Science-based dragon MMO
Someone should take this project on as their first foray into game dev. Bonus points if it's a middle-aged woman.
1: An open world exploration game that doesn't have combat … like Breath of the Wild but without all the fighting and with lots of short stories and puzzles.
Basically I want to be able to go wandering off and uncover ancient ruins etc without having to fight for my life.
2: Snowrunner, but with a good narrative story mode and gearboxes that actually work.
There's so much potential to have engaging stories in that game, which could be tied into improved game structure (namely restricting truck / tire choice to make some tasks challenging in an interesting way).
Give Outer Wilds a go.
This fits OP's description perfectly. Great game. It's on PS+ if you play on Playstation 4 or 5.
For your #1 point, have you heard of Palia? It got released last month and it is a chill have where you gather and build your house. Additionally you can explore ruins to uncover your origins.
Wobbly life is like that. It's targeted more towards children, but my kids absolutely love it.
Need for Speed: The Run, but good. Give me an uninterrupted race accoss the US (or any other continent), against 199 other drivers, with strategic decisions to make such as fuel stops, sleep breaks, multiple paths… Make it a rogue lite with unlockable vehicle classes, police chases, weather changes, racing through traffic… Bonus points for realistic physics and VR support.
Nfs the run was so disappointing. Even for a nfs game.
Some NFS game are straight up terrible (Undercover…), but at least the good ones with similar gameplay (NFSU2, Carbon) still exist. But The Run was worse than bad; it was disappointing. It could have been good, but wasn't, and they never tried to make another one with a similar premise.
The only good part of the game is the bonus mission in Carbon Canyon, in all its HD glory.
It used to exist, but not so much anymore. I miss heavily community based FPS multiplayer games. With custom servers and so on. I played Counter-Strike: Source last night, what a breath of fresh air!
Same, I played some Day Of Defeat: Source also a while back. I got onto a server, people were talking about random things and seemed to know each other, there was a sense of community, it felt like a local bar.
It's 3am and I'm chilling and talking with strangers while surfing on CS:S. God, I miss this.
I miss that in newer games. It's all matchmaking, all competitive and in many ways, modern games like this feels "no fun allowed".
I really miss these days where games were more than just the game itself.
I also feel that newer games only focus on the competitive aspect.
Pretty much. It's always competitive. Always on the grind. You can't just play for fun, no. You have to be at your best every time, because now, there is this skill-based matchmaking algorithm watching your every move in game and so on.
I feel like I'm starting to get old when I say this, but every time I go back to play one of those old games, I get reinforced in this idea… so many games feel like jobs nowadays. It's just like the real world, it's all so competitive. No fun allowed. You can't ever be goofing around, you have your rank to worry about… every shooter now keeps on getting updated, the meta keeps on changing, and you have to keep up with it constantly otherwise you'll get left behind.
I can't put it into words exactly, so excuse me if what I'm going to say sounds odd… But I feel like most of the modern entertainment available to me is really stressful and I can't explain it. To be honest, it's the first time I'm voicing this feeling, but I find it really distressing…
I think that I fully understand how you feel. It's pretty much why I stopped playing online games. I want to be able to not think about being good or absolutly winning every single game. Most of the time, I would rather prefer trying out "dumb" stuff in the game or simply having random conversations while having fun.
A turn-based, tactical, squad-centered action title where a collective of vicious aliens invade the planet and you as the leader of a group of brave if vulnerable heroes have to save the world from the strange new threat. Except this time the world the aliens have picked to invade is a fantasy realm.
Guiding mages, warriors and rogues against the threat from outer space, combining XCOMesque battles with traditional fantasy game combat and levelling mechanics. Advance through the map taking regions back in control rather than zigzagging around the globe. Both the dwarven and elven capitals are under attack, which one do you go to rescue first and gain the help a new race to pick your pool of heroes from? Manage your kingdom and choose which deities you build a temple for, determining whether you unlock paladins or warlocks as a sub-class. Beat the aliens to reach the dragon before its captured and converted to their side. And as you encounter more armoured enemies, let your blacksmiths experiment with slapping together scavenged items from the battlefield to form high -tier magitech armour of your own.
It's a fever dream combination of effectively XCOM and Majesty that's been in my head for years because I love quirky mashups like this. Not necessarily anything new under the sun but I feel like with some work put into it, you could really forge something unique by embracing the combination of styles and genre conventions.
That sounds amazing honestly.
Cities: Skylines but ecosystem repair. Plant forests, regrade areas of mountains to mitigate landslide potential, reintroduce species and study their functional relationships with each other… Game progression comes in the form of additional research grants or new area assignments which present new challenges and unlock a new set of tools/procedures, but the successes from previous sites allow for migration of the reintroduced species into the new site.
Terra Nil is like 80% of this.
I've only watched gameplay of Terra Nil, but it seems like it's just an environmentalism themed puzzle game. You could replace all the titles with colors, and all the buildings and what they do with arbitrary rules, and it seems like it wouldn't look anything like an ecosystem sim. It would be like taking the game Lights Out, changing dark spots to "growth", light spots to "wastelands" and saying the goal is to balance out the ecosystem.
I didn't see the late game though, so maybe I didn't see where it shines.
I was hoping this was the direction Dyson Sphere Program would go. I think it would be an interesting twist on the factory management genre if nature was working against you; not in a Factorio "aliens will attack you if they see your pollution" way, but a "you're producing pollution, this is creating more in-climate weather that is damaging your factories and changing the landscape dynamically" sort of way. I think this was the natural next step given that the game is already about climbing the Kardashev scale, producing more energy so that you can construct the means to produce exponentially more energy. Seemed like the natural next step would be exploring the balancing act that has to happen to achieve that energy production without also creating systemic issues for yourself that make it infeasible.
Instead their latest patch adds aliens that attack you 😕.
Eve Offline, with all other players being NPCs.
I have a mental hangup with the very real dread of when hosted multiplayer games die, that all the time and effort I have spent, and all the things I've built, will just suddenly disappear. It's why I run a private G17 Mabinogi server on my pc, rather than playing online.
This what got me into the original .hack on PS2.
Saw this trailer the other day that might interest you, it's an offline type mmo where all the other players are simulated. Erenshor Offline MMO Trailer
Back in the day I playtested this game concept under an NDA, but since it expired I can talk about it.
An FPS game in an open map with buildings, has 12 players playing but when someone dies, they respawn right there but swap to the opposite team. The last person to get shot gets eliminated and then the teams split again. This goes on until 6 players are remaining, who are declared the winning team.
It was really fun to play, and I quite miss it.
Doesn't that mean that the last man standing is the first to lose?
So if your team is loosing you try to get shot deliberately to not be the last?
So, if I die first in every round, I win?
The WoW raiding experience, but without the MMO, and possibly the addition of rogue lite elements (each raid is a run with its own progression, but wiping would be allowed and embraced).
The format of DRG or Gunfire Reborn is pretty close, but 1) I prefer the high fantasy setting of warcraft to the gunplay, 2) I'm not interested in procedural levels, and 3) I want the focus to be on polished boss mechanics.
Dungeon Defenders is also close, but 1) you're defending instead of delving, and 2) it is also focused on killing waves of trash mobs rather than boss mechanics.
Destiny bosses are sometimes well designed, but 1) don't care for the gunplay, 2) classes hardly matter, 3) it's a max of 6 people, and I think closer to 10 is the sweet spot.
Gauntlet from a few years back was probably the closest, but still far from the mark. It could have used more mechanic heavy bosses, more meaningful gear, and a larger party size.
I guess this game just doesn’t exist, but remember that tweet of the guy who had a dream about an open world pirate exploration game with Waluigi in it?
That game.
Now I'm just imagining AC Black Flag, but Waluigi just replaces Edward whole cloth, just does all the voicelines and everything, everybody else just pretends he's a normal guy.
If you go role play as Waluigi in Sea of Thieves, that's kinda the same thing.
There is/was a fan made version of this in development! I don't know the status of it currently, and I heard that development was rocky for a while… and they haven't posted on the blog since 2020. But take a look anyway!
I wish there were more Sims like games. I feel that under EA, the games aren't living up to their full potential, and they could be so much more.
There are a few on the horizon, look into paralives and life by you
I want a game that's somewhere between Animal Crossing and Dwarf Fortress - something with the extensive world gen of DF, but with cute goofy animals, and maybe a little less grisly. So less sudden death by wildlife/zombies/collapsing ceilings, and more adorable wagon travel, trade and founding of settlements - which you then get to live in!
That sounds like a great idea. I'm picture something with the world and artwork of Root, but yeah, gameplay like Dwarf Fortress or Rimworld.
So when you say "less sudden death", would there still be death? Or would it have the potential as a kid-friendly intro to the simulation genre?
Omg yeah I had the style of Root in mind too!
I go back and forth on how much of the dwarf fortress vibes to let in. Probably it'd be a bit distressing to see your adorable villager friends just straight up die. On the other hand, it would be kind of interesting to experience them getting old and passing away, plus racking up memories, hangups, traumas and complicated social connections like the dwarves do.
Me and my SO had this idea (based on where we live lol) for a game that's like Animal Crossing where it's all cute and you build houses and a town for cute animal characters, except they're all shitty crackheads so like you build a park and the next day there's shit on the floor and all the streetlights are broken, you have to fish in the river to get old bikes and shopping carts out and so on.
I really want to play single-player versions, or at least on my own private server, games like Travian or Ikariam. Basically resource management strategies but without the insane need to be 24/7 online in anticipation of an enemy attack.
Edit: Also a single player tab targetting open world rpg.
Zombie apocalypse game with souls like combat but all slow zombies. The game takes your GPS coordinates (or any coordinates you enter) and uses a maps API call to generate the game map based on the real world. It would take things like residential/commercial/industrial areas and generate similar structures but not exact to not be a privacy issue. All major landmarks would be generated. So you could start from your house, or the Eiffel tower, or the middle of the Amazon. Things like grocery stores and malls and schools would be in similar locations, roads and highways etc.
The game would generate slightly different every time you create a map so while always based on the real world, things would be different.
You then must rescue your partner who is across the map (random generated) and find shelter.
There would be some crafting and survival mechanics, but mostly action based combat, skills to level up etc. Minimal if non-existent gunplay, though I'd be open to it if done well.
Very gorey, rogue like/light with persistent stats and incremental style progression (get so far then reset/start new map with higher their upgrades)
So think dead rising meets dark souls, mixed with vampire survivors and incremental games, all with this AR framework. I also considered a multiplayer persistent map br style mode but would prefer a single player experience myself
A Microsoft Flight Simulator game but for cars.
I just wanna drive around the world and see shit I can't otherwise see, but in real time drives. I got the inspiration from those Trucker Simulator games.
We're almost there with Street View and satellite images, and the developer could do hand-modeling for certain cities and landmarks like MS FS does.
It's not what really you're looking for, but there are some really good open world map mods for Assetto Corsa that probably make it the closest feeling thing right now. They're based on real places, so while it doesn't give the touristy sense, it does a good job of capturing the vibe of just cruising around some beautiful scenery.
This. I remember playing Test Drive 3 as a kid, and being memorized with the choose your own route thing (which was huge for a game back then), and thinking how cool this sort of thing could be, if we could make the graphics realistic and basically make it like driving in the real world but it isn't the real world.
Well now we can make the graphics realistic. And we certainly have the data, the imagery and the technology.
Yesssss, hard agree with this. I've been playing a lot of Euro Truck Simulator and I keep finding myself wishing it was 1:1 like MS Flight Sim. A woman can dream…
