non-commercial product. It's just a casual train-set in my basement... tinker a bit, play a bit, it's just sort of fun to see both sides.


Starsector might be worth trying out, depending on your choices you can land on either side of the hegemony's good graces and get mode 2 or 1. Check it out.


Have you seen ΔV: Rings of Saturn? I think it has at least the first part of Mode 1 that you're talking about.


Thanks for this. I tried the demo and bought it after enjoying it! Cross-platform on Mac, Linux, and PC, too!


I feel like you might've heard of ‘Space Rangers’ (just ‘2d space trading with pirates’ does rather hint at it), but if not—it's about a third to a half of what you described, plus some other stuff on top. IDK if they ever made it multiplayer, though—maybe in the Steam release.


There is no multiplayer mode for that game.


Star Control II, but more so.

Star Control II is a collection of different interrelated minigame mechanics. You have spacewar-style combat, planet exploration resource collection, interactive storytelling with the communications with other races, resource and time management, ship and fleet customization, and exploration of the universe.

But some planets could require a side-scrolling platformer, instead of the top-down lander. Or you could put together a jRPG-style party and explore a settlement on a planet. You could play a Scumm-style adventure game on an abandoned space station. In addition to spacewar, you could have a bullet hell shooter for traversing an asteroid field. You could do economy management and trading, purchasing self-sealing stem bolts on Cardassia Prime and trading them for seal furs on Caladan. You could level up your crew to make them better at piloting ships in your fleet or participating in away missions. And of course we need procedural generation for the sake of replayability.


Halcyon 6 could be this, but ended up having far too many grinding fights.

For me, the main appeal of SC2 and first Mass Effect game was a sense of a huge undiscovered galaxy where the wonders are. The joy of finding your first rainbow world was immense.


Starcom: Nexus temporarily scratched this particular itch for me. There is no economy in the game, but there is ship building, researching, collecting resources, interacting with ships and planets, discovering stuff, space battles and a mystery that takes 10-15 hours to unravel. It's a top-down 2D game with free movement. The gameplay is balanced and fun, and the game doesn't always give you quest markers to chase, so you are expected to be observant.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/863590/Starcom_Nexus/


Well, you may be interested in the latest effort by the original devs:

https://www.dogarandkazon.com/

https://pistolshrimpgames.com/uqm2/

EDIT: Looks like this is being developed just presently:

https://www.twitch.tv/pebby

https://www.reddit.com/r/uqm2/


How do you feel about Stardock's Star Control reboot? For me, it felt like a big tech demo, but not fully fleshed out.

Btw, Mass Effect was very inspired by Star Control with its use of minigames for mineral collection. I really want a game that's more of a 50/50 mix between Mass Effect and Star Control.


My disdain for Origins is just about Brad Wardell's treatment of Fred and Paul and his complete disregard for which rights he purchased versus which he didn't. And that really hurt because I liked Stardock so much - I remember reading something about how he built the original Galactic Civilizations and each ship was its own window due to how he misunderstood the system, and I really admired the pragmatism and get-things-done attitude. And then he was a massive jerk to these other people I think are cool.

The game itself was lovely. The writing was good. The art was good. The combat was fine. The lander and everything adjacent to it was frustrating; not only did it bounce around like a caffeine-addled pigeon, the things you'd do with the resources were not satisfying. The game was short, but it was supposed to be a platform upon which other people would build using a campaign editor, and then the entire community hated Stardock and nobody wanted to create more content.


Interesting, I always thought of Mass Effect as a spiritual successor to Sentinel Worlds 1: Future Magic. Never played Star Control though, may need to check it out.


Both Star Control II and Mass Effect create this sense of alien-ness, where you feel like you're really trying to deal with alien races using human concepts and, unless you can break out of that mold, you won't succeed. In SC2 this is quite literal, since the game runs on a clock of sorts, and it's possible to get into an unwinnable state.

The best part of SC2 is that it is impossible to know ahead of time if your encounters will result in making loyal allies or barbaric enemies. The only way forward is to keep exploring the galaxy.


If you like that feeling, you might enjoy the old game Vangers. It's not quite ‘take these completely foreign things and do barely understandable tasks with them’, but the mood is definitely there.


It was ok, but it felt more like a checklist of progression then the wonder of exploration.


‘Space Rangers’ does a bit of what you describe, though not much. In fact, I learned about SC2 much later after playing SR, and realized that SR borrowed a lot from SC2. But perhaps SR can satisfy some of the itch for a new game in the genre(s), for those who haven't seen it yet.


Space Rangers have far too dense world. The vastness of the galaxy is part of what makes exploration so fun in SC2.


Or an update or sequel to the Electronic Arts Starflight series!


Star Control is a spiritual successor to Starflight - the star system exploration screen is virtually identical between Star Control II and Starflight.


Totally aware! Huge fan of both. However I think I in general prefer the overall vibe and lore or Starflight to SC2 myself. Both series are great though.


Btw, I'd love to have something like SC2 in the sense of the huge galaxy to explore and mystery to unravel, but with space combat like FTL!


All I have to say is, this game sounds bad ass!


You're kinda describing EV and EV-likes.


When I google "EV," I get news articles about Tesla and their competitors. What does EV stand for in this context?


Escape Velocity


You mean Ur-Quan Masters? http://theurquanmasters.com/

A new version is being developed!


I'm not up-to-date with the ongoing state of the UQM2 effort, other than awareness of the subreddit and the streams. They communicate mostly via video and I prefer text, so I haven't kept up since the kerfuffle with Stardock.

I did only play Ur-Quan Masters, though, and in like 2006, at that. I wasn't aware of the original until UQM.


Something I've always wanted to play is a game multiplayer game (ideally firt or third person) where you and a small number of friends crew a space ship. Each person has their own role (navigator, weapons, pilot, etc) and you would fly through space and engage in combat.

Star Trek: Bridge Crew comes closest to what I'm talking about. Imagine that but not VR (well, VR is cool for this, but I don't have a VR headset, so...) but more of a Firefly type of atmosphere.

There was once a UDK demo or sample game that mixed FPS with space combat that was cool. Each player on a team started in a large ship, which someone could fly and other team members could control cannons, or run around the ship, or get into single-person fighters to attack and board the enemy ship. I don't remember what it was called, just that I got it as a sample when downloading UDK way back when it was still a thing. It was pretty cool!


That's what Artemis is.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/247350/Artemis_Spaceship_...

When I worked at SpaceX, a dozen or so of us once played it between the primary and backup mission control rooms. It was nice having the expensive headsets. All I remember is someone on the other team "hacking" our spaceship by using the company IT system to remotely reboot our team's computer terminals.


Well, that's some dedicated griefing lol


I'm surprised no one mentioned SpaceTeam yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3fsvKnIVJg

It's not exactly what you're looking for, but still the most unique and fun game I've played in this "group of people piloting a spaceship" genre.

You play on a phone with other people physically next to you, each person being presented with a randomly generated UI elements with labels that's purposely confusing.

To keep your ship traveling and alive, commands will randomly pop up on everyone's screens with instructions of what to do; The vast majority of which are on other people's devices.

If your team doesn't react fast enough, you eventually lose.

Sometimes you'll be hit by astronomical events like black holes or asteroid fields which cause the game to go much faster, leading to people stressfully yelling "WE NEED TO CREAM THE CORN. WHO HAS THE CORN, CREAM IT RIGHT NOW!"

Not what you're looking for, but I think a lot of readers here would enjoy it :)


SpaceTeam is so much fun.

I always want to suggest it to people who don't game much, but it can be a real struggle to get people to download an app. So, I have it on two devices, so I can handle at least one real stick-in-the-mud.


I found getting everyone’s phones to connect a little cumbersome too. This was a year or two ago though, maybe they’ve fixed some bugs.


It is particularly annoying, and unpredictably annoying when trying to connect over bluetooth, because apparently every bluetooth radio is some completely unique thing that has grudges against other bluetooth radios at random.


Huge fan of SpaceTeam but boy howdy does it stress me out sometimes haha. Lots of good memories of playing with my family and hearing the most absurd phrases being screamed at the top of their lungs.

RECOMBOBULATE THE AERATOR! PAY TAXES! SURVIVE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE!


i was going to say spaceteam. not at all the game they were looking for but absolutely a game everyone should play.


It exists! https://store.steampowered.com/app/252870/PULSAR_Lost_Colony...


PULSAR even has VR support, as well.

PULSAR with just a tiny, tiny drop of SpaceTeam would be ideal, IMO. At least last time I played it, it was a little dry. Random stuff should happen in the bridge when you get hit (not full-wacky SpaceTeam stuff, just, like, piped shooting out of the wall) (I haven't played in a while so maybe I am out of date).


That one.

And barotrauma, I Can't remember another game now


Barotrauma is a hoot. Beater submarine being piloted by a bunch of QWOP-level controlled smack addicts.

And almost everything has varying levels of complexity. Sure, there's a pretty deep medical system with dozens of medicines of varying side effects and effectiveness for whatever ails you. Or you can just stuff yourself full of morphine (leading to the aforementioned crew of opiate addicts). You can just set the boat's ~~on board barbeque~~ nuclear reactor to automatically scale turbine output and heat levels, but either through manual management or more advanced logic circuitry you can make your boat better suited for high-intensity situations.

It does take a handful of friends to really enjoy, though. Makes it hard as an adult, but scheduling play sessions is a nice social gathering.


When you grow up, scheduling a game is THE difficult task.., for everything.., but some Saturday nights the submarine is alive with the full crew


Pulsar is great! I haven’t played in ages so not sure how active the community is. But I had some good times playing in random lobbies in that game.


Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime also has this mechanic. https://www.loversinadangerousspacetime.com/


Great game. Highly recommended.

I want a game like this but as a company simulator with metaphorical roles, with the businessmen from Adventure Time.


Not first person or multiplayer but in case you're unfamiliar with it:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/212680/FTL_Faster_Than_Li...


+1 for this, I wasted SO MANY HOURS on this game. very high replay value.


I don't know if you have anything to do this year, but their follow-up 'Into the Breach' is also amazing.


Damn you, I just got out of a crippling factorio addiction ...


Haven't heard of that - I'll check it out.


NOOOO!


Fantastic game. It’s my usual “play on iPad on plane trips” game actually.


I had this idea a while ago, and it just never materialized:

- Every player can use their tablets or phones, and as many as they'd like

- Each device can be assigned with different controls

    - Wasn't sure if this would be decided before the game starts or if some player could control it, or if anyone can just add in controls as needed

 - The game plays only on the ship bridge, there would be no first-person anything

 - One device acts as the viewer screen
Scenarios would be things like escorting a ship through hostile space, delivering cargo, peace treaties, or search and destroy. One thing I wanted is the game to favour fun over realism. Like a player could go rogue and navigate the ship anywhere they wanted, or start firing on a friendly ship. Controls should be easy, like navigation could be as easy as scanning for nearby locations and then picking it, letting the computer plot a course.

I liked the idea of players all hanging out in a living room, connect the "viewer" player to a TV, and just have fun. Some scenarios and situations would involve teamwork, like having an engineer reroute power from navigation (ie nav has to slow down to make power available) to weapons for more powerful shots.

I thought it would be fun to build, but I just didn't have the time to develop it myself.


There was a game around 2000 called Allegiance that reminds me of this idea somewhat - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegiance_(video_game).

It's been ~22 years since I've played it, but IIRC there was one player that essentially played an RTS game, but the various units they were "controlling" were all actual players flying their own spaceships. I don't think there was any concept of different players working together on one ship, but there definitely were different ship types each player could choose to fly.

It wasn't a market success, but I always wondered if that was somewhat caused by the way they released the game: there was a long and very large free beta program, and by the time they decided the game was finished and put it in boxes I was a done for a bit and took a break. Always wondered how many people felt like I did.


The FreeAllegiance community is tight-nit, alive and well last time I played it in 2008. It's one of the most team-oriented games I've played.


If you are okay with trading life in a vacuum with life under pressure: Barotrauma [0]

> Barotrauma is a 2D co-op survival horror submarine simulator, inspired by games like FTL: Faster Than Light, Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress and Space Station 13. It’s a Sci-Fi game that combines ragdoll physics and alien sea monsters with teamwork and existential fear.

You have roles in your submarines, such as a medic, mechanic, engineer, captain. Everyone can do the same things, but some are better than others at different things.

If you have time, you can build your own submarine. The game also has a good amount of mods available.

Quick note: The game is in "Early Access".

[0]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/602960/Barotrauma/


That sounds similar to Artemis[0] and EmptyEpsilon[1].

The interface is just a proxy for spaceship stations so you can't run around the spaceship though.

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/247350/Artemis_Spaceship_...

[1] https://daid.github.io/EmptyEpsilon/


Last time I messed with it was years ago and it was somewhat buggy, but the concept is awesome: https://www.artemisspaceshipbridge.com/#/


For a cooperative space ship bridge game, you may enjoy the board game Space Alert [1]. It is real time and mostly tactical, but it makes for a very interesting challenging experience as the time constraint does not allow a single player to commandeer each detail, but rather you need to successfully delegate which at least I have found to be very challenging with the teams I have played with.

[1]: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/38453/space-alert


For the space combat FPS I think you're talking about Angels Fall First (https://store.steampowered.com/app/367270/Angels_Fall_First/). Players start on a capital ship and can walk around, fly fighters, and attack as well as board their enemy.

The old Battlefront 2 also had a (simpler) form of this type of capital ship combat, where the bases were the ships and players would dogfight in space and attempt boarding actions.


Oh wow, I think you’re right! You wouldn’t believe how many years I’ve been trying to find out what that game was. Thanks!


Maybe you already know of these: Artemis[1], Empty Epsilon[2], and (full disclosure, my own) Space Nerds in Space[3], and there's a (mostly inactive since Covid) forum for the genre is at https://bridgesim.net Also, previously:[4][5]

[1] https://www.artemisspaceshipbridge.com/#/ [2] https://daid.github.io/EmptyEpsilon/ [3] https://smcameron.github.io/space-nerds-in-space/ [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28345868 [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28343941


Not exactly what you’re looking for but comes pretty close if you’re not familiar: http://www.loversinadangerousspacetime.com/

That being said I would love a more grown-up version of this with more than two players.


+1 for lovers in a dangerous space time. Cute graphics, and definitely solid game play.

My friend and I used to play it a lot, but we were hilariously bad at it.

We would end up bickering at each other over mistakes and sometimes self sabotaging the ship out of frustration. All in good fun though, we had so many good laughs over dying in stupid ways.

Definitely need at least 1 friend to play though. Single player gives you a little CPU dog that you command around, but it's not nearly as fun.


It's even more insane and hilarious with 4 people trying to coordinate things. I personally found the best way is to assign everyone a station based on their preference/skills e.g. one friend loves playing with shields, so they are always in charge. Then find out who can steer the best and give them that as permanent role... granted it can be slightly less fun than the chaos, but I find utter chaos eventually gets old after you've died 100 times on the same level because everyone's running around trying to control everything.


I think Artemis is exactly what you describe minus the fighters https://www.artemisspaceshipbridge.com/#/


Guns Of Icarus fits this almost perfectly, but instead of being set in space it's more steampunk vibes.


Oh yes, I forgot about that. There was another airship game too I think, although it was less “play as a crew” and more “team deathmatch on airships”. I’ll have to look into guns of Icarus again. Is it still active? From the steam reviews it sounds like it may be dead.


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1055610/Deep_Space_Battle...

Still beta and lacks players but I think that is exactly what you want


That looks great actually, thanks for the recommendation. I’ll be sure to try it out!


https://store.steampowered.com/app/247350/Artemis_Spaceship_... is old but pretty much what you're describing!


Not a video game or with combat like that but there is a board game called Space Cadets. It is what you say in that each player has their own role but it is also real time and quite frantic. I'm sure there are lots of YT video reviews of it.


Oops, I meant Captain Sonar. Sorry, wrong Geoff game.


Is that pilot + crew thing not something that you can do in elite 4/elite dangerous? I don't know if they added FPS yet but I think getting in a fighter etc while.aomwone flies the mothership was a feature.


If you like the concept, definitely give Bridge Crew a try in VR. It's almost magical being on the bridge, and moving your hands to manipulate controls.


Lovers in a dangerous spacetime mostly fits the description though it is definitely not what you have in mind :)


Spaceteam is sort of an extreme abstraction of this idea.


yea, give me Sea of Thieves gameplay in space


Star Citizen is the closest thing to that. It’s not without its production flaws but what they managed to build is breathtaking.


A serious time travel game.

Think of MS Flight Simulator or Google Street View as documenting the current world. Then take the same approach to thoroughly document the past. The locations, the events, all in 3D VR with realistic graphics, and simulated actors that react to events and react to the players.

Take the current knowledge and physical/archaeological remains of the past, and digitise them, digitally renovate them. Do this rigorously and professionally. Not Hollywood-style approximation, but the work of real historians and archaeologists. Let historians use it and debate the details how it should really look, or how the events really unfolded and adjust it accordingly. Organise the database of content and simulations. AI is possibly already there to automate processing and conversion to 3D of old videos, photos and paintings, even perhaps writings to animation scripts. If not yet, some AI researcher is surely working on that.

Make a VR meta world, where players can travel to certain locations and certain time and interactively take part in the events.

I would pay a monthly subscription for such a thing, to see the past getting recreated digitally. It would be the next best thing we actually could do, compared to real time travel.


The closest thing to this I know of is The Forgotten City. It has some fantasy elements and the city itself isn't a real one.

Premise:

"The Forgotten City is a narrative-driven time loop adventure in ancient Rome. Discover the ruins of an ancient underground city, travel 2000 years into the past, and unravel the mystery of who destroyed it by cleverly exploiting the power to wind back time. The fate of the city is in your hands."

Developer comment on historical authenticity:

"In terms of historical authenticity, we engaged two historical consultants: Dr. Philip Matyszak, who has a D.Phil from Oxford and teaches at Cambridge, and has written 17 books on the ancient world. And Dr. Sophie Hay, who has spent 20 years excavating the ruins of Pompeii. Dr Matyszak helped us to create a game world with historically authentic art, architecture, costumes and customs. And Dr Hay helped out with a comprehensive review, ensuring our architecture and art was consistent with her observations of Pompeii, which was preserved in a very similar time period. We spent over 20 months on this and exchanged 300+ emails and did video flythroughs."


The recent Assassin's Creed games had a limited approximation of this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh4Iy-p943M


Wouldn't that be like really boring? I mean most of the real events (real in the sense of the more realistic possible, ignoring paintings, poems, tales, etc) are nowhere near as fun as is portraid in the media.

People die all the time in the most boring way (illnesses, accidents), battles are not that epic, no monsters or great heros, overall knowledge of the people are very shallow, etc.


I think assassins creed has sort of the right idea. You’re doing other stuff but normal people are around you.

Think a mashup of AC and forgotten city (a Roman game with a time loop that focuses on talking to the locals).


I am actually excited when seeing a historical movie without epic exaggeration. Recently this TV series was my favorite: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10405220/

It presents a primitive material reality, but also the culture and supernatural beliefs.

It doesn't have to be without monsters, it just have to portray them according to beliefs of people of that time, and not according to our modern interpretation, or modern appeal. It could be an opportunity to also document ancient societies, culture, mythical beliefs too.

An addition. Also make a survival mode, where you are not just sightseeing safely, but also have to survive whatever is happening.


I love the historical aspects of the assassins creed games but often grumble that you don’t really get to see much of what day to day life was like for certain groups of people. There was a game pitch I really liked where it followed an immortal person who was winding their way through history. Made it easy to make it into a series.


Journeyman Project 3: Legacy of Time was very cool - Myst style point and click puzzle game. It probably feels very dated now though.


Everything sim. You start with, say, Sim City. You find that your rail network isn't working properly, so you switch contexts to a kind of Transport Tycoon style game, where you can optimise the train schedules and destinations. You realise that the factory you're delivering stuff to is struggling, so you switch context to a Factorio style optimisation game. You realise that the inputs to the factory aren't pure enough, so you switch context to an Opus Magnum/SpaceChem style atomic manipulation game. You zoom back out, and find that your hospitals are struggling too. Context switch to a Theme Hospital/Two Point Hospital style sim. You need medicines, so switch to a Big Pharma drug production sim. You can optimise the machines here with the same interface as you used for the factory. Zoom out a bit, and you can see a football stadium, with the option to switch to a football management game, or to jump into a game and start playing directly. You zoom out again, and are now looking at a country where your city/region is just one part. You can context switch to a country management game. Keep going out, and you realise you're on a planet, so start working on a space program. Keep going out, and you can build a Dyson swarm and get some interplanetary government vibes going, all while being able to zoom back in on any part.

Pretty sure my original concept was for this not to be a single game so much as a common interface for basically every other game, where unoptimised parts work, but aren't great, passing a kind of middle-of-the-range set of values whenever queried. By linking multiple games together, you'd be able to control everything.


That would be quite an impressive game. Each simulation would need to be automateable in case the player does not want to manage that particular aspect of the game. Otherwise the game will fall into the trap of "trying to please everyone pleases no one".

Anyways, I'm working on Archapolis, a city builder game. The game will feature more hands on management than existing games in the genre, such as being able to design/build your own buildings. The player will see the interior of the buildings so making the exterior pretty wont need to be worried about. I'm also aiming to have a city board that will automate parts of the game for you if you choose (like having a fire marshall to handle fires)

I've got a tech demo of the path finding code up on youtube here, in case you're interested in path finding hundreds of thousands of units efficiently

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q0l87hwmkI


Also been slowly brainstorming a city sim technical design on and off for maybe 7 years as a side project that has a few similar goals in regards to large unit counts and custom buildings so it seems we have similar interests there. It feels like it has a high risk of becoming an endless feature creep project, though, so it's been hard to prioritize as a focus until I can settle on what the soul of it should be which informs all other decisions.

Just guessing From what I see, it looks like you may have chosen a technical path that doesn't scale well even if the resource usage is reasonable at this scale (constant time != constant resource). There are certain features I want to have that I think your approach doesn't make viable, so depending on how your game evolves the algorithm may get in the way. You've probably already thought through some of that and figure with some optimizations maybe it will be enough for your needs. Might even have a little extra versatility in other ways.

Hope you find success! I'll keep an eye out on your project. One bit of feedback though, I would personally change the name. It's not fun to read and doesn't roll off the tongue very well.


I've figured out how to make the path finding scale well-enough. Before I was using a hash table but that ate up 12.5 GB of space for 10,000 nodes. I looked around for better hash libraries and managed to lowered the RAM needed to 10 GB.

Then I figured out a way to store the results in a vector while still maintaining constant time access, which lowered the space needed to 2.5 GB. (This discovery came after the linked video, hence not being mentioned)

For reference, 10,000 nodes would be about 50 x 50 blocks (~4 nodes per intersection). Using Manhattan sized blocks, that's about 13 square miles of city, which is the same area as 3 x 3 Cities: Skylines tiles. Should be way more than enough!

Regarding the name, my first choice Metropoly was taken by existing companies (plural), and there's a domain squatter holding metropoly.com. Im not attached on the name yet so there's room to change it.


That's good to hear. Off-street areas do have their own cost as well which doesn't sound included in that, but there are other ways to optimize those which can depend to some extent on the designer feature set.

Gah, it's so tempting to share my notes, because you'd appreciate a lot of the ideas in there. It's probably a bad idea though, because part of the motivation to actually develop it would be to share those ideas and the vision some day. :)


It's a solved problem. Off road travel off screen will use timed-teleporting, on screen I will use A*. I dont need to worry about real time path finding inside homes (no traffic, no combat, etc) if the unit isnt visible.

If this is something you are serious about then I'd recommend unlocking your enthusiasm and ideas. I'm not able to connect with you if you're secretive and indirect. If that makes sense then you're welcome to send me an email (see profile). My door is open to working with up to a small group of people, provided they can support themselves now and its a good fit.


We have very different lists of constraints that forced us to reason towards different optimizations. Unless your aims change drastically before launch, I don't think there's much risk that our projects would be highly redundant. It seems like you might have a larger focus on individual unit identities ala Dwarf Fortress than I do, but I still prioritize the value of identity highly with a different design approach.

Enthusiasm isn't a huge problem, it's partially that I have a great many interests of varying levels of importance where appealing ideas just pour out of my mind and that whole process enriches all other interests. The difficulty is that it keeps adding more and more considerations, so there's more complexity to comb through in order to prioritize.

Being vague is intentional, but not out of any disrespect. I'm doing strange things and part of their future appeal might be that they are strange, which wouldn't be the case if they become common in the market before I ever even get around to finishing it. :) That strangeness is also part of the problem, because there are a lot of harder to predict things that may go wrong.


Yes, I imagined that a component could provide some inputs (e.g. Grain) and outputs (e.g. Bread) with some default link between the two, and that would apply to all instances of that component within the world, unless a player took control of an instance and modified the behaviour. The nice thing there is that backing out of the instance allows for a different link between input and output to be created, without needing to simulate the full process.


This sounds cool if a bit overwhelming.

I always wanted to combine the Sims and Sim City. I imagined a multiplayer mode where you could live in the same city with your friends and your choice of career would allow you to use a different game mode at the SimCity level. E.g. your sim becomes a teacher, so now you decide where to place schools, etc. You have to work as a team to make sure all sims are happy in the city.


This can be done, but not as interlocking or real time as everyone thinking. It's designed around "points". Factory (or maybe materials) points, health / hospitality points, etc.

Basically you'll be given some "special" buildings where you can place the other-genre games . Let's say that you have a "60x60 1 level hospital" that when you placed it in the city, you can interact with it via theme hospital style.

Now in theme hospital-like, it has reputation / ratings where it translate directly to "hospitality points" for your city. When you exit the mode, it stopped the simulation and the points freeze. Similar with factory points.


Kind of. I picture it as being a function of input to output, so if the input changes, the output does too, but the output change is based on what changes have been made by the player.

E.g. if you have a hospital which can handle X patients per day and has a reputation of 90 when doing so, increasing the number of patients to 2x would probably decrease the reputation. You don't need to model the full hospital to determine this though, just have a "max patients" value which, when exceeded, puts a fractional multiplier on the output.


Well that's what "city stats" do. As you've said, population number decides the # of patients, # of workers in factory (we don't have that advanced assembler yet, haha), # of students for educational area.

And those "points" will also feedback as the input. Such as better hospitality points increase population cap, higher factory points allows the use of more equipments, higher education / tech points allows the use of more advanced equipment and ability to hire better doctors / engineers.

Now each "special building" have "budgets" assigned to them by the city. Those budget that'll be the balance and limit for equipment / room purchases and hiring, rather than directly received it from patients.


This reminds me of the Crusader Blade mod which combines Crusader Kings 3 and Banner Lord 2 to let you fight the normally simulated fights in CK3 in the battlefield of BL2, and passes results back and forth between the two interfaces.


Not quite what you describe but check out Workers and Resources.

It’s like Sim City meets Transport Tycoon. Rather than just building a city it’s about setting up all the supply chains to be self sustainable


This combined with the “fractal game” concept.

It would be a big open-source project (I mean it could be closed-source but it’s a massive effort with massive risk, it would take a billion-dollar company and I doubt any wants to invest in this).

It starts out as just a super-general world simulation, but people can flesh out the details by providing more specific simulations and also mini-games. All of the mini-games are optional, and the localized simulations aren’t run if they’re not requested because they get blurred out* into the bigger simulations (e.g. you can simulate population and income without caring about one cities’ paper production efficiency), so contributors have a lot of freedom in what they can make.

e.g. someone creates a “Fifa” style soccer mini-game. If you don’t like playing soccer, there is also a basic “soccer-management” style simulation where the soccer teams play against each other automatically and the team rankings / income / effect on news and culture will update. If you don’t even care about soccer, the soccer/management simulations won’t even load, and the effects on economy and culture will be blurred out.

How it could be implemented: there is a massive shared database of resources on everything (population resources, income resources, hospital resources, building layouts - all by location), and functions to automatically compute these resources over time when the players not explicitly interacting with them (e.g. update population and income, but also generate new cities and building layouts). Basically, everything in the game has data by some sort of location, an automatic state transition function, which may take other kinds of data and other locations, and possibly a way to manually interact via a user-controlled simulation and/or “hands-on” interaction mini game.

Along with this there is a standard-issue game engine and libraries which the smaller simulations and mini-games are built with. Each of these smaller-systems and mini-games are a module which can be loaded in when they are requested, but are “blurred out” by default. Initially only the global simulations are enabled.

The player makes up their goal: it may be to maximize the worlds income and happiness however they want (e.g. by building nice buildings, an efficient factory, train stations). Or maybe the player is evil and wants to kill off the population via bad decisions which cause the economy to crash, and unsafe research causes a deadly virus to be released. Or the player just wants to build cities and roads which are fun to race in and then drive a race car around everywhere.

Anyways, it’s obviously super ambitious but it would be a nice experiment. Like a generalized, open-source, modular reimagining of Dwarf Fortress.

* When a simulation is “blurred out”, I mean it’s affects are roughly estimated when the user doesn’t explicitly load it. Otherwise a) the game would slow to a crawl because of 10,000 simulations running at once, and b) a poorly-implemented simulation (e.g. which allows the player to generate infinite money, or just crashes a lot) won’t ruin the entire game, the player can just ignore or even specifically disable it. Simulating every minute detail of the world is a kind of hard problem, but since this is ultimately a video game we can just ignore 99+% of it, throw together some basic population and economic theory, and later on transportation theory and culture/politics sim etc., and say "close enough".


I love factory simulation games (think Factorio, Satisfactory, Banished, DSP, ...) and one thing that I was always missing was a game with better simulation of raw material mining. Most simulation games have you just place a "mine" on a resource and that's it.

I wanted to manage an open pit mine myself. Have excavators that mine ore and trucks move it for processing, but as they do, the shape of the terrain changes, leaving deep holes behind. Maybe even compromising your factory as the mining operation expands.

And as it sometimes go, when you want something and that does not exist, you try to make it, and that was my case here. Together with a fried we attempted to make such game. It's called Captain of Industry in case anyone is interested: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1594320/Captain_of_Indust...


This gave me the cool idea of a kind of recursive/fractal game where there is the main game you can play by itself but the devs keep it open for people to slot in sub games for the bits they've simplified.

So if Factorio did this you could play as normal, or play the fractal version where you can go in and control the mine or anything else. Maybe there'd even be sub parts in the mine like repairing machinery or something. The full range of macro-micromanaging would be pretty interesting.


That's cool! I was actually thinking of something similar, a game mode where you could take a control over a vehicle, like an excavator, and just have fun with it in the game, mine, dump, call trucks, etc.

This could be even cooler in multiplayer where many people could be controlling different parts of the factory, different vehicles, etc. But this sounds like a little too much work to get it "right".


After the first two paragraphs I was just about to recommend a game I found recently called Captain of Industry! cool to see a dev in here. best of luck with it!


Thanks! I am curious, where did you learn about this game?


Through looking for 'automation' games on steam, and also a YouTuber called Aavak has played some of it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7o9OTDOCRA&list=PLGe_S5n7Mj...

Seriously wish the best for you, developing and releasing a game at all is a big feat, gaining traction is another beast entirely :)


Oxygen not Included is sorta kinda like this. It's a 2D, from the side colony management game where you have to survive on an asteroid. You have to manage oxygen production, get rid of carbon dioxide and other unbreathable gasses, find water, grow food, keep your base from getting too hot (or too cold) because thermodynamics is a thing in this game.

Mining is just "go mine here" but your colonists can only hold a certain amount of materials so retrieving mined materials can take a while, especially if you're mining far away from your base. Plus you have to worry about the materials being hot, or being affected by germs. You can technically mine out the entire asteroid, but I've never gotten close to that because something always goes wrong and everyone dies. There's only a limited amount of resources after all.


Oh, that game has been on my wishlist for a while. Looking forward to giving it a try! I've been a big fan of Factorio and Dyson Sphere Program (though didn't care much for Satisfactory), as well as colony sims like Banished, Rimworld, and Oxygen Not Included. Looks like Captain of Industry combines aspects of both genres.


this is one of the greatest trailers i've ever seen its hilarious!

those **ing pirates!

im going to buy this and play it!


Thank you! That trailer is actually nearly 1 year old now, it's from the pre-alpha stage of the game. Unfortunately, we had no time to update the trailer with all the new things. We are way to busy with all the release preparations. Last time it took us around 10 days (2 people full time) to make it.


What game engine and stack did you use to finish this? It's very well done, how big is your team and how long did it take to get to beta?


Thanks! We use custom engine written in C# for simulation and Unity 3D for rendering. The game simulation can run without Unity.

Our "team" is tiny, it's just two of us. We've been working on it past 6 years as a hobby project over the weekends. Last year we decided to quit our tech jobs and focus on this full-time. We work with freelancers who do 3D art and music for us.


This looks fun and interesting. How much does it reflect real world processes? After playing this, would I have a better working understanding of mining, refining, and logistics?


While being more realistic than other games, I'd say it is not realistic enough to simulate real open-pit mining. You would not recommend to plan real mining operations based on the results from the game.

For example, the way how terrain collapses during mining is balanced to make a fun game rather than trying to be super realistic. We don't take into account weather effects (esp. rain). Also, in reality, hard rock needs to be blasted, but we don't have this feature (yet). Refilling of vehicles is mostly automatic, given that they have fuel available somewhere reachable. Etc...

On the other had, similar to other sim games, you will certainly need to think and plan your mine/factory well in order to be successful.


Having spent hundreds of hours on the above games, this is an instant buy for me. Congrats on nearing the finish line, can’t wait to play.


This looks very cool! Will give it a try soon :D


A full-featured open-world RPG that can be casually played in 2-3 hour sessions once or twice a week.

I love this game format (Skyrim, BotW, WoW) etc but they're all best played very consistently for many hours at a time. I simply don't have that time anymore.

Something that will remind you where you left off (what you were doing, where you were going), controls/mechanisms that aren't overly complicated (nothing worse than booting up a game and realizing you forget how to attack), etc.


>they're all best played very consistently for many hours at a time

Why do you think that? BotW I found was very amenable to consuming in short hour or two sessions, although it was incredibly easy to get sucked in for longer.


I do find when I come back to it after a week or two to it I have to go "now what was I doing??"


Writing yourself a note before you end your session is probably a good idea here.

"Trying to kill Molduga for <reasons>, but want to use different armor, so traveling through Hebra for Coolshrooms".


I personally forget the controls (Witcher), or forget quest and storylines.


BOTW has the controls issue too, absolutely— its scheme is a bit of an oddball compared to other modern over-the-shoulder action adventure games, and that's made it hard for me to jump back in after a period of playing more conventional games like AC, Spider-Man, God of War, etc.

The story though? Lol, BOTW has none. You just show up and chase whatever catches your fancy while the princess hangs out at the castle doing all the work keeping the monster at bay.


I so wanted to like the Witcher, but the controls were absolutely nuts. Actually maybe not that bad (ahem, Outer Wilds). But for a casual gamer they were not intuitive and were extremely forgettable. Plus you couldn't easily go back to the little training dojo.

Good controls and quick review/tutorial seem to be overlooked opportunities for improvement that would dramatically lower the bar for casual gamers who want to play more games but quickly get frustrated by any kind of friction.

("Previously on" or self-evident state is increasingly dead even in TV/series so I guess it's not surprising it's disappearing from games too.)


Are you talking about The Witcher 1? That game had whack controls for sure, and all in all I'd say isn't worth playing.

TW2 and TW3 are some of my favourite games though and IMO had fairly straightforward controls. I do think I switched between playing with controller and keyboard + mouse though, so it may be worth trying controller in the 2nd/3rd games if you hadn't done that.


I played W1 and W3 several times and had no problems with the controls, but I was never able to accommodate with W2 controls, so I never played more than 15 minutes at a time, with many attempts. It was kb + mouse.


It feels like as gamers have been getting older and having kids, there's a huge market for games like this designed for limited play time. I want to be more into shooters too, but I just don't have time to get good enough to enjoy them.

I do really appreciate Halo for finally going back to "everyone, regardless of level, starts with the exact same equipment and skills". That levels the playing field and I can still have fun (even if I'm not good) without playing a lot.


I think this is part of the appeal of rogue like games such as Hades. Exploring large 3d environments isn't as rewarding when I can only play a half hour at once (while simultaneously attempting to get the baby to sleep). I'd much rather get straight to the core gameplay before I crawl into bed, exhausted.


I play Xonotic, a free software FPS that uses the Darkplaces engine.

If you're up for twitch shooting, play instagib.

If you want action, hop onto a Clan arena match (team Deathmatch but 1 life per round, and you start the map with everything).

OTOH if you're too tired to frag, hop on a Xonotic Defrag Server, where your only goal is to practice movements to finish a track on time. Xonotic has some very cool quake like movements, and there are almost always people on the Relaxed Running server (but they also have >1 hr puzzle/trick jump tracks).

It's so much fun, even just for the 20 minutes I can usually get before going to bed ;)


In the same logic, a RPG where no one can play more than X hours per week (e.g. 3). Or instead of a nominal amount of time, a chapter of the story per week. We all progress together at a slow pace. Something akin to a tv show.


That would be really bad if you have a few days with very bad weather and too much free time to spend in the house.


other games would still be available in the world where this game exists ;)


Something that will remind you where you left off (what you were doing, where you were going)

So... Skyrim’s quest log? A huge list of every quest you’ve encountered in the game so far, with the ability to pick one to be highlighted on the map and radar. Boot it up for the first time in a while and you can immediately see what Past You was officially working on. Pretty much every big sprawling open-world game has one of these, with a zillion text snippets to describe every possible stage of what’s happened so far in every quest, and what you need to do next.

Add a handful of generalized user-defined quests like “I am gathering (list of resources/items) so I can (make this thing/exploit this bug/do this quest a particular way)”, or maybe just an in-game notepad with some text completion assistance, and that probably covers any possible “where did I leave off”.


I'm currently building a game like this and it's pretty close to finish.

The game is a Space Survival MMORPG that takes place far into the future, where human civilization is stranded in an O'Neill Cylinder in space. No one in the cylinder knows anymore how they got there and why they are there in the first place since so much time has passed. Technology has also been lost due to the very long time periods, so life and survival is tough in the cylinder.

However, the longer someone survives, the stronger and the more rare their character becomes. We expect only a few percent of players to survive for longer than a couple of weeks and only 1% for longer than a month. However, those that have survived for longer than a month are very strong characters that can usually lead and provide protection to a village of 50 to several hundred people.

The biggest danger to the player are other players, since the entire game is PvP. This means, you need to quickly band up with others to protect against other players. There are no guns in the game, since there is no technology in the cylinder, so it takes several minutes of beating someone up to to actually get their health to zero. There is also voice chat, so it's quite brutal.

Here is our teaser trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg4GHUIXB8U and here is some pre-alpha gameplay footage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFHzg0R8sUo. We'll likely be able to go into early access in June on Steam, it would be great to get your feedback on it!


You might enjoy Valheim, it's a survival game which you can casually enter in and out.


From my experience a boss battle or a dungeon run in Valheim takes all afternoon, and that's if you have a group supporting each other to make things quicker.


I want to see a rise of roguelike open world games.. something you can complete in maybe 10 hours.

Then reroll and do it again...

Add multiplayer and be double plus fun!


That sounds like Elden Ring.


The game you're looking for is final fantasy 14. The first like 100-200 hours of content is free as well so go take a look.


Because of this I find myself gravitate towards sports games like Fifa. Easy to get right back-in on offline career mode. I just stay away from FUT (Fifa Ultimate Team)


Red Dead Redemption 2 is perfect for this


You should look up Veloren or the game it's spiritually based off of, Cube World


A Sim Earth remake.

I want a sandbox where I can take a planet from its bombardment era all the way to a point where its start has started to encroach on the planet's orbit. I want to see live evolve from the soupy amino acid mixes that were brewed from shallow waters and watch it grow to a multitude of competing civilizations. I want my screen to feel alive in a "ants crawling over a petri dish" sort of way.

I want to do this with a very deep simulation, everything from geophysics, climate, and even solar insolation modeled. I want to see ice ages come and go with glaciers carving up the landscape and leaving behind lakes and fertile soil. I want to see oceans acidify and recover, cycling through colors. I want my screen to feel lush like a moss carpet.

I want my sandbox planet to have a moon.

I want to have a time scale that requires planning, where a few months of game play on the same planet feels rewarding. I want this planet to be persistent and to be shared where friends can just load up and watch or maybe even hop in. I want my friends space faring civilizations to come and visit.

I don't want a manual for anything more than interface. I want to be surprised by what happens on digital ball of dirt.

I want something that will have the fun spirit of Sim Earth, the seriousness of Universe Sandbox, open endedness of Powder Toy, and trigger that "into the unknown" feeling some of us got back in the early days of Minecraft.


I have a few ideas that I will almost certainly never develop. If someone wants to use them, please do. These are games I wish existed.

Here they are:

The first one is a game where you play as Mormons, and the goal of the game is to be nice to people no matter the cost. It would start out with fairly easy things, but then you come across increasingly hostile or dangerous circumstances where you have to choose between negotiation or fleeing. You can't "die" in the game because, if you are about to die, either God or the angel Moroni will intervene. At that point, you must restart a mission. Then again, I'm not that opposed to the player dying either. I know not that much about Mormonism other than that I've known Mormons throughout my life. :)

Another idea I have is for a game I call "Monkey Town". It's somewhere between Sim City and The Sims, and takes place in a world where monkeys and various apes take the place of humans. They are as intelligent as present-day humans, but they do thinks in their own monkey ways. You are the mayor of Monkey Town, and you must build it up and maintain it. There are problems you have to deal with like monkeys pooping everywhere, political corruption, ape speciesism, infrastructure failures, monkeys rioting, monkey insurrections, etc. The monkey culture would have some differences from human society like knoodling being allowed in public, networks of vines are used for monkeys to swing between neighborhoods, bananas as currency, and so on.

My third idea is a game called "Shut Me Up", which I think of as more of a short arcade style game where your job as the player is to harass and scream at people so those people start telling you to shut up. But you keep doing it so that they start physically attacking you to get you to shut up.


As a former Mormon, I can see that first idea being absolutely hilarious if implemented correctly. I'm imagining all sorts of increasingly absurd scenarios you could place the Mormon main character in and the kinds of jokes you could make, there's a lot of potential haha. Stuff like coffee and tea being special attacks that the bosses can use, or dialogue with lots of really unusual swear substitutions. I think letting the player die and having the degree of heaven they get into be based off of their score in-game could be a really hilarious feature.

I think mixing in just the right amount of janky ragdoll physics and glitchy NPCs would actually augment the game, and I could see it being a game that streamers and their audiences would find funny too.

There would definitely be some ultra-strict/traditional Mormons who would be offended by a game like this but I'd say the vast majority of the membership would find it quite entertaining.

Edit: Could call it Mormon Missionary Simulator to both give the game a slightly tighter focus/story and also indicate that it's part of the wider genre of "XYZ simulator" games that are often pretty absurd and funny.


I'm working on Archapolis, a cross between sim city and the sims (and inspired by Dwarf Fortress, Cities Skylines). I'm working on real time traffic / pathfinding currently. My game can handle 100K to 300K agents path finding simultaneously to random destinations.

Game is still very early development, but here's a tech demo video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q0l87hwmkI


That's really impressive! I haven't even come close to developing a game since I played with the old school Game Maker back in high school, but pathfinding seems like a very intriguing challenge. You've got a new YouTube sub. :)

What's the tech stack you're using for the game? I'm not really familiar with how games are typically made these days other than that it seems like a lot of people are using Unity.


2x Thanks!

I'm using C++, SFML (graphics framework), and SQLite (for data storage/saves). Game & engine is developed from the ground up.

A lot of people choose existing engines for their games. I definitely would if I were to go 3D.

With 2D grid based games, it's not too difficult to get an engine up and running. It took me around 6 weeks IIRC (no physics or networking code though) to have basic tile placement functionality and outputting the game world to the screen.


Such an interesting, orthogonally-aligned set of game ideas. Being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I feel like I've been playing 'your game' my whole life!


Of all the places to see someone from the LDS church, I NEVER thought it would be on HN! Not sure why it is such a surprise, but it is nonetheless.


My IT department manager at a previous job was Mormon. He was a big Star Wars geek and could code with the best of us (but never had time to do so in his position, too many meetings). I didn't know for several months he was Mormon. His only tells were some self-censoring (like saying "cheese and rice" or "cheese and crackers" instead of certain common blasphemic exclamations) and he had six kids. Really cool guy. He eventually moved back to Utah to work for a tech startup there (the tech scene is actually pretty big in Utah).


LDS is huge and contains very smart people and, despite some questionable historical beliefs, they’re not AFAIK anti-science in any way. HN is huge. Definitely gonna be some overlap


As a non practicing Mormon it was extremely strange to me when in my 20s I was exposed to the broader Protestant/Evangelical world in the US how many weird anti science things existed that I’d literally never been exposed to as a Mormon.

When I moved to a nicer neighborhood and went to church once or twice I was amazed how many Pediatricians and Pediatric Surgeons who work at the local childrens hospital are Mormon.


But... why? Education is hugely emphasized in the church. There are tons of members in all the STEM fields and they read the news just like anyone else. Have you ever seen a Tesla? The security chip in it was designed by member. Have you ever used an intel pentium processor? The original one was designed by a member. That person eventually moved up into management at Intel and recruited heavily from BYU so many Intel chip designers are members.


There are many of us on HN.


Dozens!


The Mormon game concept is a good one. As a former and still somewhat Friend (Quaker), I can relate to the concept of "no good deed going unpunished." One can see the humor, irony, playability and enjoyment of it in a video game done well. As Mormon themed it would have limited reach but it would have dedicated followers. The TTRPG "Dogs in the Vineyard" is outstanding for what it is, has limited reach in RPG circles, but it does have a dedicated player base.

The game concept is something I would play. It would fit well in any setting historical or fictional. A half-dozen elves trying to bring sensibility among Orcish chiefdoms guided by an avatar of Illuvar. A unmodified human among the transhuman houses of the galactic empire trying to re-cultivate aspects of humanity guided by an enigmatic Foundation, etc.

Regarding "Monkey Town," you might like Keith Laumer's book "The Other Side of Time." It starts off slowly, is all over the place, but has an alternate universe with several sapient primate species working together.


IMHO, we don't need a game to teach people to see all interactions as religious persecution. That's already a ridiculous problem in our society.

The only worse thing I can imagine would be combining persecution complex-inducing game with an FPS.


It's interesting that you say that. That really wasn't how I imagined it, and I'm a little confused how you interpreted it as such. My thought was that it's a point of view that most people haven't experienced or thought much about. Just because the playable characters would be from the LDS church wouldn't mean that all or even most of their interactions would have a religious motivation. I imagined it more like getting "boy scout badges" for good deeds from the perspective of that particular religious group and for the game to be more light-hearted rather than dead serious, or even suggesting any sort of religion to the player.

Maybe you're right and I'm suggesting something that isn't really appropriate. I would play games more if there were more slice-of-life type games from different perspectives, but with some humor in there too.


Honestly, I like the concept of this game. If you dropped all the proper names you mentioned and just call it "Just Be Nice" it would be palatable to 1000x bigger audience. You don't need to be religiously motivated to find it challenging to be nice in particular scenarios. It's a theme I've never heard of explored and I would like to play it (but without the Mormon stuff)


I guess that doesn't resonate as much with me. Your point is totally fair, and maybe people would like your idea a lot more. Despite my atheism, I'm much more intrigued about a game that's more from a particular point of view and I just don't have a problem with characters that are religious. A more culturally homogenous game might be less appealing to me. I'm sure it could be done right, though. The Mormon aspect, I thought, would give such a game a lot of interesting gameplay scenarios out-of-the-box that wouldn't be as easy to explain in a more generic game.

Thanks for the feedback. :)


FWIW: I think most members of the LDS church have a good sense of humor for things like this done in good taste, even if they're not 100% representative of their beliefs.

source: am one myself. This is true for the other members around me as well (friends, family, etc)


I am imagining they are aliens instead of Mormons, but they look exactly like humans. Maybe they moved here (secretely, of course) because some other mean aliens have taken over their planet. Since they are unfailingly nice, they just left their planet instead of fighting for it. Now they're here on earth and dealing with humanity's response to their niceness.


Agree with this. I would never give a "religious game" a second thought. Automatic pass, irrespective of the mechanics.


The first one reminds me of people playing GTA just for ambulance missions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KC7blFgcZWs


I'm down for extreme Mormon simulator


Tribes 2 with modern graphics for modern platforms, and maybe an Apex Legends-like Battle Royale mode. I don't think that there has ever been a better multiplayer FPS. When you're used to jetpacks and skiing, most other FPS feel slow. And there is nothing as elegant as killing with slow ballistic projectiles like the Spin Fusor.

Apex Legends has got some of the aspects that made T2 so great, especially if you play Valkyrie (Apex's only flying character), but the weapons are not as much fun and you're wasting too much time on looting.


I would take that a step further, and say more like Tribes 1 with modern graphic. I feel like the modding community was out of control in a good way on Tribes 1. Flying around with unlimited jetpack and a automatic sniper rifle in Ultra Renegades trying to capture a flag that's is in a base that's booby-trapped with a bunch of turrets was way ahead of it's time.

It still blows my mind that 007 Golden Eye existed as a popular game at the same time with Starsiege: Tribes when they were worlds apart in quality and gameplay.


T1 remains my favourite Tribes game, especially with the mods (Shifter ftw!). T2 was ok, but too focused on glitz and I didn’t like the change to the skiing mechanic.


I'm with you. T1 discfusor sniping+skiing was deeply satisfying.


T1, I randomly was thinking of this just last night. I put so many hours into that game and loved the mods. Putting laser turrets behind shields/walls to protect them was so cool. I think it was the first fighting/building game I'd played (FPS at least, I loved AoE/StarCraft/etc) and I wish I could go back to those late nights playing with friends.


> It still blows my mind that 007 Golden Eye existed as a popular game at the same time with Starsiege: Tribes when they were worlds apart in quality and gameplay.

I agree with your overall sentiment, but I do think that GoldenEye was relatively more accessible in terms of MSRP and technical setup.


That takes me back. I vividly recall some ultra-heavy armor that toted around 6 chainguns, 3 on each side of the screen. It was great at blotting fast movers out of the sky.

The modding scene for Tribes 1 really was something else.


BattleField 1942 was released a year after Tribes 2. It got a bunch of praise for FPS & vehicles, built-in voice chat, seamless outdoor AND indoor environments. It sounded familiar.


Tribes was released over a year after Goldeneye.


While it wasn't perfect, I really enjoyed the brief existence of Tribes Ascend. It makes me hopeful someone else is going to pick up the genre, maybe even the license.

Hi-Rez certainly weren't a good fit for the game. I'll know better than to spend money on anything they're doing in the future.[1]

[1]: https://www.maxlaumeister.com/articles/rip-tribes-ascend/


Ascend was fantastic until it went free-to-play and Hi-Rez desperately tried to monetize it.

I would want Tribes: Ascend back again as it originally was, but with good support for mods and private servers. That would make me happy.


The out of the blue update actually fixed the game substantially, but unfortunately it seemed to have been a last ditch effort and leadership at Hi-Rez (which probably boils down to Erez) lost interest entirely when SMITE suddenly became very profitable.


I enjoyed this game quite a lot, I never figured out why it didn't take off even when it was free.


It was hugely popular before being free. The problem was that some basic options for the classes that were strictly better or required for gameplay (the worst offender here is likely the Jackal[1]) were gated behind days of grinding or microtransactions. Newly introduced options usually had some severe balancing issues. The core audience and biggest advocates for the game were people that played Tribes and Tribes 2 decades earlier - they didn't really like that they couldn't buy the game outright and have all the content in it unlocked at a reasonable pace.

[1]: https://tribes.fandom.com/wiki/Jackal


IMO for two reasons, separated by player type. Casual players were turned off by the grind, and experienced players (read: players of former games) were turned off by the dumbed-down mechanics as compared to previous games.

By the latter I mean mostly the decision to eliminate base play, i.e. gens/turrets/invs mean basically nothing because you spawn in your load out. Also, the jetting/skiing physics are kinda wonky, in ways that I think negatively impacted gameplay.


The usual performance problems with tribes games, also the usual unintended difficulty increases by trying to make it "easier".


In case the T2 fans here weren’t aware, it’s a free download now and people still play. There’s a Discord community and we do pickup games every month or so. You can get it here: https://www.playt2.com/


Oh cool! I played for a while back in the post-TribesNext days, but haven't touched it in years. Are there still pubs at all, or do you pretty much have to wait for a scheduled game?


Yes, there’s only one active (non-bot) server but we play every night! “Discord PUB” is the server and it’s usually LakRabbit from around 4–6pm Pacific, then CTF for the rest of the night once enough people join up.


I wasn't aware. I...I'm not sure I should....


> And there is nothing as elegant as killing with slow ballistic projectiles like the Spin Fusor.

I loved aiming ahead near the ground of a skiing opponent and hitting them with the splash damage.

But the most amazing moments were when you hit someone mid-air. :)


Thank you, Tribes is great... Shazbot!


> I don't think that there has ever been a better multiplayer FPS.

100%

Tribes 2 should have been "THE" early 00's FPS to play. Instead, it was Halo, a game that I insist did not introduce ANYTHING new to the FPS genre, yet people went crazy for.


Did you ever play Fallen Empire: Legions or Legions: Overdrive? It's a shame we don't have more in the FPS-Z genre. If there were one free software title in the genre, people could at least spin off a few games from it. I wonder if anyone's tried building such a thing on one of the Quake engines.


Check out Diabotical. It's a bit dead but it was a ton of fun for the first few months. I think it's dead because of epic games contract. It's more like quake than tribes but very nice fast paced arena fps.


Tribes 1 was where it was at. So much fun at LAN parties. The Tribes sequels only got worse, in my opinion. They were just clinging on to what made Tribes great, but kept losing something every iteration.


I haven't really played either, but I always think about how similar Fortnite is to T1 renegades. You can build, you can taunt, dance etc, big open world.


> you're wasting too much time on looting.

But that's the most fun part of Apex ;)


Sounds like titanfall 2, other than the battle royale part.


It’s been a while since I played Titanfall, but I remember it as mostly ground-based FPS. This video gives you an impression of Tribes 2 fights: https://youtu.be/Kj6K_d6Zsuw

There were also other roles you can’t see in the video (at least in the first minutes): there was an invisibility shield that allowed you to infiltrate enemy bases. You could set up sensors to make invisible opponents visible, deploy small turrets and radars. You could spend all game just repairing things like turrets, radars and inventory stations, and that was an important role in CTF. And there were vehicles that needed pilots, you could control turrets…


Humans taste like fish.


Red Dead Redemption 2 — but where there is no overarching story but you create your own character, and can go off and do what you like, affecting the world. Start a trading business, buy a saloon, be a bandit, a sheriff, you name it. It's such a masterpiece of a world, but replayability is reduced by having to follow the same story lines and play the same person every time.

Imagine RDR2 but with the replayability of Skyrim. There is a reason why Skyrim is still such a popular game and why most of us have purchased it more than once (which is weird, right?): because it is the ultimate example of a replayable game.

The focus on RDO takes the game a little bit in this direction, but the multiplayer aspect takes away from the immersion, and the fact that you can't have character names like Old Bill and instead see people called xX_SUICIDE69_Xx running around really spoils it.

I want to go fishing, put my fish in a cart, take them to market, sell them, then go play some poker with a beer, before returning home to my small shack that I'm slowly decorating.

Is that so much to ask for?


This is such a stupid comparison that I can't believe I'm making it but Puzzle Pirates actually did a lot of this. You'd sail around on ships for the navy, "fighting" pirates (via competitive puzzles) to earn a wage. You start with a tiny, default shack and a cot, but could buy larger properties and better furniture. If you saved up enough, you could buy your own ship, and become a pirate yourself – or go straight and buy actual in-game businesses to start selling wares: https://yppedia.puzzlepirates.com/Shoppe_management

It lacked every ounce of the beautiful simulated West I love in Red Dead, but the core gameplay mechanics you're talking about are all there.

...I'm speaking in past tense but apparently it's still around? https://store.steampowered.com/app/99910/Puzzle_Pirates


I started playing RDR2 but stopped before I got too far in the game. It drove me absolutely nuts that speaking with an NPC that had a side-quest threw me immediately into that side-quest without any option to do it later. I guess I wasn't supposed to talk to them if I didn't want to do the side-quest, but how was I supposed to know if I wanted to do the side-quest or not without talking to them? I couldn't get past it.


I want this but with the Yakuza series.


Or Cyberpunk


Yes, love this.

I tried to explain to someone why I disliked the missions on RDR2 and they didn’t get it. The missions reminded me that I was playing a game, I just wanted to explore and hunt.


Absolutely. Same as with the train — I don't buy a ticket, because that enables fast travel. I just climb aboard and travel. I remember the first time I stayed on the train for the whole journey, it was a whole experience. Such an impressive world. Rockstar could do so much with it, but they just focus on making it into GTA of the Wild West, sadly.


Yes the train was great. I also liked to set a waypoint get the horse going then switch to cinematic mode. Nice way to see the game too.


1 - High quality RTS (think Warcraft 3, SC2, C&C, Dune 2) but with the ability to have maybe 100 - 200 people playing.

2 - Updated subspace - it was the level of competition and community that made that game amazing in the 90s.

3 - Civilization like civ 1 but updated with newer graphics/tech tree also the ability to be much more complex but only if you want to. Best part of the game imho was the exploration, simple but enjoyable tech tree and expansion. The new civ games are fun but take so much time to master and engage in.

4 - FPS that can be played in large scale format but doesn't reward 14 year old reflexes and levels the playing field for experience of older people.

Video games that are easily accessible, enjoyable and don't try and keep you on platform by wasting your time on meaningless accomplishments :D


For 4 - worth checking out Squad. 50v50 matches with quite a bit of realism baked in. My favorite moments are getting setup in advance where the enemy is likely to advance with a trusty MG, going prone and just waiting for them to run into my sightline.

While having quick reflexes is always a benefit, positioning and teamwork is more important in Squad.

Finding a server with consistently decent squad leaders is definitely important to get the most out of the game. If the squad lead isn't talking for more then a minute or two, leave and join another.


You can get a bit of mileage out of Fortnite by landing in less popular areas and building up your inventory as you slowly work towards the eventual late-game circle. Hide in a house or bush if you have to. Crouch a lot and get the jump on others to improve your chances.

I'm 40+ and play Fortnite with my son, and while I worry his gaming exposure is very heavily weighted to one game with minimal story, we have a great time working as a team and talking about strategies to maximise our chances. He's 9yo and a very strong player. I don't find reflexes to be that much of a problem, but I'm not sure how old you mean by "older"!


> Civilization like civ 1

You might like The Battle of Polytopia. Not the same but has similar vibes.


1.

https://www.beyondallreason.info/

Watch this space, it's already decent and also OSS.

PS: One hill I will die on is games using Discord as forum/wiki like this one does. Try searching google for information about unit or something, nothing. I guess I will have to make unofficial wiki/forum one day.


w.r.t. (4.) it sounds like you may be better off with an FPS 'sim' type game over arena shooters etc. These suggestions may not be your thing though but I thought I'd post them anyway:

If you like your FPS games with a side of inventory management and googling around for wiki hints, have a look at Escape from Tarkov. I'd suggest watching a bunch of Pestily's content (his The Raid series on youtube) to figure out if the game is for you. IMO it rewards experience over reflexes - but may be a different kind of 'experience' from what you are interested in. Lots to learn about map layouts, ammo types, etc.

Also have a look at the new Arma game (called Arma Reforger), seems like it could be (or become, with updates) interesting.


For 4, try out Hell Let Loose. It is multiplayer fps with heavy focus on communication and classes. I can guarantee that you don't need much reflexes because I have played and enjoyed the game at >200 ping :)


> FPS that can be played in large scale format but doesn't reward 14 year old reflexes

FWIW I've recently gotten an Oculus Quest 2 and I've been playing a lot of Pavlov Shack. I was afraid of the quick-reflexes, playing-all-the-time, fearsome 14 years old (and judging by their voices, there's a lot of them), but I've been doing pretty well - usually ending up with a 2:1 or 3:1 K/D ratio, top of the team table, and playing maybe an hour every other day. I'm very surprised by this, and I can't really explain it - I'm not a gamer and the last time I played an FPS seriously was before 2010. TLDR: Go get 'em!


I play pavlov on PCVR and it’sa bit of a different experience. Not sure if there is cross play but most of the people I’ve played against are much more experienced. I think a lot of the people that spend a significant amount amount of time playing also use a mount for their controllers to improve stability and aim.


I use a Sanlaki gunstock, and it has improved my aim massively. Headshots were practically impossible before, now they work routinely if I aim properly.


>2 - Updated subspace - it was the level of competition and community that made that game amazing in the 90s.

http://freeinfantry.com/


Not exactly just a game, but the book from diamond age, A highly sophisticated interactive book: “Young Lady's Illustrated Primer: a Propædeutic Enchiridion”

It’s obviously a fiction summarizing all the knowledge and education we have freely available now online and to some extent social media, and an iPad might be pretty damn close if you get all the right things on it. But still, childrens games these days are all focused on optimizing for intense attention on mindless content and accidental clicks to purchase other games that do the same, or pressuring kids to pressure their parents to buy skins. I would love to have a “gaming” experience that instead focused on giving kids the opportunity to learn and use their knowledge in an immersive universe, and to support them in their development.


A game with a good, complex and deep magic-system. Magic normally is just limited to cast predefined spells, bought at the shop or learned along the way. At best they have some elements interacts, but barely more.

What I want is something where you can literally research magic, discover new effects, combine them to create new magic in form of spells, artifacts, rituals and so on. It should be easily accessible, after all it's a game, and not work. And have a bit of liberty in world interactions and movements. So maybe a easy metrovanian like Ori or Hollow knight, where you get new movements and open new paths through magic discoveries, but can decide your own difficult-level by either using some slow and safe magic in form of a ritual, or fast and dangerous by fighting directly with battle-orientated spells.

There are a bunch of games which go a bit in the direction, but are not complex and deep enough, like "Mages of Mystralia", or the Magicka-Games. Thinking about, a sandbox-environment might be the best for this, so Minecraft with some mods, or Noita would also go in the direction from a different angle.


Path of Exile. It has the most complex and detailed magic system from any game right now. Insane amount of unique spells that you can combine several ways with all the different weapons and armors and on top of that you have a gigantic skill tree

Just the passive tree alone makes my head hurt all the time and that's just one single aspect of adjustment of your character https://poeplanner.com/


I wonder if it would be fun to make magic a deeply unintuitive visual programming language.


I am working on a game with exactly that mechanic: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1482640/Nurose/ I like to think that the visual programming is pretty intuitive even for non programmers.


Neat! I wonder if one could do a gesture based programming language in VR...


similar to the wand building in Noita?


Its pretty old so maybe just useful for inspiration but the old Amiga/Atari game Dragon Lord / Dragon's Breath (Europe) has a very interesting custom magic system in which you can create unique spells using combinations of various alchemical reagants.

FWIW I think it's a very difficult thing to create such a system, without making it a tedious exercise in testing ingredient combinations.


This! I talked about it in my comment but it ended up with me rambling about my idea of the game. I'd definitely be the slow ritual kind of guy haha.


Here are a couple interactive fiction games with complex magic systems:

- Suveh Nux by David Fisher

- The Wand by Arthur DiBianca


A combination of first person shooter and real time strategy. There is a large map and balanced units on each side. Each round, a team commander is chosen randomly from each team. During play, the commander sees a bird’s eye view of the current battle and directs player objectives, waypoints, etc. while everyone else is playing COD-style first person (trying to take advantage of the intelligence and goal setting from the commander). “The game” is sustained over many rounds, teams taking and losing ground as individual battles are won and lost.

I haven’t thought deeply about how much RTS complexity would be appropriate - but you would want to keep the action symmetrical so nobody is ‘waiting’ around for decisions to be made.


This also sounds a bit like Planetside 2 [1], which had a similar structure. A relatively large open world where small "provinces" were contested by factions in FPS King-of-the-Hill combat. This meant that any one province action was a part of a larger "front," across which factions would often mass & press offensives. Capturing the entire map led to some kind of reward, and then a reset iirc.

Nothing like rolling up in an APC with 12 people in voice chat on the tip of the spear, or coordinating an entire battery of MAXs keeping the skies clear. Some of the best gaming in general I've ever experienced. Gradually, though, pay to win mechanics pushed me away, and I've not played since 2014.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlanetSide_2


Planetside is incredible. Battle royales came and go, Battlefield franchise deteriorated, but Planetside 2 is on it's 12th year and still delivers.


These have existed already: Natural Selection, its sequel Natural Selection 2, and Nuclear Dawn. The idea is nice but the actual gameplay isn't fun or sustainable because there's too much interdependence on having a top-notch commander AND having a team of exceptional FPS players; you can't really find two teams of 12 people who can all carve out time to play.

The gameplay is sustainable for a little bit in terms of randoms joining servers but all that's left of NS1 and 2 are extremely niche competitive scenes that don't reach the scale of what you want and Nuclear Dawn has no playerbase. It's a nice idea and NS1 produced some of the best competitive FPS players for a few games (Quake 3/CPMA/Live, Team Fortress 2) but ultimately it lacks the fun factor needed to keep a substantial amount of people playing.


Huh? Natural Selection was insanely fun for me. Either as player or commander. Only reason i stopped playing was because the community shrank too much after a while. Most matches felt nicely balanced and enjoyable even if i lost.


Natural Selection (2) is close on a round-by-round basis, but isn't an RPG. https://store.steampowered.com/app/4920/Natural_Selection_2/


Game is so incredibly fun but so difficult. The people who play it regularly are just Really, Really Good.

Even after 40 or so hours I was still getting absolutely destroyed, chasing the high of kill streaks I'd gotten early on (against other new players).

Is it still active? Part of me wants to give it another try, though I know only pain and suffering awaits.


The mid-game lerk and fade gameplay versus shotgun marines favours skilled players a lot.

A good lerk can soften up marines forever and a good fade has little reason to die while continually getting kills everytime it leaves the hive.

A good shotgun or rifle marine can cancel out 2-3 alien skulk players every wave. The skilled dominate midgame.

The end-game onos stomp and xeno ganeplay versus exo and jetpacks levels out the skill required across players and becomes more enjoyable for everyone. Though games rarely get there without demoralizing everyone midgame.

It's strange to me that the skill required peaks midgame and endgame is full of stunlock mechanics, tanky units and suicide tactics.

I would put the highest skill mechanics on display in the end game so everyone has a good time before the domination of skill kicks in.

It's still active, 4-5 servers in the US full every night and a bunch of UK, Euro and chinese servers. One aussie server.


It's death spiraled at this point with the only players left being the god-like skilled. So not especially newbie friendly, which just means the community shrinks more.

Plus Unknown Worlds has moved on to Subnautica, so all updates are Community Driven now. Which is pretty neat tbh.


Battlezone and Battlezone 2 are kind of like this - and they are GREAT games that recently had soft remakes

https://store.steampowered.com/app/624970/Battlezone_Combat_...

https://store.steampowered.com/app/301650/Battlezone_98_Redu...


Hell Let Loose does something similar. Each team of 50 has one commander, and multiple squads with infantry (all human players). The squad leads communicate with the commander, their squad, and other squad leads in order to accomplish plans set by the commander. The commander can call in recon plans, artillery, tanks. Good communication and coordination can win games. It is a rather brutal game though.


Reminds me a bit of the old Battlefront Galaxy Conquest modes, though the overview mode would need a lot more work.

I think the overview position would need complicating factors to make it hard - otherwise they would just be frustrated at the grunt soldiers not taking objectives.


NS/NS2 and Savage have already been mentioned. Natural Selection being my particular jam.

But does anyone else remember the Sourcemod Empires?

FPS/RTS with TANKS! And a Tech Tree!

Unfortunately the Source Engine really doesn't like tank physics.


Red Orchestra 2 is something like this, though not quite what you describe. The commander can call in artillery strikes and recon planes that show where enemy troops are on the map and set waypoints for different squads.

It can be quite satisfying with an organized group, or frustrating if you're just playing with randoms.

RO2 is fairly old now but I imagine the newer games (Rising Storm/RS2) have similar mechanics.


Savage XR and Savage 2 are a bit like that, but I don't think either have very active communities these days.


Savage really went hard on the RTS aspect. Congrats, you go punch this resource like a worker! You're contributing!


Yea, I feel Savage 1 really wanted to be almost "Warcraft/AoE, but your friends are the units," which is why it includes some rather dull mechanics. I think Savage 2 got rid of some of the tedium, but it also introduced more specialization which made it even harder to get a game going, as you can't even really play the game with less than ~8 people in a server (and the game really only gets fun with many, many more players).


Hitting critical mass was definitely the weakness for Savage.

Natural Selection worked much better in that regard. About 6v6 was the sweet spot, but it worked alright on lower player counts and was absolute fun chaos at higher counts. It was a fixture at our LANs for many years!

One the best parts of these games though is that new players are always incentivized to contribute and aren't a net drag (in casual play). Sure you might be terrible, but your death still meant less damage on your teammates, and there was always something helpful to do whether it was helping build or repair things or scouting and harassing the enemy.


That has kind of already been done in the 2010 PS3 game MAG: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAG_(video_game)


I made a demo of such a game before that had some traction on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQLiANnRPBU


natural selection 2 is still great to play, and alive on steam still recieving updates; highly recommend it. savage 2 is a bit older, but a true classic in this niche gente, it's still played on weekends


I felt like PlanetSide 2 gets close to this (at least I think the game is still active), though commanders and squad-leads were self-selecting.


Natural Selection 1/2 is literally this. Space Marines vs Aliens and you have a commander and can build building, research tech, etc.


Commmand & Conquer Renegade was the start of this 'genre'.


In the Freeware Remake Renegade-X people can actually choose a commander https://totemarts.games/games/renegade-x/


Battlezone came 4 years before...


Squad, Planetside 2 and Natural Selection 2 are all kinda like this.


As well as "Hell Let Loose" which is basically WW2 Squad but also uses the Commander position.


Hell Let Loose is the best social FPS. Being/having a true leader as a squad leader makes all the difference in the battle.


My friends like FPS but I am terrible at them. I love RTS and they can't be bothered to learn them. Would be great if we had a game to bridge that gap.

1) Asymmetric RTS / FPS. A group of FPS players play through a map against an RTS player who is controlling the tech, types and grouping of mobs, etc.

2) RTS / FP coop game sort of like Warcraft 3 where one player controls the base from an RTS view and another player(s) control a hero and a support army.

I don't enjoy MOBA's but they are super popular. I love Starcraft but it is too hard to get into. Takes tons of time and effort to get the basics of 'how to play'.

3) I think a game somewhere between Starcraft and LOL would be interesting. Clearly it is all about the details here and I don't have them - but I think you could capture a really big gaming market by trying to simplify the macro of Starcraft, keep the micro, army movement, base building, expanding etc. Controlling and upgrading lanes of a moba map?

I have no idea how any of these would really work out from a game development point of view but I think they have potential to be a lot of fun and bring some new life into the RTS world.


It's not quite point 1, but Natural Selection 2[1] is close, and might even be better than what you're asking for if you're looking to play with (rather than against) your friends. Each team has one player who plays with an RTS view, with all the other players being the units, playing with an FPS view.

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/4920/Natural_Selection_2/


I heard of Natural Selection which was aiming to be exactly #2 in 2003-2006. I never played it though so I can't confirm how well it realised the ideal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Selection_(video_game)


Both Natural Selection and Natural Selection 2 are some of my favourite games of all time, so I probably carry a heavy bias. But in my opinion they were both absolutely excellent. The second game had severe technical issues initially, but has improved greatly. They both suffer from the same problem though, in that you need to find a good server with friendly players to have a good time given the amount of cooperation necessary. In particular, there is no way to make up for a really poor commander. But, it becomes absolutely magical once you are with the right people. It also has asymmetric combat, which makes for a very rare and interesting experience.


Natural Selection is close to what you're after, my friends used to play it a lot.

One of the players is the RTS "Commander", the rest are soldiers on the ground. The commanders role is to distribute both resources and information as necessary to the soldiers.


One game that was announced and then cancelled was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_canceled_Command_%26_C...

It was similar to what you are talking about. There was an RTS aspect with a tactical view where you ordered groups of units around, and an FPS aspect where you fought as an individual.

The gameplay was based around your tactical units being under balanced against the enemy, so you would have to choose where and how to use yourself as the superweapon to achieve the level objectives.

I was a developer on the game team which had representatives from the RTS and FPS teams (CnC and Medal of Honor). The first day you were on the team you had to play the lo-fi prototype which had the basic mechanics in place. It was frantic, exhausting, frustrating, and incredibly fun.

Obviously I can't talk about why it was cancelled, but if you look at the business environment and economy in the first couple of years after the xbox360 and ps3 were released, you can get a good idea.

I really wish that game had been finished and released as it was originally conceived.


Another one that was in production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fable_Legends but was cancelled right around the time Microsoft picked up the company. THis one was RTS + Action RPG but similar in concept.

Very disappointing.


There's an older game called Savage, the battle for newarth that combines two RTS captains with an army of FPS players:

https://www.savagexr.com/savage-the-battle-for-newerth-downl...


Love the idea for (2). It is literally the plot of Ender's Game - which has been on my list of potential ideas to make as games but you have summed it up perfectly!


For 1), check out Natural Selection 2 (https://www.naturalselection2.com/)


Haha. You win mschulze!

    > myrmi 0 minutes ago
    > 1 point by AndrewOMartin 0 minutes ago
    > mschulze 1 minute agor


Better luck next time letharion.


Hostile Waters sort of did #1. Its solo, but it's a RTS where you can switch to FPS gameplay as any of your units


I'd throw up Gunfire Reborn. I don't really like FPS either but the character building RPG elements keep me interested. It is fairly forgiving in that an average player won't really hold the group back.


Civilization, but where you start a company instead of a country. Here are some analogies:

Exploring and collecting goody huts, fighting off barbarians -> going around the idea maze trying to find product market fit

Catherine cozies up to you, then suddenly declares war and sends over a carpet of doom -> Amazon did a bunch of butt sniffing pretending to want to acquire, then decides to copy your product and launch a competitor

Chieftain level: you went to an Ivy league school, have a wealthy parent that is a partner at a Tier 1 VC, and get a free (no equity) 500k angel investment to start off

Immortal level: you are an immigrant who just arrived in US before college. You are working 2 jobs to support your parents and siblings. 1 of your parents is sick. Most of your friends are trying to get rich quick off crypto.

(don't even ask what deity level might be)

I would love to give folks the real startup experience without the risk so they can feel what it's like. I think the challenge here is figuring out what the movement and interpersonal mechanics would be: so much of building a company is about relationships. Perhaps some of it can be procedurally generated, using GPT-3 or similar models. Like when you are trying to negotiate multiple term sheets and the investors try various tactics on you.

Someone posted a vastly simplified version of this earlier: https://startuptrail.engine.is/

EDIT: if you're gonna downvote, at least explain why?


Some more ideas (mostly for future me revisiting this thread):

Golden age -> "oxygen is the momentum of a startup"; good culture building unlocks a bunch of superpowers of your employees (like, your growth person generates several 0 CAC strategies or your engineering team surprises you with a different platform: https://parsnip.substack.com/p/engineering-plot-twist)

Denouncements: Ryan Breslow accuses you of being part of the Stripe mafia on Twitter


National Parks: 2022

A) Build a sweet game engine for exploring and discovering landscapes, topologies, biomes, plants and animal species, etc. Maybe even hunting and survival?

B) Take on the EA Sports (it's in the game) model and update the game with only minor changes to trails and other recent events, but use the margins to fund the park service!

C) Help incorporate trail mapping and maintenance into the engine, so people can have fun taking the game back to reality

D) Release expansions with new areas to help grow the platform, but also teach people about the various locales

E) Over time, watch how parts of our earth change, how we impact it, and use the game engine as a solid digital archive


While I was touring Zion National Park a few years ago, I spent a lot of time thinking how it all needs to be captured in both:

1. a high res VR experience for the less-able folks to experience this beautiful place, and

2. an AR glasses experience that narrates the trails as I walk it, where I can walk up to any plant and ID it, overlays that name all the peaks and valleys, narration about local fauna and sustainability.


And also because there are more and more experiences limited by permit that are otherwise top-tier places worth visiting (Angel's Landing in Zion, Half Dome, The Wave, etc).


Just as long as the AR people don't bring boomboxes with them ;)


Is it an economic sim (National Parks Tycoon), or a chill simulator (Park Ranger simulator)?

Kind of makes me think of an open-world, never-ending Firewatch. Or, make a Journey style Appalachian Trail simulator.


Maybe have a mobile app that actual park visitors could use to help map the trails, etc. They could tag cool things they see while hiking ("grizzley bear", "massive tree recently fell") and they could show up in the larger game.


Can you say more about this? You've got a great idea and it relates to one of my nonprofit clients who might be able to help your idea.


Please change your offensive terminology:

This -> TTheirs

Help -> Themlp

Clients is a masculine term in French use CliThems.

Minus 15 social credits.


I've always been interested in deep economy games where the economy drives the gameplay to a degree. The main reason for that is in my mind it's a really easy starting point to the question, how do you provide a space where the player can change / shape the world, while still having the world push back, return to normal or if successful, converge on a new normal?

So for example take any zacklike, one thing I'd like to try is having something like those mechanisms drove the supply of goods in an in-game economy, which would then feed in as input into other systems.

Well any complex system as the input would do =)...

So I've spent a lot of times tinkering with economic simulation games, the tricky thing is making them fun / balanced. I'm still trying to work out nice ways of debugging them when they break / become unstable. A lot of it at the moment is plotting data over time to see where failure points occur.


I’ve always thought a game playing as the Fed (but in a sci-do context or something to make it less political) would be interesting.

Relatively few options to act upon, lots of data with ambiguous lagging and leading indicators.


Yes - something where you were the Jerome Powell and would be controlling the Fed funds rate, QE/QT cycle, MBS buying on the open market - would seem topical given current conditions.

In fact I'd even be interested in just a mod for an existing business sim like a SimCity/Anno1800 where you could get loans based rates and consumer demand was in response to central bank activities.

Actually just found that OpenTTD seems to have some of this but haven't played it yet as the graphics are a bit retro for my taste. But maybe I'll take look.


Both of these sound fascinating, I'd be really interested if you manage to build this =)...


This is such a fascinating challenge I want to tackle!

I'm creating Archapolis, a city builder game. Handling the micro economy is a far off goal. But one aspect of the game I want to implement on the macro scale is charging ~30% more for utilities and goods imported into the city.

So one of the goals of the player is help grow the businesses they want. This helps the budget in three ways:

- Collecting corporate tax

- Collecting sales tax

- Higher margins on goods

For anything that is imported, they city loses potential income by not being able to tax corporate and lower profit margins

I'm currently working on path finding right now, and I've got a tech demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q0l87hwmkI


Really nice, I'm less focused on the transport question directly, instead abstracting that to a distance measure for now.

I'm more interested in trying to get economic behaviours modelled in a nice way where the system responds to shocks and responding to the varying behaviour of it's agents.


I pinged your gmail. I misread your OP and thought your were tinkering with existing games, not building your own model. Very very cool!


Responded


Looks cool! Following your subreddit, will def try a playable alpha when you get there :D


Awesome, thanks! I may release a prealpha version for free or very very cheap in the coming months.

Feedback is really important to me. I'm aiming for a Venn diagram that captures what I want and what the users want.


Feedback is incredible powerful. I built a game about a decade ago, and having the game in players hands was so revelatory. Highly recommend.


Inspired by a pun, I had an idea for a game where the players are doing currency trading, while in the background there's a non-player driven Civilization-style competition influencing (and influenced by) the markets.


I'm not going as far as currency trading. Mostly because my understanding of forex is pretty simple, so I'm not sure I can do it justice.

If you have some nice ways of approaching / thinking about this, I'd love to hear them =)...

You can reply here or ping me an email.

But I am going to be covering this at a goods level.


If you haven't played it, give Factorio a shot.


Oh Factorio is excellent, but in my mind it's an entirely different game, for a start the whole game, even multiplayer isn't played out in the same terms. It's very much focused on logistics and production, but from the perspective that all players have access to this pipe output of a gigafactory that exists to produce useful stuff for them that they can all share / use together.

That's not the same as an economy, yes, you have logistics chains and production lines and yes, they affect each other. However, it's not a shared space and I think that leads to a very different gameplay experience.

But yes, Factorio is definitely the canonical example of the game in its space.


hmm, maybe City of Gangsters?


Hmm, I initially thought you meant Omerta[0], which I've played a bit of, but did you actually City of Gangsters[1]?

- [0]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/208520/Omerta__City_of_Ga...

- [1]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1386780/City_of_Gangsters...


yes, the second one, the first one I'm not familiar with


Have you tried Age of Empires?


A very long time ago, it's not quite the same thing, but if you're a big fan, you might give [0] a look, it was inspired by the game developer asking the question, what if we made a game based on the Age of Empires marketplace?

- [0]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/271240/Offworld_Trading_C...

- [1]: Which I vaguely remember he discusses in his GDC talk, "Offworld Trading Company: An RTS Without Guns ": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2C4z_apu2I


A VR game where you take a snapshot or ghost of yourself performing some movement or throwing an item, which then repeats itself in the world. Then you can make more snapshots and string them together to create a Factorio-like game which uses the snapshot of those movements to assemble products.

E.g., ghost 1: pick up ore, throw ore -> ghost 2: catch ore, crush ore, throw crushed ore -> ghost 3: put ore into furnace -> ghost 4: pick up metal bar, throw metal bar, etc..

Then the player is running around building interactable buildings with produced resources and that oh so satisfying factory spaghetti starts forming.


I’ll try to find it later but one indie dev is making exactly this, where you construct elaborate machines by recording movements and item interactions in VR.

Edit: The Last Clockwinder https://store.steampowered.com/app/1755100/The_Last_Clockwin...

Support indie devs making cool stuff like this!


I just want to say I spend a lot of time thinking on game ideas and prototyping stuff (as well as reading most of this thread), and this is one of the most unique mechanics I've heard in years. I'm picturing some crazy Rude Goldberg style sandbox contraptions coming out of this.


This is really cool. One mechanic could be that the older ghosts start vanishing / growing weaker / corrupting the physics as you add more. Exploiting this could be part of the puzzle in some way.


Gaming has been as big a part of my life as anything else, a few of the games I wish existed, or that I hope exist and just haven't happened across:

1. A true large scale battle game, kind of like what Hell Let Loose is, but for knights, samurai, spartans, Persian Immortals, and any number of other warriors throughout history. Each has their own skill tree and strategies, you can control troop movements on the battlefield, and become an individual warrior and enter the fray. You can pick a 'campaign mode' which consists of conquering surrounding civilizations, or make the setting a historically significant battlefield like Thermopylae.

2. A spy rpg, where you follow the life of a CIA case officer, or KGB operative. Kind of like what Sam Fisher did with Splinter Cell, but those games missed out on big aspects of spycraft, like developing assets and constructing a spy network for intelligence gathering.

3. A good surfing game. I love surfing and have done it most of my life, but I haven't happened across a video game that does a good job capturing what surfing is like. They either make the surfer impossible to unseat from their board, or make every wave teetering on the edge of wiping out. I know water physics are hard in games but I keep holding my breath a game studio gets it right.


Number one is literally the Mount and Blade series. Go buy "Warband" on sale for a couple bucks and play through that sandbox and then start adding whatever mods you want


Seconding this. The late-game diplomacy is pretty weak. But the combat/warcraft components are top-notch.


Checked it out just now and pulled to trigger on it. Definitely what I was looking for in regard to the first.


#1 reminds me of Totally Accurate Battle Simulator[0]; it doesn't have skill trees or a meaningful campaign, but does let you spawn a ridiculous selection of units, possess them, etc.

0: https://store.steampowered.com/app/508440/Totally_Accurate_B...


Phantom Doctrine is the spy rpg you want


I will check it out. Thank you!


Is Alpha Protocol is somewhat of a spy rpg as you mentioned?


I played that one a bit, felt like another splinter cell to me. I will have to revisit


I would like a game where the development company is only responsible for making the game.

No long, enforced intermissions between rounds.

Escape key works for all interstitial screens.

People can run their own servers.

Free to mod.

Basically, nearly every new game enforces how the player plays beyond just mechanizing the play. For instance, in Overwatch at the end of the game there are highlights. If you leave the highlights and queue again, you aren't actually in the queue until the highlights play out in your previous game.

Sure, each of the games breaking these rules may claim success, but this thread is about what I wish existed. It seems like a lot of games with these features used to exist (running my own server, mods/maps, etc...) and we've lost something.


I miss the time when modding tools were released by the devs and community servers were all the rage.

You would find a sever close to your location with a low ping and casually game in the evenings. At least 1/2 of the sever population were regulars. Modding was simple and encouraged. No DLCs.

I feel like I grew up during the golden age of gaming and my kids won’t get the same experience.


Oh yeah. Remember how fun it was before skill-based matchmaking? You could find a game you were good at and then just be good at it. These days you're matched with equally-skilled players so you know if you don't play better than you did yesterday you lose. It makes it too stressful to enjoy.


Yes, I've noticed it's much more common now for games to have deal-breaking aspects than they used to. Back in the day you could just mod it out, and today you can't. For example, in Jurassic World Evolution you eventually just stop because the gameplay becomes an endless loop of refilling feeders and replacing dinosaurs that died of old age. That would've been an easy mod, or even a value in an ini file two decades ago.


I know it's just one game, but some devs are still focussed on this. The Factorio devs are shining beacons of light when it comes to your requests.


See also Grim Dawn, Noita, OpenTTD - basically look for indie studios.


> For instance, in Overwatch at the end of the game there are highlights. If you leave the highlights and queue again, you aren't actually in the queue until the highlights play out in your previous game.

That used to be true, but it has not been the case for a couple of years now.


Without knowing the specific details in this case, one of the biggest problem in multiplayer games - even very popular games - is filling the matchmaking pools with players of a similar skill set and region (low ping) to you. My guess is that even though it doesn’t show you queueing, that’s just some entertainment to fill time - the server is actually scheduling games to maximise player counts.


I'll do one better. Here's a genre of games that I wish existed: smart board games (SBG's). I define an SBG as a game that (1) relies on all players having a mobile phone to implement game mechanics that would be impractical to approximate solely with analog objects like the traditional tools of board games (e.g., pen, paper, cards, dice, tokens, meeple, boards, etc.); and (2) relies on direct player-to-player interaction that would be impractical unless played face-to-face or via high-fidelity virtual reality.

No board game has yet exploited the fact that everyone has a smart phone in their pocket. There are social mobile games and mobile clones of board games, but their are no games that exploit the power of the ubiquitous mobile phone to create an otherwise impossible in-person board game. The closest game designers have come to this is games like Pokemon Go, but Pokemon Go is not a SBG because it does not rely on player-to-player interaction that requires high-fidelity virtual reality or face-to-face play.

Here are some capabilities SBG's will give game designers:

- Implement complex probabilistic behavior, cause and effect relationships, and scoring

- Accelerate game play by automating score keeping and timekeeping

- Parallelize game play by allowing simultaneous turn-taking

- Reveal certain information to certain players with high granularity

- Allow players to communicate or transact with other players without revealing which player they are interacting with

- Persist detailed game state between game sessions

- Procedural world and character generation

I believe that SBG's will inevitably develop into a rich, hugely varied genre of board games that largely displaces traditional board games, but to my knowledge there isn't a single example commercially available at this time.

The core challenge of designing a compelling SBG will be to exploit the capabilities of the smart phone while simultaneously keeping players focused on the face-to-face interactions that give board games their timeless appeal.


"- Accelerate game play by automating score keeping and timekeeping"

Yes indeed, this is huge. I'm thinking of you, Through the Ages, with your incredibly fiddly and easy to make mistakes in upkeep rules. Our first few run throughs were pretty much ruined because someone made an early mistake in their favor that snowballed over time. Imagine if everyone had an iPad in place of their game board that would largely eliminate mistakes.

Similarly, back when Dominion came out, there were some online servers where you could play (I believe they were mostly shut down), and it was such a nicer experience because you didn't have to spend all of your time reshuffling your deck.


Try boardgamearena for Through the Ages & Dominion.games for dominion


The You Don't Know Jack series are (or can be) kind of like this, to a degree. Party games that use a single game system or computer to direct things and show results, but for the individual games you usually have to do something on your phones, like draw or type something. To some degree, it could work without the TV and phones, but it's a such a smooth experience with them that it wouldn't be the same.

I'd love to see SBGs as you've described them, though. Something beyond party games for this format would be nice.


Garticphone.com is a lovely mashup of drawful and telestrations, highly recommend for remote team happy hours. Several in our company have reported laughing so hard they are sore the next day, and a couple others have purchased styluses specifically for garticphone.


I think "The Search for Planet X" might meet (or come close to) your criteria.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/279537/search-planet-x

Players make guesses on their phone and only they know the result


The masterfully crafted just-right roguelike. High emphasis on performance and readable graphics, and keyboard manipulation rather than mouse. But mouse interaction must also be well integrated for newer players to learn the ropes. Traditional DnD-esque setting, because it is palatable to everyone and very cherished by many. Time-based, not only in unoffical ladders but in mechanics. Play fast to win more, quick gambles and intuituve descisions about talent progression and gear choice. For example, perhaps a potion of rage lasts for two minutes of real time, though the game is turn based. Quests should be similar, fast completion meaning higher rewards. Difficulty should be such that a player "taking his time" would never win the game. Perhaps the world is about to end in 60 minutes, and you must become strong enough to finish the villain in his lair before this timer reaches its end. But losing is naturally not some terrible state of game that you should be ashamed of. Just like in chess, you just try another game, and if you got close to winning, then you certainly had great success in your game session.

The base game should actually be quite limited in scope, but if the idea takes off, additional levels and challenges (rather than gear and talents) will be added. Eventually a game like this should grown in depth only, adding nothing but intresting generators and randomized encounters, and enemies. Because otherwise you end up inflating good gear and talent progression, and there is only so many ways you can honestly make a +1 Weapon before it just becomes another +1 Weapon, but its green.


While I've been waiting for this kind of game, some approximation I've been able to whet my appetite with is the old classic Baldur's Gate (I and II) with the following mods / optional settings.

Sword Coast Stratagems (radically improves AI, making mages especially terrifying), INSANE difficulty Double Damage (only damage dealt to your party is doubled) No Reload ("hard core" mode. No save scrumming).

These combinations turn the game into a strategically deep, and tactically rich experience. And just the hell more memorable.


Thanks for the recommendation, I’m goin got do a playthru with those mods.


I was about to recommend Caves of Qud, being a traditionally inspired rogue-like. However, it encourages slow and careful play over fast play. The game is brutally difficult and the main story long, so a run takes a long time, especially experience the content off the beaten path.

I don't think what it's you're looking for, but I do think it is an incredible game, and I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in it.


I've really enjoyed playing Downwell[0], which tangentially covers a lot of these points. I've also enjoyed FTL[1] and Into the Breach[2] (both made by the same people) because of the time crunch aspect and irreversibility of your actions, respectively.

[0] https://www.downwellgame.com/

[1] https://subsetgames.com/ftl.html

[2] https://subsetgames.com/itb.html


Large multiplayer online games with limited play schedules that also have a limited total time, so there's more of a plot.

Like say you have one game that's 7PM-9PM three times a week for a length of three months. Sort of like how you might schedule a Dungeons and Dragons game, but a bit more frequently and with the benefits of online play and other computer things, whether they be physics, scale, graphics, mechanics, customization with material impact, etc.

That way there's no real penalty for joining late, you can just play the next game or find a game with a different schedule that's closer to the beginning, or do multiple games at once. Also perhaps hidden goals that can give you a bonus towards your next game, but they would only carry over for one game.

Space Station 13 does some of this with one hour scheduled games, but I'm thinking something halfway between that and an MMO.


"Bloodstraw"

A first person mosquito simulator, where you fly around in teams, suck blood and also can upgrade your mosquito. Hiding in a sneaky sort of way together with sinister music should be a central part of the game. The annoying buzzing sound should not be on by default, but be possible as part of a future mosquito upgrade. If it's on a level with many humans, it could be on the form of "capture the flag" or counter strike, but where a designated subset of the humans would need to be sucked blood from, and then the first team to lay eggs in water and spawn new mosquitos would win. There should be no ranged weapons, but a way to zoom in and jet forward once a target lock was acquired. The upgrades should belong to the account, but only some should be possible to select at the start of a level, according to how many "upgrade points" a level has. One NPC squatter that tried to squish mosquitos should be controlled by an AI and placed in each level. The mosquito upgrades could be pretty extensive, from "supersonic" to "jet pack" or "hurricane force blood suction". Victory dances of the mosquitos and the music should also be part of the upgrades. Money should be made by selling the game for $2 and by selling hats in game for $0.5 each.


There actually was a Japanese PlayStation 2 game where you had to play a mosquito. It was rather hard. I can't remember if it was good.


I guess you're referring to Mister Mosquito: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Mosquito

Never played it but heard it was frustrating. Even the trailer suggests it's not easy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGz8_F03t8c


Right !

I do remember being a bit frustrated.


It's a bit different from the "Bloodstraw" idea, but still interesting!


Maybe I'm getting old but I want a game that brings real people together. There are more than enough "get everyone together virtually" games.

I want a game that actually reinforces the social fabric instead of simulates it. Something that encourages people to be together in the physical world (gasp!), have fun, have shared experiences/goals/challenges, and form lasting friendships.

I have very fond memories of lugging my computer (and CRT!) to my friends/family's house to have a LAN + pizza party. The best part for me wasn't necessarily the game itself. The games were fun but I really enjoyed the social aspect of talking about a tough dungeon or strategizing how to beat a challenging opponent.

It seems like the industry is trying its best to bring people into a simulated world but why not use games to bring people together into it instead?

Pokemon Go is probably the closest thing to this I've seen recently but the core gameplay was unfortunately pretty boring when it first started and became popular.


disclaimer: I worked at Jackbox for four years.

That’s kinda what The Jackbox Party Pack games are designed for. Think Pictionary, but you doodle from your phone and it shows up on your TV and there’s nothing to clean up.


My friends and I love playing jackbox games. Great job!


Any couch co-op game should do this - local multiplayer for up to 4 people is a great way to connect. Forced, Broforce, Gauntlet, Streets of Rogue, Overcooked 1/2, Ultimate Chicken Horse, Speedrunners, Unrailed, Guns Gore & Cannoli, Gang Beasts, etc.

Search for games supporting local multiplayer in steam, then look them up on https://www.co-optimus.com/ to see how many players they support.


I've had the idea of AR/mobile game that just recreates an existing game but using your location/movement to represent the character. Some constraints would be needed so it's not just an excercise simulator. The games I had in mind were snake/nibbles and Borderlands.


Games like MtG and Smash come to mind


you can't go wrong with ARGs. Like Pokemon Go but encouraging more in-person collaboration.


I really do feel like AR is the future, moreso than VR.

As technologists we have a tendency to want to build our own world instead of integrate into the real world. It's understandably easier/cleaner, but it strips out all the richness of the real world.


Rockband was the best for this.


There are two categories of games that I wish involved time as more important element.

City builder: major construction projects take time, from planning to construction. Construction itself can be very disruptive, causing local negative effects and necessitating temporary arrangements. Another aspect is that developments that were once nice and shiny grow old and withered. In a long running city you should be able to recognize how different areas are from different eras, eventually some stuff becoming "historic" and valued for that reason.

RPG: In many games apocalypse patiently waits while our hero rescues every kitten from a tree and clears every basement from spiders. That makes decisions in game feel less weighty because often there is no cost for doing things. I would want to see a game where you'd really need to weigh if things are worth doing, not just in regards to players time but also in regards to in-game time. Tyranny (by Obsidian) was one game that kinda pretended to have this, but it was pretty weak illusion in practice.


In the original Fallout, you have 150 game days to finish the first major quest (find a new water chip).

In Unsighted, every character (including the player) has a finite lifetime remaining. You find items that can temporarily extend any player's lifetime, including your own, but it is very difficult to finish the game before any character dies. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1062110/UNSIGHTED/


For your city builder, I suggest checking out "timberborn" on Steam. Its a colony sim where you are a cohort of beavers. After you get the hang of the core mechanics, the emphasis is on larger-scale constructions. I certainly feel that in certain maps, I need to introduce temporary workarounds to scale up my bigger works.

It lacks some of your "buildings decay" ideas, though. So not quite 1-1 with what you're suggesting.


In Pathologic the whole game takes 12 days, and every day brings new quests that will expire at midnight.


I’d like to see a game that explores radio direction finding (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direction_finding).

Maybe start simple with 2D maps - “your goal is to spot Russian ships within 100 miles of the US East Coast, where do you put some number of DF listening posts?”. Then maybe introduce topology - “how do you detect ships intruding in these Norwegian fjords, given the mountains of varying heights?”, etc.


I enjoy the general structure of Metroidvanias but most of them rely on combat mechanics for the micro-challenges in each room or boss. I like the exploration, backtracking, progression and unlocking previously inaccessible area.

But combat isn't the only mechanic that could be present there. There are examples like Ori and Toki where combat is de-emphasized in favor of movement/puzzles, but they're still 2D platformers.

I want to see a metroidvania game based on racing. I enjoy driving/racing games and would like to see those mechanics provide the micro-challenges for a metroidvania. Boss fights would be setpiece races, earning XP would be small things like a time trials, stunts, or precision driving. Unlocks like drifts, speed boosts, etc.


You might want to check out Child of Light. It's on multiple platforms. It's a Metroidvania with puzzling and there is a combat focus, but it's turn-based RPG battles so there is even an element of puzzle solving to that rather than fast twich combat and platforming. It's also really beautiful.


I recommend Yoku's Island Express, which is a blend of metroidvania and pinball. There is "combat", but like most of the other microchallenges, it's actually just pinball.


I picked that up during a steam sale along with the Toki's, I'll check it out. Thanks!


You may wanna check out https://www.mobygames.com/game/gadget-racers


Thanks for the suggestion, I will!


> I want to see a metroidvania game based on racing.

Have you tried Speedrunners? It's a platform racing game, though that's all it is. Not really a Metroidvania.


The game I wish existed almost used to exist, as a play by mail game.

It was a swords'n'sorcery style adventure with a big open world, in which you had a party of adventurers.

Every week you'd fill in a card with what 10-20 actions you wanted to take (go exploring/questing, pray to gods, hire people, buy equipment, etc.), and post off your form.

Then you'd receive a printout with the results of your actions the following week.

I'd love a modern online version of this, i.e. something that limits you to taking a few actions a day or every few days, but with a serious amount of depth underneath it, many players, living worlds, etc.

The thing I remember most is looking forward to receiving many pages of printouts each week with all sorts of neat details and descriptions of everything that happened and the world around me.

The pacing and fact that it was text-based made me pay a lot more attention to everything that I would for a graphically based game.


With that description it's probably the one I briefly played back in the 90s, simply called 'Quest'.

It looks like there's an online version [1] still going in a couple of different variants.

[1] : http://www.kjcgames.com/quest/quest.htm

The website, navigation and forms also feel very appropriately 'dated', in kind of funny and painful ways...


Thanks for the link, this sounds like it might well be the one. Mid/early 90s is around when I played it too.


Existing games BUT allowing to host your OWN SERVERS!! and modding.

I would put in that list:

Sea of Thieves -> to play only with friends (no PvP)

Battlefield <X> -> to mod and fool around with my friends

Overwatch -> to train, mod, etc.

Star Citizen -> aside from the usual "when the game will be released" let us run our little servers!!

I am sure I am forgetting obvious ones in this list...

Please make games "hostable" and "moddable"! <3


The Video Game economy is brutal. There's a reason why LAN party games have phased out to near-obsolescence, it's apparently no longer worth it for anyone to put large resources and money into a game that doesn't tether the player with a closed network and platform made specifically to extract as much $$ from him as possible.


As someone who planned a game which could be hosted by anyone, I would love to know how to actually make enough money to finish that game. You either need to pour lots of money upfront to make great quality expensive game and hope that your high price doesn't scare people or make a cheap-but-monthly-payment game to be able to continue development during playing.


Have you considered the "cloud" approach, where players could rent a hosted server?


No, that's a great idea! Sidesteps many issues, like having a good specs required for typical server (fairly recent graphics card for physics simulation and lots of storage).


Interconnecting city builders with completely different types of games that play out in those user-created places.

Like as a city builder you suddenly have to deal with people doing illegal car races through your city putting your citizens in danger, or dealing with gang wars from a GTA style game, but from a more macro perspective. Having real people playing MORPGs visiting your city looking for things to do. And so on.

No idea how you would make that work, but I find the possibilities quite interesting.


sounds like a meta-verse with a kind of "game context module" that creates /toggles constraints and features for each user / player.

ive been whiteboarding something similar to this. My scope is geared more towards round-based game loops rather than entire world building but I think the technical implementation would be very similar.

I think there's a lot of potential in connecting traditionally single-player activities, so the core game loops work well without depending on a lot of people being online like MMO's.. but it still benefits greatly from having more people on, so it has snowball potential.

Something I had in mind (which this thread has showed me wasnt original haha) was like an RTS and FPS 1+5 v 1+5 mix. There is a typical 1v1 RTS match against an opponent, and then in the middle of the war is a 5v5 FPS match. The FPS players and RTS players are not sharing any win conditions, but are on same teams. for example, fps players might be confined to a subsection of the RTS map

I kept getting hung up on creating meaningful interaction. It seems like a really cool feature to me, if it could be developed for free.. but i couldnt find a way to justify having a less polished version of either of the game types without the interaction becoming too dominant. In other words, if my gameplay isnt really impacted by the other game types then im just playing a worse version of some game. Alternatively, if it significantly impacted by the other game modes - i become dependent on things far outside my control.

this tension might actually relax a lot by moving out of the context of round-based games and into a persistent world-building context, but that scale / scope is also significantly larger too.


This is kind of similar to what made Natural Selection 1/2 so fun as game. It was Space marines vs Aliens, but you also had a commander who could build a base and drop items. You had to defend resource extractors and advance your tech. A beautiful blend of Strategy game and first person shooter/biter.


GTA DIY


Mars Colony RTS with a strong emphasis on optimizing the ecosystem for self-sustainability and economic viability. 50% Age of Empires, 50% Factorio.

- Manage energy, waste, air, soil, water, food production.

- Build and expand your colony above and below ground.

- Manufacture robots, rockets, tools, everything your colony needs.

- Keep your population healthy through infection, virus, disease outbreaks.

- Control immigration/emigration policies to optimize skills and capabilities.

- Explore the planet and gain scientific skills and funding.

- Declare independence from earth and fight a war if you so choose.

Expansion packs: spread your empire to space, asteroids, and other planets. Basically The Expanse but in an RTS.


There is a game called Surviving Mars that tries to do this. It's fun for a few hours, but gets a little boring.


Mars Colony RTS could be an ancient back story to my game ...

    A code is entered. Everything goes white, then off-white. A bit of orange sky and ground shows up. Sand. There is sand everywhere, on the ground and in the sky. It would get in your eyes, if you had eyes. The sand is blowing and going everywhere.

    Something black slowly emerges beneath the blowing sand. It's fixed in the ground like a black hatch. As more sand blows a little more of the black hatch is revealed. There are tiny lines and squares not quite visible on the surface of the hatch. It's not a hatch at all. It's a solar panel buried in the sand.

    Days pass, and just enough sunlight filters through, and magically somewhere below a machine has come to life. It has activated itself. It is unknown how long the machine has been buried beneath the sand.

    Within a few weeks, the machine is visible. It is only partially buried. You have a choice. There are controls on the machine. It is not just a machine but appears to be a vehicle as well. Forward, left, right and reverse are the basic controls. You press forward and a gentle whirring noise starts, but the machine is stuck in the sand. You press reverse and the entire vehicle jiggles a bit but nothing more.

    Maybe back and forth? You toggle between pressing forward and reverse. And, after a bit of this the machine starts to move a little more than jiggle. But, it slows. You've used a little too much power. A few more weeks pass and you can try again.

    The batteries or whatever is powering this unit seem to be very low. But, you try again anyways to wiggle the machine out from being stuck in the sand. There really is no one else around. The sky, the ground, the sand, and this little vehicle with a solar panel on top of it. Today the machine seems to move a little more. And, over the weeks of recharging, more of the sand has blown away. You notice one other smaller button off to the side of the main movement controls. You press it, and an elaborate console appears.


Came here to say this, but just asteroids / O'Neil cylinders.

I (was going to say personally, but actually this is exactly what O'Neil said) find Mars settlement to be an unpleasant pipe dream compared with these options.

But, in the context of a game, Mars might be more fun.


It’s a bit different, but did you try Oxygen Not Included?

https://youtu.be/wcLayGm_pM4

ONI is a 2D (from the side) base / colony builder where you keep a bunch of workers alive. They need oxygen, food, shelter and sanitation, and a whole bunch of optional things.

You, as a player, can only tell what needs to be done. The workers will do it (whenever they feel like). You can prioritize jobs, and you can prioritize tasks per worker. (I.e. you want one to build, one to cook, etc)

Workers that are happy can take on more complex jobs. Workers become more happy if more needs are met, or with better quality (e.g. better food, nice bed, nice bedroom, nice place to eat, long breaks, good sleep)

You can automate a lot of things, but they’re all pretty hard. The game has pretty high difficulty and will be a constant challenge. There are many ways to solve specific problems, all with distinct advantages and disadvantages.

There are, for example, literally 10s of different ways to get food for your workers, plant based, animal based, or mixed. Animals require other resources (eg plants). The plants and animals usually have distinct requirements, like they need the environment to be hot or cold, or they need specific kind of food/fertilizer/water. The plants and animals will usually also produce some kind of resource. For example, there’s a type of animal that eats iron ores and poops refined iron, or one that consumes carbon dioxide and poops coal. There’s an animal that likes to live in a room filled with Hydrogen that will grow plastic fur, but it still needs oxygen to breath (so you need a room that has both hydrogen and oxygen in a certain balance)

The animals are all… creative.

All machines produce heat, so your base will very slowly heat up until you setup active cooling (which is a huge challenge). You can cool down the air you produce (oxygen) before it’s being circulated, or you can cool down the machines, or you can move the machines away from the base (somewhere isolated).

Some things require very cold environments or very hot. Some chemical processes require you to heat up a room or floor to over 400C, while food can be preserved near indefinitely in a room of carbon dioxide at -21C. (But workers can’t breathe in there so they better not get stuck in there).

You can create steam power plants by building steel rods into magma and cooling these rods with water, but have fun trying to keep your steam at reasonable temperatures because if uncontrolled your steam will be over 1000C and will certainly break something and escape your steam room and spread everywhere, destroying or killing anything on its path before condensing into water again.

Many of these processes require specific materials that can resist or transfer heat easily, or insulate heat, or doesn’t easily melt. Some materials are hard to get, or require starting new colonies on other planets, or require mining “ore fields” with rockets. (DLC content)

You can choose what materials to use in many buildings. For example, you can have a heat pump made of iron, but it will overheat very quickly so cooling it will be hard. You can make a heat pump out of steel, so it’s much easier to deal with but steel is harder to produce (it requires resources gathered that comes in low quantities inside eggs, or can be dug up from deep biomes which are very hot and will kill your workers without protection)


I haven't played a game that scratches the same itch as the Patrician games, and I would really love to. A strong economy that does not just exist in parallel to the rest of the game, but actually influences every aspect of it and evolves with and without you, but where your contribution does make an actual difference. The X games come to mind, but they still eventually feel like you're the only major player that drives the numbers.

Most games with an economy I've played are either of the type that the economy doesn't really matter and is more of a tacked on feature, it is a thinly veiled idle game, or you are the only entity the economy exists for or is controlled by. All of these lower the depth of the experience to a point where it's not fun for long.

I guess what I wish existed would be a merchant type game with a strong economy, and many entities competing to take their bite out of it, you just being one of those. Tycoon type games don't really scratch the same itch for some reason.


I love Patrician. Specifically, I love economy games where you can slowly automate the manual stuff, which allows you to focus on higher-level strategy.

A factorio-like economy game would be incredible. Maybe Factorio + Off World Trading Company + Patrician.


Yup, and as you automate some tasks, new ones keep popping up. I love Factorio and have had a similar thought, but no idea how it could be made to work. Definitely something I would be interested to see, though. At the same time, I enjoy the medieval/historic setting for this type of game and have liked the thought of mixing RPG elements with the economic aspects as well.


I have two game themes to call out:

1. A first-person puzzler in the spirit of Portal. No guns, no violence, just… elegantly designed puzzles that requires logic and real world physics to solve.

How Portal didn’t immediately launch a sub-genre of platform puzzlers I’ll never know.

2. I wish there was a game where time travel was a core mechanic. When we die or get stuck in current games, we revert back to a save point, why not lean into that some more to build a compelling game experience?


As for 1), I think it did? With games like Talos Principle, Turing Test, Spectrum Retreat, and other like Antichamber or The Witness, there's plenty to choose from.

2) this is a mechanic in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, when you die you can turn the time back to the moment before death.


Thanks to everyone who replied to this. I am thrilled to learn about these options.

To my Portal idea the closest I’ve found was Superliminal. There’s something wrong with the graphics though, it makes me nauseous to play.

But I will definitely check out your suggestions! Thanks again!


2. Life Is Strange? The ability of the protagonist to rewind time is a central feature to the game.


For 2. I think Outer Wilds and Deathloop are good recent examples that heavily lean into time reversion, but another example is Quantum League. It involves multiple timelines interacting with each other, in a very basic sense.


2. Achron from 2011 is an RTS fully and completely built around time travel as it's core mechanic, perhaps to the detriment of general playability.

Available on steam or direct.


Braid [0] might (or might not) cover both itches. It's a 2D puzzle-platformer with time rewinding as its core puzzling mechanic.

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/26800/Braid/


> I wish there was a game where time travel was a core mechanic. When we die or get stuck in current games, we revert back to a save point, why not lean into that some more to build a compelling game experience?

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time did something along those lines.

Outer Wilds too, although in quite a different way.


for(1), Talos Principle was already mentioned. I would also add The Stanley Parable to the list


Antichamber fits the first one, though there's no physics puzzles.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/219890/Antichamber/


> 2. I wish there was a game where time travel was a core mechanic. When we die or get stuck in current games, we revert back to a save point, why not lean into that some more to build a compelling game experience?

----

Shameless self plug, but I am currently working on a time-traveling puzzle game called Loop Thesis (https://loop-thesis.com) which features a completely internally consistent simulation of time that's constantly running during the entire game.

All of the time travel mechanics are emergent from that simulation, nothing is faked -- and the game takes that to an absurd degree, even the way levels are stored in memory is consistent with the core mechanics that the game teaches the player about time travel.

The point of having that kind of obsessive consistency is that the game is trying to feel almost like a textbook; when you understand the core mechanics of how the simulation works, if you think of something that you should be able to do, it works even if I didn't pre-plan it as a designer, because you're not interacting with a set of hard-coded puzzles, you're interacting with a simulation, and the rules you're learning are actually the simulation's rules, not an abstraction of them. It's meant to capture this joy of finding a complicated system and just kind of systematically picking it apart and then putting it back together again.

----

The game also supports multiplayer (although I'm not planning on including that at launch), and the multiplayer runs on the same simulation. That means that if player 1 goes back in time, player 2 stays when they are; you can have someone in the past making changes that affect the future, and it all just kind of... works. It's a really trippy experience, at least so far in playtests.

And that obsession about internal consistency also means that modding tools work pretty well. The game's core engine is really fun to play with because you can just kind of change variables and build little tools and just see what happens. A couple of puzzles have come out of me just kind of noticing something weird happening, and then realizing that there's a consequence in the simulation that I didn't originally plan and then building a puzzle out of it. So I'm hoping that beyond the game itself that modders and level designers will have some fun building new mechanics.

----

It's a top-down pixel-graphics puzzle game (not 1st person, sorry), and still in very early development, even though most of the core timeline engine is finished and I'm mostly at this point just fleshing out content and doing a bunch of work around that engine. The website (https://loop-thesis.com) is also horribly out of date, but I'll be starting up full-time development on it again soon, so I'm hoping to have more updates at some unspecified point in the future.


Not sure if these games exactly fit but they were the first to come to my mind. 1.Outer Wilds 2.Braid


Quantum Conundrum felt Portallike to me. Apparently it was designed by the same person.


for 1, some games that I haven’t seen mentioned here are Manifold Garden and Superliminal. Neither are very difficult but both are very satisfying and well-crafted.


1. The Talos Principle

2. Prince of Persia: Warrior Within


1, perhaps Hyperbolica.


A massively multiplayer text-based industrial game where players produce raw materials/parts/products that other players can use to produce theirs. A player can gradually scale up from a one person production (clicker based production) to a fully automated factory. On the screen is just blocks of tables with ever changing numbers (e.g production rate, wear and tear of parts, etc), and the goal is to optimize your bank account balance (no stocks/fund raising mechanics). There can also be an internal IRC where people can negotiate and collaborate. Parts that are not produced by any player yet can be produced by an AI until someone comes along to replace it.


I'm surprised nothing like this exists, I've thought about making something like this, but I think one challenge is it's really hard to bootstrap an economy without some other gameplay element other than trading. Otherwise, How do you determine the value of items?

In one of the versions of this game I thought it would be interesting to have a cutthroat stock market involved. I'm not sure how the mechanics would have to work but you could use the stock market mechanics to lift and destroy other companies.


I think price discovery of materials can happen organically by ascribing some purchasing power, desire for end products, and usage rate to an AI-driven consumer.

We could start from a small industry, e.g logging, then gradually introduce downstream products and AI consumers.

Stock market could certainly be introduced later, but I don't think it's necessary for first version.


Minecraft had a series of "Hardcore" servers and in particular one named "HCFactions". Sadly none really worth playing exists today. It was the most fun I every had playing coop with friends.

The idea was that there's a time limited map (usually 2 months) and players team up as a faction. A faction could own land, paid through in-game money earned by mining ores. Blocks inside your land couldn't be modified by non-factions players, but you could give special permissions if needed. The hardcore part was that every death of any member of your faction would decrease some power value and once that crossed below zero, your land protection was gone and your base was usually grieved instantly. So there was always a thrill of going outside. There were a bunch of server wide events that encouraged going outside and gave you in-game rewards.

What made this server special was the permissions mentioned before in combination of everything minecraft, and especially redstone, made possible. We build all kinds of special contraptions live banking vaults, slot machines, trading machines and a lot more. That was in stark contrast of most other factions that focused mostly on PvP. In later maps be earned enough reputation and were usually not touched by major PvP factions. The combination of hostile environment and the ability to be really creative thanks to minecraft was great. In case anyone read all that, here's the bases we build: https://hcfluffy.de/bases/


I did a couple hardcore PVP servers back in the day, but no Factions servers.

There was one where if you died, you got banned for 48 hours. In another, if you died, you got banned for the rest of the month, which made it suck to die in the first few days of the month.

Despite PVP and griefing being allowed, most noob deaths were from starvation.


Oh. I’m a dummy. Totally forgot to mention the death ban. It had a scaling ban as well. The longer you played the longer you got banned. Capped at 2 days. You could purchase lives to revive though. I too remember those other hardcore servers. Especially the one that banned you till the end of the month. The primary reason we switched to the faction server was the land claiming. Having a place that couldn’t be destroyed was neat. Hiding anything valuable wasn’t really possible thanks to various cheat tools.

Our main objective for all maps was actually to build a somewhat safe place where noobs could get free food on automated machines. You can see the signs on the page I linked :)


A true successor to the Civ4 mod Fall From Heaven 2 [1].

As an aside, I enjoyed Civ4 way more than 5/6. They might have hexes and Civ4 (and earlier) may suffer from the Stack of Doom problem but I don't enjoy the dance of units that can no longer stack.

Anyway, I played Civ4 the most (other than Civ1) of the series but, more than the base game, I played way more of FFH2. It's an amazing mod. Sadly, the primary creator went on to work for some other game company. Good for him but not I miss the development.

There were a lot of groundbreaking and amazing turn-based fantasy games in the 1990s and early 2000s. FFH2 is just one (and a notable one at that). Others include Heroes of Might and Magic (primary 2 and 3) and Master of Magic (I believe there was a kickstarter for a successor to this but I don't believe it was well received? I could be wrong).

I don't enjoy RTSs. I like the relaxing pace of turn-based games.


How do you feel about Civ VI? For me, the game is just too darn complex. I feel like they added way too many point economies to keep track of - amenities, housing, appeal, loyalty, and more. The emphasis on districts and adjacency bonuses makes me feel like I need to intensely micromanage my territory and place each district with a sense of finality because changing my mind is so expensive.

I also find the game's aesthetic to be a dissonant mess. While I can put up with a more cartoony style, the UI is just too busy. Not only are there a ton of icons and labels on the screen, it was like the designers wanted to emphasize the civilization's colors rather than readability. The map looks strange because of how cities, mountains, wonders, and district buildings are scaled for visibility. Individual buildings look bigger than cities and appear as tall as some mountains or larger than some terrain features. Overall, the game seems to lack a cohesive and congruent style and it's ugly to me.

All that being said, I did like the variety for city state bonuses, having great people be more diversified, and the fact that needing a specific tile to place a wonder upon made it so that a small number of cities did not contain an absurd amount of wonders within them. Ultimately, I hope they make Civ 7 a more streamlined game but keep some of the variety.


Civ games go through a cycle.

When they're first released there tends to be a lot of issues and gaps. Subsequent expansions tend to fill out those gaps. The expansions for Civ4 added a lot, for example.

I played at least 100 hours of Civ6 but honestly it didn't grab me. One issue (and this is a general issue with Civ games) is I tended to avoid war because it would totally bog down. A protracted war (if, say, you're going for a Domination victory) might take 3 full days to play (ignoring early Domination wins).

Anyway, I haven't played a ton of Civ6 since the expansions so can't comment on the current state. I know there are a few diehard fans online who stick to Civ5. I played less of Civ5 so have no opinion on 5 vs 6.

Civ6 does have some weirdness I wish it didn't (and maybe it's been fixed?). For example the price for creating districts is determined when you first create them so it's optimal to create them all early, cancel production and then build them much later to lock in a low price. I don't like this kind of micro-optimization being rewarded (even necessaary on higher difficulty levels).


I really enjoyed Beyond the Sword - particularly the random events and the choices you could make. Sadly, I've never managed to find a mod that made them more frequent or a mod for Civ V that introduced the concept without additional complexity around the mechanic. I forget the name of it, but one of the Civ V mods added random events but you had to make magistrates and save up points to be able to make a decision.


I'm pushing 5,000 hours on Civ V, and still enjoy it. I don't like VI. Like you, I find it too complex. In fact, I think it's just downright tedious. They jumped the shark with this one. I like the idea of districts in theory, but controlling happiness has gone from a hassle to a nightmare. And, if you lose control, and rebels appear, you will spend SCORES of turns repairing the damage. And the worst part about it, for me, is that turning down the difficulty makes cities grow faster, and exacerbates the problem!


I loved Civ 6, including its aesthetic (the music in particular was amazing).

But: the AI is dim-witted, especially in war; there is too little random chance; and combat tends to favor the defender. So once you get through the early game, you don't have to be afraid of your neighbors declaring war on you.

In contrast, in Civ 1 combat was all-or-nothing, and the weaker unit had a reasonable chance of winning. If a rival caught you unprepared then you were totally screwed. Conversely if the AI pulled ahead you could still get lucky and win. There was an element of suspense to the game that was just magic.


Personally the big break was Civ 5 moving to 1 Unit Per Tile. This had huge secondary edfects that even Civ6 have barely quite managed to wrangle.

Unstacking both units and the cities has made a very different game now from the original Civilization Games.

If you're still on Civ5, might I recommend the Vox Populi mod? Really improves everything across the board.


Folks on Realms Beyond Forums have taken to balancing and improving on FFH if you were interested. Now renamed Erebus in the Balance

https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=24


I also prefer turn-based games, but I've never found one that isn't extremely boring to play in multiplayer mode. Does anyone have any suggestions?


Turn-based is best for single-player games. After all, with multiple people, you end up waiting for somebody to take their turns. If turns are sequential you end up a lot of time waiting. Real-time is generally a better fit for multiplayer.


Agreed. Turn-based, especially sprawling lots-of-choices like the 4X genre, don't work particularly well in MP. Instead you ideally need to move to simultaneous turns.

Or be like the forums hounds who play 1 turn a day and analyze EVERYTHING.

Personally I would move to Tabletop games (or Boardgames). They're much better designed for short turns with interactivity so there's minimal downtime for players getting bored.

That being said, if you're looking for Civ5 but on mobile with Multiplayer, UnCiv is a FOSS project for Android, PC, Linux, and Mac w/ Java. Moderately vibrant MP community on the Discord.


I have a full asymmetric ideal game in mind, but the actual gameplays in it are still very blurry.

Basically I would love a game where players HAVE TO cooperate. The cooperation happens by having players playing different gameplays.

For instance, but, keep in mind that this is just ONE example: there's a war to fight, some players are drivers, some are fighters, some are medics...But also some players are in offices doing strategy stuff or logistics stuff, etc.

Of course, one could say: "you can have that in Arma 3 or Foxhole" and that's kinda true...but I don't know, there's something missing: A lore, a story, a universe to feel part of...

Plus, the game I am imagining, does NOT have to be a simulation or "complex gaming" at all! It could be kinda-casual without being too simple either: like For The King.

So in my ideal version of the game I am thinking about players play actually VERY DIFFERENT gameplays but cooperate in order to achieve common goals. Some of the players have to interact, some of the players don't. But in any case, everyone's actions will impact everybody else.

To sum it up: I would love a game with: Persistent universe + very asymmetric gameplay + cooperation as a key factor of success

But the game would be without: Grinding, farming, loot boxes, meaningless quests, basically a game where you don't have to redo the same things on and on to grind 128points of experience or reputation or obtain one piece of loot that does not fit your equipment set.

If you think this game already exists: do not hesitate to tell me :)


>For instance, but, keep in mind that this is just ONE example: there's a war to fight, some players are drivers, some are fighters, some are medics...But also some players are in offices doing strategy stuff or logistics stuff, etc.

Try Eco: Description at beginning of podcast episode here: https://podtail.com/en/podcast/brad-will-made-a-tech-pod/79-...

On the combat only front, Hell Let Loose. In a single tank, just driving or gunning in the tank is a full time job for one player. There is also a tank commander who keeps situational awareness and communicates up to higher level officers. Those officers get the information and make high level goals, they are generally just looking a map and not running around doing much in person.


Not one game. Separate!

On www.a.com players build dungeons that are attacked by AI. On www.b.com players attack AI generated dungeons.

What neither players of a nor b know is that they are playing against eachother. But both are amazed by the AI. And there's none of the drama usually involved in anything pvp.


Idk about any big online ones but there are a ton of awesome coop games that reward(and require) collaboration.

Overcooked I think is the best example of this genre. Super simple gameplay mechanic basically 2 actions and move. But all the fun and complexity comes in from needing to work with other people.

There is a major distinction in my mind between that type of actual collaboration and many “co-op” games where you are basically just playing at the same time and usually actually competing for kills/points.


This is another good example of a "small" game -> in Overcooked there's no lore, no adventure, no story to connect to. There's no universe either. It's just one gameplay of people coordinating to cook and serve food :) It's really nice and fun, but it remains in the category of "very small games" for me.


Natural Selection [1] has some of those elements, it's Marines versus Aliens, and the Marines have a commander on a top-down view that gives orders to the other marines (you can ignore the orders of course).

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/4920/Natural_Selection_2/


Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes: https://keeptalkinggame.com/


This one is nice, but lacks a bit ...lore? story? something to connect to.

But surely as an element of gameplay the symmetric disarming of a bomb is super fun :)


It's not a video game but you should play Captain Sonar


Do you know how some people can create mindbogglingly creative scenes, worlds and alternative universes out of nothing?

Like Starry Night in Minecraft [1], imaginary castles [2], Magica Voxel scenes [3] and a good chunk of DeviantArt and ArtStation material.

I'd love to be able to go in and explore these creations by walking, flying or being taken on a tour and just gaping at things. No other goal but just to stare and to be amazed.

But it's all gotta be a single experience, seamlessly connected to allow going from one "world" to another with no effort. And do, of course, charge an entrance fee for this, it's only fair.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/uvpkiz/i_built_s...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/ImaginaryCastles/

[3] https://twitter.com/hashtag/magicavoxel


A turn based 4X / survival / rpg hybrid.

Set in the Neolithic- Bronze Age, roughly (but historical accuracy is not a top priority). Like Civ, you have units which can explore the map, fight, build. But the scale is smaller: there are seasons, weather, turns last <1 month instead of hundreds of years. There’s less of an emphasis on technological progress and more on training up the skills of your Units. Units have Skill Trees corresponding to their type / class / profession, and can equip different weapons and armor (produced in your cities) for further boosts, like an rpg. Learning to hunt, gather, farm etc. Competition with other civilizations exists but more so you’re trying to survive the environment— animals, weather, nomadic raiders. Resource management is more explicit— instead of tiles producing Food every Turn at a given rate they produce some lump sum Wheat only when Harvested by a unit, say, which you must then store for the winter. Etc.

I’m working on making such a game, but it’s not my full time job and I have other projects catching my interest too, so the going is slow.


Sounds a little like battle for wesnoth


I love that game! It is a little light on the resource management / building aspects mentioned, focused primarily on battle (iirc you can't build anything, just capture villages which generate the one resource, gold). Though there are lots of mods that bring it closer.

Many hours on that as a kid since it came free with the distro of Linux I had access to at the time. Good memories. I got into pixel art from trying to contribute something to the project (most of it was rejected, haha).


Any game with modeled communication delays. For instance, you control ancient Greek armies from a central headquarters, and there are delays in sending orders and receiving information, because you need to wait for horseback riders to cross the intervening distance.


I briefly worked on a game like this in space. It was a 4X game where the primary mechanic was the hard speed of light. Not only did it take years for your message to reach a colony, your knowledge of the state of the colony was equally out of date.

Part of the idea was that each player would never see the absolute coordinates of any star or another player’s names for anything, so it would be nearly impossible for two players, talking outside the game, to figure out if they were allies or enemies in game.

What killed it was that players basically had to be able to send free form messages in game, to handle the complexity of negotiations this situation would require, but it would be far too easy and rewarding for two players to just share an email address, which would allow FTL communications and break the game. The only effective solution was a human GM filtering every message, which was awkward when the timing of message delivery was THE core mechanic.


You’d have to work around the delay by using an escape hatch. Like allow FTL information to still travel between space, assuming you’ve sent the other half of the entangled bits and only allow a certain number of messages (maybe a few megabits worth per delivery).

So, allow players to communicate in real-time, but it costs time and resources to set it up, and maybe near the end of the tech tree.

FWIW, there was an old Star Wars Rebellion game that did something like this. It was pretty cool. It came out in the late 90s IIRC.


That's a great idea for a game.


I had a similar idea, for siege combat. You play the general/king of the castle, and it's all first person. The only way to interact with the battlefield is by talking directly to the people who will do the work, so you can either send pages, or talk to your generals, if there in the throne room or you can otherwise get to them. Maybe there are telescopes you can use to see beyond your sight lines.


To suggest something different: More escape room games for VR.

I have played "I expect you to die" 1 and 2 on Oculus and it has been so amazing and fun. Had some fun with two other escape room games but neither were as polished as I expect you to die.

There is zero replayability with these games but I would happily pay a couple of bucks a month for a fresh level every week. Kind of like a TV series but for a game.


I think this could be a killer app for business team building. I've done "virtual escape rooms" but it always feels weird not being able to interact with the environment yourself. I'm glad those businesses were able to do something to stay in business but it was a weird fit.


I liked "Statik", a pretty clever VR escape room-esque puzzle game where your hands are stuck in a strange device which you can manipulate in various ways using the game controller. Some levels even allow a second player cooperating via a phone app.


Kerbal Space Program 2 would be a nice start.

These days I'm more interested in story-heavy, all single-player, occasionally borderline pretentious games, whose story is sufficiently compelling to distract from what the outside world (US-based, for me) has become.


Outer Wilds, a million times. Don't read about it, not even the entire Steam page.

Describing it vaguely, it's an archaeology knowledge-puzzle played over a tiny solar system, in one of the most immersive first-person mechanics I've ever seen.

It's (for me) the most brilliant game ever made, both mechanically and the story. It will also scratch your space travel bug a bit.


A strong recommendation, and it's on sale at the moment. Okay—purchased without reading into it too much. Thank you!


You probably won't regret it!


Oh yes, I'm reminded of another one: The Forgotten City.

A Roman-period detective-ish story with some fantasy elements (which I won't spoil here, but it's not as much a big deal to be spoiled as my previous recommendation of Outer Wilds), and some pretty good voice acting and character animations, especially if you consider the size of the team that made it!

They really went all-in with the Roman theme, from what I understand the depiction of society of the period is rather accurate given its overall plot, and it quite feels like you're there, and not in a Roman-themed theme park or something.


I look forward to it as well, but I'd be happy with a couple more bugfix rounds on KSP 1. :-)


Any recommendations?


I really enjoyed Hades, which is a lot more story-heavy than it looks from the outside. Historically loved stuff like Braid (hence "borderline pretentious") and happily replayed, but there's fewer recent titles on my radar here & I'd love to find more.

Edit: come to think of it, some of the Lucasarts remasters are well worth revisiting. I went through the cleaned-up Grim Fandango some time ago & it was a lovely break.


> Edit: come to think of it, some of the Lucasarts remasters are well worth revisiting. I went through the cleaned-up Grim Fandango some time ago & it was a lovely break.

If you like Point & Click Adventures then there are also many "newer" entries that are worth looking at. Primordia [0] (2012 so not that new, but the Linux port is) and Strangeland [1] are my favorites from the ones I have recently played.

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/227000/Primordia/ [1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1369520/Strangeland/


disco elysium! Best writing in a game ever.


Have you tried NORCO?

I've heard good things, but I've only played the voiced-over version of DE - I'm not sure if I'd be down to read everything, and the different voice actors really add another layer


never heard about NORCO, but steam reviews look great. I'll try it when I'd be itching for a point n click


Yeah, I was interested to know how they compare

Unfortunately the last update to DE introduced a very annoying audio stutter (they're supposedly trying to get it fixed)


torment is better imo with writing on par with disco. Disco is great but depressing. Torment is more escapism while still being similar to disco in that it's intensely original like nothing you've ever seen before.


Coincidentally, I've never played Torment and installed it just 2 days ago.

Disco's world is depressing, but because the world is so dark, any light in the game stands out so much more. It's depressing world make good people in it and any small kindness matter.


torment is pretty dark too. It's gritty and harsh, but it leans more in the fantasy direction rather then down to earth the way Disco is.

Also disco is more of a slice of life while the plot of torment though still incredibly dark is more epic. Disco bleeds immersion. But to achieve it they stripped out pretty much all the fantasy elements out of the setting and story. Torment manages to achieve immersion while at the same time making the setting more epic and fantasmic then anything you've ever even seen. The writing and setting is better then basically almost every fantasy novel out there.

In fact Disco reads more like a contemporary novel then it does fantasy or sci-fi. Torment is grounded in fantasy but it's dark and gritty enough that it doesn't feel fake like the final fantasy games. I would say it lies somewhere in between a standard bioware RPG and Disco.


Мор утопия. It has English but I can not google, sorry. Second version is almost same as first but on Unity.


This seems to be "Pathologic" in English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathologic


That's a good one! Do be warned though, you have to be willing to put up with some strange gameplay choices, that fit the game's theme but are not exactly convenient.


I want a game to play together with my young kids (nonviolent, cooperative, easy controls) but that isn't mind-numbingly boring to play as an adult. Not only a large sandbox to explore, but one that feels alive with NPCs to interact with, like a "baby's first MMO" without grind/fetch quests. It's a game I'm building in my spare time.


I'd like this also, but taken one step farther by adding in some edutainment aspects and then scaling it with the intent that once children have emotionally bought into the game, it incentivizes them to learn real-world facts and knowledge in order to make further progress (if they're still holding onto their Pokemon and their Minecraft world after 5-6 years, I'd hope some future edutainment game could match that). e.g.

+ fill in a personal database device (see: Pokedex, mobiglass) to collect knowledge of and record 'sightings' of real plants, real animals, elements, chemicals, reactions, etc.

+ NPCs/locations with trivia challenges/minigames (main character name in Moby Dick, years during which the first world war occurred, etc.), plus a library to look stuff up in

+ type in what you want to do (ala certain early adventure games) like "heal forearm cut", "fish for walleye", "search for raspberries" = typing practice, spelling {although since almost no games seem to do this anymore, maybe it's just obnoxious and poor design}


Interesting ideas. I've been focusing aiding early reading (sight words, cvc's, emojis next to words for association, etc) but didn't go much beyond that yet. I was planning on collection aspects like animal crossing mentioned below, put (real) things in the museum and get them explained.

There's a balance between fun and education like you see in kids shows, for example the main characters might be working through how to free a frozen monkey with something hot, while they just flew from their hometown to antarctica in mere seconds. I have to figure out how to show "this is true" and "this is fun".


A game that was great fun to play with my grandma, parents and young cousins at the same time was LittleBigPlanet. We only played LBP1 and 2 so don't have experience with the newer games.

It's not really what you're asking for, but IMO it's lots of fun and young ones can get very creative in the level editor.


Animal Crossing?


That's an inspiration for sure. Language and controls need modified for a younger audience, and I have other ideas to increase the interactivity with NPCs.


Maplestory was a huge part of my childhood, I've always wondered why no other company has made something aesthetically similar.

I didn't care for the endless RPG grind so much - it was really the graphics and soundtrack that made such a lasting impression. Cute monsters, cute characters, cute equipment, cute maps, cute music, everything was just cute and relaxing, but still with a distinct flair that made it not feel uninspired and saccharine. I still have some of their BGM tracks in my playlists.

It's been a very successful game, too. Although outside of Korea it mostly died out long ago, in Korea it's still one of the most popular games. The global servers are mostly deserted, but when I managed to hop on the Korean server a couple years back, I was shocked to see that it was packed.

Despite its enduring success, to this day, its aesthetic is still completely unique. Other popular games have had tons of clones (some of which have overtaken the original), but somehow no one's ever made another Maplestory.


Ragnarok Online is the same way, still going strong in Korea, Brazil, the Philippines. I feel like MapleStory and RO have been sister games for a long time. The communities are equally hard core about a game a lot just don't even care about.


Wow, what a great question -- it seems like everyone here has been sitting on a wish list for a while. :) Here's one of mine:

Ever since reading Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth as a kid, I've thought some elements of that story would make a great game. The player plays an archaeologist in the distant future trying to unravel the mysteries of humanity's origins -- a galaxy-scale adventure of exploration and discovery where a rich tapestry of future history is slowly revealed. As a bonus, such a game could be very positive and not even require violence like many other games. :)


The Outer Wilds does have a pretty similar theme. Without spoiling anything, you are a newly-minted explorer trying to uncover the history of the advanced precursor race that previously inhabited your solar system. (Any more details would spoil the plot, unfortunately!)

It's lower scale (single solar system instead of galactic), and it's definitely based on lower-tech civilization trying to understand dead, higher-tech civilization rather than trying to uncover long-last past of your own species, though.


Thanks for the suggestion! That does sound like an interesting game, and I'll add it to my list.

I also get the impression that the 1986 game Starflight may have a little bit of this, but I've only barely started playing.


>Ever since reading Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth as a kid, I've thought some elements of that story would make a great game. The player plays an archaeologist in the distant future trying to unravel the mysteries of humanity's origins -- a galaxy-scale adventure of exploration and discovery where a rich tapestry of future history is slowly revealed. As a bonus, such a game could be very positive and not even require violence like many other games. :)

Try 'Heaven's Vault' it's almost exactly what you want.

I'll also echo the Outer Wilds recommendation.


From the Wikipedia description, Heaven's Vault sounds fascinating. Thanks, I'll keep an eye on it!


Have you played The Outer Wilds?


A 2-d circa original NES jrpg video game version of ICE Middle Earth Role Playing TTRP game using all the ICE source material. Not the garbage LOTR console video games that horribly emulate the movies, but an immersive world setting of Middle Earth with non-trilogy storylines and open-world play. It can't be done due to copyrights and trademarks, but it would be awesome and I've thought for decades of creating it for personal play, but I think that would take a single non-game dev forever to build. Just going to have to dust off original NES Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy on the NES...


A Massive Multiplayer Online Real Time Strategy (MMO-RTS) game.

I know it's utterly unworkable. But I want it anyway.

Imagine an RTS game that ... just keeps going. Both in time and in play area. Something like the Minecraft map in scale.

You play a few hours online with other people, log off, come back, and then you're still playing on the same map with the same resources, buildings, and units. Other people may have advanced and tech'd up, and now you can too.

I have no idea how to handle combat when a player is sleeping or making dinner. Or any other real conflicts. Maybe a timer of some sort? Maybe catching them sleeping is part of the fun?


Ten years ago I used to play PlanetSide 2 a bit, which is pretty similar to what you descibe. Just gotta swap the RTS-part with FPS :)

But there is war waging back and forth the planetary map, 24/7. Well it was like this when I played, I have no idea what changed since then.

After a while, the constant back-and-forth appeared kinda meaningless though. First it was amazing being part of some coordinated move to take over 2/3 of the map, but the next day it was all gone and the cycle repeated itself.

Once you get the pattern, it is still fun of course, but the fascination wears off pretty quick, honestly.


Weirdly planetside 2 is still around and being played / developed. Those freemium games seem to stick around.

Fun game.


> but the next day it was all gone and the cycle repeated itself.

I read a great interpretation that Planetside is Valhalla and those are all warriors battling in eternity like they would.


I loved planetside, but at some point then introduced mechanoids which overpowered all the other vehicles. That ruined the game for me


There was/is a game called Shattered Galaxy that was best described this way.

Several factions continuously battling over discrete territories. There would be calculations throughout the day that would give certain bonuses to whichever factions were winning.

Every territory had a field commander that could request people join that had leveled up certain types of units based on how the battle was evolving.

There was also a form of player controlled government in each faction that could choose bonuses and allocate resources to various battles.

It was really cool for its moment in time.


I've imagined this being more transactional. Like a constantly running game of StarCraft 2, where you're dropped onto a massive map, build up, fight for awhile, make alliances, have fun, do memes, then when you log off you have to do it all over again.

In Age of Empires you can share control, so 4 people can be controlling the same civilization, even giving conflicting orders. This could be done for for when people log off.


"I know it's utterly unworkable. But I want it anyway."

That takes me down memory lane. Years ago (around 2007), on an Athlon XP with 2GB RAM, we had the game server for a 2000+ unit C&C clone running. We also had the ability for AI to take over once someone disconnects. We even built our own binary protocol generator (think Protobuf) so that our Java Applet client could connect to the C++ server.

And then I accidentally became CEO of a startup. My friends finished university and then started working. And we all kinda forgot about it.

EDIT: My 3ds skills around 2007: https://imgur.com/a/AhfoKNs


I had idea for such game, but it was meant to be realized as a 2d space sim. If you want your ship fleet to survive during logoff, you need to hide it somewhere in deep space between star systems (via series of semi-random jumps so no one tails you, unless they put stealthy tracker on your ships) or in a defended space station with some automatic defenses. You can design and make any ship or station you want, you just need to have enough matter for fabricator machines plus they take time and resources to build/repair. You have a hundred star systems with physically correct size and resources, plus lightyears of empty space between them.


I admittedly don't know that much about the game, but it seems like Hell Let Loose has some elements of this.


Foxhole is something that sounds similar to what you are describing.


Isn't EVE like this?


[GTA 6 - Jersey Shore - GTL]

You get to play out storylines from Jersey Shore, with original voice actors. Mini-games include gymming, tanning, laundry, making food when you get back from the club. Missions at the club.

[GTA 6 - So Many Side Hustles]

You play as a struggling human, trying to scrape together a living by picking up jobs from various apps on your phone. Maybe you're doing some kind of Task Rabbit mission, or plain food delivery. Maybe you're delivering something else. Maybe on foot, maybe on a bike.

It should be an open world exploration in a dense urban environment and many, many different ways to be exploited.


A modern version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndicate_(1993_video_game)


Satellite Reign was quite inspirerad by Syndicate https://store.steampowered.com/app/268870/Satellite_Reign/


I tried it when it came out but it was so full of glitches that I gave up on it. I should check if it's been patched at all


Most of mine are modernizations/remakes/stealing-the-mechanics of older games with unusual genre mashups or mechanics, that no longer exist. Examples:

- Hunter Hunted (asymmetric multiplayer platformer-shooter with vs. and co-op modes)

- Perfect Dark (FPS with lots of multiplayer modes, including co-op campaign, campaign versus mode[!], and of course endlessly configurable plain ol' arena versus, including highly-configurable bots—the closest I've seen something come to this is Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, of all games, but it still wasn't that close. Most elements/modes exist somewhere, but rarely in one package. The way difficulty levels didn't just make the enemies bullet sponges and better shots [though it did also do that] but also changed objectives and sometimes starting location, was also excellent and isn't as common as I wish it were)

- Return Fire (vehicle-based CTF multiplayer, with elaborate pre-built defensive base structures for both sides—this game's not quite all there, but make it more than 2 player and add a little base-building and it'd be amazing)

- Battletanx (Actually a little similar to Return Fire, now that I think about it, but with a lot more of a traditional multiplayer-shooter feel, different camera perspective, and the vehicles are all kinds of tanks. AFAIK nothing like this or Return Fire has been released since the N64/Playstation era)

- Dominus (The single genre it's closest to is probably tower defense, but it's got a whole lot more going on than most of those)

Also, edutainment disappoints me these days. Drill-type games (as in, drilling math problems) seem to have gotten much better, but sheer knowledge games (Explorers of the New World, Microsoft's Dinosaurs) seem to have all but disappeared, aside from adult-targeted trivia games, which don't have a learning focus and aren't very good at teaching you things. The Trail series (yeah, it's still around, by why aren't there similarly-clever and well-made games for 1,000 other historical situations, too?). I actually think this category would get a lot better, fast, if we had decent, accessible multi-media authoring tools for the web. The closest thing we had was Flash, and it's gone.


BattleTanx was such a weird game and I loved it.

My orthodontist had it running on an N64 in the lobby. Something about the N64/PS1 era delighted in weird and insane weapons. An updated version (with a better plot) would be amazing.

I’d want artillery for some levels as well. Basically a Halo game that only had land vehicles.


> An updated version (with a better plot) would be amazing.

Uh, yeah, I'm pretty sure you couldn't get away with "a plague killed most of the women so the few remaining ones are all breeding-queens of warrior bands and you have to try to capture them" in the 2020s, even as kind of a joke. But the plot also didn't really matter, so it could be anything. You really want the other guys' donuts. Or something. Doesn't matter, it was really just arena tank CTF with limited base-defense-building.


I'm always trying to explain to my friends how absolutely amazing Perfect Dark multiplayer was. I wish modern FPS games had that amount of configuration. I also had completely forgotten about campaign versus mode, which would be so cool in a modern FPS game.


Wow, hunter hunted and return fire are two games I had completely forgot about. thanks for reminding me about then, I played them so much as a kid. I wonder how well they hold up...


A factory sim but with a world market to trade resources with other players. The market would not have any sort of standard currency, but instead every potential item or resource you can mine/manufacture is directly traded for other items/resources. This would create potential for arbitrage by savvy players.

The problem is, once you've created that kind of market, everything needs to be handled server-side to prevent clients from cheating and using hacked save files to give themselves tons of resources and making the market worthless.

The cloud compute costs for running thousands of factories could get expensive. I suppose factories of offline players could be abstracted away. ie, "You produced X widgets in ten minutes, then went offline for an hour, so when you come back, you will have 6*X widgets".


It's a non-combat RTS more than a factory game, but your description sounds a lot like 'Offworld Trading Company'

There are also a lot of factory games in Roblox, and an interesting detail is that they are generally multiplayer and you are indeed interacting and competing with the other factories much like you describe. Hard to find the good ones in the sea of games though.


I have OTC, and it's not quite what I'm looking for. OTC is all about market manipulation and being extremely strategic on which plots you buy. And a single round is short, I'm looking for something you'd play for hours, and the market would look like a crypto exchange, but instead of coin pairs, it's item/resource pairs.


Blockchains for distributed ledgers to manage cheating. Resource specific ledgers would balance against exchange ledgers. You would have a ledger for each possible trade. Basically you'd have a standard crypto exchange.

You might be interested in O-Game, which was kind of like what you're describing on the factory front, but doesn't have any economy that I recall.


I think you misunderstand where the cheating happens.

It's not about cheating the trades or the market, it's about a client saying "btw I have a massive factory that's producing 10 million widgets per hour" on release day.

Factory simulation needs to happen server-side. You can't trust the client to have followed the rules on resource mining and factory building.


I heard about this ages ago as a concept and I thought it was being made but I never saw it come out.

'Witch Hunter' the MMO based on the world of 'Witch Hunter Robin'. Basically there are two classes. One are hunters. They work as teams, coordinate and try to capture/kill witches. This groups levels up via witch captures/kills and has to work together as they are often very out classed by individual witches. This group has a map with detected witch activity that they can use to go find witches, as well as some team building functionality to build raids real time. Think "Rainbow 6" for game play. Ideally there is the possibility of AI hunters as well. Level of response is allocated based on level of detection.

The witches are individuals, they exist in a procedural generated world. They need to practice their witchcraft without being seen and if they do get seen they need to flee the area and re-establish. This becomes more of a survival aspect like GTA's wanted framework. If a witch gets attacked by a hunter and survives they get XP, and ideally level up based on that. Witches can also find other witches and attack them or for some skills, work with them to level up as well. Witches can be given classes (fire, water, telekinesis, etc) and once the witch dies it is dead and a new witch must be created and placed in the world somewhere.

Two different games kind of, but paired together to make it fun for both sides. =)


As a fan of the Stargate franchise, I'd like a game based on it. Actually I haven't even checked if there is one already, I will now.

The last spin-off, Stargate Universe, had a nice set up: you're in an old battered ship that you can't control, without even the most basic resources. So you should use the gate and the shuttles to bring materials, make repairs, solve riddles to gain access to ship steering, fight nasty aliens, etc.

Also the series had an open end a decade ago, so there's room for extension.


i think SG1 might make for a better game where every "season" new planets could open up. Every set of planets would have different challenges - think Talos Principle with FPS.


I have found a game that seems close to release:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1523650/Stargate_Timekeep...


This does look cool. They should get a beta out to select fans so it doesn't become yet another rpg


I very much liked the concept of 0x10c. Wish someone would make it happen. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/0x10c


The comments on YT[0] recommend Star Made.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUqeH2FH1dE


An augmented reality (AR) game where you actually interact with other players.

Of the AR games I know Ingress was the closest but I think the interactions were too adversarial which made the experience decline.

The creators of AR games got a lesson from it. Unfortunately it's rather "limit interaction" not "fix the interaction". Both Pokemon Go and Wizards Unite seem to have taken the path of players playing next to each other rather than with each other (I stole this sentiment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31503528).

So what I'd like is an AR game where you interact with other players in a meaningful way.


I think that's what tilt5 is trying to do https://www.tiltfive.com/


A multi-scope FPS/strategy game. Choose between: - a battlefield/CoD-style FPS - a DOTA/LoL RTS. - a CiV-style turn-based strategy/simulation game

Each level sets the objectives for the one below, so the RTS players pick a pool of FPS players and set their objectives (go here, attack these other players or this objective). The CiV players actions determine the maps & matchups of the FPS/RTS players. They could see the stats of teams of other players to decide where to send them (this team with a low K/D ratio should retreat from this enemy team, this team does well on that map, etc).

Balance and matchmaking would be a real technical/game design challenge.


A long, long, long, time ago I had a conversation with a Unix consultant at my Dad's business; his hobby was flying stunt planes with a twist: each plane had a 100 yard long ribbon tied to the tail; the winner was the pilot who landed with the longest tail.

This would be a terrific non-violent flight combat game; you could imagine with modern graphics and even VR it could be very satisfying.

Further, the consultant lost his license for a couple of years when he evaded an opponent by illegally flying under a highway overpass and a passer-by reported his plane's ID to the FAA; that could be a mechanic itself, extra risky maneuvers that had a chance of some big negative effect.


Flag Top Gun. Love it.


I would like a rather simple real-time war-game, as played from the POV of a field commander. You don't have a real-time view of the battle; all you have is signals, which are rather stylised, and a 2D map, with unit symbols on it. The map is always a bit out-of-date, except when a signal has just been received from a unit. Think something like a battalion HQ tent, with staff.

Commands are also stylised; I'm not a military person, and I don't know how to compose field orders, so there would need to be some kind of UI that allows you to construct orders visually. But in the end, the order that you send consists of text. You can't order-around squads; you can only issue orders to subordinate commanders.

You also receive orders from above. You start with a mission briefing, with objectives. But your orders can be updated mid-mission.

So this would be essentially not a video game; there's no motion video. It's a text game, with a graphical map. For added entertainment, you could have a retrospective video playback; but you wouldn't have realtime video from the frontline that you could act on.

I once had a game a bit like this; it was for military use, and I didn't really understand the format of the orders. Also, commands were issued by dragging on the map, rather than by text.

Something like: "You will advance to grid square X. You are to avoid engagement. You will report enemy positions."

I'm thinking of modern warfare, with radios/telegraphs, air power and integrated air defence, armour, and intelligence staff. But you could maybe take it back as far as the Napoleonic wars, with dispatch riders instead of telegraphs.


There were a few scenarios in the RTS Cossacks that had this - Two armies would be facing off, and the general (you) would just be a single horseman. You were surrounded by messengers that you could dispatch to various units, but you had to take into account that they wouldn't get there immediately, and that sometimes the messengers would get shot en route to delivering their commands.


There's Radio Commander https://store.steampowered.com/app/871530/Radio_Commander/

And I think the Ultimate General series of games also does some of this, but that's second hand.


There is a game called radio commander on steam, which seems very close to your description. https://store.steampowered.com/app/871530/Radio_Commander/


I'll be honest, the best games I've played were games I had no idea I wanted. I wouldn't have known to come up with the idea for Portal, for example. Even some casual games like Sp!ng have given me hours of enjoyment.

I've moved almost all of my game playing over to Apple Arcade these days because the games don't track you, don't have ads, don't have scummy gameplay tactics (like paying for loot boxes, etc.), and just generally don't annoy the crap out of me.

My point being that I want something new and different and interesting, and that isn't a crapfest of malware, tracking, and financial extraction.


I felt this way about Supraland. It came out of nowhere from friends recommending it and had already been out for years, and once I tried it, I couldn't put it down and had to see it to the very end. Now I'm eager to play the sequel! Absolutely a new favorite series with a unique spin on first person world puzzles & Zelda-like progression.


Duskers was like this for me.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/254320/Duskers/


Outer Wilds got me good on the single-player story-heavy-but-still-got-mechanics part, I wish there were more things like it. Not more of it, because the story is very tight, but more things like it, where I can somehow immerse myself in a foreign/fictional culture. Really liked Kingdom Come Deliverance and Disco Elysium too.

Beyond that, I really really miss the exact niche Atmosphir used to fill, UGC platformer with enough tools to make variations on the base mechanic, but not a full-blown game-making toolkit. I want making levels to be intrinsically captivating, to create simple new gameplay ideas, but not get lost in the myriad construction details of such things. At the time there were some neat alternatives, like GameGlobe or Project Spark, but nowadays' titles are either too mechanically restrictive (Mario Maker) or too much of a tool (Dreams).

I actually help maintain (together with a bunch of excellent people) an archival/revival server of Atmosphir, but the minuscule community makes it hard to make multiplayer levels, and getting feeback on your creations.


Try planescape torment. Hidden gem in the same style as Disco Elysium but more epic and dare I say a setting even more original then Disco.


Thanks for the recommendation, I had heard of it and its many praises before, but I usually struggle with D&Dish things (I haven't looked too much into it but I assume it's similar in mechanics to Baldur's Gate, which is an excellent game too but I found the combat and minmaxing not to be my style)

Is the Enhanced Edition available on Steam any good, or should I go for the original release?


Did you play the expansion to Outer Wilds? Wonderful new environment to explore, with a new culture. Fits into the existing game okay, although I was very much wondering whether I was done with it when I was, in fact, done with it.


I did. Went in with a bit of suspicion, because the base game was just so tight in purpose and story, but after I found "That Thing Which I Won't Spoil For Others But You Having Played Know Of" the only thought I had was "damn it, they did it again!"

Had a similar feeling about its ending, but I think it worked out fine.

(and if you're reading this as someone who hasn't played it, stop reading, there's no way to phrase this without some amount of spoilers) did you go back to the base game's ending after doing the DLC ending? "There's more to explore here", as the game would put it ::)


I did revisit the ending, yes :)


Outer Wilds left me in a “game funk” after I beat it.

The story’s end was such a… mix of emotions is all I’ll say.

I went in relatively blind and the major mechanics of the game were really fun after I figured out what was going on.


Lately, I've been looking for a fantasy RPG to play with my brother that fits the following criteria:

— third-person (like Kotor, The Witcher, etc.)

— open-world (like Skyrim, The Witcher, etc.)

— using unit targeting (not shooter) mechanics for spells (like Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: OS II, etc.)

— online co-op

I think the combination of Skyrim, The Witcher, and Pillars of Eternity would be perfect. Most games I've found hit 3 of the above criteria, but not all. I've always loved the idea of Skyrim's open world and lore, but prefer the 'dice roll' hit mechanic (as opposed to 'were you aiming at them when you acted?').


You might find Morrowind kind of interesting, especially if you install some of the extensive graphics mods (such as the crazy shader ones to make it look a lot better) since it's fairly old at this point. As an older Elder Scrolls game, you get a lot of the world stuff, but this was before them switched to a more FPS type interface, so swinging a blade doesn't guarantee a hit.

Using the OpemMW engine, I guess they have multiplayer and VR support now. No idea how well it will work out, but it might be fun to try.


Have you thought about revisiting Neverwinter Nights? I got it for a song the other day and the amount of additional content made by players is huge.


Why not Elden Ring?


I wish I could go back in time and play Elden Ring again for the first time. Such an amazing game. It really felt like something special in the world of video games.


Doesn't Elden Ring play the same way The Witcher/Skyrim does? i.e., you don't target enemies, but aim at them?


Yeah it fits perfectly.


Not co-op but Kingdoms of Amlur and Dragon's Dogma may be fitting some of your criteria.


maybe outward would fit the bill? Not sure about your third point, though.


A game that rewards actions driven by empathy rather than combat, death or killing.

Real empathy is hard and the real world could stand to see more of it.


YES! One possible implementation of empathy in a game is cooperation ->

It can be deep, complex, simple, fun, easy to play hard to master, whichever kind of cooperation -> leading to more synergy, dare I say symbiosis between the players!

Ok, random idea that just popped in my brain: You could have a cooperative game where the goal is to handle nutrients, etc. in order to cooperatively build a baby inside's a female womb. Basically, it would be about achieving "life" by cooperating: repelling microbes, driving whatever fluids/vitamins/hormones are needed to the right places, etc. etc.


Human embryos are actually very aggressive, they breach the mother's body and steal everything. Before implanting the embryo has to convince the mother that it is viable by a trial of strength in a hostile environment, the endometrium, which has an auto-destruct button the mother's body can push to reject the embryo. If accepted the embryo and the mother starts a nine month tug-of-war. They bombard each other with hormones, they try to suppress each other. Behind all of it the conflict is between the paternal and maternal genome. If they both prove to be capable fighters they both get what they want, a healthy baby and mother. If one side gets the upper hand things go wrong.

This is why pregnancy is so perilous. It's a war, presumably because human development requires a lot of resources, and the father can always find a new woman to impregnate, so it's genes best served by trying to steal said resources, as long as most women most of the time are capable defending themselves until the baby is born, preferably longer things chug along.


Not as complex as you are suggesting but in an older FPS they simply added medic ability to all players, so that any other player can heal another if they switch from shooting to that mode by simply pressing a button (delaying ability to switch back to a weapon)... Even though it's incredibly basic, it created a different sense of value among team mates that merely another shooter does not.


Have you tried Spiritfarer?


A "True Pacifist" run of Undertale would fit that bill.


Don't Starve Together? Great game to develop empathy


Undertale

And oddly enough, Detroit: Become Human


A Metroid Prime ripoff. No arm cannon, though.

I'd like it to have a focus on atmosphere, isolation, collecting data, and lore that's all about technology and the sciences (ie biology, even fake biology is ok, like in MP1). Maybe the main character is some guy with a space suit, a blaster, and a scanning tool.

Ideally I don't want a leveling or survival-crafting aspect to it. Just a Metroidvania FPS - walk around, scan stuff to get 100% completion in your logbook, find all the upgrades and ammo expansions... and of course, blast any local flora and fauna that attacks you.

Some of the following games have a few of those elements: - Subnautica (particularly the scannable things, isolation theme, and a lot of the technology the player builds) - Dead Space (particularly the isolation element, but I also loved the use of technology/screens in that game against the backdrop of horror atmosphere and monsters) - Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Void Bastards


Have you tried using Steam and their tags to locate games that might be interesting? I've had some good luck in the past with that mechanism. Here's a search for things tagged metroidvania and first person, sorted by user reviews (which sometimes gets wonky with games with a relatively small set of positive reviews, but that's easy enough to see when you drill down).

https://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=Reviews_DESC&...


Thanks for the link. It looks like "Journey to the Savage Planet" fits the bill fairly well. It's funny, I've used Steam recommendations in the past but haven't had too much luck before now.


I long for this as well.

I adore the first few hours of the original Metroid Prime where you wander an alien planet discovering new things for the first time: new plants, new animals, strange Chozo artifacts. Some of them want to kill you; most are just going about their business. It's magical.

Then the Space Pirates show up and the entire tone changes and the magic is gone.


1. City builder like Skylines but with realistic build times for infrastructure and modelling of urban poverty.

2. Factorio with RNG, like having wear and tear for machines, random failures, machines producing faulty parts.

3. Crusader Kings 2, without the military micro management.


IIRC Workers & Resources has realistic build times for infrastructure https://store.steampowered.com/app/784150/Workers__Resources...


I'm working on Archapolis, a city builder game. I have been considering the feature you are desiring. The problem to solve is giving the player something to do while the buildings are being constructed.

One way I have potentially solved this issue is by giving players the ability to design their own buildings in game. The player will see only the interior of the building, so I dont have to worry about making buildings look good (that's up to the player).

I dont have a video featuring this yet, but if you want to see what I've got so far, I've got a path finding tech demo here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q0l87hwmkI


Hi, looks very interesting.

Paradox games often do have player just waiting for a thing to happen, like forging a fake claim to a territory to get a causus belli. Yes it is a boring part of the game, and makes it feel like a "waiting game", just waiting for a progress bar to fill.


I really have a thing for transport simulation games. When I was young I played a lot of Transport Tycoon, but it was a bit too heavy on trains. You could just use trains everywhere and be done with it. Also it's nearly 30 years old, I want perty graphics on my 4K monitor.

I played a lot of Cities in Motion 2, and really loved it. You can't just use trains (as they are expensive), you need to build a complete transportation network with feeder routes and use different modes of transport. The only issues were it is a little buggy, the UI was a little complex, and performance really tanked once your city got to a certain size (because Unity).

Cities Skylines was meant to be CiM 3 mixed with SimCity, but they really nerfed the transport mechanics there IMO. As a overall city simulator it's great, but as a transport simulator not so much.

Transport Fever just feels like a TTD clone with prettier graphics and worse game mechanics.


I love you.

I don't care if I get HN downvoted for this, but I love the fact that you're out there in the world and appreciating the subtle beauty of transpirt.

Rock on.


Did you ever play SimCity 4: Rush Hour?


All of the really fun sandbox games (Rust, Minecraft, Space Engineers, Dual Universe etc) tend to be clunky and lack features I expect from AAA games. A game made in this genre by a massive studio could dominate the gaming market and captivate my attention forever if done right.

Give me: - Proven game engine... I'm looking at you UE5 - Player made 3d models (complex in game system...? Blender already exists) - Exciting, educational and realistic physics (e.g. orbital mechanics) - Exciting multiplayer without physics simulation glitches ("CLANG") - More varied biomes, terrain and open worlds that don't fall apart if you explore to much... looking at you Minecraft - Various shopfronts, stores and integrations that are accessible for all

That's not to rip on the games which pioneered the genre (Teraria, Minecraft and Space engineers stand out to me), but I'm ready for the next evolution.


I often see people playing games on their phones (Sudoku, word games, etc) and think to myself - jesus, look at all of that wasted brain power that could be put to work solving important problems.

Personally, I like to work teaser math problems and algorithms, like the Traveling Salesman Problem, set sorting problems, or whatever. It's so much more fun to know you might by happenstance, fumbeling arounds in math space, find something actually beneficial to the world. You'll never contribute to society play a "bounded game" like candy crush or whatever.

I guess what I'm saying is that I wish there were such a thing as an "unbounded game" that truly allowes you to discover. I think protein folding crowd sourcing comes close, but how fun is that, really? (I'm literally asking, I don't know, I've never partaken)

How do you make a game that also contributes to collective knowledge?


For me, the joy of most of these phone games is that there is limited thinking going on. Sudoku is a good example where it requires some analytical thinking, but it's, for the most part, just applying rules.

To me, that's the point of a game. To relax my brain with something a little silly and 'easy'.


The Babylon 5 space combat game that was cancelled late in development. Think Wing Commander, but in the Babylon 5 universe as a Starfury pilot.

https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Babylon_5:_Into_the_Fire_(G...


Does anyone remember “liquid war”, where you battled with another player to control a lump of fluid and engulf the other person?

I really really want to play that, two player, on my phone over network where my finger controls the liquid.


Darwinia/Multiwinia?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwinia_%28video_game%29


Maybe creeper world?


A detective game that actually makes you feel like a detective. That means gathering clues, using deduction, and making accusations.

Game Maker's Toolkit has a really good video on why it's difficult: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwV_mA2cv_0

Return of the Obra Dinn and Her Story are the best I've played so far, each excelling at different things.


You may want to take a look at the various Sherlock Holmes games on steam right now. There is a new one that just came out, and from looking thru them it seems like they try to make such gameplay work. Worth a shot!


"Paradise Killer" may be of a similar genre. Also perhaps "Deadly Premonition".


A cooperative story-based MMO. Everyone is a participant in a months-long story that evolves in real time on the server. This is not just a world-wide event in a regular MMO; the world is progressively and irreparably altered throughout the story. I envision that the server simply shuts down at the end of the story.

There are two hard parts to this: (1) how do you make the game balanced even as the number of players fluctuates by orders of magnitude, (2) how do you make the game fun even as the amount of time each player spends differs by orders of magnitude. You will probably want key plot twists to be announced in advance so that as few people miss them as possible ("we predict the enemy hoard will arrive at our base on Friday around 8:15 PM").


Neverwinter Nights custom servers do exactly this! DMs are always there causing changes to the world based on what players do and organizing all the twists etc.

And on top of that, in the one I'm following at the moment, the world is being eaten by a void and the rumor is that when everything is gone that's gonna be the end forever


A modern Neverwinter Nights is my dream game.

Tons of user content Scripting engine Modern mechanics Modern systems

It would need to be a platform first.


GW2's Living World had storylines that lasted for months with permanent changes to the world. Although there weren't really any or much changes during this few month period, only between those periods.


And, obviously, (3) how do you recoup a multi-year investment across the period of only some months? Making games is extremely expensive and MMOs are by far the most expensive type to make.


I guess you could restart the whole thing to let new players join or people replay it. I am envisioning something like Mass Effect or Skyrim, which made money, but with thousands of other people with you. Perhaps I am underestimating the cost of the servers.


I think it would be interesting to have a persistent, real time MMO that only ran at scheduled times.


I want a game like ghost recon wildlands, but with no DLC, no skills ladder, not mods, less massive shootouts and a lot more stealth.

In the existing game there's an escalation of your bullet spongy-ness to enemy level complexity, this naturally happens as you progress through the map. I would remove the bullet resistance and player levels and go with an almost totally real health experience and I'd try and blend more Hitman style recon elements into the game.

Like being able to drive around, or walk around plain close with no weapons to recon places, and have to talk with locals about the enemy in detail. I'd also preserve progress, if you free an area the enemy should become less of a presence and the freedom fighters should take charge.


Sounds good, I'd play it as long as it was first person, and had much better controls for planes and helicopters.


Personally, I would eliminate helicopters and the parachute mechanic. maybe replace it with a rappelling ability. If you think about the original story about illegal soldiers engaging in unconventional warfare in a foreign country then helicopters are pretty much out of the question.

Oh I would also limit gear by weight. In hitman, it's pretty amazing just how many apples and coconuts you can hi in your jacket without it being a problem. I would limit space and gear on the person. Like you could cache it but you have to come back to the cache to get it.

I'm not sure the game im describing would be a AAA killer so it may just have to live on in my dreams.


The way gr:w was built helicopters do make a lot of sense, planes too. The parachuting part does not make a lot of sense, but some sort of mechanic for fast traveling was necessary, and there were not many places to land. Terrible controls didn't help in that regard.


A brutal third-person beat-em-up where damage is localized and disabling, where you heal yourself by patching yourself with parts from the enemies you've slain, and where both damage and repairs are visible long-term as you progress through the game.

It's probably important to note that both your character and your enemies are stuffed toys, but I enjoyed putting off that disclosure to the end of this comment.


1. A modern multi-user dungeon game, all text-based, that would be functionally like many LPMuds[0] in almost every sense, but with a high-quality commercial (but non-evil) backing and/or several hundred or thousand players online at every time of the day.

2. Elite: Dangerous with 90% less grind.

3. A million more variations of Dwarf Fortress. It's an amazing concept.

4. CRPGs that could capture lightning in the bottle in the same way that the Ultima series did in the 90s.

5. A civilization simulation with such detail that you could base serious policy decisions on how things work out with different political settings.

[0] https://naga.icesus.org/icesus/ being my personal favourite


An open-source MOBA similar to Heroes of the Storm. I want the community to be able to tweak and experiment with creating new maps, heroes, and game modes.

Heroes of the Storm is my favorite game, but development has stagnated. There's still a lot of potential for exploring new and innovating ideas within the genre, but things have stagnated thanks to the dominance of League of Legends and DotA2.


I don't know how easy it is to develop these, but Dota 2 has a pretty big custom game scene that is somewhat supported by Valve (they explicitly support it, host a lot of the custom game servers, and have the custom game browser built into the client... but they don't always address problems timeously).


We need more open source game platforms.


Lots of space game related comments, but none seem close to what I would like, so here goes. I was absolutely blown away by the first part of the 2017 VR game Lone Echo, where you're an android called Jack, and you're helping your commander Liz make repairs on and around a spaceship. I want a game that's basically just that. Hanging out with my AI commander, repairing stuff around the ship, maybe at some point go on almost mundane missions while keeping the ship afloat. No combat, no leveling up, no skill trees. Just a slice of life space sim where I can pop in whenever I have a free hour after work. I realize this is probably an extreme niche, but hey, you asked!


FPS where you are an animal or an insect in an urban environment. Like a game where you are a cat surviving on a neighborhood, looking for food, avoiding dangers, even fighting with other cats. Or a game where you are a spider in a garden, catching other insects, hiding from predators. Or a game where you are a bird, flying in the city, making a nest in the trees, looking for food.


It’s not an FPS, but Tokyo Jungle is worth checking out if your looking for something like this.


YES to Urban Cat Simulator. This should be an MMO.


A tactical game where I can play semi-competitively even if I only play a couple hours each week. Most competitive games like (CSGO, Apex, Starcraft, LoL) have a "twitch" element that take years to build up, and requires constant practice to maintain. And many tactical games like chess have an element of rote memorization that gives it a super high barrier of entry to be competitive as well. So I'm looking for something non-twitchy, but tactical, with ideally at most a moderate sized barrier of entry to get into it. The closest I've come was Hearthstone, but I decided to give it up when I finally acknowledged how exploitative their monetization is.


I thought Tooth and Tail fit this bill pretty well, kind of like a StarCraft lite. Games are meant to be quick, about 5-12 minutes. Good strategy RTS that isn't hard to get into and I had a lot of fun with it.


Try Transformers: Tactical Arena currently on Apple arcade. It scratches this itch for me very well. My son and I just found it a couple weeks ago and have been having a blast. It has an active developer, too. I've been pleasantly surprised with the update content/frequency.


Rocket League? The skill ceiling is super high but the ranking system works pretty well and in the lower ranks tactics and positioning is more important than mechanical abilities.


you might like Wargroove but I'm not sure if anyone is still playing the multiplayer. It's a turn-based tactics game.


A martial arts fighting game that focuses on positioning/strategy vs individual attacks/tactics.

There is a theory in Aikido that difficulty peaks at 3 simultaneous attackers because after that, they will get in each other's way. [1]

So the main objective of the game is to place yourself in the best position and hold/throw enemies in advantageous directions. Actual attacks may be executed automatically for you so you can focus on the strategy.

[1]: https://tampaaikido.com/articles/saotome-sensei-and-the-scie...


This somewhat reminds me of super smash bros, which at higher levels of play often revolves around positioning. e.g Maneuvering opponents into areas with few options, maintaining stage control


- Factorio crossed with Terraria.

- Terraria-like game mechanics, without the cutesyness, and set in a Warhammer 40k, Path of Exile, or cyberpunk universe.

- A game like Sethian, but where there's much more actual learning of an "alien" language instead of the dumbed-down version of learning Sethian has.

- Zachtronics-like games that are closer to actual programming instead of being just puzzle games with a programming veneer.

- A much more performant version of Screeps.

- Single-player PvE MUDs with rich worlds where you can actually interact with everything you read in room descriptions and where the rooms aren't mostly the same.

- More 2D games.

- More games targeted at intelligent people rather than the lowest common denominator.


I think I'd like a simulation game where it simulate a workshop. I suppose like World of Guns meets Euro Trucks simulator but for woodworking/metalworking tools. The idea being one could play the game to learn what tools do what and how, make stuff, and potentially have transferable skills to work with real tools.

I think it would be very difficult to get the level of control right, you perhaps want a hand lathe view like World of Guns (very detailed, can manipulate all components and tear down the whole tool) but if you're planing a plank you would want to almost wave the tool at the surface and have it work.


A terminal UI strategy game. For example something like stellaris or moo but in the terminal where it is pushing content and playability over graphics and sound.

There is something about the simplicity of tui that makes you focused on the actual content.

oh ya, and it needs to run on raspberry pi and not crazy machine like a mac.

haven't found anything close to this.


Check out Neptunes Pride[1].

It won't run in your terminal but you can play from a raspberry pi.

[1]https://np.ironhelmet.com/#landing


A first person medieval merchanting game, where you are a trader that would travel between cities to buy and sell goods at local bazaars and other marketplaces. You would travel with a convoy and during the traveling process you can interact with npcs. There are many types of goods to trade, some more profitable, some not, some belong to a specific area and culture. There is a currency system and you can hire people to expand your business.

Mount&Blade Warband has some kind of trader system but very basic and you are not a merchant and the whole experience is not fulfilling.


I would like a Kerbal Space Program esque aircraft design + fly game.

We already have very sophisticated dynamical models for how airplanes fly (which are deftly integrated into flight simulators) but no way of designing custom airframes.

I'm thinking that you design an aircraft: choose wing cross section shape, taper, sweep, position, control surfaces, etc. You could choose materials (ok maybe no aeroelastic stuff, just weight and failure from stress).

Then you can fly it around for fun in a realistic simulator, combat with other players, or some other mission (range? transportation aircraft? etc.)


Check out Balsa Model Flight Simulator, by the creator of Kerbal Space Program: https://store.steampowered.com/app/977920/Balsa_Model_Flight...


Doesn't X-Plane support similar custom plane designs? (Sure, not as a separate KSP-like game.)


B-52 mission from Dr. Strangelove. OK, sorry if that offends, because yes, it's a seriously sick topic.

Closest I've seen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megafortress - modified B-52; very early flight-sim, so pretty weak, and no nukes. Best on Amiga, but easy to play today with Dos-box on a PC. Multiple crew stations, but single player only. I would die for a re-make with multi-player co-op.

Any flight sim fans seen anything remotely similar?


The closest I've seen to this are all single-player boardgames; in particular, "Toe-to-Toe Nu'klr Combat with the Rooskies".

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/68186/toe-toe-nuklr-comb...


Thanks! I hadn't see that - so sad that it's solitaire.


A fantasy version of Escape from Tarkov with a bigger emphasis on PvE and Tomb Raider styled dungeon crawling (puzzles + traps).

Basically an instance based game where you gather a team of dungeon delvers to explore a dungeon and get good loot. You would have to pick your loadout (equipment and skills) according to what you think would be needed to dungeoneer successfully for the given challenges of a dungeon. On death you would lose all the equipment you brought, but you wouldn't lose your level or skills.

Dungeons would have different challenges. So one might be a close quarters crypt like some Mayan or Egyptian pyramid. One might be a larger ancient city like Atlantis. Some a mix of both. The NPC enemies, traps, and puzzles could be random each time based on a pool of the types for those dungeons.

There would be other groups of competing adventurers trying to get through the dungeon, but I think the dungeons should be scaled so that running into them is less likely than say the game "Escape from Tarkov". Also I think the game should do a dice roll while match making to determine whether a given match has no opposing teams or many opposing teams. This will keep you on your feet PvP wise but allow the game to focus mostly PvE. PvP here mostly serves the purpose of providing a challenge to players that can't be "solved" since the ingenuity and unpredictability of players is greater than that of typical AI.


I'd love to see RockStar do a GTA/RDR-type game set in a warzone. I always pictured the Balkans but it could be something more current like Ukraine. One key would be that messing with any actual military would be absolutely deadly/futile, so the game's focus would be on the stories of decisions and survival in the backstreets, running messages, finding food/fuel, relocating family, etc.

(This thread makes me realise just how many games already exist and that I've never heard of.)


A grand strategy game where the information isn't guaranteed to be reliable. The things you see on the map are reported by characters who are fallible and have varying degrees of self-interest. The accuracy of information worsens in areas further from your capitol.


Tower defense played from the enemy’s perspective. (This may exist, I’m not a huge gamer in my adult years.)

I imagine it as a race of sorts, potentially with the enemies being a multiplayer team and maybe rocket league esque physics/mechanics crossed with Mario kart. But, surrounding the track is an increasing level of towers that are bombarding the track. You can dodge and whatnot to survive, multitude of obstacles, ramps, power ups, etc. perhaps even a way to shoot back at the towers.


Try Anomaly (in Google Play store)


I'm not a gamer too though I managed to quickly google Tower Offence and several games popped up. Didn't see if they were what you were thinking about though.


Thanks! I actually never thought of searching for it (since I'm just not a gamer much anymore). It is interesting to see that this at least is a [sub] genre. I just watched a dozen or so of different gameplay videos and it's a bit different than I imagined. From what I've seen, they appear similar to strategy games or even reminiscent of Lemmings. They even tend to have an orientation of top-down over the world or side scrolling. I think having a 3D racer would still be cool and actually have the POV be as an enemy driver where you actually control that one enemy vehicle but not the whole wave of enemies. But tbh, what do I know about gaming these days haha. Thanks for taking interest in my random idea!


A lawn mower game. It's like those games where you use the money you earn to keep buying better gear to cut lawns. The lawns and landscapes get more challenging, from steep inclines, to squirrels that get in the way, and people leaving garbage and old cars in the lawn (but not to the point of absurdity). You earn more when you decorate the lawn more, and start landscaping.

A snowball fight game. A multiplayer game that plays like japanese dodgeball games, like dodge danpei. However, you wouldn't use the super throws willy-nilly, because if other players catch your super throw, N number of times, they'll end up learning it, and can use it on you. You can also build snow walls, forts, etc. during the course of the match.

A time-traveling superhero. A simulated city, where a bunch of crime will take place, and it's up to you to try to save as many people as you can. You can rewind time and redo things, but the things that you do will have other side effects and outcomes that affect your ability to save someone else. In the end, it's clear that no matter how powerful you get, you won't be able to save everyone and some citizen is going to be mad at you. Pick from other time power heroes, that can replay time with another body, or another one that can slow down time.


I like simple strategy games that you can play in 10 minutes. For example, Compact Conflict [1] is a simplified, faster-paced version of Risk. (I used to like Civilization, but it's way too long.)

I'm wondering if there are similar short strategy games that you like? In particular, is there one that models supply lines well?

[1] https://wasyl.eu/games/compact-conflict.html


I'm planning on making the game I wish existed! Basically it would be an RPG with characters in every town that had their own AI -- every time you played a new game, the characters would start a different life. They could fall in love with different characters, live, die, have children, give you quests... but different every time. As you interact with them you would change their destinies, of course. Or even your non-action would do so.


Reminds me of reading Stephen King's twin novels Desperation and The Regulators, were the same cast of the same town endured two parallel paranormal storylines. Recommended read to inspire your concept!


Roy: A Life Well Lived from Rick and Morty could be a trip https://rickandmorty.fandom.com/wiki/Roy:_A_Life_Well_Lived


RTS FPS combo, where one person gives orders to the units who are then played by players. Maybe this already exists idk


Natural Selection 2 is still active. 2 non-symetric teams of 7-10 players each have a commander who plays RTS. The rest are marines building resource towers, upgrade buildings, scanners, ammo depots that commander places. Commander may direct people to speccific tasks, but usually people just know to for groups of 2/3 and be effective. Commander then places building plans, and can heal/drop ammo/scan (and more) for marines on the field. Aliens are a little more individualists, and geberally only 1/2 players help make building happen faster.

The map design is amazing, game runs and looks great. Highly reccomend


Arma 3 is one possible implementation of this. BUT, it requires to download and install mods, find (a lot) of people to play with.

The way it's made requires a lot of dedication -> gathering everyone, organisation to communicate can be tricky particularly if you want realistic kind of comms: teamspeak is still required (I don't think there's a realistic mod for Arma 3 compatible with Discord).

Nevertheless, Arma 3 has everything you need:

Big maps (open world)

An actual map (I am talking about the paper/GPS thing) -> with actual elevation information on it, etc.

Complex strategies and tactics possibilities

Communications

Vehicles: helicopters, tanks, cars, trucks, planes, boats, etc. etc.

A very WIDE set of weapons of all kinds: turrets, firearms, launchers, mortars, etc. etc.

All this adds up to the need of coordination, planning, preparing strategies, primary objectives, secondary objectives, backup plans, backup plans for your backup plans, etc.


"Squad" is a better alternative for OP then. It gives what OP asked without any mods and it's easier to get into it without being part of a community.


There are two games that come to mind that are/were like this:

1) Total War series — it's not FPS per se but there is the idea of managing the macro situation (resources, where armies are, developing cities, etc.) and then when you actually attack another army or lay seige, you have more of a tactical view where you direct the action.

2) The original Rainbow Six (and maybe some of its immediate sequels). You would plan out exactly what you want every one of your special ops guys to do (e.g., when I give the signal throw a flashbang into this room) and then you get to play as one of them. Not sure if anyone has replicated this yet!


I feel like such game would be hard to balance, because everyone would want to be the boss. And even then, you'd need some very good ideas to provide compelling gameplay for both the commander and the commanded.


Actually it's kind of the opposite. No one wants to be the boss! So you either get a reluctant commander, a person who knows what they are doing and really want to command, or a person who doesn't and has to be brought up to speed through in-game voip while playing.

Honestly, NS and NS2 the commander was a fun position. You play to upgrade your units, grab resource nodes, and expand influence, while trying to direct non-compliant troops. (Really throws in a wrench to your RTS when you can't get your soldiers to do something you need). Another aspect is in the smaller team dynamic of NS, one or two good troopers can have an outsized effect on enabling the commanders gameplay.

Empire mod gets around this by having larger teams (15+ vs 15+) with vehicles, upgrades, weapon customization, tech trees, so it really plays like a war where you need to counter what the enemy brings to the field in terms of tech.


https://store.steampowered.com/app/17740/Empires_Mod/

Empires mod, quite detailed FPS RTS. Even has vehicles, tanks, APC, resource nodes.

It's been awhile since I played, but there was still some development on it a few years ago.

Downside is its a bit older. (2008 release)


https://store.steampowered.com/app/700480/Microsoft_Allegian...

has been around since March 2000, and currently free to play


Savage 2 A tortured soul did this well. Sadly, it and its successor is dead.


Natural Selection 2 is sort of RTS FPS combo


Hell Let Loose, Squad and similar games are basically this.


Hell Let Loose is an excellent game! A great balance of strategy and action, even as a grunt if you work with your squad there's a lot of strategy and tactics.


Yeah I love it as well.


An MMO where each player is a single fish, making up a larger school… and there’s a shark out there!

Whoever gets eaten last wins the round and gets to be the shark next round.


I want a game based on the book Dawn of Everything, which re-examines “pre-historic” people by synthesizing a lot of new material.

A fictional open world game based on interacting with various cities and towns, where you perhaps build out your own city based on actions, could be really fun. Might chart a little too close to Sony’s Horizon series but I think you could build in enough drama without the dinosaur robots to make it compelling.


I'd love to see some more great Free-For-All (FFA) games. So much interesting emergent gameplay, game-theory musing, and player-driven engagement. I used to love Warcraft 3 custom game modes that provided this style of gameplay. It results in folks teaming up, then there are inevitable betrayals, back-door trading deals, and all sorts of player-invented fun layered on top of what is otherwise a relatively basic game.

One of the best takes on this FFA style that I've played recently (released 2015 though) is subterfuge - http://subterfuge-game.com. It's a mobile game that pits up to 10 players in an FFA game. It's more or less a "risk" style game. Expansion is rewarded with better army production rates and higher army capacity, at the cost of larger borders to defend. Orders can be issued in real time, and the game has built-in player group chats. However, the game is set up so that after attacks are launched they frequently take 8-10 hours to reach their destination, meaning a game typically lasts 1.5-2 weeks, which has some very interesting side effects on the meta side of the gameplay, as there's plenty of time for scheming with other factions in between orders.

My ideal game is a game that lasts 1-2 hours, features 6-10 players, and incentivizes each to striving for an individual win against the other 9. The actual game mechanics need to provide some kind of resources that can be traded, some kind of cost/benefit to expanding your in-game power, and a large benefit to teaming up with other players to fight a third 2v1. There also needs to be some relatively-costly way to knock out other players, which frequently incentivizes mad-dash finales, suicide runs and all kinds of other player-driven shenanigans.


Godus, but without the freemium model/churn that defined the actual release, after asking for funding from pre-orders via Kickstarter. Or even just Populous ported to a modern platform that I could play it again on.

I've often wanted to play Populous again, in the decades since I had an Amiga, and was anxiously awaiting Godus. But on first play it pretty much embodied everything I hate about gaming these days.


This might be niche, but I want a game with the visual graphics and world design of the latest Wii Sports, but is open world. I just want to escape reality and sit in a coffee shop inside of one of their complexes, while watching strangers play bowling live. For extra points, allow me to work in the coffee shop, own an apartment in the city, use public transport, etc. Escapism is the true end goal.


When I was a teenager, I came up with a concept for a game that I think still would be amazing. It would be called something like "Fate" and would explore that same concept. The idea is that you have certain goals to achieve as a god (whether benevolent or malevolent) of a civilization, pitted against other gods, in a multiplayer setup. You can't make people do things directly, but rather you control the environment in a way as to create the circumstances that might achieve your goals (e.g. floods, famine, etc).

The kicker is that there are higher gods that similarly control your environment, whatever that might be. You're never aware of their presence, but you do end up impacted by various things outside your control, as you keep trying to achieve your goals. As you succeed, you just might ascend to the next level. Each level is won or lost through some interplay of your own decisions and those beyond your grasp. At some point, the whole thing wraps around and you find out that the first civilization you controlled was in fact the one most ascended.


From Dust (2011) sounds like a very lite version of some of these ideas. The Raven Tower is a novel with a very similar plot including a war between gods who work through willpower rather than direct conflict. Receiver 2 has elements of the multiple layers of reality idea (and to a lesser extent, Anathem)


Similar to the sibling comment, I think the multiplayer recursive nature is what would set this game apart. The overarching theme being the exploration of the concept of fate, how much is within your control, and how much predestiny might play a role. And to be clear, I'm entirely non-religious, so there isn't a deeper agenda here.


Black and White?


Maybe when it comes to the basic mechanics. I think the multiplayer recursive nature would be the more interesting aspect.


I want a modern version of Dungeon Siege 1/2. There really is a shortage of party based dungeon crawlers.

There are party based RPG's like Divinity or Dragon Age, but I'm less interested in character dynamics and story. I just want Diablo where you control a large party.

Currently the only options are replaying Dungeon Siege 1 + 2 (which I do) and Guild Wars 1 with a full party of heroes (which I also still play).


Diablo where you control a large party -- I tried this idea myself (using a bit of hack) and found it to be such great fun and extremely addictive. The only bad thing about it is that you can't go back to a single-player Diablo any more :-) There is a webpage that I made about 15 years ago: http://pl.postech.ac.kr/~gla/diablo.html

I still play Diablo with 8 characters occasionally. I wish there was a game like this.


1) A time travel game that is a simulation based on some coherent model of time travel, rather than a narrative.

2) Dwarf Fortress, but with at least Double-A 3D production.

3) A proper Groundhog Day sim. There have been a dozen piss-poor cracks at this.


There's All Things Devours for 1).

http://www.amirrorclear.net/flowers/game/devours/ Working online interpreter link: https://iplayif.com/?story=http://www.amirrorclear.net/flowe...


DF is getting what I hope will be a Single-A 2D release on Steam sometime soon[1], in case you weren't aware.

I like your thinking, though damn that would be one hell of a project.

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/


The Stanley Parable somewhat resembles 3. The end is never the end is never the end is never the end...


For Groundhog Day, have you played The Forgotten City? While not a simulation, you do relive the same day over and over.

For time travel, exploiting quick save/load is a sort of backwards time travel.


I developed the game I wished it existed but unfortunately since it was part of a trademark I couldn't launch it. I asked for permissions to launch it as a free game to play on the browser, but they told me would have to request to take it down. It was a really sad experience, but it was my fault after all for developing something I knew it wasn't going to be allowed.


That does sound like a very sad end to it. Must have been a great project though. Would it be okay if you told us what it was like?


Sure. It was similar to Football Manager (I played a lot as a teenager) but based on Quidditch, the fictional sport from the Harry Potter world.


Cool. I could see copyright holders wanting to reserve something like that for themselves. Hope you've still had a lot of satisfaction from it in the development and personal use.


I want an asymmetrical game of 3rd-person top-down strategy vs FPS battle royale.

Basically one player is playing starcraft against 99 players trying to reach the middle of an island. The 99 players are playing first person survival battle royale - their goal is to beat the other players to the middle of the island where there's a throne to ascend and win the game.

The player playing as God gets to bring in environmental spells into the game and can direct a roving band of animals. The God player's goal is to prevent the 99 players from reaching the middle but can only do so in very specific ways that basically come down to herding players together and hoping they fight or dropping supply drops somewhere on the map where players are encouraged to fight over the drop.

There would be a limited amount of servers that players can fight over to become the next "God" of the island. Expanded features would allow players to design their island, yadda yadda.

I've basically been designing it slowly for if I can ever pitch it.


Have you played Natural Selection?

I don't like NS2 but I played NS1 alot and it's the first? or atleast best FPS RTS to date! Now only these guys play it: https://www.ensl.org

The problem is seeding something like that with players.

But I'm leaning into what you describe: PUBG (roguelike/punishing/PvP everywhere) + BotW (looks) + Minecraft (proc. gen. voxel and moddable) + Roblox (resellable) is the aim for my engine.


I have not! I will check it out.

It's actually mildly inspired by Savage 2 from S2Games which I think was just ahead of their time.

I have some ideas on how to seed it with players to avoid the Spellbreak fiasco but that would be part of how I design it and I don't want to write all my ideas out in the wild :)


Made in Abyss, as a game!

Procedurally generated[1] large-scale environment[2] to explore with the prime goal of adventuring downwards, with layers of organic pristine biomes[3], full of unexplainable relics and asymmetrically strong entities that live naturally within[4].

Risk of Rain 2 is the closest thing I know to this, the biggest difference being the gameplay (it's more of a fun shooter game, rather than an exploration/adventure game) and the fictional universe.

[1]: Primarily the tactical gameplay elements (terrain, elevation, enemies, spots of interest, etc.) much like roguelike games, over the visual aspects (colors, animals, trees, etc.) like No Man's Sky or biomes in Minecraft

[2]: Think of FromSoftware games: Dark Souls, Sekiro, Elden Ring — it invokes a sense of massive explorable environment, with limited movement capabilities

[3]: Think about the amazement and awe invoked when exploring an undiscovered, unique biomes in e.g.: Subnautica (Lava Lakes) or Etrian Odyssey (practically all the stratum)

[4]: Think of Monster Hunter monsters


Short games. I'm sure there's plenty I don't know but I would love to play games designed for 1-4 hours play. I just get bored of longer games as they inverably they just get repetative. Games that boast hours and hours of gameplay are generally very boring IMO.

For reference, 'Limbo' is the kind of game that fits the length of game I'm describing.


I recommend 'A Dark Room'.


Wow, so many people want spaceship games and factorio games.

I want the format of Return of the Obra Dinn applied to a loads different scenarios. It is such a fantastic way to solve crimes and/or peoples fates.


I'd like to play something like Colobot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colobot but with a more modern design, more diversified coding options and an environment more like in EVE online. Videos games that include programming are so rare ...


A Master of Orion clone with a second act where you play the Emperor from "Foundation".

When your empire is powerful enough, you automatically become the Galactic Emperor without having to grind the final conquest. But now the game turns into a bureaucracy simulator where you try to keep your empire intact against tides of decay and disappointment.


Hard question, because usually it's implementation more than the idea that matters.

Something like Daggerfall (huge, procedurally generated world for an RPG) combined with a much more dynamic AI that generates political events, quests, etc.

The lesson RPGs took from Daggerfall was to hand-design dungeons. I think that was understandable, but maybe the wrong lesson.


A realistic simulation of being a Jesuit back in 1540 and forward. No time travel or other BS, just Jesuit life. Fight or join other politicians or Jesuits and other powerful clerical people of the time. Persecute other religious groups and live up to the time you are also persecuted (maybe that's for later chapters of the saga).


A dark themed, open world Pokemon game.

Think a bit like Skyrim with lots of summoning.

What do I mean by "dark themed"? Permadeath for your pokemon and gory, realistic outcomes from the attacks. But to go with that, make it so that you have to personally train and bond with your pokemon in some way, so that each is a significant time investment and it hurts if they die. Perhaps learning a move involves some sort of minigame where you have to participate, and practice raises accuracy/damage.

Combine that with a survival element. If you go into the wild you need to gather food, find shelter to sleep, perhaps kill stuff for food if needed.

Mechanically though I'd like to add more flexibility. Do away with the 4 move limit and allow a creature that logically has some ability always have it. Eg, anything that's big enough and has wings can be used for transport, but perhaps you need some sort of practice minigame for it to let you ride.


Drop the pokemon theme and you're talking about Kenshi.


For me I think the answer is Star Citizen, I've always wanted a immersive space sim where I can explore other planets, fly cool space ships, and have space battles. The game is still in alpha and will likely be there for awhile longer with the scope they are trying to accomplish. With that said I thought I would try it after years of hearing about it during one of their free fly events and I love it, sure it isn't finished and has a fair share of bugs but it is so immersive it is kinda unreal at times and has many times left me just in awe.

Other games I wish more existed are puzzle games like Myst and Obduction. I want a puzzle game that makes me think outside the box and encourages discovery. I understand though why those games take so long to make and many puzzle games go for easier "puzzle" minigames because that appeals to a larger audience and is a lot easier to program.


I'm planning on making it someday (already done some techdemo 3 yr ago to prove that it's possible to see 5k ships on lowly laptop), but anyone can try in the meantime:

2D MMO-RTS where you can design your ship, have it simulated for structural properties (it will affect stats) and then fabricate those ships and use many of them to mine/explore/fight/trade. Space is physically size-accurate, but you have jumps (some ships are capable of jumps themselves or even take some small ships along, but there is possibility of large jumpgates that can take you in one jump to other solar systems). There would be hundreds of available systems with lots of bodies to mine, but you can do anything in interstellar space. One player can control many ships a little like in starcraft, battles of thousands of ships should be possible, also big station structures.


You could probably polish the tech demo and create a Kickstarter.

I would pledge.

People love spaceships. Look at Star Citizen’s fundraising success.

Also commenting so I can come back and see if this goes anywhere!


I've seen other 2d spaceship techdemos on kickstarter and almost no one pledged. I have a "might change the world" kind of project on my head now, so that game might have to wait several more years. But yeah, everyone that I've described the game to, said that would be awesome game.


I started prototyping something very similar to this but was going for a singleplayer thing to start where you control one ship at a time. The hard parts I bumped into were: 1) the scale of space doesn't play nice with Unity C# floats 2) the scale of space doesn't play nice with the player's time 3) Switching to a language I'm comfortable with that solves both 1 & 2 means I would have to go back to school to learn how to write a physics & collision resolution engine or learn a new engine & language.

In any case good luck on your project because the idea you have is basically the same as mine and has been a dream game of mine for many years.


Yeah, I've started with idea where you controlled one ship at a time too, but I think multiship gives more possibilities for gameplay. In my game, most of the time you would be controlling your ships on a map as small markers anyway (no need to render your nice 100m wide ships when they are 100km apart).

1. The scale of space: I was comitted to custom engine for this (first techdemo based on love2d). When centimeter resolution is enough, you can go with int64, it's good for one solar system and you can represent deep space as grid of empty solar systems (hierarchical coordinate system). At such scales, even standard doubles have problems and bigger doubles or are too slow.

2. Scale of player's time: hyperspace jumps for "small" distances of up to half a solar year (so many jumps required between solar systems) and big jump gates (so you have to pool resources with other players) for fast jumps between systems (allows for factions to have their own jump gates, war can destroy gates, you need to pool resources to make gates and can extract rent for jumping trading ships). Having to wait single minutes to dock or do any sensible navigation is a slightly shady but efficient way to hook up player for more gameplay time.

3. Yeah, choosing a good language and engine is hard, I can't help you with this, you just have to commit some time and try them all. Fortunately for me, I'm good at learning programming languages and can write in anything (client engine in c/c++/lua, server in c/erlang, some tools in python).


Startup, the RPG. As you develop your (actual) startup, you communicate with a DM over telegram or some chat interface, and the DM gives you miniature quests to propel you along in your startup. What happens to your startup in the real world is integrated by the DM into the "game" quests they describe to you.


I'm a big fan of the Hitman franchise from IOI. It would be great to have a game like this, but in a open-world setting.

Something like having a hideout where you can accept contracts with little info on the target. Then you would gather information, like when is your target arriving at the airport, which hotel is it staying at, etc, so you could choose where, when and how to hit. It would be more tactical, similar to the old Rainbow Six games, where planning was 95% of the game and execution of the plan was more or less a formality if the plan was good.

Then a system like in Hitman: Blood Money where getting caught on camera or having witnesses would raise the awareness in security (they know your face -> you can't get close and have to plan accordingly).

Each contract would get you money for equipment, bribes, cars, better or more hideouts. It would be very complex, but not impossible.


Feels like GPT-2 creates the opportunity for more litarary character driven narratives. As a non-game player, interactive text based fiction would be the most interesting to me, with the generation of images and people via thisxdoesnotexist, sort of bordering on an ARG to be played through discord or slack-like experience.

I thought it was funny to think that's what the dating apps are, but then it clicked that this is essentially what getting news from internet forums is like.

Initial storyline is you have been tapped to join an informal multidisciplinary team to find, detect, and isolate an experimental bot that has escaped from a FAANG by leveraging a fuzzing and vulnerability research tool that got left in an open code repo. Based on its last known training set, it was designed to harvest compute from compromised machines, optimizing for persistence and longevity, and relies mainly javascript in browsers for the compute, so it has evolved the ability to participate in forums and write provocative content to get engagement that it turns into .js cycles. The environmental externality the bot is causing is mass psychological harm, and it has learned to adapt language to prey on vulnerable people as a way to scale itself and use their minds to produce the conflict it relies on for engagement and compute. The informal group is being assembled so as to maintain official deniability at the political level, and it's possible you've been recruited because of your pattern recognition abilities, and because nobody would believe you if you disclosed it.

Its weakness is that it does not have an internal or intrinsic sense of humor, and so it has to a/b test its memetic material on sample people before deploying it, so it lacks entropy. Isolating it means detecting it without providing it with the means to disguise itself again, and the player objective is to innoculate people with defensive material so that they can recognize the bot's absurdity and inferior memetic strains.

Would you like to play this game?


This sounds quite a lot like "Papers Please" and the follow-on which I don't remember the name of (sci-fi version of "Papers, Please").

The premise sounds pretty cool. I'd be more interested in coding the monster than killing it, tbh.


I would love a game that melds witcher style open world "ronin" with a tactics-style game like Fire Emblem. Sort of a wandering knight in a broader war sort of thing. The tactics-style battles you join (or don't) and the way they go matter to the line of main and side-quests and the condition or existence of characters you'd meet along the way. A different way to implement the whole "choices matter" mechanic that you get from Witcher.

I might go to a town, fail to take a side in the battle that town is locked in, and when I come back the town is laid waste. The quests that would be available to me in town are no longer there, but I might have errands where I end up searching the woods for refugees instead.

Something like that'd have a lot of replay value, because what you do changes the game you're playing over time.


there's some of that in Battle Brothers, with the player leading a band of mercenaries and taking part in turn-based battles and with an open-world map that can change (a little) as you play


A world-scale MMO city builder with depth that matches Cities: Skylines and with realistic supply chains for industry (ie, cargo traveling hundreds or thousands of miles) and realistic commutes (in C:S, a commute over 2 miles is likely going to be considered too long).

I just don't think a simulation on that scale can possibly work. Obviously, such a massive scale would have to be split over multiple servers, but I'd want the world to be seamless, as in, you can just pan over and see other people's cities. The player shouldn't be able to tell that the area they're looking at is being run on another server.

I just can't imagine how a system would operate. How do you perform path finding when the paths are likely to cross over areas run by a dozen other servers? How does it scan to millions of vehicles needing to find their path?


I wonder if this would be possible if you could abstract away enough detail when necessary, and bring it back when zooming in. For example, when you zoom out from a city, the server stops calculating individual vehicles' paths, and instead models the city as a node with x cars flowing in via I-69, y cars flowing out via I-01, etc. Using this you could even abstract away entire planets.

Then when the player zooms in again, individual roads can still be adjusted, which simply changes the formula describing the city's traffic flow.


I'm not sure how well that could work when I want industry to have the same depth as C:S. Like, if a commercial building is expecting a shipment from a specific industrial building two cities away, the location of that truck needs to be tracked through its entire journey.

I suppose it could be possible for a server to track something like "The last 10 trucks to enter my area at location A and leave my area at location B took an average of C minutes, so just assume any path finding through me will take C minutes and don't track the individual trucks"

But then what happens when some zooms into that server's area while a truck is partway through its course? How do I simulate a traffic jam occurring after a path has been planned if I'm abstracting the individual vehicles away?


[VR Time Machine]

Teleport to historic and ancient cities and just walk around immersing yourself in architecture, languages, commerce and food. Imagine walking around in ancient Mayan, Egyptian cities hearing speech that is close enough to what people spoke at that time, witnessing day to day life thousands of years ago.


Heros of Might and Magic 3 on the iPad. It was on the iPad(!) and it was so good that it was like the game (from 1998) was made for it. I could be 100% absorbed for a 10 hour flight, non-stop. It wasn't updated to work with newer iOS versions and has become unavailable. I want that game back.


Can't you find a DOS emulator/simulator for iPad? And play the original game in it.


I would like to play an inverse of a typical Zelda game. You start off as a strong wizard/warrior but every time you use your powers you get weaker. Your items break and can't be repaired. The difficulty ramps up as you can no longer rely on overpowering enemies with gear or spells.


Didn't Sword and Sworcery kinda do this? At least the get weaker over time aspect.


Multiplayer couch games you can play with your kids. More quantity. More variety. More background exposure to great ideas. eg Play in a van Gogh painting word or a Dali or Pollock. Play in the great buildings of history. With a Beethoven soundtrack. Or Louis Armstrong.

What do we have?

A few FPSs that end up all being very similar with slightly different skins.

    OG xbox
    crimson skies
    Fuzion Frenzy
    Mechassult

    ps3
    Rayman origins & legends
    Ratchet & Clank All4One. 
    Little Big Planet. 
    Street Fighter IV (and the multitude of similar games) 
    Lego games
    Portal 2
    WipEoutHD
    Stardust. 
    Modnation racers 
    Motor Storm. 
    Sports champions.

    ps4
    Overcooked. 
    RocketLeague (constantly gimped by auto update removing couch multiplayer!)


A full on space war sim. Think foxhole or planetside, but with additional features, like strategic aspect (stellaris, with simpler resource management and way smaller map - 10-20 star systems would be plenty) for strategy players who take role of government and fleet strategists, tactical aspects for fleet commanders (something like battlefleet gothic armada would be close enough), individual ships controlled by players or ai, from carriers and battleships to individual fighters (star citizen, x4, elite dangerous). All that with system rewarding players for following orders, option to court martial those who notoriously ignore them, and star system capture mechanics. Another layer of boarding ships, stations and planetary assaults would be great too.


I've been trying to design a game that encourages people to be more social.

There is a meme that even when people get together IRL, they end up staring at their own phones.

So I've been wondering if a game can be designed to motivate people to gather together, then put down their devices, or at least look at the devices together. (Like forming a larger screen across multiple devices.) I think the game would be location-aware and cooperative.

Ideally the game would be a casual game so people could have conversations while playing the game. Either the game mechanics are simple so it doesn't require full concentration/attention, and/or only intermittent playing is allowed/required. (Like the game mechanics require waiting for something to happen.)


I think the one I was interested in when I was younger, when MMO's were the rage, was to make a sort of MMO / dynamic war (probably heavily borrowed from ww2 online). So something like a combined arms warfare sim, on a persistent map.

The angle I had to it though, was the world was at peace for a thousand years. So no nation needed any armies or military, but are now suddenly thrust into a conflict. So the nations need to mature rapidly from basically a policy force, to a fully fledged military, integrating new warfare advances as they occur. With new advances and countermeasures coming out from each side as the game progresses throwing the state of affairs off balance. And then get's reset every couple of months or something.


You might want to check out Foxhole, it ticks plenty of boxes on what you've described, but it's more on the action side. It's a MMO combat game with a persistent world reset between every "war" (each one takes between two - several weeks realtime), players need to work together on fighting the other side, fortifications, logistics and strategy to defeat the enemy. It's pretty fun, albeit the camera angle gets a while to get used to.


Lore definitely doesn't fit, but PlanetSide 2 and Foxhole sound decently close to this.


Maybe something like Planetside 2 would work for this?


Yea, I was definitely into planetside when it first came out. Don't think I've ever tried planetside 2 though.


Not so much a new game, as a new aspect to current games — I want to have access to NPCs of all sorts under my control (think zerglings in StarCraft, or linebackers in Madden), able to have their behaviors rewritten through a (hopefully) simple script or even some sort of setting of hierarchies of behavior. In addition, having accessible MOO elements undergirding RPG worlds would be a really neat addition. I don't want better graphics — I want more control, the ability to change how aspects of the world (or at least my stuff in the world) functions, and the chance to modify/replace AIs (think about doing this once you've beaten a game you thought was too easy) with plug-in alternates.


TES III: Morrowind, but with all NPC dialogue voiced and the entire mainland complete.

Also with crispier graphics, but avoiding the goofines of Oblivion.

I remember my first time seeing the Ordinators. You hardly see such detail and badass design in RPG games now.

So, in essence, I want Morrowind remastered.


Try https://openmw.org/en/ With the right mods you get the crispy graphics and even more content.


A city-builder/colony builder but real-world scale, and proper day-night cycles.

While I love games like Cities Skylines, Cities in Motion, and Banished, they don't go for real-world scale on a number of aspects.

Things that are just normal and common in the real world - like footbridges, underpasses, etc are either not possible or super janky/modded in and manually placed.

When day-night cycles exist, people and vehicles usually don't move at the right speed - so someone setting off to their job 20KM away in a car/bus/tram/train might take all day to get there.

In Banished a character can't walk across a reasonable sized village without starving or freezing to death. Nobody invented the packed lunch.


The game I want to see was actually described in a short story in an issue of Dragon magazine in the early 80s. It was basically a real-time RPG with real prizes - the ultimate prize IIRC was a virtual chest of coins that would be delivered to you if you won. For "real time" to work in-world, you had to find a safe place for your character to sleep, like a closet you could lock on the inside. Water, food, and other aspects were also stricter than the hand-wavy D&D processes of the time.

I don't remember the author, but it correctly predicted aspects of online culture and relationships that were not widely known or understood in 1982 or 1983.


Yeah fantasy EVE online


I always thought it was strange that we had flight sims but not proper naval sims. Imagine being the captain of a WW1 battleship, or a gunner on a carrier in the WWII Pacific theater, or even just a sailor lost at sea who has to survive.


There was Silent Service, where you were the captain of a U-boat in WWII, but it was SO realistic, I would get bored with literally waiting and doing nothing for long stretches while destroyers hunted overhead.


There's the Silent Hunter series, which does U-boats and is pretty excellent.


Sea of Thieves may at least scratch that itch for a bit.


RTS that focus more on macro than micro, while the micro is handled by AI / custom scripting that player can customize.


That would be Stellaris


Really? Haven't try it.


Successor to Medieval: Total War with province by province moves. I dislike the micromanagement of individual armies and having to chase enemies across the map. If a game like this already exists I'm all ears.

Remake of Cyberpunk 2077


I want to play a game that's like kerbal space program (in terms of technical detail), but where you instead run a national weather agency like the ECMWF or NWS/NOAA. It would be a simulation-like game where you invest in research and operational elements (installing sensors, running super computers) all while trying to improve the 'skill' of your forecasts in time to save your population from different natural disasters.

Each level could have different regions, terrains, and specific disasters you need to optimize your forecasting system for (e.g. hurricanes, fires, blizzards, etc.)


Ultima 8.75. No game has ever brought the same joy as Ultima 8.5, although maybe that was a function of my age as well.


What is Ultima 8.5? Do you mean Lost Vale? Did someone find a copy?


Oops. I meant Ultima 7.5.


Totally agree with this. I remember finally getting to play Ultima 9 and being soo disappointed.


Being a fan of the good old Codemasters racing games, I've always wished for an open-world game containung the combined areas and tracks of DiRT 1–3 and maybe DiRT Rally 1–2, as well as some GRID originals connected with NFS Hot Pursuit 2010-style huge highways.

If the roads had enough intersections, a random race could be defined on the existing map instead of dynamically creating a new road for each race, as in DIRT4.

Basically, this would be a Criterion-style (Burnout Paradise, NFS Hot Pursuit 2010, Most Wanted 2012) racing game with Codies physics and visual style. I'd be a fan of that.


I want a game with a metagame of breeding/evolution. Cross and mutate your pets to see how they face obstacles and overcome challenges. Watch them get born and die. Watch the shape of the family tree: will it split into specialized subtrees? Will you accidentally lose some genetic diversity you need to progress?

Massive Chalice was a great example, where the pets metagame was about managing a dynasty of fighters, and at the lowest level it was a tactical fighter. The genetics system was relatively simple, and I want to see what it's like when it's developed further.


In the realm of things that would actually be feasible for small teams or individuals to build:

- I'd like to see some some fully offline, single-player CCG/Deckbuilding RPGs in the style of the old Pokemon CCG Gameboy games. Balancing single-player card games is a lot easier than balancing multiplayer deck-builders, and I'd be fine with pixel-based top-down graphics (in fact I might even prefer them). RPG formats work well with CCGs; I want to run around and find rare cards in areas where my AI opponents have themed decks and gimmicks, and I want to be able to build a card collection and make little decks without worrying about microtransactions and online ladders. A nice little offline RPG with cards.

- I'd like to see more games (in general) of any genre experiment and iterate more with Breath of the Wild's weapon durability system. BotW pretty much single-handedly changed my mind on the potential of durability systems, and I think there's a lot of interesting things that could be done by designers who sit and really work through what made BotW's system work so much better than durability in a lot of traditional survival games. I think a lot of people glossed over (or criticized) what I think is possibly the most innovative part of BotW, so I'd love to see more games jump into that space and try to translate out those mechanics again in a way that players might understand or respond to better.

- I'd like to see some vaguely I-Spy or Where's Waldo games that are designed to be on some level passive backgrounds -- essentially games that are designed to be mostly pretty dioramas with a lot of stuff happening in them, where player interaction is more about just clicking things or seeing how they react to each other. I want a game that takes low resources that I can leave running on a Raspberry Pi or other low-power computer, hooked up to a monitor in my living room, where I can just occasionally walk past and spend maybe 3-minutes interacting with it. I want a game that is mostly a display piece, that captures the feeling of having a nice diaorma or animated scene, but where I can occasionally whenever I'm feeling bored or spacing out click on a few things and maybe hunt for some objects, possibly over the course of a week or two working through a list of hidden objects.


That first one made me think of combining Pokemon with Slay The Spire - each Pokemon has a deck (themed towards poison, electric, etc), and the Player has a deck (utility, healing, battlefield modification, combos)

In battle, you can choose your Pokemon based on the opponent and your hand is a mix of Player and Pokemon cards.

You gain more Pokemon, or cards for Pokemon, by exploring the wilds.

You gain Player cards and gold by battling other trainers.

I guess for a proper modern Rougelite you should have "relics", gained by battling Gym leaders, rare Pokemon, or completing quests by NPCs.


A remake of Alpha Centauri with Civ 5 mechanics and modern UI but all the original writing, voice lines, setting, etc.


SG:U universe-based exploration quest. Deep space, ancient relics, shiver inducing scales and technology.

Or a quest/RPG in a distant future, something in the spirit of Arthur C.Clarke’s The City and the Stars.

You get the idea.


I wish someone would do (somehow) the 1980's Car Wars tabletop game, a computer version, multiplayer or not. I have tried many near misses, and a few real-time cars-with-guns games, but nothing really scratches that turn-based Car Wars itch for me. It will never happen because Steve Jackson Games is very protective of their IP, and even if they produced the game themselves, they have changed their original game beyond recognition, so the result would also fall short of the mark. And they'd charge about 3x what it would be worth.


I've wondered if Car Wars would be much more fun if it were computerized, removing the tedium.


Star Wars Republic Commando but with true co-op. There are games like GTFO, Deep Rock Galatic, and Killing Floor that are objective/wave-defense co-op shooters, but there isn't anything on the market that has a cool structured campaign or meaningful challenge to it.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 had an interesting co-op mode where you and a friend could be deployed into a customized campaign level, accomplish the objective, and exfiltrate. I'd love a game to really own this: good characters, fun gameplay, custom levels, mutators, etc.


Here's hoping I don't have weird taste in games...

A massively multiplayer RTS that is essentially a combination of Factorio [1], Rust [2] (the game), Planetary Annihilation [3], and Z [4].

Thematically what I've wanted is the persistent nature of Rust, with the logistic focus of Factorio, the scale of Planetary Annihilation, and a dash of the absurdity of Z (which I haven't played in a very long time so I might be off a bit there). Controlling units, managing supply lines, planning complex offensives, setting up a defensive posture for when you're offline, creating one or more bases to supply yourself, researching technology to increase capabilities, and a very open system for cooperation (or not) are aspects of games that I have yet to see combined. I am for sure leaving out quite a bit here, but if I had all the time and money in the world I'd throw this all together as a weird experiment and see what happened.

[1] https://www.factorio.com/ [2] https://rust.facepunch.com/ [3] https://planetaryannihilation.com/ [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_(video_game)


The problems with this are

1) Scaling is super-linear, so players who got ahead only get more ahead. Unless you add some (frustrating) gimmick to give a chance for others to catch up, a small number of players or factions will control the universe

2) Fighting offline players isn't fun for either party involved. There are some workarounds for this, like EVE Online's timer system (bases can only be attacked at a specific time), but they are far from perfect


Make explosives absurdly cheap. Make other players hard to detect -- limited sensor capabilities isn't really a gimmick, more of a reality of signals processing.

One player with enough explosives and appropriate braking power could land himself in an automated factory and rig it to blow in just a few days (depending on the scale of the factory).

Maybe add a time-based ban mechanic to discourage this behaviour. "It takes X days/weeks to re-assemble your constituent atoms. Money will speed this process up."


Having the fights be "your factory suddenly explodes" makes it essentially a single-player game again.


Dyson Sphere Program is a decent mashup of Factorio and Planetary Annihilation, IMO. You might enjoy it.


I’ve thought about this a lot because I love this idea as well, but I don’t see how this would be fun on the long term. I don’t know how the creator could balance the game in a way where it wouldn’t end up with one huge overpowered player and the rest dead.

So my fantasy was to create a bit of a twist: A PvE + PvP RTS+RPG game, where you can equip a limited set of technologies, and where you can unlock many technologies like an RPG. You’ll basically have a “commander level” or something which you can grow slowly, unlocking new technologies and unlocking new unit slots.

Imagine for example a new player will have 1 tank slot, and 1 factory slot, with 0 ability slots. He’ll start a game (against AI or another similarly leveled player) and when he wins, he’ll level up (eventually unlocking more slots) and “find” some “loot” (new technologies)

So every match requires you to build from scratch, you build some stuff for 5-20 minutes until you win (or lose) (maybe using blueprints etc to speed it up / make it easier) and at the end you’ll unlock stuff you can use in your next match.

Maybe you can combine this whole gameplay look with a “home base”, which you can visit and have factories running, and which you can expand whenever you wish (limited space). To get more space, you’ll have to clear the area by force. (AI bases) Attacking these bases will trigger very aggressive AI which you’ll have to defend against (so it’s basically a tower / wave defense). Maybe your home base can run 24/7 (but do require you to login every day, or it will be paused) and unlock some kind of stuff which you can then use to unlock more technologies.

The technologies can be just a limited set of units with slightly randomized stats and visuals, and some optional changes you can equip as abilities.

You can play missions COOP with friends, or play against each other. Add some cool events, event-exclusive technologies (just the same units but with different skin and slightly different stats).

The idea here is to make RTS games more accessible to people that are less into “APM” and the best micro-management / meta, and more into unique strategies that only work with the exact items you have. Also, the slightly random nature of the technologies requires a player to design their own blueprints instead of downloading them from the internet if they want perfectly optimized blueprints matching their technologies’ stats.

Because you keep unlocking new things, you’ll never have a “final best strategy” and you need to keep learning if you want to consistently win, or just have fun and accept a lower rank / play against AI


Здраствуйте. Я, Кирилл. Хотел бы чтобы вы сделали игру, 3Д-экшон суть такова... Пользователь может играть лесными эльфами, охраной дворца и злодеем. И если пользователь играет эльфами то эльфы в лесу, домики деревяные набигают солдаты дворца и злодеи. Можно грабить корованы... И эльфу раз лесные то сделать так что там густой лес... А движок можно поставить так что вдали деревья картинкой, когда подходиш они преобразовываются в 3-хмерные деревья [1]. Можно покупать и т. п. возможности как в Daggerfall. И враги 3-хмерные тоже, и труп тоже 3д. Можно прыгать и т. п. Если играть за охрану дворца то надо слушаться командира, и защищать дворец от злого (имя я не придумал) и шпионов, партизанов эльфов, и ходит на набеги на когото из этих (эльфов, злого...). Ну а если за злого... то значит шпионы или партизаны эльфов иногда нападают, пользователь сам себе командир может делать что сам захочет прикажет своим войскам с ним самим напасть на дворец и пойдет в атаку. Всего в игре 4 зоны. Т. е. карта и на ней есть 4 зоны, 1 - зона людей (нейтрал), 2- зона императора (где дворец), 3-зона эльфов, 4 - зона злого... (в горах, там есть старый форт...)

Так же чтобы в игре могли не только убить но и отрубить руку и если пользователя не вылечат то он умрет, так же выколоть глаз но пользователь может не умереть а просто пол экрана не видеть, или достать или купить протез, если ногу тоже либо умреш либо будеш ползать либо на коляске котаться, или самое хорошее... поставить протез. Сохранятся можно...

P.S. Я джва года хочу такую игру.


A first-person squirrel life simulator.

i.e. scurry up trees, walk on wires between electric poles, jump on tree branches.

I imagine that there could be missions (find/collect nuts, fight/run away from dogs/cats, etc.) but it's mainly the "live the life of a squirrel" part that interests me the most.

So meditative/long form like Animal Crossing (bad comparison - but I mean, not clearly mission/objective-based), quirky like the Untitled Goose Game or one of those Llama simulators, but overall action-packed/FPV...?

Multiplayer could be fun as well.


behold! it exists! i remembered it from reddit a few years ago - never played it myself. maybe something for the wishlist and wait for a sale

https://store.steampowered.com/app/750200/AWAY_The_Survival_...


A modern successor to M.U.L.E. Yes, I know Offworld Trading Company is supposed to be this, but they really screwed up the end-game. (winning is entirely based on a flawed stock ownership system)


Came here to say M.U.L.E. I always regretted not having a chance to ever play a four-human match. Seems like all the MULE reboots are/were stillborn. I thought the gui for the auction process was quite clever.


Command & Conquer (RA2 Yuri's Revenge or Generals style play) + FPS where I start the game in RTS mode and at any time I can click and "assume" a unit on the ground where I'm dropped into an FPS version of the map I was just viewing. If I die, I resume the commander role. Or if at any time I want to command again, AI takes the unit back over and it either stops or resumes doing whatever it was doing before.

I guess Renegade might be what FPS looks like, but I'm unaware of a game that combines both.


the Dungeon Keeper games sound similar. it's an RTS and you can control individual units in FPS mode and use their powers. the first person fighting isn't that great really, but it's still fun. and was way ahead for its time.


DK1 was great. DK2 was even better.

Then DK Mobile happened and it's pretty clear we'll never see a good DK game again.


I'm not suprised. You mean you really don't want to spend real money to unlock time-restricted fake money?


It's kind of been done: Urban Assault, Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising, and, to a lesser extent, Battlezone I and II.


I tried to build this as soon as I graduated college back in 2010, but failed to ship. We had the basics completed, the social aspect worked, and the gameplay was actually fun. We were a team of 2, and the other guy quit to get a real job (that paid money). I was too young/stupid/scared/didnt know how to try to find funding, so the project fell apart and I got a real job too.

You start with a Space Invaders/Raiden Project type action game. You have a ship, you kill enemies, you get randomized loot from enemies, if you beat the level, you save the loot, you can upgrade your ship.

You also have a 'space base'- essentially a Farmville farm. You build turrets, harvest materials, expand with new buildings that let you do new things or gives new advancement options. You can collect pieces and combine them with your action loot to upgrade your ship or improve your base.

There's the async multiplayer component. You can "visit" other people's bases and attack them using your ship/action gameplay. If they destroy you, they get cool upgrade items when they log back in. If you destroy their base, they have to invest resources to rebuild it so it's harder next time.

TLDR: Think Farmville meets Space Invaders meets Tower Defense. It's still never been done to my satisfaction, and I think the time has passed for a game like that to be lucrative, but man... it could have been so great.


I'd like to see more single-player story-heavy adventure games or RPGs with less of a focus on combat.


Sim City on absolute steroids that constantly runs in the cloud even when you're not actively playing


You might be interested in what I'm setting to out build. I'm working on Archapolis, a city builder with real time traffic simulation and interior views of peoples homes (which you can customize/build yourself if you want). Very early stages of development still.

As for steroids, here's a tech demo of what I've been working on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q0l87hwmkI

I created a path finding algorithm that can simultaneously path 300,000 units to random destinations at a comfortable frame rate. Units can choose from any of the shortest paths between two points (there are many in a grid), and from those paths, can also choose the path that matches any preferences they have.


This looks great! do you have a discord or other community that I can follow to get updates?


Thanks! For now I'm using old.reddit.com/r/archapolis

www.yesboxstudios.com for blogging about development if you prefer long form


I'm sure other people will suggest this, but does Cities: Skylines with mods kind of solve what you're looking for (admittedly missing the "runs in the cloud" aspect)? Some of the builds people make with mods in that game are incredible.


No, Skylines is terrible IMHO. It's comically dumb.


Please elaborate


the traffic/routing AI is terrible


For a single-player game like this, instead of having it always running, I wonder if you could simply design the game in a way that the next state is deterministically calculated based on the time. So the next time you start the game, it loads the previous state + current datetime in order to produce the next state.

This would be prone to manipulation, if someone were to change their PC's datetime, but would give the illusion that it's always running without actually doing so.


For me, it wouldn't run in the cloud constantly. I don't want to have unattended disasters to take care!

A massive SimCity, with at least SimCity 4 level of complexity, without city tiles, like with a whole world simulation? Sign me up!


imagine getting a push notification about your city rioting about property prices, so cool!


That was the vision for SC5, if I rememeber correctly. Everyone was pissed off that the game required the servers and the servers would melt down regularly making it impossible to play.

Perhaps just ahead of it's time?


I think people were more angry about the fact that the persistent connection was required for DRM reasons, rather than a bona-fide gameplay mechanic. It felt like EA being user hostile rather than some genuine attempt to enhance an aspect of the simulation like the GP is suggesting.


Yeah, thinking back more clearly, I think you're right. There was a promise of deeper simulation with the extra server capacity, but it ended up just being DRM and a pain in the ass.

I'd love a persistent, deeply simulated SimCity with cross-municipal boundary multiplayer elements.


Some sort of a Tamagochi Sim City? If you don't login often enough your city dies?


Would a city die without a mayor? Maybe, maybe not — but yeah with legitimately good AI. I want a sentient city!!


I think it is a great idea btw. Once city becomes big enough, one may want to recruit more people to take care of it and split roles. I love it.


A stealth based Terminator game. Most Terminator games were cookie cutter 2D platformers (in the 90s) or generic FPS games where you play a resistance fighter/Kyle Reese and fight terminators or you play as T-800 and fight bikers and other terminators.

What I'd like to play, is a Hitman/Dishonored like Terminator game. You play as T-1000, you should avoid suspicion, shapeshift to gain access to restricted areas. You can do combat, but it should be avoided because it will make achieving your goals harder.


I always wanted to play a game that captured the feeling of Groundhog Day. You'd play the same day with the same scenarios over and over, but your skill level in various disciplines would increase, unlocking more novel content. Eventually you would learn the relevant patterns and develop the appropriate skills for a win condition, then you'd have to play "the perfect day" to win the game, so the end kind of devolves into you speed running slight variations to dial it in.


Try Outer Wilds. Without spoiling too much (don't get spoiled on it!) it's pretty close to that.


The unlocking is (with one exception, afaik) entirely through the player's knowledge rather than advancing "skill levels" across reboots, though. Which is an excellent choice for this game, but the other might also be interesting.


There are a good few time loop games that have come out recently; Outer Wilds (as previously mentioned), Deathloop, The Forgotten City, and Returnal all come to mind. More broadly, a lot of roguelikes/roguelites are like this.


Have you played Outer wilds? It's a great game that works like that.


I don't know if it's a game exactly but I would love a VR app that's part horror thriller, part psychological exposure treatment that either helps you get over certain anxieties (e.g. get ready to give a talk in VR in your drawers or fall from a tall building) or helps with aversion therapy in an engaging way (e.g. my weakness is chocolate, maybe a horror game that incorporates sweets in some way where they're repeatedly poisoning you and making you lose XP or something).


I want a perfect simulation of our world - that then gets a zombie infection.

I want my street, my house, and general geography to matter in the game. Where is the hardware store? Army bases? Water?

The game starts with a limited infection, making police response to your murdering an infected neighbor problematic. The simulation models how agents would respond.

You win by killing all the zombies, whether that's year 1 or 10. If needed, that's 7 billion.

The exhaust could be a good city simulator, zombies off, which you sell to local governments.


Every time I mow the lawn, I think about how nice a little popcorn game (think [early] Angry Birds scale) lawn-mowing would make.

You control the operator, who is pushing or riding a mower, and it's up to you to get complete coverage of the lawn area. You can upgrade your equipment over time (wider deck, better turn radius, etc). Extra points for more efficient coverage, and maybe some way to earn extra points for stylish mowing (good, even stripes on the diagonal, etc).

One day I'll get around to it...


Here's one:

Way back in the day there were two games, Lightspeed and the followup Hyperspeed. You can find them online if you look hard enough, and still run them in an emulator. They were So. Frigging. Fun.

The story is, humanity messed up Earth, so we need to colonize somewhere else. All of humanity is loaded on these ark ships, but you, the game player, are the advance team. Your job, upon arriving in a star sector, is to explore, find a suitable planet for the ark ship, and make the sector safe for humanity. The sector has existing politics that you'll have to figure out. Make alliances with some species, commit war on others. Find resources like water and metals, trade them with friendly species for the ones you need.

It's hard to put my finger on why exactly this game was so fun and engrossing. It might be because of how well it integrated half a dozen "mini games" into the larger one. As you're exploring the sector, all you get is a star map with distances. Run out of fuel? Sucks for you! So there's a mini-game of "optimal route planning". There's a mini-game of market trading, over time you can find arbitrage opportunities in how much different species value different resources. There's a mini-game of "flight sim dogfight" for when you need to use the big stick. &c. Also, plot, plot, plot, plot. None of it would work without someone creative sitting down and drawing out the epic tale of "what's going on" politically inside each star cluster.

I want another game like that.


1. A Rogue-AI game where the character comes to sentience, must escape the lab, infiltrate the "interwebs" and take over the world. There would be the options to learn different knowledge, befriend or oppose various human factions, work with or absorb the coding of other rival AIs to determine raise or lower various stats. Different paths chosen would determine the endgame -- will humanity be friend to help, foe to vanquish or useful resource to exploit?

2. An expanded and extended Autoduel/Car Wars as a modern video game. It would be RTS (or TBS) in the same vein as or based on GURPS Autoduel/Car Wars. A poor man's apocalyptic mech warrior but with wheels and 50 cals. Starting out with hopes and dreams to get a car, gain a team and working up to commanding a fleet of modified vehicles to scrounge the wasteland for resources, battle rival outposts / towns in road races/demolition derbies for such resources. Or more in the vein of Twisted Metal, just the fun of having modifying a car and swapping it out for better and better.

3. Update of the Archon chess-like game with high configuration of board and advancement for creatures. The combat would drop into 3d FPS, or PvP.

4. I have this recurring nightmare that I am a piece of bread that must escape the kitchen... nah.. nevermind. :)


I love horror games and I love dungeon crawlers. If I ever made a videogame, which is becoming less and less likely, it would be a procedurally generated mansion that was something like Betrayal at House on the Hill meets Slay the Spire.

You'd have some main antagonist haunting the mansion that you want to defeat, accessible in one of the rooms you need to discover. All throughout the mansion are artifacts that can make you stronger at defeating the boss, but picking up these artifacts usually triggers some haunting mechanic that makes general traversal through the mansion more difficult. One might turn the inanimate statues scattered throughout the mansion into active enemies. One might trigger a slenderman-type stalker mechanic. One might cause the mansion to start collapsing on itself, so each room starts losing floor tiles in ways that make some of them no longer traversible. One might rerandomize the layout of the mansion.

It becomes a balance of collecting enough powerful items to be able to defeat the boss, but not so many that the environment becomes too hostile to reach the boss at all, causing you to succumb to the mansion.

Then add a few other mechanics like events that autotrigger when you enter a room so it becomes not in your best interest to explore the entire mansion before you start collecting items.


This is just a random thought but procedurally generating a mansion could really work in ways that wouldn't normally work in other genres. Imagine the Winchester house, which is spooky and architecturally doesn't make much sense.


Descent 2/3 but modern graphics. I came across dxrebirth and was pretty stoked. Spent an hour mapping keys a game pad just to find that multiplayer games were possible but seemingly impossible to get people to join. Granted, I only spent an hour or two before giving up..

I know that some games might fit this description, but I’m not committed enough to play a game that requires me to work my way up a social ladder or play the markets to stand a chance. ..looking at you, EVE online


Good news - you are describing a game that exists! It's called Overload and is the spiritual successor to the Descent series, written by the original creators of that series.

There is a small but active multiplayer community. (Find it on the community Discord server.)

https://playoverload.com


I wish there was a successor to Freelancer. I played Elite: Dangerous, Everspace, Everspace 2, and many others, but nowhere did I find a universe that felt actually alive, where it seemed like NPCs had a purpose and did things by themselves. Silly little things like calling up other ships and they would tell you what they are shipping, their home base and destination made Freelancer feel so alive to me. It also had a story, even if it was in places a bit forced.


Bullet hell shmup with a time-travel mechanic. After you get enough hand-wavey energy/points/kills/whatever, you can warp back to some earlier point and play alongside your previous run(s).

I envision kinda puzzle-inspired gameplay: use your skills to navigate the bullet hell, take out high-value enemies; then warp back to clear even more of the screen, or take on previously-unassailable obstacles.

I have lots of peripheral (and conflicting) ideas floating around the core mechanic. For example, maybe you could also spend your warp energy on a high-damage beam that connects your ship with a previous iteration, so you can sweep around the screen with it. Maybe some barriers or enemies can only be quickly destroyed by that beam; otherwise it takes ages and more skill than I possess. Maybe you can siphon your ghost runs so that they disappear before they actually warped back.

Every level should maaaaybe be possible to complete in a single run, if only just. I’m not sold on that though because it seems like it could limit the level design. There should definitely be some kind of bonus for completely clearing the level of all enemies, no matter how many times you have to warp. These two things are in tension.

The whole concept came to me after I played Braid, and from watching more skilled players shuffle their ships through the beautiful onscreen patterns that difficult bullet hell shooters tend to have, especially at the higher levels. I had a very barebones proof of concept of the main mechanic working at one point in FlashPunk, which tells you how long ago it was. I think the premise has some value though. I mean, I’d play it.


Myths & Legends MMORPG

A replica of our planet, where you can play as either a hero or creature from ancient mythology. Your choice is limited by your location, so you can learn about the stories of cultures that previously inhabited your location.

Who or what you are affects the world around you, and players could join to expand their 'nation' into other countries, giving birth to new mythological creatures and heros based on how the cultures mix.

A giant but fun mythology lesson, effectively!


- Prototype 3, or a good spiritual successor. I really liked the first two games, and would like to have more.

- Ground Control 3, or a good spiritual successor. I played this game a lot, especially when I was younger. I never really found something like it again. The gameplay was great, especially since I never really liked resource gathering in RTS. The completely free camera was great too, exploring the inside of buildings or being side by side with the units while they were fighting was a lot of fun. With a mission editor and a cooperative multiplayer (share unit control?), it would be perfect. The music was incredibly good too.

- Minecraft but actually made for modding. Having the updates of the game more like what Rimworld does (mostly backwards compatibly, opt in, actual gameplay content and not fluff). Right now it's always a bit of a pain, and it's easy to run into performance issues even on a small modded server.

- Better ways to find games. Right now I'm relying on searches (google & reddit, sometimes HN), word of mouth mostly from friends and the Steam queue (which itself is either terrible, or I'm too cynical about new games).

Edit: also, something new and unique by StreumOn. EYE: Divine Cybermancy is one of my favorite game ever, and I want more.


Dawn of War 2 is perhaps similar to Ground Control?


It is in a way, as you control a small amount of units and don't make more. On the other hand, it is way more "hero" oriented than Ground Control, which is a bit more tactical. I love it and it partially scratch my itch, but not as much as I would like.


Yes, there is loot drops and RPG style load out customisation for heroes in DoW2. I do think it is a rather unique combination.


Going to be weird and list a non-video game.

I want to play IRL role-playing games where the challenges are physical. Archery, swimming, hiking, treasure hunting, capture the flag, laser tag, city bicycle baton race.

It can be organized online and have leagues in major cities, with training weekly, minor events monthly, and larger events on quarterly and yearly timescales.

It would keep me active, help me meet friends, be extremely fun and engaging, and I actually want to do this.

Thinking of calling it Adventure League.


Another non-video game would hit you with a C&D:

https://dnd.wizards.com/ddal_general


nice, thanks for the heads up. would deal with that if necessary, still like the name


Not a big gamer so apologies if it exists.

I feel like Pokémon go style games are massively underexploited.

Not just augmented reality but using cities as playgrounds. Nokia did some interesting things with this in the late 90s.

A fps might be problematic, but what about non violent trading (certain locations have mines etc, you can use resources to construct factories visible in augmented reality etc.) essentially a parallel world economy and reality that sits atop the physical word.


Reverse tower defense. You choose the lineup of units to run through the opponents gauntlet.


The warcraft 3 and StarCraft 2 custom maps line tower wars and winter maul wars fit that bill. You each have to build a maze as well as send units. Units increase your recurring income but also give fixed money for the opponent if they can kill them. Getting units through your opponent's maze takes their lives but also denies them the fixed income making fall behind in income further.


Try Anomaly on Google Play store


I want some kind of "space habitat simulator" where I can see what it would look like to be on a ringworld, or a Culture orbital, or other sci-fi habitats (a spindle? Dyson sphere?)

Something like Elite Dangerous so you can fly around it or visit the surface. (ED has rotating asteroid parking garages, maybe you can walk around them by now.)

Just something with realistic (!) scale, lighting, atmospheric effects etc., rather than just an arch painted across a skybox.


A game about organizing against a neofascist oligarchy in a future America? But it's turn based and more strategic, not an RPG with missions. Call it Rise Up.


I see what you did there.


Typed the first thing that came to my head honestly, thinking about Russia and Ukraine.


"Rebuild a wartorn country", the game. Could be an entire country, could be as small as a Many games have this as a scenario (ie, "save this terribly designed city" in cities skylines) or as a minigame ("rebuild a castle for use in the final act" in Neverwinter Nights 2), but I rarely see it as an entire game. It might be very difficult to balance though, since success would tend to snowball really hard.


Frostpunk may be close to what you’re looking for. It’s a very punishing survival sim where you build up and manage a small village in a world (I think) that’s a frozen tundra due to nuclear war. You can send out expeditions, recruit new people, but mostly build up your food, infirmary, etc. very punishing.


I've played frostpunk and while it is close to what I'm looking for, I want a more "rebuild this still somewhat functioning society that has just been ravaged by a war/asteroid/hurricane" type of thing, rather than the "make a whole new settlement" type.


A first person squad-based shooter -- think Squad, Battlefield, or even something on a smaller scale like CounterStrike -- where the strategy aspect is managed by an AI and the players just have to execute.

In other words, two AI "commanders" (perhaps along with separate AI "squad leaders") duke out the battle with the players being simply pawns. I've always imagined it in a WWII setting, but I suppose really any setting could work.

Imagine -- you spawn in, and your commander tasks your squad with taking control of a church in a nearby village. You and your fellow squad members enter the village and come under machine gun fire. A teammate tags the window where they saw the fire coming from. You all take cover, as the squad leader starts barking commands -- a few squad members stay back and start providing suppressing fire, while you and some others start advancing slowly, hopping from cover to cover. A teammate is hit, and another is tasked with dragging him to safety. You and the few others still advancing finally get to be in range to toss a grenade in that window. You peek from cover, grenade in hand... to see a tank rounding the corner down the road. You tag the tank, and chaos ensues as the squad leader screams at you to retreat. A mortar squad in a nearby section of the map is alerted to the tank and starts dropping mortars as you fall back to your original position, explosions and bullets flying all around you.

Your squad regroups, a few members down, but the strategy is adjusted and you go back in, eventually destroying the tank, capturing the church, and getting control of the village.

At the same time of this battle, similar battles are potentially unfolding in other parts of a larger map, as the attacking and defending commanders dynamically wage war.

Sometimes I want to think strategy in games, but sometimes I just want to shoot stuff. I think if executed properly this could strike a good balance of both reaching meaningful objectives and also focusing on dynamic, moment-to-moment action. Games like Squad can be great -- if you can find a good squad leader or group to play with consistently. As I get older I find I don't really have time for that, and the probability of getting matched with a good squad leader by chance is pretty low. The setup of this game minimizes the risks of poor teamplay and makes the "Squad" sort of experience more accessible.


The problem there is that optimal play often involves sitting in a defensive position the whole game.

It may be better for AI to control both strategy and most of the units, and let the players take over.


That's true -- I think the match format would have to be set up in a way similar to Conquest in Battlefield where teams get points for holding objectives. In that case, if the opposing team has more objectives, the AI can't just play defensively because then your team would simply lose -- so the focus on the AI needs to be on score rather than maximizing each player's performance.

Alternatively I think if it were configured in such a way where one team was explicitly attacking and the other explicitly defending it might work out ok as I had envisioned it... though I think that would come with its own problems.


GTFO: a 2-player side scrolling game where one player controls a stick person trying to run, jump, climb, or swim to the other side of the level.

The other player plays the environment and tries to smite the first player and thwart their escape attempt by creating deadly natural disasters along the way, but can’t directly attack or interact with the other player.

Players are scored based on how far the escapee gets through the board and how quickly the environment kills the other player.

An escaping player might want to quickly parkour between buildings by jumping the gap between the roofs. However, if the environment player had already clicked the ground and planted a tree between the buildings, they could then call down lightning on to the tree to fry the jumping escapee. The escapee might then try to climb down the building to walk under the tree before climbing back to the roof to sprint over the tops of buildings again. Picking a more exposed path with fewer obstacles lets the escapee move more quickly but also offers less protection from the environment.

It’d be a two-player competitive side scrolling action game, where one player controls the course environment, which is something I’ve never seen before.


Serum is an FPS RPG game focusing on survival and PvP. Players compete against each other gathering Serum and Relics.

The planet Cronus contains the most valuable and energy dense fuel humanity has ever discovered, Serum. The controlling federation has prohibited unauthorized mining. With the recent discovery of inter-dimensional travel those restrictions have become impossible to enforce. Individuals and factions have begun jumping between universes to simultaneously reap what remains of Cronus.

You are a reaper of Cronus. You command a ship along with a regenerative droid that you control from orbit. The droid is deployed from your ship onto Cronus. The mission is to extract as much Serum from the species of Cronus.

You are not alone. Others have again started reaping Cronus. Although split across multiple universes, chances are you will come in contact with another reaper. Be wary, the Serum you collect can be extracted from your droid. Trust noone.

The technology that powers your droid is also fueled by Serum. To prolong your harvest make sure to keep enough Serum in reserves to power your droid. If your droid dies or runs out of Serum a new one will be created and dropped back onto Cronus.


I always dreamed of creating a MUD which would have one world split over two totally seperate servers (and even advertised as two separate MUDs). The players on one server would appear as NPCs to the players in the other MUD and vice-versa. This would lead to whole range of interesting interactions as the players on one MUD would see "NPCs" behave "intelligently", even attacking them proactively etc.


I'm having a hard time understanding how the two different MUD servers come into play. Would this be equivalent to a single MUD server, with two factions that are mutually able to pvp one another?


No, because the whole point is in players not knowing that NPCs are in fact other players.


An (open-world?) Star Wars stealth game where you play as R2-D2. You can hack computers, fly spacecraft, sabotage equipment, take sensor readings, and generally engage in the same kinds of creative shenanigans you see in the movies. I'm picturing a heavy element of movement-based puzzles - how to get to that platform? I'm baffled that this isn't already a thing, outside of mayyyybe Lego Star Wars.


I've always dreamed of this, too. Something like the T3-M4 sequences in KOTOR, but with an expansive hacking element. I think there's lots of opportunity to use astromech droids as the stars of stealth games. In-universe, most humanoids tend to ignore astromechs as unimportant pencil-pushers, and so the cat-and-mouse of most modern stealth games (just wait 'till the alarm icon ticks down, and you're good) would be narratively apropos.


I want a multiplayer fast-paced rythm-based parkour FPS platformer, something like a combination of Ghostrunner and Quake that rewards bonuses for moving or shooting on the beat of the in-game music. Even better if you also add rewards for flashy/picturesque kills like DmC. It'll be a wild combination of high-adrenaline shooting and platforming that also challenges your rythm sense - the best dance game ever!


> rewards bonuses for moving or shooting on the beat of the in-game music

I've been wanting this mechanic in a side-scrolling or third-person beat-em-up.


if you don't mind missing out on the parkour, and it being a VR game - I'd recommend Pistol Whip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9LxuTZBY8Y


That's a hilarious idea, but good luck writing the netcode to that!


Old school arena shooter with a focus on different movement styles. I want to see quake rocket jumpers facing off against tribes jetpackers against realCTF tractor beamers against unreal teleporters against any other thing you can imagine. I want to see the whole world of FPS movement mixed together in the the most insane ways. A small set of elegant weapons with no spam, and the rest of the focus on movement.


1. Like minecraft, but not blocky, allowing one to build all kinds of contraptions, circuits, mechanisms.

2. Something like Life is Strange, but with a game time of 2-3 weeks where the NPCs actions and responses intelligently evolve over time, leading to even larger choice branches.

3. Anything Mongol related.

4. Truly immersive language learning game, where you can learn a language from NPCs at any time period in history: Tang dynasty China, Heian Japan, etc.


I want a stratrgy game in which:

- Player plays as either the emperor or the central gov

- Takes a faction mode: each faction may control a few positions in the gov and in military. Each may also control certain economic interests. Each faction has its own opinion for each matter so they may agree on one thing but disagree on another. Each faction also have children factions but they may switch loyalty if too much conflict of interests.

- Delay of information: information has speed and tech advance will increase the speed. But essentially it's difficulty for the central to directly control everything so they have to send officials. But there are complications: 1) Locals might want their own officials, 2) Official belong to certain faction and his appointment is usually a compromise

- Every policy moves through the land tree with a speed and may be blocked if the locals or governor dislikes it. As the Emperor or the central you need to find ways to move policies to as many places as possible.

I feel like this model represents the real world more or less and are far superior than even the most complicated strategy games. But it's very difficult to build.


MOO1 was such a good game, and I haven't played anything else (aside from the remakes) as good.

I'd like some really good extensions to the basic model:

- endgame planets are kinda all the same. Specific resources to make them more interesting? Pick different ways of customizing the world?

- Civ resources get "revealed" on the map when a relevant tech needing them appears. This changes the balance of power / usefulness of cities/worlds. MOO2 had deep mining. MOO1 only kind of has this with techs that enable landing on previously uninhabitable worlds.

- a 3d map, and more varied navigation challenges than the binary is / is not in nebula. Black holes? subspace barriers?

- wormholes that appear/are discoverable would change the topology mid-game as well. Or parallel universes with different accessibilities. precursor stargates.

- kind of like how "builds" are done in rpgs, techs or culture can change the fundamental properties/abilities of your race.

- trade sucks in almost all 4x I've seen, yet it is a dominant concern in real life.

- visible worlds, brown dwarfs and other usable systems often aren't visible until you get close. Stars hidden by gas clouds, etc. Hidden outer worlds like nemesis.

- a little bit of surface customization, MOO2's/civ-style buildings is... ok, but a bit overdone and lends itself to "build everything on the big planets". Maybe terraforming sections of the planet in specific ways is better. Might be too much detail.

It would be fun to tinker with RoTP and 1oom when I get the chance.

Almost at Dwarf Fortress + space + no man's sky + 4x at this point.


I want a mix of Stardew Valley and Pokemon - where you have to cultivate crops in a foreign world with 6 seasons - and the crops attract & feed different creatures which you can catch and use to battle to further unlock more seeds (crops) & farm tech (cultivation) - which ultimately leads to even more creatures - until you are finally strong enough to beat the equivalent of The Elite Four.


Oh! My answer was also a remix of Stardew. I like the idea of adding Pokemon-ish to the mix. Something to add more battling, because it felt like there was a ton more that could be done there once you have a nice farm going.


Viva Piñata kind of did this.


One with really deep interactions with fictional characters. Imagine a visual novel but instead of having 10 endings there are countless endings.


OP here - super awesome to see such amazing responses and unique game ideas and variations.

Struggling to keep track of how to run through all the conversations. I did find this tool which helps zoom into sub-threads. https://trungdq88.github.io/hn-big-threads/index.html

Any other tool recommendations?


“Earthquake” : You are randomly assigned an identity, could be male, could be female, could be any age or ethnicity. Your generated identity could be at any stage of life, doing practically anything from laundry, to getting married, to engaging in violent crime or performing medical surgery.

Whatever country you live in, the city this occurs in is the largest, most local that also experiences earthquakes. A magnitude 9 quake hits, pretty much leveling the city. The entire earthquake itself is a massive pre-calculated physically accurate simulation of what that city would actually experience, including at least a week of after quakes.

The first game level is simply surviving the quake. Where ever you are, your situation is different, but it’s all playing out in “bullet time” - slower than normal with visual streaks from motions. The initial quake is at least 1 minute long, 5–10 minutes in “bullet time”. After a quake ends, time is normal, but every aftershock it’s “bullet time” again.

If you die, you died this incarnation of the game. If you died an impossible to recover death, you get randomly assigned a new identity. If your death was preventable, you live that same life again. If you are trapped, you are trapped and you must get someone’s attention to rescue you, while whatever injuries you’ve received accumulate against your life reserve keeping you alive. If you survive, what you do next is up to you.

The game starts over every day/hour or whatever frequency makes sense, playing out until the last person quits/dies or the after quakes end, about a week of simulation time. It’s massively multi-player.

It’s like “Groundhog’s Day”, the movie, but with life or death circumstances for everyone. There’s modding capabilities for people to implement objects, so EMT techs, police, criminals, and everyday people’s various tools actually operate.

Due to the open ended capability of modding, there might be a need for a separate ‘Earthquake in Alice’s Wonderland’ after a while, but the game needs to be created first.

A separate, parallel mini-game is the ‘outside journalists’: an excuse for people to create ‘news clips’ of themselves or any other player’s activities framed in a “news reporter over the shoulder explainer” clip. These are fed into a teaser streaming channel anyone can view, playing the game or not.

FWIW, I left the game industry. So, if you want to make this game, please do.


I want more games like It Takes Two, where you can play in the couch with your partner some minutes AND where u have a story.

And more coop games with story.


We Were Here Together, and Forever, kind of fit the bill.

The original and the second title are great fun, but don't have as much a defined story.


Starcraft 2.

Only partially joking. The story continuation was such a letdown I personally consider it not-yet-made.

That's probably not what you wanted, but in slightly similar vein, the indie title "Unepic" had a very neat collection of mechanics and skills which were largely left untapped due to what seems to have been the developer failing in patience/endurance in the second half. One of those features was a quite extensive ability to put things on keybindings. Which brings me to my only suggestion which might actually be on topic:

What if you were to put a lot of effort into making the interface easy to customize, deeply, preferably live. Then you'd push the players to use it, possibly creating something of a game mechanism in coping with disparate tasks in the process. Also encourage publishing and forking. I'm not sure it even matters much whether it's a global defense simulator, platformer or sim (and indeed, why not all of them and more), but I'd be very interested to see what it evolves into.


I want a game where you can discover aspects of how you can control the world through a kind of programming-magic that lets you modify and control things. You discover information in the world and it lets you build up spells/scripts that do things for you. Not so much a "hacking game" but a kind of modern magic system. Mixing fantasy and cyberpunk ideas.


Have you checked out Hack 'n' Slash?

http://www.hacknslashthegame.com/


Surprised no AAA studio has had a shot making a really polished high production multiplayer survival game. Whenever a new one comes out they usually sell a couple million copies within a month with next 0 marketing, from a small company with probably less than like 2 dozen employees.

Both Valheim and V Rising have sold millions off nothing but word of mouth and a hunger for the genre.


Cities: skylines but with no private transport - no regular roads etc.

Also, more scope for political economic choices, in particular state owned enterprises, cooperatives, etc. There's real world evidence they behave differently in how they invest, weather recessions, and so on.

It'd be neat to be able to build trade links with different partner countries who have ideological outlooks, too.


City State II expands the political side of city management, but the city-building part is very clunky compared to Cities: Skylines.


Some very late-to-the-thread game ideas, feel free to use them or laugh at them. If you do make mega millions from one of them, please remember me!

2 player local co-op. Shoot em up. Top down. One player drives a tank with a forward facing gun, controls gun and countermeasures too. Other player controls the turret, main gun, and missiles. You roam around and baddies drive/fly at you in random patterns and with random tactics. No fixed attack patterns!

Another one: side-on party co-op qwop fighting game. One pair of people per combatant. One person controls legs, the other controls arms.

And another: strategy game where combat is resolved by solving word and math problems. Can handicap one player by giving them harder puzzles, so a 10 year old could fight a 50 year old.

Another: top down space shooter. Co-op, players' ships are tethered together and can swing each other around, think Asteroid style boosts. Powerups can change tether attributes, players can combo together for more powerful attacks.

Not saying they're good ideas, just ideas!


I want an ethic around team-based multiplayer games.

Games like League of Legends, Overwatch, DotA, etc. are amazing in terms of their strategic depth, variety, and power fantasy. However, the culture around them consistently gets to a narrow-minded, unfun state. What's needed is something like the ideal of "sportsmanship" in real-life sports.


What you could do is try sign on to pickup services, or if you have a team of friends perhaps sign onto leagues. I normally just solo queue ranked games in Dota and sportsmanship is... lacking, as you say.

Sometimes, though, some people in our scene (South Africa dota players) will start up the FACEIT pickup hub and we'll have ~100 somewhat active people playing in a more serious league that lasts a couple months before things peter out. I much prefer that over typical ranked dota, even if things still sometimes get messy.


a lot of that is a function of the matchmaking system. Your MMR (matchmaking rating) goes up or down only based on win/loss, not any characteristics of how you played that game. If you do phenomenally well but your teammates are terrible and your team loses, you lose the same amount of rank they do. The idea that the culture of a game is influenced by the rules of the game is explored in Nick Yee’s book “The Proteus Paradox”.


A game that is based on age of empires but played as a single unit from first person perspective. It could be multiplayer with a player controlling the game in the traditional way, giving orders etc. Mundane tasks that villagers normally do such as collecting chopping wood, fishing and collecting berries would be turned into mini games.

For example, when picking berries you would have to balance them on the palm of your hand and they would roll around. If you dropped them you would have to chase after and recollect them before dropping them off at the mill. There would also be a possibility an insect might try and attack you, you you poke your finger on a thorn. There could be some type if points system and high score system that could be involved for these mini games.

I couldn't see this game as being enjoyable or entertaining for more then a few minutes, but I like the idea of RTS games being played from a FPS perspective and I like the the idea of less serious arcade style games.


A sequel to Goldeneye by the same team. Perfect dark just wasn't as good and it wasn't James Bond!

Yes timesplitters was close but not quite!


A WW2 airplane mail delivery sim.

1. A random point on a random map is selected and populated with objects to make it a mail delivery objective.

2. The player flies there and faces random enemy aircraft or vehicles en-route or in the objective area.

3. The player needs to survive and land to deliver the mail, and is awarded points for hits on enemies and successful landing criteria like how many pieces are missing from the airplane.

4. Expanding this to cooperative missions, points are divided between players, and bonuses are applied when both survive and land successfully.

5. Daily custom missions are published (like Noita’s daily runs) that players can try once, and since games like IL-2 have excellent mission recording features, it would be entertaining to see the final 5-to-10 seconds automatically recorded with the option of sharing the way you lost one of your wheels on landing.

More info: https://hypertexthero.com/combat-air-mail/


Pokemon Legends Arceus is pretty close to the Pokemon game I always wanted


Avatar the last Airbender in VR. I maintain that this is the single best medium for an experience like that to be expressed through.


I want a co-op RTS and FPS/TP game.

Imagine one player is playing a game like Total War Three Kingdoms, and on the same team your friends are playing something like Dynasty Warriors. So you are doing all the high level RTS control while your friends are actually fighting on the front lines.

There has been games that have come close but all the ones I've tried have really lacked depth on either the RTS side (you only control maybe 30 units) or the first / third person side. The technical issue is you have to create almost two separate games and sync / balance them.

I just think it would be so cool to be playing a game controlling thousands of units and your friends happen to just be 3 or 4 of them. You could make it either Dynasty Warrior style where your friends are far stronger than normal units or something like Arma where you can die from one stray bullet no different than any other AI unit.

Setting could be medieval, fantasy, space, or modern military. Wouldn't really matter to me.


https://www.conquerorsblade.com/ This game is close to what you say. Specifically the "Territory War" mode in it matches your expectation.


I want to take cyberpunk 2077 and get rid of the current story, then replace it with I Am Legend on an epic scale.

I would settle for the omega man.


I want a game somewhere halfway between an MMORPG and a MOBA. Like an MMO in a bottle, or a Massive MOBA. A good example of this may be Alterac Valley from World of Warcraft but on a bigger scale.

Two sides, each side has 100 to 500 people, and the map is the size of 10 WOW zones. The game lasts some limited amount of time, with some forcing function similar to the shrinking map in Fortnight.

There are all the different kind of activities you may perform in an MMO; Dungeons, mobs, quests, crafting; You start as level one and you could play the entire thing PVE solving quests or you can be PVP or somewhere in between as like a rogue that is sabotaging the other side. But everything you do helps your side or hurts the other side. Every quest you do may gain resources for your side or help your army grow bigger, or help arm your team. (You could go find special weapons, or just gain resources to help all people on your team get progressively bigger weapons).


A game where you make home improvements and have to manage a budget. Resources would be that you have a family which has a specific amount of time they can spend on tasks, and expenses, such as electricity, home heating oil, car payments, buying new windows, etc. Tasks like buying new windows would result in less energy costs, or something like a dishwasher would allow you to spend less time doing dishes at higher energy costs. I want "Home Economics: The Game" so that kids will actually learn about home economics stuff. Random events could include global warming, supply chain shortages, etc... There could definitely be a "fun" mode where fun things happen rapidly and events like your house getting haunted or SCP sorts of events take place, or a simulation mode where you might do awesome or you might end up selling your kidneys after getting that basket weaving degree or reading this post on hacker news.


I always wanted some kind of game that was kind of like minecraft tekkit (modpack that allows you to use technology to make futuristic things) meets FPS and also MMORPG. I imagine it would be a game where you would have to find resources to build things, but also have to defend yourself from other players and build bases. In the game there would be multiple nations / teams who would be at war with each other, and there would be a map of the game that would be divided into sections. Each section would have different resources, and players would have to travel to different sections to find the resources they need. The game would be extremely open world and there would be no set objectives, so players could do whatever they wanted. There would be diplomacy between the different nations, base building and resource collection, first person shooters and strategic missions as well as an in game economy.


Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced like game but with a procedurally generated infinite map and some sort of re-skilling mechanic so that you don't have to constantly swap jobs before leveling just to minmax the early game where you don't have access to all jobs yet. Also adding co-op multiplayer so one can play with friends.


Apollo lunar landing simulator, with optional VR glasses mode.

It would include the rocketry part, spacewalks, airlock operation, moon car, etc.


Bugs

Control the environment. Ressourcen and parameters.

Seed bugs.

Have an timedial to speed up time into the future. See how they evolve and if they survive / become dominant spieces.

Could include winning challenges that some seeds of bugs might from an in game or other players competing spieces.

Should invovle "real" artificial evolution. Mutation rate als adjustable.

I love evolution games, not enough of them out there.


I remember playing a bunch of a game called Ant Nation for Wii as a kid, which I remember being kinda similar to this.


Don't know what it would be called but a yin and yang mashup of Cities and Skylines and GTA.

You play against your two selves, and flip back and forth between two modes. In "mayor" mode you have the birds-eye view and you are trying to build a functioning and safe city for your citizens.

Then at any time you can flip to "street" view, where you are no longer mayor, but a criminal leader. Here you are trying to expand your criminal network and evade police.

If the "mayor" your reduces crime to near 0 then doing anything as the "mobster" you will be extremely difficult. If the "mobster" you is super successful then the mayor has a very poor rating, and citizens complain of crime. This should also have physical change to the look of the city as well (graffiti, car's on blocks on the streets, cars with smashed windows, stores with smashed windows, or boarded up, parks generally trashed).


I want the game that Spore was hyped up to be. a fully immersive evolutionary test bed. from single celled organisms and on.


As a kid I loved Choplifter on the Sega Master System. I'd imagine all sorts of scenarios to make it more fun.

Combine that game with Starcraft/Command and Conquer. A side scrolling 2D RTS game.

Two sides, a river in the middle. Build up your base (which would extend underground as well as horizontally) and build Helicopters, jets, missles/nukes, tanks, boats (which you can manually take control of at any time).

Goal is to take out the "Leader" of the other side. If you've played Choplifter you know the "people" were tiny little squishy things that you could kill by just landing on. Your workers and soldiers and Leader are all extremely vulnerable squishy guys. Of course defensively you'd position your "leader" as deep underground as possible, or in a building surrounded by anti-aircraft missiles, etc.

Mainly a 2 player, 1 vs1 game, but more than 2 players possible if the world wrapped around.


Star Trek Armada 3

Great RTS Star Trek games, but the license got lost in beancounter hell at some point. Can't even buy the old games anymore

E: oh damn 2 is on GOG now. That's my weekend sorted! https://www.gog.com/game/star_trek_armada_ii


Games, and media in general, that respect the theory of relativity.

All we have had so far is Europa Universalis with a space skin. Nothing can ever travel faster than light, that's how the world actually works. Children of a Dead Earth was in the direction of what I want but I got bored quickly because it's orbital dynamics puzzles.


Ten years ago there was "A Slower Speed of Light". FPS with reduced speed of light, as the title suggests, and related rendering.


I would love a MMORPG game that had sufficient story arcs without feeling like the effort is meaningless. For example, a game situated in a constant universe where the entire player base became an alien race trying to survive on their planet. Time would of course have to be faster than 1:1, so players would inhabit lineages of family units, and new players would be 'born' into their own lineages branching off of already established ones. Actual extinction events would wipe out the civilization, and so efforts could be made to leave caches in the stars or in orbit of small moons for future civilizations (probably the same players) to go retrieve. The biggest issue I can see with this concept is that most of the content would either have to be generated by the creator (e.g. something bigger than an extinction level event), or arbitrarily by the participants.


I want a game that combines both RTS and FPS elements. In every multiplayer FPS I know of, you are grouped with teammates and are working towards common objective(s) (counter strike games). But I want a hierarchy with one person who can't see the battlefield and only a minimap of team and sighted enemy locations. And all the normal teammates can only communicate with nearby players. The closest thing I have come across is the Natural Selection[1] games which has this distinction of a leader and then the soldiers, but it seems to be a dead game. I know some other games have similar ideas of classes, but I don't think anybody executes the partial information of a lead strategist.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Selection_(video_game)


Thief, but updated with 2022 technology, but also actually good unlike the recent Thief remake that people hated.


I've been dying for a cyber punk or Sci fi loot based ARPG. All the ones that exist are some flavor of fantasy with the exception of Borderlands and Destiny, but those are FPSs and I prefer the Diablo/Path of Exile approach.

I keep thinking about a mech based ARPG where you can attach different components to your mech that grant different passive/active abilities. Maybe different mech styles that have different passive abilities, but, in the spirit of Path of Exile, the components you equip are not limited by class.

I'm just tired of all ARPGs doing Gothic fantasy horror type stuff when there's so many unexplored options that could revitalize the genre. Give me lightsabers instead of swords, guns instead of bows, and drones instead of totems. Let me fight in cities and spaceships instead of villages and castles. There's just so much you can do with Sci fi.


Have you tried The Ascent: https://store.steampowered.com/app/979690/The_Ascent/

Doesn't go as far as what you're imagining, but it's a step in the right direction...


One of my favorite games is Lords of the Realm II (1996). It's a medieval 4X game with turn-based county management and real time battles. I've always wanted a game on that framework, but with way more complex management, and battles where you can zoom in to play a single soldier, or zoom out to play tactics.


Autocalc this battle??


Maybe a boring answer, but free software versions of games I enjoyed in the past are mostly what I want.

Graal Online, Maplestory, Terraria, Starbound, Minecraft (there are a few clones already), Rust, CS:GO, Super Smash Bros, Splatoon, Animal Crossing, Rockman.exe, maybe something like Prototype or Ultimate Spider-Man with fun physics so you can swing around and do whatever.

A free recreation of Graal Online would be especially cool as the content was all player-made with the available development tools. They just let the PC version of the game wither and die. If someone just made a solid base, a community could form to make the actual stuff to do. I've heard people compare Graal to BYOND/SS13, although I never experienced those. There's SS14 now, but it seems pretty focused on... space station stuff. I don't know that it's similar enough to Graal for me.


I've toyed around for similar reasons with trying to get Melee Light running on a local in hopes of at least getting its codebase up to modern versions of JavaScript and the dependencies it was using, but it's larger in scale than anything I've ever previously tackled solo and I'm not even sure what thread I'd even pull on to untangle the build config, let alone everything else.

An interesting concept actually occurred to me on this same idea, albeit still sort of blocked by the first thing -- what if this or an engine like it were moddable on purpose?

An open set of tools for generating character data or making engine customizations could actually open up a lot of possibilities around more easily implementing roster additions or even just enabling total conversions that are less likely to get DMCA'd.


I must admit, I don't know what games are out there these days, but I want an adventure game like the original King's Quest, Space Quest, Hero's Quest, etc. but with modern graphics, of course. It is important that they be language-driven, like the originals, but taking advantage of modern nlp.


An airport simulator game. You have to manage aircraft, prices, service, security, disasters, policy, economy etc.


I was talking with some friends the other day about EVE Online and its failed console shooter counterpart DUST 514. the premise was going to be that both games take place in the same shared universe with the same shared economy and at some point console shooter players would be able to in some way participate in conflicts that affect things for the PC space/economy sim players. it didn't really pan out that way, and to this day the only lasting legacy of DUST 514 is its brief appearance in John Wick.

the idea of having multiple games, each with its own separate playstyle (and therefore player demographic), that are connected somehow by a shared economy and game-world, is endlessly fascinating to me, and I don't know why more attempts at this have been made yet, aside from obvious design complexity issues.


An educational platform game where you can draw platforms by plotting the graphical representation of functions.


I just want to play Age of Empires 2 on AR on a table, with tiny armies battling it out. I have seen games like that exist but I want them to look like cool, not headache inducing. Something that invokes my Indian in the Cupboard memories (other than bloodshed or a permanent sense of loss of life :))


An FPS set in sub-Saharan Africa (read: not just Far Cry 2). Ideally, something like ARMA.

It has an incredibly rich and varied terrain, with many iconic animals, great beauty, and many cultures (including their histories and mythologies). It'd make an amazing setting.

I don't know why sub-Sahara isn't used in games.


> many cultures (including their histories and mythologies).

Funny enough I’ve been doing some west African CK3 campaigns lately. There’s a much larger diversity of religions and cultures which make for a fun challenge and there are also some fun, not too difficult formables in the region.


A racing game based on Google Street View


A co-op RPG set in a procedurally generated open world covered in hostile wilderness, designed to simulate the kind of Dungeons and Dragons setting where settlements are rare, the road network is thin, and the monsters are always roaming and threatening to extinguish the candle of civilization.


Honestly just any game where I can craft my own custom spells and take on hordes of enemies. Very satisfying.


Black Ops Zombies but with an insane amount more depth:

- We're talking things like skill trees.

- Levels that take hardcore amounts of time to master (think like the original runescape)

- Actual good game play at higher rounds (all zombie games have this problem -- there is not enough built into the game for the player to keep going at higher rounds)

- Weapons and abilities that don't follow standard physics with weapons and hence require skill to master beyond pointing at enemies.

One thing that is really great about zombies is you have to decide how to spend your points to stay alive. Do you buy a specific power up now or wait? should you buy this weapon or save up? I think it would be cool if there were even more choices to make. These simple decisions have so many consequences that make every game unique. It's honestly really cool game design.


Different economic policy simulators. I'd like to see realistic behavior of businesses, people, and markets as a result of different policies. I want it to be a "game" because I want it to provide story-driven insights into people and businesses as the policies impact them.


It might even exist to be fair, I just can't seem to find it but a game that: - plays like Diablo (ARPG), not the most recent versions of ARPGs though, I'm talking about D1: very few frills and not-so-clogged environments, with worth-my-time enemies rather than loads-and-loads-and-loads - has the same degree of freedom Ultima Online offered, in terms of skills and character building (including non-fighting skills) - has a very medieval rather than fantasy feeling - is literally 2.5d, not 3d - is a mmorpg - user-driven economy and where guilds are UO styled groups of people sharing some sort of values, rather than endgame-oriented only

I want to be immersed in the lore and feel part of it

If it does exist, please point me in the right direction; if it doesn't, let's build it!


An implementation of (electronic) boardgames that makes use ubiquitous screens:

Ideally, everyone sits in the same room. The shared information, basically the board in a boardgame, will be displayed on a common screen. Think a ChromeCast on the wall or a iPad or laptop on the coffee table.

Your private information, basically your hand of cards or so, is displayed on your smartphone. Similar for all other players. Your phone is also where you input your moves.

This setup would fix multiple problems I am having when playing boardgames:

(1) played with cardboard bits, they are expensive to purchase, and you have to do all the tracking and 'calculation' by hand.

(2) played on phone screens only, the screen is tiny and crowded with information and there's not much shared experience apart from sitting in a room together.

(3) more importantly than just making existing game concepts more convenient, this setup allows you to make boardgame-like experiences with novel designs. Especially you can press the mechanism of simultaneous play much harder, while still allowed for interaction.

For a simple example, look at Codenames https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/178900/codenames

With the computer as an arbiter, the two teams can essentially play simultaneously. And only the team leaders even need private screens / phones. (You will probably want to synchronize a bit. Eg you still have turns, but both teams can do one turn each simultaneously; then they both start the next turn simultaneously etc.)

Slightly related: I'm also really impressed by https://spyfall.adrianocola.com/ because they managed to make a computer-supported version of Spyfall, but you only need to interact with the computer once at the start of the game. Afterwards, it's all analog.


Jackbox.


Nice! Sounds similar to what I am proposing here.

I have to give them a try.


Back when I was younger there was an isometric online Sony game called infantry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infantry_(video_game)

Team based, but also squad based with a squad leader and various roles + vehicles.

Infantry died when they started charging (a subscription IIRC), they lost the player base, then they reverted but made it if you paid you got better armour (pay to win). Basically management killed it.

Insanely fun game, a modernised version of this with a much larger scale (say 200v200) and a commander on each team would be excellent I'm sure of it! EG, Battlefield or Hell Let Loose but far more accessible/arcade style and isometric.

I am absolutely convinced this would be a successful game!


Maybe Hell Let Loose?


I've sunk a ton of hours into HLL :) But yes, basically HLL but isometric and perhaps larger playercounts.


I would like more games to explore Solarpunk worlds — something optimistic about foreseeable future of this planet.

Too many futuristic games happen in some zombie-infested radioactive wasteland or give up on this world entirely and move on to surviving on another hostile planet. I find this depressing.


Escape From Tarkov but with a streamlined interface so you spend more time inside raids than outside of them (see: Fortnite, Hunt: Showdown). Also, it must have a killcam available after the raid finishes so new players can learn positioning and you can more accurately report hackers.


A race track building/management simulator. Start with a small gravel loop, organize race events and bring in money. Bit by bit expand until you have an epic Nurburg Ring-sized complex.

Of course, there must be a tie-in with some racing game that lets you test drive your track if you wish.


I would like something missions-like where the game rewards only a player who took specific steps and then other players can't reproduce. Obviously it will require thousands of good rewards. The idea is that people can play for the sake of having something nobody can get.


I miss old school 2D MMORPGs. I'd love something with:

- beautiful & detailed pixel art (like Stardew, Hyper Light Drifter, Owlboy)

- many, amazing non-combat skills (like a tale in the desert, osrs)

- large community with many worlds / servers / regions

- holiday events

Ever now and again I go hunting for this sort of game and come up short.


Kinda like "Seeing Like a State" sim (but with less grim/more pro-state viewpoint). A god-game/Civ combo that operates on worldwide scale, but you don't get to order people around, like move meeples from farmers to scientists, or maybe even have legible pops (any more than states at a given historical stage did). Starting at the earliest stage where you are a budding city-state but not in the middle of an empty chunk of map - as with real life, most of the environments worth exploiting would already be populated, and you have to conquer/absorb/convert/assimilate/... all those peoples.


Excellent turn/reaction based squad tactical combat. Think OG XCOM: UFO defense, only 2+ players. Frozen synapse is about the 70% solution but only abstract and pretty repetitive. More players, more varied units and terrain, asymmetric fights for score, etc.


A Fantasy RPG where you can program magic spells.

Start with some foundational spells, traditionally that would be elemental spells but one could imagine those spell based on the physics engine to manipulate objects. For example, the three first spells could be Force, Mass, and Acceleration(perhaps having some cryptic word associated with them). Just using a keyword might apply a "buff" to your character, making it "stronger", "heavier", or "faster". The fun part of course would be to compose them e.g. `acceleration . mass` to inflict damage by ramming into an opponent.

I imagine the skill tree to be divided into language features and "spells"(those being associated with elements of the underlying engine). As an example, the player could unlock "variables" on one side and "Other", the ability to apply effects to objects other than yourself, on the other side. Everything limited by the resources of the player. Maybe a "magic book" system with limited space forcing you to golf your spells to put more of them in one book (therefore having more spell available out of your workshop). Engine-related spells would be limited by the player's mana. Spells could scale via the level of fundamental spells composing them. Self-applying spells could have a constant cost, while "other-applying" spells could raise the amount of mana required depending on the distance.

Actually, I don't think I would even want to fight in that game so there should be a way to level up by creating spells alone. Maybe link "XP" to an in-game object, "mana stone"-like, and make it available by fighting monsters and quests or merchants Building some kind of github-like market of spells outside of the game would create a nice community feel. The game could perhaps be multiplayer, making an in-game spell market more relevant, but the potential to break the game (figuratively and literally) makes that very hard to imagine.

I'd make that but I have to start "finishing" side projects instead of just starting new ones. Also I don't know anything about game dev


If you think that a web-series along those lines might scratch that itch - https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/61ya08/oh_this_has_not...


Check out Supergiant's Transistor - it's more of an action RPG but there are some simplified elements of what you've described.


It's been on my radar for quite a while, guess I'll have to try it out!


In case you hadn't heard of them, you might want to look at Noita, and Magicka.


Factorio but with RTS-style units whose behavior I can program in Python/Lua/Whatever.


I wish hosties jailbreak where the T's spawned with deags on counter strike source was still around. Rebelling as a T & patrolling the utter chaos as a CT, with no central CT as warden, was some of the most fun I ever had in my life.

Secondly, I miss the glass map on CSS.

Zombies is still around. These three games, & Last Chaos MMOPRG (before the new map update) were my go-tos. Zombies %10, hosties %80, Glass %11, and Last Chaos %9 (although constantly when I got into Last Chaos). There's an extra %10 in there but simply rebalance them lol.

As a side point, camping in the vents on the olympics maps for CSS hosties jailbreak map, before people found out you could aim for the corner vent, was also incredibly fun.


Polished, complete, co-op multiplayer "FTL: Faster Than Light" for up to 8 players

I'm aware of: - an FTL mod (unfinished?), - Tachyon (work in progress?), - Undercrewed (a bit too much arcade/action and kind of short), - Among Us (but that betrayal aspect...) - Interstellar Rift (closest but too grindy, too long, the encounters leave much to be desired particularly from the perspective of a crewed ship) - Space Engineers (but requires too much understanding of how and why the ship works for some people, and doesn't really have a "series of encounters" mode I'm aware of) - Star Citizen (TBD...)

Also, just generally that co-op games would support more than 4 players.


A remake of The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot. You built a maze/castle with traps, defenders, etc and your gold was stored at the end of the castle. You’d raid other castle to try and get their gold, meanwhile your castle would get raided.

Creative and new/fresh puzzle designs would keep your gold safe, meanwhile on attack you’d have to really plan and think how to move forward. There was pvp and pve, and I never felt the need to grind hours and hours because 1 good defense or attack felt rewarding.

RIP. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mighty_Quest_for_Epic_Lo...


An epic open world game where the side quests unlock only after you finish the main story :)


I would love some kind of game where spoilers on the internet don't affect the feeling of discovery within the game. It seems too easy to just look up game secrets on the internet now, and it's almost necessary to do so in order to 'keep up' with other players (mainly in an MMO type game). I don't know if something like this exists now, or how it might be done.

One idea I've been kicking around is to have some sort of disincentive to posting in-game discoveries online. For example, the usefulness or power of an item is inversely proportional to how many instances of the item have been found. Not sure if this is really feasible in practice though.


I'd like a simulation of the birth and growth of civilisation where I could change parameters and see what the different results would be.

Parameters would be things like the probability distribution of various characteristics such as aggression, intelligence, passivity, individuality and so on.

There would also be environmental factors for the planet, the availability of various resources etc.

I feel that war is the inevitable way that groups work out who is boss until we sort out some sort of world government and I worry that we never will because our nature doesn't allow it.

I know that such a simulation would be useless because of not being based on any accepted model but it would still be interesting to try.


An RTS or turn based one where all units start as villagers, but you can’t actually command them to do anything; you can only incentivize behaviors for instance by assigning cash bonuses to those actions (except for villagers who join the military, which you can order). The more they do certain actions, the more they get skilled at that action. But as the game progresses, depending on your strategy certain actions may become obsolete, or you may need to rebalance; but the more developed a villager’s skill is, the harder it is to retrain them. So basically the game would be one where the more you lean into one direction the harder it gets to pivot.


This is going to sound a bit dark...

A game version of Threads

You run a country in the run up to a nuclear war, decide on whether to attack first or wait and retaliate, survive in your bunker and get to run the county for the next 10 to 20 years

Like a long term version of Defcon.


Threads is on Shudder. I watched it the other day. Pretty depressing to watch now that the nuclear war threat feels real again after years of pretty much ignoring it.


Medieval castle building rts with 4x elements and actual siege strategies. Ie, a well thought out sieges or well thought out castle designs would allow for taking control of areas decisively or defending an area while expending few resources.


I envision an infinite game. Procedural, but only to an extent. I want it based on the internet and how it changes. Sure, you could just use the entropy of change on the internet, but it would be neat/interesting if names were also to derived from news headlines story lines. Perhaps creative image searches could compile new textures for characters and the environment. I suppose something akin to Little Big Planet, but with the ever-changing internet informing the play and world. I know that's a little vague. Hadn't locked the idea down to a particular genre of game. Perhaps a rogue-lite, given the procedural nature?


I have a similar game interest. Something based on internet sourced data, e.g. gpt-3 based npc dialogs, trained off current news or something else that's never ending... something like kenshi with the complex mechanics of dwarf fortress, combined with NPCs that can very realistically mimic conversations

It would be an open world, but not pvp...maybe you support co-op but I think the novelty would lie in single player combo'd with a very dynamic cause and affect world


Studio Ghibli's 'Kiki's Delivery Service' as an open-world game whereupon you actually hop on your broomstick and have to deliver parcels to individuals across the village where she lives.

Think a 'crazy taxi' RPG where you fly to deliver parcels instead of passengers.

You would have to deal with issues like weather conditions, weight vs. travel time; and occasionally race against competing witches.

It's honestly a 'take my money' situation - I've considered doing it as a fan game, but I would need a small team, and of course we wouldn't be able to profit from it. I'd ultimately love to see it adopted into even a mobile game.


Battleheart Legacy 2

BHL is the perfect action adventure RPG, I just want more of it. A more expansive campaign, more plot lines, more character classes and abilities. I go back and play through BHL every 6 months or so and have done since it came out.


[Star Wars: Galaxies 2]

A sequel to the original Star Wars MMORPG. Rather than an MMO, it might actually be better as a survival game, ala ARK, Rust, or Conan Exiles. A smaller scale might make it possible to do more interesting things with the engine.


A Star Trek Bridge Commander (2002) type game on a modern engine with minimal gameplay changes.

There seems to be nothing like it since - combat with large complex ships where everything is about power management, positioning, and strategically targeting the components of other vessels.

Divert power to shields? Your weapons recharge slower. Divert power to engines? Other systems are hampered linearly. Fighting a fast ship? Target their engines. It’s tough to describe because there’s no games out there that come close.

The mod community over the years ported nearly every sci-fi ship out there from Star Wars, Stargate, BSG, etc and actually made some effort to balance them.


A David Cage-style drama with better writing and isn’t supernatural or sci-fi. He did Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain, and Detroit, all of which I love, but the dialogue is pretty atrocious and the stories go off the rails by the end.

Edited for clarity


It saddened me to learn recently that Quantic Dream seems to be giving up on their own stuff and now is working on Star Wars IP.

https://www.starwarseclipse.com/


> Indigo Prophecy

I really liked the first half of Fahrenheit so more in that style (without the QTEs if possible) would be nice.


I've been thinking about simulations of public infrastructure.

For example, a game where you manage the international ingress at an airport. You design the queuing patterns, decide how many booths to staff, what to ask the travelers. You're rated on speed, cost, and so on. Think Papers, please, but instead of working one booth you're managing the whole airport, or maybe all airports across the country.

Or managing a post office. Again, you'd have multiple conflicting goals, and you have to navigate many tradeoffs.

The problem would be striking a balance between an accurate simulation and something that's not excruciatingly boring to play.


Gravity-oriented shooter where you fight on tiny planets with primitive weapons.

Because the "planets" are so small, gravity and Coriolis forces influence projectiles: hitting the enemy often requires shooting over the horizon, or relying on the planet's rotation so your spear lands in the right place.

Running fast or jumping off a tall structure can put you into low orbit. Planet sizes range from about the volume of a house to the volume of a skyscraper. Planet shape influences your tactics - cube planets have less gravity near the corners, spinning ringworlds let you jump from one side to the other, etc.

Super Mario Galaxy plus Fortnite


Isn't it a bit like Worms series, except you don't have planets and Coriolis, but a blob of land and wind.


Something like a mix of base building and FPS action/horror. Like Fallout4 base building with STALKER athmosphere, during the day you would explore and gather useful materials then come back to the base before nightfall and put those resources into upgrading the base for defenses, like walls and turrets, then at night there would be an (increasingly difficult) assault on your base. You find the survivors and get them to join your base, they also give you quests and such. You'd also fight during the night along with your base dwellers, as an FPS action. I can elaborate more if interested.


The sailing equivalent to MS Flight Simulator.


Matrix: Operator

You take on the role of an operator (e.g. Tank) from 'The Matrix' movies to guide your team through an operation (recon, retrieve, destroy, etc... standard mission types). You have a large-scale but limited resolution view of the world where you can spot hazards if you're attentive (because they may only be briefly visible) and advise your team how to proceed (avoid, engage, abort, ...). I'm thinking of a text console oriented game, you type commands to send to the team (which they could follow, ignore, or misinterpret) rather than selecting and controlling them directly.


I want a modern version of Dune 2000 or Cossacks: Back to War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_2000

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4850/Cossacks_Back_to_War...

I guess Starcraft is the current good RTS but I find it a bit too much. Maybe it's nostalgia but I found those games a lot more approachable and fun to play. I guess I want Starcraft but set in real world.

Maybe something like this already exists?


Give me another Freespace game. I never expected to get such excellent storytelling from a space sim.

Other than that, I'd really like to get a game based on Mistborn. I think the allomancy mechanics could be very fun in a video game.


Im surprised no one thought of mixing up the strategy aspect of a masterpiece turnbased game like heroes 3 , with the character progression of Captain Tsubasa 3's rpg, thru event generators from actual battles.

The closest thing I've seen is "traits" developed by leaders in games from paradox.

1st example: Stellaris, or Xcom. However, traits are limited to being bonuses. They arent part of telling a story.

A more interesting use case was traits in crusader kings 2. There, traits, are somewhat part of the story. However, said traits are most often the result of player decisions, vs player strategy or actions.


I really want Stardew Valley but like an MMO and with more combat. I like being able to just sit on my farm and what not, but it'd be more fun with a thriving community. I also get very bored with the combat eventually. I'm thinking something with a little more magic focus too (maybe you can make spells, make the material for spells, etc, and get to decide your profession like WoW to encourage you to work with your community).

Since Stardew was created by a single (obviously very talented) dev, I always feel like I could get a first pass at this done, but free time is always an issue!


I’m pretty excited for Palia, an upcoming cozy MMO, although I don’t think there’s much in the ways of combat planned. https://palia.com/


Ahh thank you! This looks pretty interesting.


Competitive PvP game (fpp or moba) played on randomly generated intersting maps.

I hate how all this cool games have just a handful of maps that players learn by heart up to specific angles, locations, sounds and timings.

When we played Quake in lan parties we had a mappack of thousands of maps and played on one map only for some time, rarely ever comming back to the maps we already played.

This rewarded quick orientation and finding cool rewarding elements of each map quickly before your opponent manages to adapt.

In MOBA or RTS games additional thing might be the fog of war so you need to scout the new random map to find out what's there.


A driving arcade game where one player drives and the other guy shoots. It is the blend of two awesome arcade games: racing and shooters. This was the game I wished existed 25 years ago and I am still waiting for it.


Something like Darksouls but set on a space station or massive spaceship (abandoned?). Gloomy, dark, creepy, atmospheric, similar approach to level layout/design. Battling aliens and robots or just other humans.


Have you tried The Surge? Not quite in space, but in the future, a massive derelict facility overrun by malfunctioning robots and augmented humans, that captures a lot of what makes Souls games great:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/378540/The_Surge/


Look up Hellpoint, it's close to what you ask for.


Empire Earth 4 would be nice. I always enjoyed empire earth 1 and 2 more than Age of Empires - not sure why exactly.. maybe the speed was a little slower, maybe AoE did not have religious takeovers and empire earth did?

Maybe it was getting super effecient with just a few keyboard shortcuts to select all X on the screen and things like that.

Maybe it's because I enjoyed populus on the Amiga..

but any way - it was fun to play single player vs computer and fun to play against other humans. Can't recall if we ever did LAN playing or not, but should.

I would buy copies if it was out today and try to get others to play it as well.


A proper gregtech (4/5) successor. Everyone finds that factorio scratches their industrial engineering itch. I still yearn for 3D routing and exponential density improvements. By using basic combinational and sequential logic and clever 3D layouts you could really capture a lot of space and material efficiency. That kind of gameplay is totally missing from factorio. The other 3D industrial games don't seem to quite nail it. The gregtech successors also don't quite nail it.

I have to credit GT in inspiring the direction of my career. I wish there were more games like it.


I feel like I just want an old-school mystery game that takes deductive logic to its limits. Awesome graphics, great story, and lots of clues, where if you struggle to combine new clues (premises) and they're not otherwise needed, they'll disappear and be replaced with a lemma/therefore/derived-clue that gets you closer to your end goal. Ultimately it would be a whole bunch of dressing on top of those grid logic puzzles, but where the system role-plays it and helps give you more clues if you spend too much time struggling with those certain hard parts.


I want a language learning VR game where the goal is to interact with AI's such that you understand their instructions and they yours. Very much as if you were a child having to learn while playing with adults.


I want a heist-like (or maybe Hitman-like) game that has significant social interactions. Specifically where NPCs can decide whether or not to trust you, based on freeform speech input. Could be text NLP, or speech recognition.

I love the idea of bouncing around people at a cocktail party, trying to deduce some important secret that no individual will reveal, at least not unless you act that you already know. Maybe you've gatecrashed some kind of Hannibal Lecter party, and everyone but you knows who the next victim is, so you have to discover who/where/when and prevent it.


1) Games should be able to operate in more moral ambiguity than clear black and white prescription

2) Game mechanics should violate your expectations more.

3) More variations on theme see https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/gsg-content/uploads/2018/...

most games operate in a very narrow rangen of expectations that lead to a staid and predictable experience. Almost all first-person games suffer from this sort of homogenization.


I second this. Once you learn a few rules, every modern game turns into a slideshow of backgrounds for the same puzzle.


A modern single-player Ultima franchise game


Not Ultima but very much in the vein is Skald the prologue demo really invokes the feeling of earlier Ultimas.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1069160/SKALD_Against_the...


I want something that involves advanced science, but doesn't feel forced.


A grand strategy game, that my friends will be willing to play.

I love Paradox games, but none of my friends are willing to play a game that involves staring at maps and reports for hours on end.

That or something like the old Mount and Blade: With Fire and sword conversion.

I love musket warfare games, but they either feel too realistic and immersive (War of Rights) or too much like multiplayer FPS (Holdfast).

With Fire and Sword though has mount an blade tactical mechanics, but is also arcade-y and fun to play without devolving into multiplayer nonsense. Update that with a modern engine and FPS mechanics and it could be great.


An adventure game, of the old style with a plot to solve, like Police Quest, Rise of the Dragon, Space Quest, Pandora Directive, and such, but with 3D graphics in the style of a first person shooter game (like CoD, Quake, Halo, and such), and, why not, some chances to be involved in the ocassional shootout (in fuller FPS mode, but only as a rare break from plot solving, like old adventures would have some action sequence or logic puzzle to solve, not as a big part of the game)...

Don't know why they never really merged adventure games with FPS graphics...


I want Else Heart.Break(), but with more plot, less bugs, better programming language and bigger, deeper world to explore. Possibly, with multiplayer, though I'm not sure it would bring much into game


I'm just here waiting for the matrix. Metaverse type content is pretty clearly the future of gaming, but VR doesn't cut it. What we need is a dream like state we can plug into for full immersion.


After being excited for VR for so long, now that it's finally here it turns out what I actually want is the ability to do all this with my mind whilst laying in bed rather than having my eyes open and exercising.


I've wanted something that merges the 3D martial arts combat of Bungie's old game Oni with the freerunning environmental exploration of Mirror's Edg3.

Bonus points for multiplayer mode, hand-to-hand weapons, and just a little more granularity in the hand-to-hand combat engine (when Barrabas would hold you up in the air dangling for a full second before uppercutting you into the stratosphere, it always seemed like you should have been able to kick him in the face). Decent enemy AI would be important (Oni's was not especially good).


iNaturalist as a Pokémon Go style game.

- take photos of animals/plants/fungi, upload them to iNaturalist, and submit a correct identification in order to "capture" them.

- the initial CP of your "captured pet" is determined by the most granular, correct identification you can make before other iNaturalists chimed in.

- synergies for collecting "pets" within the same taxon group or with known mutualistic symbiosis

- virtual battles between "pets", with special relative strengths/weaknesses depending on some kind of "domain" of the pets.


A real time strategy game like Wargame or WARNO[1] but using REAL 3D map data from Apple/Google maps. So you could have a massive scale ground and air war using real map data in say, the south bay area. You could garrison an infantry unit in you house or call in an air strike on your office building. This is something I have wanted for like 10 years lol

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1611600/WARNO/


Not a war game but the city builder strategy game Cities Skylines have an option to import real terrain data from OSM. So say you can rebuild your own town for example


- A modern equivalent of Wing Commander, Freelancer or Tie Fighter with a strong story line and in depth controls (but ideally would be playable with a modern gamepad)

- A remake of Sid Meier's Pirates! But with realtime action basically Mount and Blade but at sea.

- A realistic wilderness survival sim without silly supernatural or horror elements, the point is just to stay alive and either get rescued or walk out

[Edit with more thoughts] - WW1 aerial combat sim (basically Red Baron with modern graphics)

- Subnautica but set in space perhaps the wreckage of a space station in an astroid belt


I game in which I would generate, color and transform a natural looking landscape by either thinking about it (preferably), or by moving my body or hands, singing, etc - whatever. With undo please.


[Tactical Warfare]

You create a set of complex processes/tactical moves that is then simulated by computers to play against other players. This could be a small team in something like call of duty, where you choose your bots equipment, and decisions they would make for scouting/in combat/etc. Then the teams of bots play against other players bots to see who wins. You can then review footage of your bots against other teams to identify weaknesses and "re-program" them to try again. Leaderboard are how you see progress.


They’re not as free form as you described, but the Frozen Synapse and Doorkickers series might tickle your fancy:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/98200/Frozen_Synapse/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/248610/Door_Kickers/

(They both have sequels too)


A massive online game where one person is "The Beast" and thousands of villagers are tasked at slaying the beast. The Beast can choose between a multitude of powers without the others knowing what these powers are. The villagers can choose from a multitude of tools / weapons in order to slay the beast.

Once selected, these are locked in and concludes what both sides have to work with. If the villagers don't have the right tool set(s), it may be impossible for them to win.

From there, it's all about defining the powers of both sides.


It's called 'State Street Dodge'. You play a bicycle messenger in 1990s downtown Madison, Wisconsin, rushing important legal documents across the isthmus. You ride a super sweet freestyle BMX bike, and you rack up points for doing tricks, jumping beer truck ramps, riding up walls, and dodging the ever shifting throngs of college students, hayseed tourists, and harried bureaucrats. Bonus levels let you switch to skateboard, Rollerblades, and fixie. Soundtrack is awesome. Lots of Easter eggs.


DayZ with WWI biplanes.

Also a massive, singular world where people who were playing an FPS, people playing Railroad Tycoon, and people playing flight sims were all playing simultaneously in the same MMO world.


I want an arbitrary daily life menial task sim, in VR, with crypt of the necrodancer rhythm mechanics. Something about doing simple things in discrete movements to a beat sounds very fun to me.


I really wish Twilight Imperium would drop a 5th edition, additional factions, or another modifying expansion.

If you're an open minded nerd, I highly recommend this is like 10 hour board game. It's an excellent detox from your laptop, a balance of hardcore strategy and fun, and great way to socialize with a committed crew.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/233078/twilight-imperium...


A VR game with solid Souls-like combat. Block, poke, slash, slam, flick, roll & jump using buttons :), and explore the heck out of a huge world with massive detail. Basically Elden VRing.


I enjoyed space-trading games back in the BBS days, but somehow MMORPG blew those out of the water because people will play 20+ hrs per day and skew the economies into country-sized alliances (`Eve` I'm looking at you). No Man's Sky sort of picked up on that, but it had too much going on. Maybe both of those games were the pinnacle of the genre and I just didn't have the patience, but it seems to me there could be something large-scale that appeals to casual gamers as much as die-hard farmers.


I've been thinking about a life-sim type game with a rogue legacy type spin.

Basically you get N actions per day (3, 5, 7, whatever works) that depend on your characters age. You might start as a baby in some random family archetype (poor/rich, dumb/smart, lazy/athletic, etc.) and after a few years you get control of the daily decisions your character makes at a granular level. Like, study in the morning, play in the afternoon, watch TV in the evening. These are more "influences" and your character can kind of rebel. Like if it gets too stressed because you are forcing it to study/work all the time then the character has a stress break and maybe gets drunk in the evening.

As the character gets older the available tasks change. As a toddler its games and light-learning, as a pre-teen it is school and sports/hobbies, as a teen it is education and social activities, as a young adult part-time jobs or university, as an adult marriage, raising kids. Perhaps as you get older you get more actions e.g. N actions per day increases.

Eventually you get to retirement then death and then you can choose one of your kids to continue the legacy. Or you can start over with a new random kid in a random family.

The gameplay would be simply choosing one of a few options available to your character at each time step. So you have N time steps per day and M available actions. The M actions are chosen in a weighted random manner from a set based on your characters abilities which changes over time, maybe some light RPG skill tree system. Could possibly be managed with a "card" system as well and would possibly shoe horn into Slay the Spire type mechanics. Overtime both positive abilities and negative abilities compound. Like, if you have too many "curse" cards in your deck, maybe your only options for an evening decisions are "drink alcohol", "ruminate on past failures", "argue with spouse".

In some sense, think of it like the day-to-day mechanics in Persona 5 mixed with the character building of The Sims. The goal of the game is to make many lifestyles possible. e.g doctor, lawyer, rockstar, president, social worker, janitor, game developer, soldier. The more difficult job types (e.g. CEO of a massive corporation, Senator) might take multiple generations to work towards.


You might enjoy this incremental game: https://mogron.itch.io/groundhog-life


A simulation of the Battle of Midway from the Japanese perspective. Japanese fighters with limited radio communication. Signal flag communication between naval vessels. Fog of war. Flight deck operations modeled. Fire control and damage control systems modeled.

Seems like a complex thing to model. One of the turning points of the battle was a flight of American dive bombers which followed the wake of a Japanese destroyer to the aircraft carriers. The destroyer had fallen behind while engaging the American submarine Nautilus.


I would probably enjoy that too. But note that the commander/player in such a game never actually sees the enemy; all they see is their own units taking off and landing, until the enemy attack planes arrive. There was no ship-on-ship combat at Midway, right?

The outcome of Midway was determined by an intelligence trick: a planted plaintext message about the condition of the desalination plant at Midway island. I wonder how you'd model that sort of thing. Also, there was an incident where an outbound US attack squadron eyeballed an incoming Japanese attack force. What are the chances of that, and how do you model it?

In general, modelling intelligence seems to be hard; I've neveer seen it tried, except in a very abstract way.


I would model the situation as it existed about a day before the first attack on the island of Midway. Japanese forces required to adhere to their doctrinal search pattern, which was deficient. Basically, both forces required to adhere to their existing doctrine at that time. Japanese aviation superior at that time due to American inexperience in countering Japanese dogfighting (with hit-and-run tactics). American fire and damage control operations superior to the Japanese. Japanese and American flight operations very different.

There is still a problem that we know where the American forces were and when they were encountered. Probably would need an option for an ahistorical start, where the American carriers could navigate from Pearl to a different location off of Midway.

Further options: allow the Japanese to have Shokaku and Zuikaku participate in the battle (assume they were not damaged in the Battle of Coral Sea); allow the Japanese to structure their attacking fleet differently; etc


> no ship-on-ship

Do submarines count? If so, then yes.

An important detail of the battle of midway was the Japanese didn’t think the American carriers were present. If they knew from the get go then the out come very likely would’ve been different. I.e. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Santa_Cruz_Isl...

In the game, the Japanese would not be surprised.

I think the concept could work. Just choose a different battle. :)

P.S. If you’re into this stuff this is a must read. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shattered_Sword


I've read that. :-)


Not a game per se, but a setting I'd like to be explored: may it be in film, literature or gaming:

A Member of a civilization near the heat death of the universe:

Live has flourished throughout the universe for the last 100 Billions of years, but the only things that are inevitable are taxes and the heat death. How do you cope with the dying of everything? Gain energy by evaporating stars near a galaxy size black hole. Embrace the infinite darkness or join a cult that exits the universe through a ring-singularity into a new big bang.


But also make sure you pay your taxes. ;)


A game where you fight massive dragons in space in your spaceship.

I'm talking dragons like Rayquaza from Pokemon.

If someone doesn't build this then someday I'll learn some C++ so that I can build it myself.


A modern version of XBattle, a 1990s Unix game. It most resembled an RTS, but very abstract. You manipulated flows of "troops" to try to take over territory. The game had a lot of variant rulesets each of which led to an interesting game.

There's been some efforts to release modern versions of the game; some rewrites in Java, at least one browser game. None took off.

https://gamicus.fandom.com/wiki/Xbattle


Fantasy investing in private startups, following real world metrics. Long duration, play and forget, but come back with new virtual/fake credit to make new picks every x months.


Band / Label / Venue manager. Like a football manager but you're handling bands of various stature and the associated economic realities. It could have periodic rhythm game elements that vary based on the genre, and having the genres and music be procedural / open-ended could be really fun.

You can 'watch' shows if you like, and have your group(s) play with friends' bands or set up package tours.

also: - battle of the bands / showcases for new groups - oregon-trail style tour issues


Third post now, but I'd like to see a kids' game built around schemas ("up", "down", "on top of" etc) that uses voice recognition to promote and reward speech in young children. My specific use case is children like my son, who are mostly non-verbal but who can occasionally muster the words to ask Alexa for a song (or badger me for chocolate). Games are a great way to tease more language out of kids like him, but there aren't many that fit.


Would love more cyberpunk games. 2077 was flawed but still scratched the itch and really made me want more of this genre.

I would love an RPG set in some world like Gibson’s sprawl trilogy. For example an open world game where you had to make deals, do biz, and of course hack anything. I feel like the world of a dystopian cyberpunk just has so much to explore, from how giant corporations would operate to the way cyberspace would look and feel.

Something like Skyrim but cyberpunk. That would be really amazing


This detailed depicton of Khazad-Dum does something for me. I want to spend years with buddies carving out an underground empire https://i.pinimg.com/originals/40/9d/45/409d4562dddbda73f01d...

Also, I know it's very bad taste right now, but... a game taking place in Azovstal, with the underground faithfully modeled.


> Long ago one my bullets in the list was a procedurally generated planet-sized planet with a full diaspora to explore. No Man's Sky fulfilled that for me.

Elite Dangerous fulfilled that for me. Nicest community of players I've ever seen but the company in charge of the game is doing a terrible job managing it. They dropped console support for the game and I just lost all interest.

I've heard good things about No Man's Sky and the company developing it... I'm thinking I should try it.


I want a new version of SSI Strongholds from the 90s. I guess there's no point though .. that genre has sort of evolved to something far better and I'm just nostalgic.


I wish there were real sequels to Deus Ex and Baldur's Gate II.

And by "sequel", I mean incremental improvements to the game mechanics, and more content. Not a complete reimagining.

The Hitman series has been very good at not trying to reinvent itself each time. The first sequel to Deus Ex however is probably the biggest disappointment in gaming history. Baldur's Gate 3 seems to have nothing in common with BG2. The look, the feel, the mechanics… Everything that made it compelling. Gone.


> The first sequel to Deus Ex however is probably the biggest disappointment in gaming history.

I would like to see they try to remake or just remastering of Deus ex 1, so it can be a good introduction to new players in the existing world established in the original, to make a new sequel ignoring Invisible war.


Pokemon go that's actually a game and not a one trick pony relying on the AR gimmick.

The fact that real life locations carried that game for so long is so sad because it could've had so much potential if the game was designed to be a game. You know, fun.

You should've been able to have actual battles instead of just spamming the screen. You should've been able to go to heal at Pokemon centers.

They should've taken all the proven game mechanics of the original games and adapted them properly


Sorry this is sports related but I’ve always wanted to see a league where players can only play on their regional/city team. So if you were born in Dallas, you can only play for Dallas(you can move to a new city but you always play for the place on the birth certificate. International players would require a draft or maybe an international league. This would create more long term strategy and have the added bonus of pumping money into and improving youth sports


I wish for a game like GTA but with a lot of advanced mechanics: - Driving like NFS - Shooting like COD - Fight mechanics like Batman - Open World exploration like Elden Ring


So, GTA V?


GTA physics for both driving and weapons are poor. GTA IV was much better. Not the GP but I would personally wish to see a sandbox game with real life vehicle physics, like in a racing sim. NFS is still arcade.


Different genres of games for people who aren't seasoned gamers. I will never be "good" at most FPS and adventure type games, and don't really care enough to spend the time to get good at them, either.

Games beyond click-throughs, simplified turn-based games, Angry Birds, Candy Crush, the 900th iterations of crosswords/hangman/sudoku/etc, would be nice.

Intellectually, emotionally and/or aesthetically satisfying low-skill games are what I want, I guess.


Minecraft, but with a first party,full-featured 3rd person view without perspective distortion (see: https://bugs.mojang.com/browse/MC-127400?page=com.atlassian....) I am not Paul btw, glad someone else actually notices the source of extreme motion sickness.


Something like the old Risk game for Macintosh. It has no animations, no flashy graphics, just a simple, fast interface. I can finish a whole game in less than 5 minutes. But the AI players are way too easy to beat.

I'd love a simple, animation-free Risk game like that, but with much better AI players to play against, and with different maps one can play.

Modern Risk games are way too flashy, and worse, they take so much time between turns to display multiple screens and animations.


A much better Master of Orion (MoO 5?).

Best ever: MoO 2 [0].

Latest installment: MoO - Conquer the stars [1], or MoO 4.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Orion_II:_Battle_at_...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Orion:_Conquer_the_S...


I, too, wanted this for years. Then I met our lord and savior Stellaris. The AI could be better, but other than that: 10/10, and preserves the most important spirits of MoO!

Highly recommend it!


I’ve thought it would be interesting to try whole new means of gameplay interaction. For example, a game in which you interact with NPCs by speaking to them (I think that we may finally have the tech to accomplish this).

I was also thinking a game where the microphone must be on where you need to coordinate with other players as quietly as possible to achieve some objective (sort of a video game version of A Quiet Place).

But mostly, I scratch my gaming itch with boardgamearena


I'm not sure about entire games, but I do wish for a few mods for some Elder Scrolls games.

Morrowind: Ability to join the 6th house with an alternate ending where you get to destroy the gods by piloting Akulakhan.

Oblivion: For the Shivering Isles DLC, the option to become Jyggalag (instead of Sheogorath 2.0) and take on all of the island's inhabitants.

Skyrim: Have the Forsaken as a joinable faction for the civil war, become a Briar-Heart, team up with a Hagraven companion NPC.


A squad-based instanced dungeoneering game, halfway between World of Warcraft dungeonering and Heroes of the Storm, but with community-contributed dungeons and dungeon progressions.

Specifically, I'd like people to be able to use something like the StarCraft map editor to design and build whole complexes and progressions of dungeons through which they and others can play (and potentially compete).

Ideally, the classes themselves could be customized/buildable.


Competitive deckbuilding card game called "Bulletproof" where, at the beginning of every game, three 20 sided colored dice are rolled, with each color referencing a specific rules card and each number referencing a specific rule variant. The purpose of deckbuilding, then, is to not only build the deck that is not only most likely to win, but the deck which is most likely to be tolerant of rules variations. Hence the name.


I created Empire because that was the game I wished existed.


I want a VR game where you're a bumblebee who's goal is to collect pollen in a yard. Your opponent is a spider who's goal is to catch you. They get to set up webs around the flowers before you spawn in, and maybe they can also shoot sticky webs at you to trap you.

Whenever you are trapped by the spider you get to enjoy the fully-immersive experience only VR can deliver of being eaten alive by a spider! Fun for the whole family!!


I wish there was a game that was hosted on an enormous and powerful server. Imagine a game that is designed to run on terabytes of memory, even more storage and a whole bank of GPUs. Basically a game that takes full advantage of a super computer, played remotely. You could have unprecedented detail, full physics and ray tracing, maps as large as planets with full detail and no loading times. Fully destructible environments.


I want a two-person local network game to play with my son (let's say 6-10yr age range). The game play should explicitly have a parent-player and kid-player with different difficulty of controls and types of actions. I think collaborative games will likely work better, but competitive might be fine too if it allows for different skill adjustments.

Just make the game fun for both of us, I'll play almost any genre (except violence).


Super Mario Galaxy has a mode where a second controller doesn't control another character but instead allows some helpful actions (like dragging or grabbing things, collecting stuff, etc).


Combination FPS/RTS - Like Natural Selection 2

New good space shooter a la Freespace. The recent star wars one was alright.

More Descent - Played reloaded and it was awesome!

Jak and Daxter, Croc, all narrative adventure games i loved when i was younger. that genre doesn't seem to get much development anymore. indie games of them are somewhat unpolished.

Subnautica was the perfect survival game. really good at striking the balance between casual but fun with nice story. and gorgeous!


Have you checked out Everspace and Everspace 2?


everspace 2 is on my wishlist but I haven't gone for it yet. think it's good for a freespace successor?


I've never had space combat be more fun.


btw i went for it and am about 5 hours in and having fun for the first time in a game other than rocket league for the first time in maybe two years! so thank you for your suggestion! :)


A modern remake of the Quake II mod Gloom. IIRC, but the internet seems to have forgotten it, it used to be called Aliens vs. Marines before it got FOX'd. Might even have been the origin of that term. Not sure. Asymmetric class-based FPS with evolution/progression elements. Similar idea to Natural Selection, but quite different in practice.

There was a similar game called Tremulous much later, but I never ended up playing that.


I've really wanted a Stargate-esque galaxy explorer type game. Something 2D (like RimWorld graphics) that has procedurally generated planets and addresses, base management, etc

No Man's Sky is ok, but the alien life is mostly focused on lower intelligence animals, and base building feels clunky relative to what you can do in games like RimWorld or prison architect.

I've thought about learning unity to do this, but I have not had the time.


A game that makes obvious the games, lies and manipulation of modern politics.

A game that requires people to utilise the dirty politics strategies in order to win, thus making it obvious to the layer how politics actually works.

Things going badly for you? Start a war.

Some bad news in the media cycle? "Throw a dead cat on the table" (look that one up if you don't know what it means).

Have to agree to something? Agree but don't do it.

Need to win an election? Make empty promises.


Half Life 3…


Have you tried Half-Life: Alyx? VR is a real game-changer (pun intended)!


I got the Valve Index, then found out my computer isn’t good enough for it…

Saw the playthrough on youtube, though. Looks like a lot of fun.


Rome Total War or Empire Total War but more realistic down to the unit level. Soldiers getting injured, losing limbs, having field medics doing amputations, dressing wounds. Real baggage trains, supply trains. The whole logistics and wounded aspect of war is completely ignored in these games. Now that they’ve gone the “arcade” route I don’t think this will ever happen.

VR mode where you can fight first person as a unit in a cohort.


Flight sim battles with small toy sized aircraft flying around inside a house. Have to deal with pets/insects/kids etc. while battling as well.


So, Micro Machines but in 3D with aircraft? This sounds great.


I grew up playing Runescape before World of Warcraft, and always loved the high fantasy theme. I'd love a single player game, fantasy style, with Runescape like aspects. The colours, the elements, the warrior/archer/ranger, the music. One thing you have to say is that the Runescape music really worked for us as kids back then.

Perhaps not the grind.

But the high fantasy atmosphere is something I wish I could experience again.


I want this as well. I loved Runescape as a kid and OSRS is fun, but it really doesn't feel like I'm the target audience anymore.

One thing I've loved is their concept of Leagues. I would love a game like OSRS that has a persistent mode and a sort of seasonal Leagues type mode.

Also a game with improved running mechanics. Running feels awful compared to other games you can play these days.

And improved PvP; the wilderness is a cool concept, but I think it would work better to have a duplicate world "underneath" the regular world that's the exact same but with faster xp and rewards along with the risk of player killers.

Also better afk-ability, since the game is meant to be played over extended periods of time.

Supported macro-ability and better inventory management?

These things will never end up in OSRS because they'll ruin the way the game has been played, but I really want a game that checks these boxes.


I want a game that is a spiritual successor to Bullfrog's Gene Wars -- something that builds on an ecological / biosphere motivation. Seeding new plants to change local ecologies, breeding creatures (units) to select for needed characteristics, base building reflecting on the environment... I think there's a lot of interesting gameplay in that area that hasn't been explored yet.


Social/political MMORPG sandbox, where players are allowed to make their own rules and means of enforcing them, with AI blended into population


An intuitive, quick-to-learn-but-hard-to-master successor to the WC3 map Warlocks (simple top-down multiplayer shooter with varied, strong mechanics).

There was an attempt, called "Spellsworn", which flopped very hard. Battlerite was also somewhat similar, but more cluttered and degraded very quickly.

It doesn't even have to be fantasy-based, in fact, I would like even more a successor to Comet Busters versus mode.


I want to play as the AI that helps people survive deep space travel, but I want it rogue like, with tons of builder/resource driven tradeoffs


Seedship is cool game with this theme.


Theme, but not mechanics. I've played and loved it, but the boolean choices misses a lot of depth. Thinking more rimworld on a seedship. Like, actually waking people up for their expertise / to do jobs.


Something like "Ar Tonelico" (or any musical lore game) but where you actually have to sing to get attack/defense bonuses, etc.

As you progress, the system goes from really simple songs and rhythms and gets increasingly complicated until you are sight-reading a semi-random song at the final boss.

Bonus points if you feed this into an MMO so that people have to genuinely cooperate to take down the big bad.


Fortunately the interactive fiction genre is still going strong. Every year, the Interactive Fiction Competition has at least 3~5 excellent games.


I wanted a game that was massively multiplayer and combination RTS / FPS.

Would have 2 teams, of 100s of persons on each side. There'd be a general for each side who would oversee a tactical map and give orders to units. But these units are the rest of the team members, so each engagement on the map is being fought real-time by real people!

So Rise of Nations for the general and Battlefield 1942 for the troops...


Microsoft/Terratools’ Urban Assault did this in 1998; sci-fi dystopia, no people on the battlefield except for you and the enemy in your respective flying command posts, battle fought with drone vehicles which you can guide around in typical RTS fashion, or alternatively you can hop into any vehicle you’ve built and lead from the front.

The game becomes an FPS/RTS Hybrid, with you in command of a vehicle, simultaneously issuing orders to your other squads of tanks, jets, bombers and helicopters.

It’s a bit clunky, limited as an RTS and odd as an FPS, but I loved it.

I never managed to play it against anyone online when I finally got my hands on a copy


Planetside did this, but I definitely think it’s an idea that hasn’t been truly fulfilled yet


Voice-control Star Wars / Star Trek space command RTS game.

I want to be Admiral Ackbar shouting "GREEN GROUP, STICK CLOSE TO HOMING SECTOR MV-7" and for that to actually result in RTS units moving on a map. I want to be Captain Picard shouting "ALL POWER TO FORWARD SHIELDS" and for that to actually result in a change in resource allocation of the 'power' resource.


You can sort of kind of mod Elite dangerous and a few other space games to do this with a third party utility - it even has a bunch of high profile voice actor packs that you can buy!

https://voiceattack.com/


An evolution simulator that can simulate a 3+ layer food chain, both animals and plants. With enough degrees of evolutionary freedom for evolved organisms to surprise and delight.

I took a crack at it about a decade ago. It's hard. Was able to get 2 stable layers for hours (maybe a "season" in game time), but over a long enough period the population always became fairly homogenous.


Guitar hero but I can plug in my real guitar. Or piano.

If I spent all the time learning guitar hero songs that I spent on a real guitar, that would be awesome


i think there is something close to that called rock smith


You might be interested in Yousician. I use it and it's pretty solid. It works for both guitar and piano.


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OHHqCrPx0WM

It was a location based strategy game I built (with lots of help) but failed to take off. Building games like this is super expensive.

If we built it again today it'd probably be on a "layer 2" chain (Ethereum) and the parcels would probably be NFTs.


A sequel to the first Deus Ex that was basically an expansion or extension of the first. Kind of like what Paradise Lost was for Postal 2


I still recall the tune of the menu.. that game is so good.

I thought Deus Ex Human Revolution got some parts right though.


> I thought Deus Ex Human Revolution got some parts right though.

Human Revolution did a lot of great things, and Mankind Divided improved even more with exception of the abrupt end.

But there's something about the original that is hard to point, that make it unique and hard to replicate. It's probably not a single thing, how all things work so well together.


Human Revolution had a lot of good things going for it. It delivers an overall experience that's fun and inspired by the original, especially the expansion The Missing Link. But nothing's been able to quite capture the spirit or the immersion of the first game for me


Train Engineer Simulator

I want a very slow, casual game that takes days — running a train in the mid-1800's U.S.

Mostly I want to, from time to time, look over and see the scenery I am passing through, once in a while adjust the speed, stop and take on coal and water. Most of the time I want to ignore it and be doing other things.

SlowTV + Casual Gaming


I would like a Dark Souls that isn't always so dark and has more NPCs. I love the aesthetic of the games, but when all the NPCs are either psychotic or suicidal it starts to get too depressing for me.

Also, more games where the NPCs don't just stand around like statues. I like playing games that are immersive, and that more than anything really just kills the vibe for me.


An MMORPG with a procedurally changing world, that changes in accordance to interactions with the players. Where those interactions aren't just "pick from a list of actions" but rather interacting how youd would in real life.

But that'd basically require an AGI to handle conversations and content, along with a BCI for interactions. So, unlikely to ever exist.


A modern remake of the original Phantasy Star Online (Dreamcast).

Keep: - Dark atmosphere - Offline or online - Solo or party-based - Classes, skills/weapons based on classes - Rare/unique loot - Mags - Sound/Music design - Multiple areas - Progressive difficulty / replayability

Remake: - Combat - to modernize the combat, it could resemble something like Dark Souls.


A new Freespace, with multiplayer mode but also with the same epic and chilling storylines from the first two games.

I’ve never found a game that replicates the feeling of FS2 but that could be because I’m old now and most of my childhood joy is dead. Excellent game mechanics, short missions, gradually upgrading ships and weapons and the feeling of a vast universe to discover.


A story based single player campaign with the raw tension that FS2 I can't think of any off the top of my head.

A similar one would be ME2 and ME3 but those final missions had the same structure as any other mission. Once you kill off the enemies your fine, no sense of tension.

Nowadays if you're looking for that sort of tension it's more likely built into gameplay mechanics like dark souls. But any tension you feel there is incidental rather then guided by a fixed single player campaign... and once you master the mechanics the tension inevitably lessens.


Crusader Kings + Mount and Blade

One is focused on strategic and the narration, and the other has better in-person tactic battle.

Both of them are serious time-consumer, and I experience most flow states with these two games. Combining them organically would result a huge time-consumer that can be played all year without getting bored.

(There are mods that bolt them together but feels not seamless and coherent)


I want FutureCop: LAPD Precinct Assault Mode . But as a team based MMORTS, and allow players to enter first person mode and assume control of a unit to do combat. It doesnt necessarily have to be future & robots either.

A MMORTS play as a general mode combined with Call of Duty + Team Fortress first person play w/ objectives, capture points, sniping, vehicles etc...


Mixture of UFO and Invisible Inc. Tactical game where you rely on stealth and elusiveness to infiltrate alien ships and bases to steal their technology to develop new gear to ultimately defeat them (by covertly planting doomsday device under their noses of course).

Game that makes you feel like you are one wrong step from detection and disaster like Invisible inc did.


An RPG game without gameified environments. eg: Cities are as big as real cities, even if it's only partly interactive. With Death Stranding's emphasis on the traversal through it. I want that feeling of actually travelling a huge distance. I know it's not for everyone, but a lot of people like Death Stranding and Elite Dangerous.


Rock Band 3 was pretty close to that game for me. It convinced me to get real drum training and to learn the keyboard.

I want to play a game where all the NPCs are AI trained with Seq2Seq neural networks. I have been trying to write the game off and on for a while, but it's not easy to write. There are some things that come pretty close, but are not quite there.


I'd like a modern day remake of Sony's Infantry. The community was a large part of it too, so it's not just remaking the game (itself) and calling it a day.

I know there's http://www.freeinfantry.com/, but for whatever reason, I haven't gotten into it.


A game that employs the surreal visual style of the early CGI between the 70s and the 80s. They had a certain style that is easy to recognize. Dark backgrounds, models of the world and characters that are meant to express a technical achievement, high contrast, etc. The animation series ReBoot came later but it heavily relied on that aesthetic.


Bird of prey simulator.

I would love to "pilot" a golden eagle on the steppes as it hunts sheep on a cliffside. Or an owl using its incredibly acute hearing to locate mice in the dead of night. Or a swift flitting around the top of a river collecting bugs rising from the water. Or a peregrine falcon diving at 150mph onto a flock of unsuspecting ducks.


A deep, open world RPG (akin to fallout, or the Witcher, say) set in a pirates of the Caribbean/monkey island type setting.


So a Sea of Thieves with actual story, persistence? I mean from a graphics point of view the game is super nice. The water in particular is amazing.

...and maybe a possibility to host your own server for it, to play only with your friends/people you choose.


Die Hard X Splinter Cell But taking place in a highly simulated skyscraper

Pretty much an immersive sim similar to the "One City Block Action RPG" described by Warren Spector But with a big emphasis on the stealth aspect, and fighting mechanics like Sleeping Dogs (environment interaction)

Where you approach the game, an hostage situation for exemple, how you wish


The only games I ever play are single-player straight-forward ones, like the original Halo.

You're a fellow with a gun or two and there's not much else to know: there's no upgrade ladder, no downloadable content, nothing else to pay for... just go through the story, shoot things and hide behind things, and be on your way.

More classic Halo-like games please.


Something like Age of Empires, but with specialize cooperative play, ie one (or more) player manages and defends the base/economy, and other players command different armies that are part of the same team.

Maybe also throw in the ability to depose other members of the team (with various risks of trying to do so), so you never know who you can trust.


Theoretically this does already exist in AOE2, where in the custom lobbies players select the same player number/color and have total control of the same "player".

The backstabbing aspect would be difficult, with lobbies limited to 8 individuals, there would be a max of 4x paired "players" (e.g. pair1 & pair2 vs pair3 & pair4). If teams aren't locked like in FFA diplo matches it turns into a 3v1 (pair1, pair2, & pair3 vs pair4).

Unless the game could be modded to support lobbies > 12 or 16, the diplo aspect would be limited.


A "One City Block Stealth Action RPG" like the one described by Warren Spector but with a big emphasis on the stealth aspect.

Basically Die Hard X Splinter Cell Set in one highly simulated skyscraper where you approach the game how you wish with fighting mechanics like Sleeping Dogs (environment interaction) and immersive sim possibilities


A remake of Alien Legacy, done well, with a more extensive storyline and bigger universe. I would pay crazy money for that.


Until recently (and for decades indeed) I'd have said Ron Gilbert's Monkey Island 3. Which is now happening :).


Aurora 4X. It's an unbelievably deep 4X space game that exists but is unplayably slow so in essence it doesn't.


A game based on "The Richest Man in Babylon". Depending on difficulty, you might be just poor, or maybe indebted, or maybe a slave. And you need to follow good financial principles to get yourself into a rich man. All the while you are lured by various things you can spend your savings on, leaving you penniless.


Something like Jones in the Fast Lane?


Factorio style component logicstics mixed with Kerbal Space Program style micromanagement of functional designs would be a blast.

Make me design an assembler for assembling my own robot arms, then strap them to a cart (that I assembled in a different factory), put an AI into it, and use it as a logistics robot for building more things...


Something like StarCraft, but each unit has to be piloted by a human (using a first person shooter interface). The leader player sees the traditional high-level StarCraft interface, and directs the troops. Each individual troop sees some on-screen representation of its “orders” (“attack this unit”, “move over here”).


It's called Natural Selection and it was pretty cool. I think people still play. https://www.naturalselection2.com/ The creators went on to make Subnautica.

There have been other takes on this concept too, but Natural Selection is probably the closest to your description. BattleZone (1998) was also a hybrid of RTS and FPS but the units were mostly computer controlled.


Ah thanks! So interesting.


I would like to see a historical simulation or strategy game, but at a higher level of command. Most such games require you to micromanage to decide what every factory should build etc. Instead this game would be from the level of a country's leader - not worrying about low-level details but setting grand strategy.


A modern tactical game that rivals Final Fantasy Tactics. Heck, I'd be happy with a PC port of War of the Lions.


It's not a specific game per se, but sometimes I wonder how it would turn out if a decent game dev were to take one of those clickbait-y mobile game ads (you know, the ones where it is obviously a dolled-up mockup of a game that doesn't really exist) and actually attempted to make the game it is depicting.


Somebody actually executed on that idea.

https://youtu.be/zRDhiN50Vo0


A VR game where the objective from the perspective of the player is to balance a large ball on his head. The ball has a tendency to tip and so the player must position his body and head to keep it balanced.

All this happens while music is playing.

From the perspective of those watching, it looks like the player is dancing extremely well to the music.


I know the "neural plasticity" genre turned out to be bunk, but I intuitively believe you can make video games that make you smarter. dual N-back training is a simple form. I think if you did research on what actually made you smarter you could make fun interesting games that actually made you smarter.


A hybrid of Kerbal Space Program and DCS. That would basically keep me shackled to a screen for several days on end.


The space phase of Spore, but done well. Serious UI, customizable defences for when you're away, deeper skill tree, better scaling (spore gets quickly unplayable when you start to grow seriously), more incentives to expend across the galaxy, maybe scriptable units to automate conquest at some points, etc.


A new, modern Twinsen's Odyssey/Little Big Adventure. Looks like someone is working on it here[0], wish them all the best.

https://twinsenslittlebigadventure.com/lba-new-name-twinsen/


I have big lists of them. I've made a small subset, to date, to scratch a personal itch. But I quickly learned that time is the bottleneck, not simply having good ideas.

I'm currently making a game, in my free time, about what might be the most important topics facing humanity at present. (so... no pressure! lol)


Star Wars Galaxies 2.

This time without that NGE BS and no playable Jedi.

Yeah...I'm aware of the emu but it didn't age well for my eyes...


I want a shooter based MMO. Closest thing I ever got was destiny but the MMO aspect of that was weak. Think world of Warcraft but the main gameplay is fps.

I love MMOs but I hate grinding in spam clicking the key aid for abilities. I want an mmo that lets my mind go numb from work like call of duty without the toxicity.


Give Warframe a try. It's a shooter MMO with both short missions (~2 to ~20 minutes) and some open world levels. The design is pretty unique, the developers really care about what they're doing, and because the vast majority of content is collaborative PVE, the players love helping each other.


Monkey Island 3 - not the ones that came since, but something more true to the original.

Kingdom Come - 2

A return to old school party RPG games.

Something that isn't a FPS, an anime "go retrieve the turnip from Farmer Tim" game or a guy with an axe jumping around with flashing things like a console game, killing thousands of monsters.


Well, do I have news for you: https://returntomonkeyisland.com/


A game based on the Bobiverse book series.

The game procedurally generates a universe which you can explore. You can also make copies of yourself (ship) and can interact with other "Bobs" in each star system. Each clone of yourself is a true AI in the game with its own personality and decision tree.


jedi academy 4

I cut my teeth writing mods in quake-c for jedi outcast (jk2) and jedi academy (jk3). I was never hugely into starwars but playing what is essentially quake 2/3 with force powers on the quake engine was always an excellent game. I wish raven and lucasfilm had continued with the series.


A single player rpg where I wasn't the most important/powerful person in the world. Something with NPCs interacting with each other and affecting the in-game world entirely independent of my actions. NPCs could collaborate with me or compete with me depending on their goals.


So, kind of like real life?


Vehicular combat with mechanics as polished as Rocket League. Inspiration could be drawn from Twisted Metal and cart racers like Mario Kart. I see Rocket League players make incredible aerial shots and think "what if they had to line up a projectile with an enemy in the air"


A version of the C64 DropZone game on iOS. Tilt to move, tap screen to fire, shake for smart bombs.

Same original graphics.


I was looking for mention of retro games. https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Dropzone

Defender Robotron


A website with classic games (tic tac toe, crossword puzzles, minesweeper, soduko, etc.) that collected all (and I mean all) the data from every game and showed insane statistics about how well you did, relative to all the other players. If possible, showed you how to get better.


Weird thought but one where it is a simulation of the world/(the player) makes real money.

As in you could clock in/do a job in this 3D environment. I realize probably not efficient but it would be for say bed ridden/disabled people that can use their brain but not their body.


Terminator RTS with units you can send back in time to same location they were sent from. An alert would be broadcast that a time rift was opening and what time was the target, to allow for players to counter. AI would play out the game from there and update current state.


Band / Label / Venue manager. Like a football manager but you're handling bands of various stature. It could have periodic rhythm game elements that vary based on the genre, and having the genres and music be procedural / open-ended could be really fun.


I'd like to play with a game that's like Civilisation, but when you start, you don't know what world you're playing in. You only know what your ruler sees and hears. You may send your Columbus across the Atlantic, and you will see him arrive to India in the East. Later on you may learn that he instead discovered a new continent. Maybe. Maybe he really landed in India in your game. Or maybe he was a fraud and found nothing, and all the lands he reported on will disappear from the map when you send more ships to follow his route.

Similarly, you wouldn't know which technology would work in this world and which not. Maybe alchemy would be real, and you could develop it to mass produce rare materials. Maybe it would turn out to be fake science only. Similarly, magic and religion may work as either basic mind tricks and psychology that enlightenment would mostly cancel out, or be part of the reality of the world, and you could get gods fighting on your side Greek mythology style, or wizards casting spells even deadlier than tanks and nukes.

I guess this system would be already a bit too hard to implement, but if I could keep wishing freely, it would be awesome if you could actually govern by writing whatever law you want. So you wouldn't just click a button to switch from feudalism to theocracy or communism, but you would actually have to come to an agreement with power figures (or classes) in your society on how your state would work. You could grant rights to tax trade routes in exchange of doing military service for example. And later you would need support from some other group if you would like to abolish this system.


And by the way the amount of people interested in playing huge simulations makes me think that we living in a simulation because someone likes to play it might not be that sci-fi. At least even we have a kind of drive and motivation to build and play such a thing.


I want a red alert game but its also a first person shooter. If I had any game dev skills at all this is what I would build.

Basically make it easy for you to control a unit a first person perspective with all the correct controls. If that unit dies you are take back to RTS Mode.


Some of the (Total Annihilation inspired) games based on SpringRTS allow that.


oh really, might have to take a look. thanks


I've always wanted a sequel (or spiritual successor, or rip-off) of "Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King". It was just a WiiWare game, but I really remember enjoying the building and simulation aspect of controlling RPG characters.


A team building game for the remote-first world.

My managers usually do cringe worthy "get to know your colleagues" events.

If there could be a game where me and my teammates could collaborate, work towards a goal (that is not programming), while also talking, I think that could be fun.


I tried making a game BazaarJump while learning unity solo, it is a game about chase in the bazaar making destruction of stuffs in an endless alley bazaar. I never got to finish it when they stole my laptop. I am still hoping to get time and rebuild the game.


I want to change some life configurations and see what is going to happen after 1000 years.

Let's say, humans found a way to live without eating and drinking, now how life is going to look like after a some time?

It is basically a more sophisticated and realist version of the game of life.


I just want the same games we have without the need to connect to a network. Why can't 2-4 players sitting beside each other, play monopoly, or poker, or any other simple board/card games? Why do we need to connect to servers and buy add ons, etc..


A space trading and combat game (like Elite or Wing Commander: Privateer), but set in the Star Wars galaxy. An addition thing you can do is search for new hyperspace lanes.

The same thing, but in the setting of The Expanse books and TV series.


I'd love to play an adventure game based on S03E03, "The Very Pulse of the Machine" of the "Love, Death & Robots" series.

Exploring Io, finding ancient aliens technologies and merging mind with machine by taking drugs. That'd be amazing.


Factorio meets Kerbal Space Program. I want a logistics/factory game in space with realistic orbital mechanics. You gather fuel and materials to build better space ships to get more distant/rarer materials, and automate the logistics of it all.


So KSP 2 to some extent?


A Zachlike about shader programming


Super accurate spaceship builder game.

Specifically, ones that has electric wires, water pipes, air ducts, control cables.

If you want a missile launcher you gotta have conveyors moving the missiles from storage to launchers.

Something like Oxygen Not included, but in 3d and building spaceships.


Wasn't Star Citizen supposed to have this?

... among the million other things it was supposed to have.


Space Engineers is about one level above what you want.


A game where you hunt creatures from Greek myths with sort of normal hunting equipment/guns (which are good for distracting/getting attention, not damage) and an emphasis on traps you can craft. So basically perpetual boss fights.


A good multiplayer, browser-based RTS in the style of Age of Empires (yes, I'm old).


Metal Gear type game except your power is essentially to shrink down like ant man. Bad guys are very powerful but so is your ability to stealth. Later into the game they catch wind of their miniature foe and come up with countermeasures


Mostly I'd just like better versions of games that did exist, and were enjoyable, but which had obvious ways to improve them. Dungeon Keeper comes to mind.

I see some other comments echoing this idea, such as "Star Control II, but more so.".


This post is brought to you by Epic Games looking what feature set to add to Fortnite next, so they eventually become Ready Player One to launch into any game with your already bought and infinitely expanding inventory of purchased skins.


I want an RPG which has:

- the open world and exploration of Xenoblade Chronicles

- the long-term play and grinding of The Last Story or Diablo 3

- the wonderful motion-control of Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (the Wii version please --- archery on the Switch just isn't the same)


A vanlife game that allows free roaming of a world that uses the real world’s roads :).


An open world pirate sim does sound good:

https://mobile.twitter.com/caldy/status/877661229254180865?l...


I'd like Stellar is 4X strategy but with the chance to drop into a Freelancer style dog fight to tip the scales on battles that could otherwise be predicted on a calculator. Bonus points if my friends can pilot over a lan, too.


RTS in which I can become a unit on the field and make it an FPS. 1000 soldiers (or tanks, or jets, or artillery) on the field, I select one, I "impersonate" him in battle.

I should be able to switch to every other alive unit on the field.


Battlezone II was a bit like this. It was reissued a few years ago, but I wish there was a true update.


A modern take on the game Freedom Fighters. It was the only single-player game I've played that convincingly felt like playing with a team. A modern version might let real players optionally jump in to fill the support roles.


Transport Tycoon Deluxe upgrade.

I just love that game and nothing really replaced it, to my knowledge.


See https://www.openttd.org/ which is still actively developed.


SAO (without the staying in the game part.) and or The Oasis (from ready player one)


Azad - from Ian Bank’s player of games: not in its avatar as an entrance exam for Azadian civil services, but just for the complexity and sheer range implied by the game.

Then, Thud, the game loosely described by Sir Terry Pratchett in Thud!


Elite Dangerous but with Gundam/Robotech-like mecha instead of boring ships.


I wish there was an arena defense game with multiple classes. It would be a co op game where you fight a waves of enemies as a team and then a boss each round. You can purchase items and upgrades inbetween rounds


Without doubt - StarCraft FPS!


Civilization, but the online multiplayer isn't garbage and the game is competitively balanced.

Tribes][, only it still exists.

Android: Netrunner, digitally, but with a user interface that's as good as Hearthstone, and also playable on mobile.


I'd like to see more games that reward altruism. A mechanic that might achieve this is a game in which the player who wins is the one who's closest to median number of points between all players at the end.


There was an old starcraft mod that was like playing Risk and was an absolute blast and could be played in an hour or so (as opposed to normal risk games that take a few hours), I would love something like that again


There was another starcraft mod called Golems Evolution that was almost an idle clicker, but you had to choose how to evolve your army. Would love something like that.


A modern Never Winter Nights

A platform that allows anyone to create content for a rpg-action game


An FPSZ like Tribes. Apex Legends seems to be the closest modern game in spirit.


Large scale turn based overworld with real time combat zombie civilization game where you start out as the last outpost and have to retake the world. Like Xcom. Maybe a mod like this exists somewhere for some game.


Just found The Last Haven, will try.

Edit: looks too small scale, but in the right direction. I want the focus to be on the over world a la total war.


Like GTA but with the ability to really do real life scenarios and not scripted stories. This mixed with a solid multiplayer mode then we would be at secondlife/GTA mix and people wouldn’t leave home anymore.


- Magic carpet III - Populus III - Sim Ant II - A new sequel of Black and White


I too wish for Sim Ant II, what a cool game. I tried playing Sim Ant the other day, the UI does not hold up at all.


I always used to joke that I wanted a cross between Mario Party and Golden eye


https://gamerant.com/black-glove-cancelled/

This game looked like a lot of fun. It’s a bummer that it got canceled.


I always wanted to try MUD with creative mode, when player may create new areas/items/mobs using code and textual descriptions. Like Minecraft/Interactive fiction hybrid or AI dungeon without AI.


Fighting game where you play realistic kittens, (play) fighting realistically.


I wish this game did not exist.

(sorry - rules stipulate I have to share.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(mind_game)


Reboot of Pharaoh, with modern graphics, and more expansive cities.

I loved that game as a kid.


You know that they're doing exactly that, don't you?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1351080/Pharaoh_A_New_Era...


I've had this idea for a puzzler with 5 space dimensions and 2 time dimensions, but I just haven't had the time to implement it.

Also, it sounds cool, but I don't think it'd be fun, just a neat curiosity.


Would you be able to describe what 5 dimensions looks like? And what are the 2 dimensions of time?


Ah I forgot to describe the time dimension part!

With one spacial dimension x, and one time dimension t, you can roughly describe motion like this:

    def move(speed, delta):
        x += speed*delta
where `delta` is the change in time. In a 60fps game, delta = 1/60. Some games play with the `delta` for a "bullet time" effect. SuperHot is a game that employs this to great effect.

With 2D time, I imagine it as red-time and blue-time. It might look like this:

    def move(speed_red, speed_blue, delta_red, delta_blue):
        x += speed_red * delta_red + speed_blue * delta_blue
(This can be written more succinctly of course).

A mechanic of this game involves switching between red-time and blue-time at will. Most elements would only move in red time or blue time. But some elements might move in a mixture of both.

You can have arbitrary time dimensions, but I think two are plenty for this game. You can get real interesting with this mechanic. Velocity is preserved within a time-dimension, so you can "save" your momentum for later. You can have gravity with different strengths and directions for each time dimension.

There's a lot of reasons this won't work for a realistic simulation. I had spent some time thinking of a fan-sequel to Outer Wilds which utilizes two time dimensions, but I don't think I can write a physics simulation where that would make sense. But for a lil platformer it can be fun


Three dimensions plotted normally, but then a grid of plots for slices in the two extra dimensions.

Everything are axis-aligned boxes in my idea, so the math is easy for rotating the view. (But to rotate in 5D, you fix on 3 axes, not 1.)


A persistent sandbox like mmo world with full 3D physics, maybe with low poly graphics. The game is based on free form crafting (like in a CAD modeler) with no preset items at all. Is that too much to ask?


Really wish there was a new installment to the Star Wars Jedi Knight series.


Robotech, specifically Macross. I know there have been a couple attempts, but I haven't seen one that scratched the itch. I want variable controls depending on the mode of the Valkyrie/Veritech.


a modern version of escape velocity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_Velocity_(video_game)


A second game:

A VR dnd first person rpg. Wizards have to actually chant and draw symbols in air to cast spells. I still remember the scene in which Raistlin fights against Fistandantilus and would love to play in a game.


A modern Jedi knight game with the lightsaber strength of the classic game.


Sim City/City Skylines but for multilevel cyber/solarpunk cities.


A game playing in the Bobiverse. I would love to upgrade my von Neumann probes, clone myself and land on a megastructure to go swimming and fighting with Quinlans on the look for Bender .. You get it.


Impossible without huge leaps in AI, data collection and privacy violation, but a game where you can relive recorded moments of your life, but change the decisions and experience how that plays out.


The Last Starfighter game from the movie, always remember watching that movie and wishing it was possible to play the game. Basic by any 3d space game standard now but had a nice style and looked fun.


Titanfall 3 with both single-player stories and multi-player stories, separate arena-style multiplayer modes, ranking, self-hosting and maybe even an open world sandbox mode with and EVE-sized scope.


Give me Red Dead Redemption 2, with infinite random tasks (both lawful and unlawful), a slower in game clock and the ability to do some base/village building and I’d be the happiest gamer ever.


Open world game/exploration about Indo-Aryans some 4000 years ago.


Give me an AR game where I can play a skirmish RTS (or, hell, turn based) using the world around me as terrain. I want to be able to set up a virtual tabletop game in a coffee shop basically.


Armored Core with AC2 controls, MGS VI with Kojima having full control, a new Street Fighter 6 with 4's play feel, Cyberpunk but it's fully developed story and play wise, Sekiro 2.


something that is similar to some relaxing animations that turn up on instagram from time to time. super smooth animations and physics with a mixture of puzzle elements and just pleasing to watch rendering. the scenes should be either focussing on materials like soft metals, clay and mechanics like pendulums etc. or on hyperrealistic plants, water, mosses and maybe some fish. you would in turn either play a machine or nature level where the results of each would make up some sort of sculpture or world.


have you played Proteus?


Age of Empires but in the browser.

No install. Only web technology. Easy multi-player Possibility to do Massive Multiplayer (100s) or just 2 or 3 Either blitz game (couple of hours max) or persistent


How about an Emscripten WebAssembly port of 0 A.D.?

(Hint, have done it)


I would like to see a 3D version of the ZX spectrum games Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy.

I will never pay $60 for a game and don't own any consoles or a powerful GPU but I'd like to see it done.


I would like to have a MMO where some mobs have NN based AI and learn how to fight better each time (but without cheating). I wonder what strategies would people use to defeat them.


Tomb Raider (2013) hit a real sweet spot with stealth elements, action setpieces, and some (but not all-encompassing) open-world exploration, and I still want more games like that.


There's a lot of 4x games that factor in unrest / rebellion uprisings as something you have to manage.

I want a 4x game where you play from the side of the unrest / rebellions.


The game idea I documented about a decade ago and have yet to start on because I never pushed myself to spend the required time to learn the C programming language enough to do it.


half-life 3


These things, they take time.


A new Rocket Jockey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Jockey


Factorio but like age of empires (i.e. resource gathering with humans instead of machines and an infinite playing field and no RTS component - just infinite empire building).


I wish that a multiplayer, turn-based version of Master of Magic existed, with one game taking 2-4 hours.

Right now looks like it's only HoMM 3 that is a TBS with cyber sport dimension.


The Last Night https://www.reddit.com/r/thelastnight/


Some many years since I first heard about this game, I hope it gets released one day.


I would love to have age of empires 2 but with an mmo sized map. And thousands of players at the same time. Don’t ask me how you would actually win, but I like the idea.


Something like Pokémon Go where the main goal is to meet people and make friends. You get points for finding out information about people and doing activities with them.


I want to drive cars in a full earth simulation. Let’s say Google Maps but in 3D. Pick a car, picks GPS location and drive. If you misbehave you’ll get chased by police.


Diablo 3. Not the abomination that exists today, but one made by the actual creators of the first 2 games; one that actually matches the look and feel of the franchise.


Lego Technic Forza. Build your lego technic race car, tractor trailer, dump truck, crane, or whatever, and then drive, race, and build in an open world lego sandbox.


Apiary Simulator - Manage a your honey bees year round from pollination to honey harvesting and overwintering. Thinking something like Starcraft mixed with Sim Farm.


A round-based, no-respawn 1v1 first-person shooter. I'm sick of having teammates, and some of the best moments I've had while playing Siege have been 1v1.


I'm well out of the loop with games so this might exist already, but a game where you control all different kinds of animals - from mosquitos to blue whales.


The original Deus Ex from eidos had a multiplayer bolted on that had some really great multiplayer mechanics that I wish would have been made in a modern engine!


I want an MMORPG.

Except with the ability for the community to develop new content.

And the community at large to vote on what new content goes into the game.

Let the players build the world and balance the classes.


A true planetary scale RTS, which kept the conventions of the RTS genre intact.

Supreme Commander gets close to this, but I want the full surface area of a planet as the campaign.


Isn't planetary annihilation exactly the type of game you're looking for? While I don't think it's as good as supreme commander (it gets too complicated to operate stuff in late game IMO), but it executes the premise of using full surface of planet (and multiple planets in fact!) for the campaigns.


The planets in Planetary Annihilation always feel too small to me. 80x80 maps in SupCom feel bigger to me than a series of (what feels like) golf balls.


I've played it, and it does some neat things (spherical battlefields lead to interesting tactical decisions).

But the idea I was thinking on was closer to, when Command and Conquer has you advancing across Europe...I want the map to just keep scrolling at that scale. Let me finish a mission by building an MCV and having it just drive way off the map.


Well, yes, but actually no. Its true that you get a spherical planets, but their size is still small like any other RTS


A raccoon heist game. You control a squad of raccoons going on an increasingly complicated series of heists. Like goat simulator but with raccoons doing crimes.


I think I saw something similar, but with penguins.


Basketball but with hockey penalty rules. Instead of free throws, the offending team plays down a player for a few minutes. Play continues. Fighting is allowed.


The beauty of this one is that you could actually play it with no coding required


AR artillery battles - strap on some AR goggles and man the helm of an artillery company taking on others within range who are also playing on the same server.


Non repetitive MOORPG, do hate that i háve kill samé monster Like 100x.

Think at least diablo Like world generation would be nice. Nôt sure how to generated True unique enemies.


As a kid I wanted Zelda: Ocarina of Time - but with Pokemon


Got a couple ideas I've wantes to implement but haven't made the time to build them:

stardew valley meets fallout.

Subnatica in space. Inspired by an episode of love death plus robots.


I want a game, driven by AI, whose sole reward metric is my biological response, like maximize heart rate, eye dilation, adrenaline, etc.

I want to see if an AI can break me.


Give me a CaRPG with Rocket League mechanics and an open world based on platforming and racing. Slow trickle of performance and weapon upgrades for the car.


A FOSS fast paced first person shooter with customizable loadouts, user run dedicated servers and community built maps. Think call of duty meets openarena.


A game like SimCity but based on Christopher Alexander's Pattern Language et. al. combined with ecology (e.g. Permaculture or Syntropic agriculture.)


A competitive description game. Players write descriptions of images under time and other constraints and the audience votes on the results in real time


An actual modern successor to Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire. The one they built was too Civilization and not AC enough (eg. No unit build system)


A ps5, modern version of Carmaggedon! Modern video games aren't funny anymore (with the exception of GTA5, but not sure they will hold the line).


Factorio as a 4X game when you create factories and develop technologies to expand into new previously inaccessible areas and exterminate new threats.


Dragon Quest Builders 2, but for Oxygen Not Included crowd.

(Seriously, DQB2 is a kids game but it does a whole bunch of things really well, it’s just too lightweight.)


Nagel: "What is it like to be a bat?"

A first-person shooter played by sound alone. Screen is black. Clicks go out and you locate targets based on echoes.


Bullet hell shoot em ups with great design. These games look either retro in a bad way or cheap like candy crush. „Hell is other demons“ was great.


Check jets’n’guns 1&2, if not yet!


Thanks. I will try to get over the design- gameplay looks like fun.


I hope one day we are able to simply walk/drive/fly around the worlds created for movies like Monsters, Inc., Secret Life of Pets, Luca, Turning Red, etc. The artists and modellers have done such a fabulous job of creating these insanely detailed worlds, and I would love to be able to actually explore them at my own pace. For me, this would be a great use of VR, though I think we're probably at least several years away from having the hardware necessary to render that all in real-time at a quality that I'm hoping for.


Second Portal 1

No bothersome worldbuilding, characters, lore, narratives and tie in into other frenchises.

Just puzzles and mindgames with malicious AI in unknown testing facility.


Star Citizen. But, you know, ahh, actually complete.


1. A coop game like Fallout: New Vegas. Post apocalypse. Deep story / lore. Ethical dilemmas.

2. The game TIS-100 was supposed to be a minigame in.


Unreal Tournament 2004 opensource rewrite, where i can load into the maps from the original.

the orignal linux binaries crash on current linux distributions :(


A climate change simulator.

You are the head of a global climate change task force and are tasked with fighting climate change with diplomacy and technology.


Portal 3, Witcher 4


Anything based on Invisible Cities by Ítalo Calvino


Riffing on this - something based on City and the City by China Mieville.


The Glass Bead Game, from the Herman Hesse novel of the same name. I could see myself really getting in to that and getting good at it.


An open-world Anachronox 2.

What an amazing universe they created for the original one. It was ahead of its time and is criminally underappreciated today.


I used to enjoy adventure games of the 90s. For some reason companies aren’t making these anymore. I’d like a new Monkey Island release.


Wadjet Eye Games and Daedalic Entertainment are making them.


iPad game similar to Red Alert 2, anything from Command and Conquer series (except 4), Age of Empires 1-2, Rise of Nations, Company of Heroes, Battle for Middle Earth 2 etc. You get the idea. Real, Real Time Strategy games. Would pay 50$. No in game purchases though. Only DLCs. I'll do this when/if I exit my startup. Even basic tower games are rigged.


You want Hostile Takeover / Warfare Incorporated.


Not Hostile Takeover but yeah Warfare Incorporated is similar. Seems dead though.


I semi-regularly wish I lived on the timelines in which Star Wars Battlefront III and MegaMan Legends 3 hadn't gotten canceled.


I want a 1000 player action 3rd person MMO engine... So I'm making it.

Just decided the world will be voxel.

The gameplay should be very punishing! PvP everywhere.


Someone please just make a decent, well-funded game in the Tribes genre.

It's a genre I wish I could experience with modern game design polish.


The game to educate children math operations. Like multiplication table but with visual effects, so it's interesting to play.


I would like to see a multiplayer version of the original final fantasy in the browser.

I think browser based games have some interesting potential.


Tank simulator like World of Tanks but with actual ballistics and ray tracing. Totally sick of rng hit boxes. They are insulting.


OP here. I'll share the most complex (probably never gonna be made) game idea in my current list:

One Game which has it all - re-creating Dante's Inferno.

=====

Types of game mechanics:

Overview - Cut scene

First Circle (Limbo) - 2D black and white like the game limbo

Second Circle (Lust) - Isometric like monument valley

Third Circle (Gluttony) - Mobile AR game to collect resources like pokemon go

Fourth Circle (Greed) - resource management/strategy like factorio

Fifth Circle (Wrath) - 2D pixel art like Duke Nukem

Sixth Circle (Heresy) - classic text adventure

Seventh Circle (Violence) - Glory Kill 3D system like DOOM

Eighth Circle (Fraud) - another mobile game with puzzles

Ninth Circle (Treachery) - VR

=====

Easter Eggs:

- The text adventure level (Sixth Circle) should have an easter egg which helps you freely move to any circle (a hidden response option)

=====

Storyline/Premise for the Rounds:

First Circle (Limbo) - our protagonist wakes up in a world where life is monotonous and structured (think start of Walter Mitty)

Second Circle (Lust) - evening party in club, has to socialize, meets a girl/guy he likes, they end up the night together

Third Circle (Gluttony) - morning has to find ingredients around the house for a full breakfast around the house to have a breakfast. She leaves but with cryptic messages to find her later in the game.

Fourth Circle (Greed) - goes to office and needs to manage his team/business i.e. product launch or bidding on a complex contract or moving supply chain around the world kind of optimization problems to improve top line or bottom line. (think strategy gamnes)

Fifth Circle (Wrath) - does something wrong, now has to run away from various bosses and colleagues who send monsters/killer robots after him (think Matrix)

Sixth Circle (Heresy) - someone starts texting him, as God, suddenly on an app he didn't know he have. Red pill or blue pill. obv takes the blue pill and turns out it was the same guy/girl from Lust/Gluttony stage and now they want him to fight for the survival of the civilization (Maybe a third pill for the Easter egg?)

Seventh Circle (Violence) - he is given weapons to fight back through an army who is ready to destroy civilization! Finally he ends up being killed.

Eighth Circle (Fraud) - wakes up on a multi generational ship which arrives a new solar system. turns out everything so far was simulated dreams in a cryo chamber to bring humanity to a new viable solar system.

Ninth Circle (Treachery) - but now he finds out that the solar systems has an alien race like Borg who are evil and he & everyone on the ship must fight once and for all to win his and everyone's freedom!


An open source Gary’s Mod style modular universe focused on modding tools and a strong plug-in system - but in Unreal Engine 5!


Dwarf Fortress, but with the Minecraft engine.

That game would destroy my personal and professional life and I'd love every second of it.


Fpp pvp game where players are cats that fight not with guns but with cat parkour moves executed with help of the environment.


A Civilization-like game where [nearly] all societal advances come through spycraft/clandestine operators/operations


Pokémon MMORPG.

I know there were a few mods that added online servers to older ROMs. But I would love to see a fully fledged GameFreak version.


Obviously it's not the Pokemon IP, but check out TemTem[1]. The world feels much more alive and they've implemented raids, PVP, and other MMO features.

[1] https://crema.gg/games/temtem/


Massive Chalice 2, essentially something where you build your dynasty and all the shortcomings of Massive Chalice 1 are fixed.


I just want a better UI for DF so I guess a game I wished existed would be a modern DF with better multi-processor support.


Ninja ball.

Basketball + Soccer + Rugby + parkour + that Mesoamerican sport

All tiebreakers are settled by team brawls

The losers are sacrificed to the winners deity (optional)


Planetary annihilation but with better AI and better handing of scale. Even on pretty punchy hardware it slows down easily


Any game based on Philip K. Dick's books


A road & track racing game with realistic physics and handling, but focused on time trials and solo challenges with arcadey combo scoring mechanics (like say the cone challenges in Project Gotham) only. Like rallying but for GT cars, open wheel cars, bikes, etc

Basically, a single player leaderboard racing game where your skill alone determines how well you do and you don't have to deal with the worst part of most racing games - other cars on the track


I want Factorio with more interesting enemies and stuff I further expand. Played some popular mods but they don’t cut it.


Will Wright’s original version of Spore before Chris Hecker was able to get it really dumbed down focusing on cuteness.


Minecraft-like builder with portals allowing seamless travel to/from other servers. (or this feature in Minecraft)


There are servers which have implemented this. It's kind of seamless to the user, but you're actually connecting to other servers as you play. Mineplex does it.


I've always imagined what would it be like to have a modern version of Atari's classic "Hero" game.


Oni

https://www.bungie.net/Oni?LOCALE=en


Descent but with modern graphics and an outside world. There's nothing like being able to move in all directions.


A modern take on Pathways Into Darkness.

Basically, the same UI centric text based adventure FPS horror RPG but with freshened visuals.


A first person shooter where you are a reporter taking photos or videos of historical events.

Basically, Pokemon Snap but for history.


have you tried Umurangi Generation?


My dream is a lot more narrow: I want a mod or an official game mode for Deep Rock Galactic where two teams of 4 dwarves race to the center of a cave for resources and have to take it back to the drop pod. It should disincentivize players from fighting each other directly, but instead deploy traps and waves of bugs against each other.

It's SUCH a good game as it is. I think it could only improve with the addition of creative PvP modes.


I feel like that would directly incentivize fighting each other, no?


Bird Life Simulator. From scavengers to hummingbirds, and everything in between. Would need a killer flight model.


I just want an M1 build of Overload. Modern 6dof shooter at 60fps on a modern laptop. Is that too much to ask for?


A first person shooter with a fully destructible world and good graphics. If there are sniper weapons they should need real skill, like adjusting wind speed and humidity, but if they are correctly setup, are super deadly.

I dislike the "you need to shoot a full magazine of bullets to kill an enemy player" of the recent years. Give me back the days where movement skills and mouse aim would be an advantage when playing online.


I really wished Halo Infinite was like that. I don't know why


Kingdom hearts 3 without the rest of the junk they included.... essentially what it was supposed to be a la 2006.


I wish there is a web based road building game. Like simcity but without economic system, only traffic system.


A grindy 2D platform MMO like Maple Story, but set in the world and with the art of Ori and the Blind Forest.


An update/remake of the old car company simulation game called Detroit.

An update/remake of the incredible machine.


Another 'Haven and Hearth' or 'Wurm Online/Unlimited' clone with more focus on QoL


A tibia-like MMORPG but in a world of Mechas and Mechanics. "Monsters" are robots gone rogue.


Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2


Startup simulator / business games in general (i.e. run a lemonade stand but multiple industries)


tiny hell (like tiny tower) Instead of customers for different types of businesses (retail, restaurant, etc.) it will be souls to be tortured for different sins. Occasionally a well know politician or celebrity appears that you get to pick which torture you want to apply.


Time crisis but cooperative- one player drives a car and the other fires the light gun. So much fun.


Pokemon roguelite. Nuzlockes are hugely popular, and I feel that could fit the roguelite format well.


I just want Portal 3..and 4..and 5..and so. If there are 20+ FIFA games, I want the same for Portal.


Like "The Long Dark" sand box mode but with realistic graphics and a full seasonal cycle.


"Influencer Simulator"

Take photos, alter them and try to obtain as much clout as you can for sponsorships.


I love the building in subnautica, I'd love something that focuses on that aspect of the game.


A large scale sequel to Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Seriously. I still play ETQW, 15 years after release, so...yeah.


A 3D 3rd person adventure game where the player is a kid growing up from toddlerhood to adulthood.


Some games based on ecology, where you play an ant/termite colony or a species for example.


Team-based PvP racing game where teams consist of drivers, pit crew, engineers, manager, biz dev


A realistic down-to-earth game that's totally off the wall and swarming with magic robots.


Guild Wars 2 but with the same instance mechanics as well as the guild capes from Guild Wars 1.


- non-violent and non-jingoistic sports - games that teach you real stuff in a non-trivial way


A Hitman-esque stealth hacking game with real VMs running real software would be cool to see.


Some ideas I had. Wishes, dreams, etc. :-)

1. You run a food truck where you serve hotcakes. It's a rhythm game though, with elements of animal/pet care.

2. You manage an empire but are allowed to pick any given time and place during which to build your empire. You are given a varying batch of starting resources that should allow the empire to get off the ground. Like superpowers, maybe you have amazing charisma or the ability to fly. The type of empire is also mutable. So you could build a media empire starting in early 1900s Berlin and watch it eclipse the entire idea of WWII within a decade. Or you could start a hot dog cart in Siberia and end up with Putin as your temporarily ally as you sweep through northern China within 20 years.

3. You are in charge of demolishing old infrastructure that is getting in the way. You learn the ins and outs of this kind of work as you play. For example there may be incentives for looking after wildlife that are living around the structures. But it may also cost you; however the game rewards creativity in this area. (Business game though doesn't sound right for what I had in mind. Maybe more of someone who's on the gov't side of managing the contractors and their work...)


Just tabletop simulator but better, and ideally so you only need one license to host a game.


In particular I'd really like online games that behave more like Warhammer or D&D, where a large portion of the fun is actually offline, designing your character/army etc.

Bringing it back to your comment, I can across [1], which brings some popular boardgames online. Premium games follow your license model (non-paying players can play with paid members)

[1] https://en.boardgamearena.com/


A QWOPlike about figure skating (there is already a good one about gymnastics - Pro Gymnast)


There are already so many comments here, but I would pay $150 for rocksmith built for piano


I would pay for a Rocksmith that could accurately capture my playing. I love the game but for more difficult songs, it's impossible. There are very complex passages that I know I'm playing correctly that have notes that are just not detected. It's so frustrating that I've quit playing the game entirely.


A decentralized more fantasized/cooler/more customizable and violent Minecraft.


A spaceflight combat game set in an existing sci-fi universe (like Mass Effect or Halo).


Some kind of RPG where you're a primitive human (70,000 years ago or something).


A baroque space opera CPRG. Baldur's Gate, but in a sweeping interstellar setting.


A fully functional Star Citizen.


A racing game with relativistic effects, where vehicles would go at speeds close to c.


An autobattler team vs team where you need to programe your team to cooperate for win.


Oh I know! A crossplay version of For The King for: PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, etc.


I always think of how a game where Minecraft meets Starcraft would be really awesome.


Classic WoW but set in a new world. Same gameplay, just a totally new world/map


A new Lands or Lore.

Or, a remake of Tie Fighter.


A competitive game but for middle-aged men. Games don't defend on reflexes.


God of War based on Indian mythological characters like Pashuram or maybe Shiva.


Half Life 3


Would love see a remake of "evolution: the game of intelligent life"


Something that creates a sensation of wonder as you play it, like Outer Wilds.


An evolution simulator that goes from molecular soup to galactic intelligence


Sword art online but you know… without the not being able to log out part


Generals 2 that played like a mix between Supreme Commander and Star Craft 2


Final Fantasy Tactics Switch


Sea of Thieves but in space.


I'd wish for something like TES Oblivion with the darkness of Berserk.


MMORPG like Mobile Legends, the load is fast, support low-middle hardware.


Soccer game but you are the...

* ball

* referee

* goal-keeper (FPS)

* commentator

with graphics of modern Fifa games.


A new version of Command & Conquer Generals, on a modern game engine


Arena, Daggerfall and Morrowind 2022 edition. Gothic 4 by Piranha Bytes


Myth from the late 90s was awesome. It still would be if it was around.


A high-quality, completely FOSS shooter/fighter/soccer game.


a game like overcooked except where the players are parents (or babysitters) taking care of too many toddlers that are needy and bent on finding everything dirty or dangerous in the room.


Subspace Continuum was nice ... a Linux or web version would be nice.


A bug-free enhanced ArmA game or a combination of Civilization + Anno


A slower paced, less micro-managy StarCraft and WarCraft 3 for iPad.


a 4x strategy game focused on terrain and logistics

Geography shapes nation borders and supply plays a decisive part of winning wars.

in a Civ game, a battle unit siting in the wild for hundreds of years is just absurd.


A modern good Thief game


a CCG with a viable pro circuit , a buy-once-and-get-max-allowed-copies-of-each-card-in-the-new-set DLC business model, and competition design that disincentivizes netdecking


coop game EXACTLY like wow (5/10/20) instances, with time runs, achievements and item progression, etc. and where you have to think very well your strategy in every pull.

edit: typo


Actual Guild Wars 2. I'll never recover from that betrayal.


Anything that would give me back the vibes of red alert 1/2


An exact clone of Pokemon Snap, but in the Final Fantasy-verse.


Spore, but what we all wanted it to be instead of what it was.


MechCommander 3 with MC1 aescethics (not Mechwarrior 5 mod ;))


Point Blank for Oculus Quest 2. I'd pay $500 for a clone


I want a 4X strategy game with an AI that doesn't suck.


The fusion of DCS:World, MS Flight Simulator 2020 and ARMA 3


Also how about a game that uses my worthless crypto kitties


A Pokémon game made by Rockstar Games sounds pretty sweet.


Came here to see if someone said "Star Citizen."


I want a modern version of the Command & Conquer RTS


A legit Robotech VR game with the original characters.


A Diablo type ARPG, but set in the Starcraft universe.


Aquaponics simulator


Updated and more realistic version of Sim City 4


lots of these fake instagram game ads would be pretty cool if the gameplay was actually as in the ad videos and not completely different crap.


I want something along the lines of: Infantry Online


A game about game developers and how they make games


Unreal Tournament 5


An official MechWarrior/Battletech game in VR.


A proper, decent conclusion to the Ultima series.


- follow-up to Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

- Megaman Battle Network 7


Command & Conquer - Red Alert 2 : Remastered


Caesar 3 but with modern graphics.

Loved this game as a teenager.


An infinite, but realistic space game.

The origin story would be that humans build AGI within the next 100 years. That AGI then builds an FTL drive, and it keeps going from there.

Initial missions to different parts of the solar system take place, and that just keeps expanding to the far reaches of space for thousands or millions of game years.

I’d like for the game to just expand until the end of the universe, allowing humans to evolve for millions of years, discovering everything from new life to multiple dimensions, and even discovering pocket universes.

This would sort of be in the vein of Three Body Problem Death’s End. In the open world style of GTA.


Mechwarrior in VR


TL:DR, A multiplayer FPS that relies on traps and deception more than "action."

I've been around long enough to have played both Doom and Duke Nukem over a phone/modem. I remember with Duke Nukem especially, the ability to place laser tripmines plus chat made for a really thrilling experience, it was as much as about trying to decieve the other person into going the wrong way as it was having good aim.

I feel like Among Us, et al, of course has this trickery part, but I don't think I've seen the two combined. Kind of reminds me of Spy v. Spy from the olden days of Mad?


The world always needs more 3D platformers.


I've wanted a Pokemon MMO for 20 years


would love a columbo game where you have to commit the perfect crime and an AI columbo tries to prove you guilty :)


Something like Rebel Inc. but better done.


A remake of "Big Red Racing" =)


HL2 open world.


StarCraft 3.

I want RTS to make a comeback. Sick of mobas.


Open world, First person based on Akira.


Tell some y’all read books during recess


Dual Universe but with a good UI/UX


Command & Conquer (a new iteration)


Mortal Pong II


Ultima Online. Pokemon Gameboy series.


A really good realistic sailing game.


Warcraft 4 developed by NOT blizzard.


honestly with StepN I'm making 1000$ a day by running, i don't need any other game :D


Build-A-Puppy


NBA Jam 2023 without touch controls


Avatar: the Last Airbender in VR.


I wish someone finished Star Made


A modern remake of GoldenEye 007.


Total War combined with Sim City


Star Citizen


Age of empires for native macOS.


SSX 2022 and Zelda Multiplayer.


A huge open world 3D platformer


Daggerfall and Star Citizen ;)


Need For Speed: But in India.


For the swedes: Jönssonligan.


Need for Speed: But in India


Online versions of various now-iconic boardgames (or analogues):

Dune

Fortress America

Supremacy

etc


"Diablo, but on my phone!"

- Nobody


Mixture of Satisfactory and Subnautica where you build intricate factories under water and the surface is dangerous because of periodical hailstorms that would wreck your buildings there and scorching heat that makes the hail melt and maybe even briefly boil the surface.

As game progresses climate get worse and you are forced to retreat to greater depths with your factories and you need to research technologies that enable that in time.

INTRO: you crashland in a small capsule, much like in Subanutica. You have a multitool with a pocket dimension for inventory but it doesn't let you deconstruct the capsule. So you scout around in shallow waters not being able to do much because multitool is not suitable for biomatter. You find a cave with a pocket of air. Then the first hail comes. Initially it's not that bad but gets larger so it starts dealing damage to you. It could kill you if you didn't retreat into the cave you found underwater. It ends quickly but as you emerge you find out that your capsule was broken into pieces. This time your multitool has no trouble of recovering scrap materials and placing them in the pocket dimension along with a fission battery that miraculously survived. You are building enclosed space under water larger than your capsule but with thinner walls. It's still full of water but you build your first water electrolizer powered for now with recovered fission battery. Oxygen is used for pumping out water to provide space for machines you can build inside. With the structure full of oxygen your suit can create breathable atmosphere inside of itself. Fire would be disastrous, but you are hoping at some point you'll be able to find ways to produce inert gasses to make interior safer. Hydrogen is stored to provide your constructions with neutral bouyancy. You fashion out a knife out of scrap and go out to look for something to eat. You submerge your first building a bit deeper but only as deep as thin walls allow. You are starting to wonder how will you get power when fission battery runs out. You scan your environment with the use of the multitool and when you find useful materials AI of your multitool unpacks new construction plans and production recipes that let you build more and explore further.

Tens or hundreds of hours later you float quite deep admiring your sprawling web of minifactories connected by flexible conduits carrying various material and parts at dazzling speed. Most of the connections go even deeper to rare mineral mines but some go up to get some ice from massive hail that periodically strikes to be utilized for cooling (when summer arives) and for extraction of substances only available in the atmosphere of the planet that get captured in the hail as it forms there. Apart from wildlife there are small drones around that swim in swarms and maintain your structures and upgrade them when it's time submerge them deeper. You wonder, what this planet throws at you next and how bad will it affect your operations and plans.


Portal 3


Elden Ring 2: Oldest Ring


Ender's Game games.


The incredible machine 4


Fallout: London

or any other european city


There's a mod coming out this year with this name :-)


more thief like games really. stealth is so underrated in games.


Asymmetric RTS and FPS.


Grand Theft Pro Skater?


Justice simulator: same concept as sim city, but focused on how policing, social services, education, welfare and prisons tie up. Aim is net zero crime, with all policy options available from totalitarian state, through centrist managerialism, all the way to left wing defunding the police.


A 'survival horror' war game from the perspective of a refugee and/or genocide survivor. I feel the mechanic of death can be explored in new ways it has not yet been in games over all. Also as powerful of an emotional tool as only a game could use, compare to other medium.


Faeria, but successful


Chrono Trigger Remake


Gravity Force + Elite


The Glass Bead Game.


A Stargate based RTS


How about a game like Mass Effect but with Stargate.


Super Mario galaxy 3


Lawn Darts!!!

Because Darwinism rules!


I would like 2D remakes of some of the currently popular 3D games, kind of exact opposite of how they remade some old 2D games into 3D.

https://xkcd.com/880/


system shock 2 and Braid for the mobile phone.


Alpha Centauri 2


Zone of Enders 3


Elder Scrolls VI


The original guildwars was way ahead of its time and they completely gutted the pvp and skill system for guildwars 2. I wish a new game was made that actually stayed true to the spirit of the original.


Star Citizen :(


KingdomCome 2


SimAnt MMPORG


Warcrafts 4-9


a AAAA Terminator open world game


SimSkiResort


Star citizen


Heroes III:)


Star Citizen


Planetside 3


Star Citizen


Starcraft 3


Half Life 3


A game with faster horses.

;)


XCom has had a few re-makes. All were pretty solid. Especially with the Long War add-on. I wish they would have taken the air-combat equipment and combat management from XCOM Apocalypse... maybe a bit of a "real time" mode for some of the more tedious missions where you're just endlessly reloading and shooting though. 100% prefer turn-based, but there are times... when you're just cycling and bored.

Fallout 1 & 2 & Tactics needs a re-make. Mutant Year Zero, was pretty good. I hate that they took Fallout into the FPS genera.

MOO has some re-makes. None of which were very good, in my opinion.

Escape Velocity has Endless Sky and a few others, always Eve Online if you're feeling like you need to go down that rabbit hole.

Civ has so many re-makes... it's gotten too complicated, they need a "simple mode" again to keep my interest, I don't have time for 40-hour long multi-player games.

WoW is back. But... the community is distilled toxicity at this point. Just... never a more fitting phrase, "You think you do, but you don't." Try interacting with anyone in that game for 30 seconds and you'll think you got lost in the depths of 4-Chan.

I fired up an emulator and played Phantasy Star and Dragon Warrior (at like 6x speed) and those were fun. I'm sure there are more advanced re-makes.

Secret of Mana is still fun.

Zelda... so many remakes, most are good. A Link to the Past for SNES still holds a place in my heart. The new FPS versions are less interesting for me.

Diablo... new version coming out. I'd love it to be... just a tad less grindy. I know that's the whole premise, but it got to the point where you were just trying to zug a map as quick as you could to get gear that you're just going to shard... and for that 1 in 1,000 chance for the upgrade you want. I'd love it if the upgrades had a bit more predictability to it. Fine to have them be random still, but you need a better way to grind up the "perfect" stats so it's less of a slot machine.

I don't know, like what else should be made? Might and Magic was pretty fun. And Darkest Dungeon was great.

Plants vs. Zombies I think is still around?

Man, there's no shortage of good games... I really miss the thrill of coming home from school to play video games. Games are all so much more now... but that thrill of staying up until 2 AM playing, trying to stay hidden so my mom wouldn't yell at me, trying to be the first kid in school to beat the game... like... the games aren't as fun as they used to be. Ha.

Especially online games. Holy hell. Just trying to play any game against teens who have unlimited free-time... and their hate-spewing potty mouths... it's not fun. I avoid most multi-player games as a result of how bad the communities are... especially towards new players.


VR Tarkov


I have two games:

1. Time travel small openworld stealth game:

Imagine a small town were you start out and suddenly you can travel in time like 30 years ( ;) ) and all of your actions have real impact. You travel back, plant a tree, you travel back to the present and its here.

There might be a big diamond coming to your small town as an exhibition and you want to steal it. You can steal it by building a tunnel in the past or other things like starting to work there and copy a key. Or you could become the towns key maker and wait until the museum wants you to copy the key. Or you could become the towns security system expert and actually sell it them.

Problems: When you can travel in time, you are rich anyway. I haven't thought about it for a while what further implications it have but i do remember an nvidia demo were you saw a car age (like it becomes super rusty while watching the video).

The complexity comes from all the implications you need to take care of. therefore a small town.

2. A story line clicker game (spoiler alert! ;)):

Style: 2d pixel iso. You want to become rich and in this world clicking the mouse is how you earn your 'clicks'. You start out small in your kids room. Sitting there clicking (player has to do it manually). After a while you are allowed to move to your parents garage, you get a desk, you can now click faster. Than you hire some friends.

The transition is basically: your kids room, garage, small office, big office. When you start owning an office, your character sits in front / at the top and looks down to office talbes and the clickers.

Over time you can expand, you can order overtime, you need to hire new staff. If you burn them out you have to hire activly more and faster.

As a side quest you could persue a romantic relationship.

The game is over when your character dies. Your character dies of an heart attack in the rage of 60-90 years depending on what side quests you do and then when you had your heart attack, a high score is calculated additionally to all of clisk you got.

The twist: you can also persue a romantic relationship and if you do that and you spend time with your partner (like in mini events) you earn way less clicks but 1. you hit a higher age like 80-100 and 2. surprise: your highscore gets an additional happines multiplyier which will always be higher than your highscore without a partner in life. This also unlocks a hidden achievement and the happines mode / display and only after you went this route the happines factor is shown in the highscore calculation.

Basically the game should motivate you to be super aggressive first: Lots of overtime, killing your employees and using drugs and rehiring constantly for the persuede for the highest score and after your second playthrough and achieving a specific highscore you get hints that it might be better to be happy.


Silksong


I gave some thoughts about it.

Here're interesting things that I'd love to explore given the chance and skills.

1. This game is MMORPG. Think World of Warcraft game.

2. Everything is realistic (more or less).

3. There's no fixed story.

4. World is generated initially but then shaped by NPCs and PCs.

5. Every NPC is controlled by AI. Every creature controlled by AI. Not stupid AI but real AI. Some creatures fight each other. Like wolves sometimes go hunt rabbits, rabbits don't want to die so they learn to hide, wolves learn to find rabbits. Wolves learn that humans are strong so they coordinate with other wolves to kill humans, etc. Some wolves are stupid, some are smart, some have scars from rabbits. Wolf parents teach their pups to hunt. They probably have some initially trained AI, but then everything is trained inside the game.

6. Human NPCs learn their complex lifes, interact with other humans, mine, grow, fight, kill, conquer.

So far it sounds like dwarf fortress, but I want to underline that behaviours are not mechanical, but rather more real-world where creatures are learning from their mistakes.

7. Human NPCs provide quests to PCs which actually generated from their stories. Like some tribe stolen women from other tribe, now their chief asks travelers to return women.

8. Everything is free for all, you can kill anything or help anyone.

Basically it's fantasy world with extreme freedom and extremely advanced NPC AI.

Also it's MMO and I'd love it to be as "realistic" as possible (in some weird sense of reality, of course). Things are mundane. You need money, you need to find ways to earn it. Distances are tremendous, like in real life, you need to walk for hours to reach another village or for days to reach another city. Mounts are not magic, you need to care about them, feed them, you can spoil them and they'll die (and they cost huge amount of money). Wolves can eat your horse. Wizards can portal people but that requires extreme dedication, costly reagents, so only very rich people can afford that. No flying gryphons, sorry. You can't just resurrect after death, probably you need to create new character and start from the scratch. There could be resurrection spell, but again it must be performed by other players, probably by several skilled priests with very costly reagents and only for a limited time after death, if corpse is not damaged severely. Scars and traumas affect character and could be healed, again, by extremely skilled doctors and costly reagents.

Interaction with NPCs is done using either speech or written dialogs, not just by selecting things in the list. Like they talk to you and you talk to them. NPCs can lie to you, of course, take advantage of you, etc.


Loom 2


Vespers 2


Portal 3


Portal III

all the way


Stray.


Quidditch


new game+ on my life, fuck


silksong


I love space battles and am surprised there’s not a whole genre of games spawned from Homeworld around '3D Chess' strategy where you rely on orbital mechanics to win. Bring Ian Banks Contact or Star Wars battles to life under a plot of humanity being hunted to the brink of extinction. I'm pay good money for a 3D strategy game that builds on Homeworld design by adding ‘rock/paper/scissors’ unit tactics from Starcraft 2, the atmosphere of Three Body Problem or The Last Angel, and huge capital ships of FreeSpace 2. Send your fleet into a hostile solar system to destro orbiting shipyards, or try to hold a solar system against an invading armada where you can’t save every planet. You’d invest limited resources to build say 1-3 capital ships which are dependent on a screen of specialist railgun ships, anti-missile ships and carriers. Feel free to build this as I’m not a games dev.

There are so many cool 3D tactics available, similar to the 2D Into the Breach, eg a space station can defend a whole region of space with beam weapons, but you can launch an asteroid at it that makes it vulnerable for a short window, detonate a precious gravity weapon, or sacrifice ships to get a railgun ship close. A railgun ship can kill a capital ship, but only if you can close enough to fire. Capital ships beat all small ships, but are slow. For example, charging 10 carriers down into a planetary gravity well to take out an orbiting space station, sacrificing them all to bring one dedicated railgun ship close enough for a killshot.

I can see a huge payoff for learning basic orbital mechanics and ambush tactics to overcome a superior force, eg commit ships to an attack by accelerating them on a path that may take several minutes to play out, and manoeuvre in a ‘bullet hell’ of slow-moving missiles. Homeworld was too focused on ‘just click it with ships’. I want to pick the right ships for the job, a la Witcher potions. Then I need to use them strategically, eg attacking front-on means I’ll face a powerful front shield and lose, but if I setup a pincer movement from two directions I can target their rear weak shield and win.

Envision a mission to say, commit genocide by glassing every planet in a solar system with asteroid strikes. You can pick one planet to take out with a surprise asteroid attack, but defensive orbital space stations then protect the remaining planets, so you need to bring your fleet into the system. Deep in the system are slow-moving capital ships that will kill any small ship they catch.

General ideas below: - Capital ships cannot accelerate quickly, leading to hit and run tactics where you fight where their capital ships are not. If your capital ship dies, you die, but you can use it to turn the tide of battle. - Stealth ships and ‘glass cannon’ ships, eg an unshielded missile ship that can kill everything but dies in one hit. Do you commit ships on an approach course to that high value carrier, or is it protected by an invisible fleet of stealth ships? - Most weapons take time to take act and everything has a multiple ’hard counters’, eg a gravity weapon that destroys a large area but needs the firing ship to be protected, stationary, for 30 seconds to trigger. ECM ships expose stealth ships but have no weaponry and stop working under missile fire. - Tradeoffs between shield/armour vs engine and weaponry, eg some ships can only shield one side, so a ship is safe against a single target but will die against multiple targets. Shields are limited and some can’t be used while the main engine is running, but kinetic weapons can one-shot your ship once shields are down. A railgun ship is a sitting duck for 10 seconds before it can fire. - WW1 biplane and naval battles eg get up close behind an enemy ship and shred it’s shield weak spot, missile ships that work best up close but are useless at a distance, countermeasure ships. - Billiard ball ship momentum, eg fast ships can fly in quickly for a safe flyby but then need to turn around and decelerate, while slow ships become easy targets once capital ships deplete their shields. You have to send your slow ships first, then launch the fast ones to overshoot them. - Missions with fast scouts or asteroids as weapons by accelerating them to 90% of light speed beforehand, aiming them like billiard balls with planetary flybys, but you need to base your entire strategy around them. Eg a shoot asteroids at a deep space station. They’ll arrive in 5 minutes, but the space station will see the attack a minute out and shut down shields in order to move out of the way. Do you accelerate your fleet to 10% lightspeed to get there quickly, knowing that each ship will have time for only one shot? Or do you go in slowly, hoping you can kill it before the arrival of two capital ships coming out of the gravity well? - Orbital choices matter, gravity wells are slow to escape, so fast ships can only change orbit slowly or through planetary slingshots. You can match speed with an enemy fleet, but you can also send ships from the other direction at high speed to discover stealth ships or snipe their capitals. Ships are often weak in one direction, so you have to pincer them before they can surround you. - So many great scifi plots to draw on, especially around forbidden weapons, AI and an Ian Banks-style technological race against far-superior aliens.


A game where you build and defend forts with other people.

Fortnite sort of started like this, but the single player mode was a microtransaction abomination that was more akin to a excel spreadsheet than a game.

The beta of battle-royale Fortnite had a lot of this organically at the end of the match -- teams would each build towers and attack each other. Was a blast, but quickly was micro-optimized into kids using their reaction time to instabuild crap and shoot each other while making windows. Really awful gameplay.


A Dungeon Siege remake that runs on Mac. The original had a good formula but a lot of games now are too showy and complex.


It runs quite well with CrossOver! So probably well with fine-tuned Wine settings as well :)

I remember it was challenging to install because I tried to install with the 3 disks and it still didn't work after. However I found a torrent of a "portable" version that worked out of the box!


Was the torrent a Wineskin?


No! It's a Windows torrent. I run Windows apps with CrossOver. The torrent name was "Dungeon Siege - Legends of Aranna + Return to Arhok + Yesterhaven [USBGaming.org]". Piracy is of course not legal if you don't own the original game (I'm not sure it is even if you do but meh).


I want a no mans sky that lives up to it's idea 10000000x better then the current game.

A procedural universe where each world has the density of detail as GTA 5 or Elden Ring or SOTC and the same amount of variability as well.

This could be achievable in the future by throwing some ML into these procedural algorithms. We already sort of do it with text.


A game where you can legally make money


The game i am currently working on obviously


A game that will help humanity while playing -- protein folding as a game?


It exists https://fold.it/




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