GAME IDEAS

A game like neutropia except there are different modes of charge exchange - Talk (persuade), feed, hit (intimidate)

ROGUE DOT You’re a rogue who is a dot. You can collect dots on your journey, you can battle others with your dots and choose your stakes, battling is like a game of poker but you have only primaries and secondaries, you can play up to 3 dots 3 secondaries beats 3 primaries but 3 primaries beats 2 secondaries etc. There needs to be a way to bluff. absolutely minimal.

You can guess whether someone has what colours by watching their behaviour if someone has reds and yellows nearby they will have those colours and will be making oranges.

Each fight is negative sum, if you lose, you give yours, if you win you take theirs and lose yours. So you have to measure what you’re willing to bet based on how powerful you think the other is. You can offer food to animals that will protect you from conflict.

ENTROPY A game with a field of randomly coloured dots, the rgb values are translated into 3 rg,bo,py gradients where in rg -1 = red 0 = grey 1 = green. This would be a simple get / set function. Each node is attracted to opposites on each gradient (and maybe repelled by similar) - so if given long enough the system should make everything reduce to grey. On collisions, if a negative and a positive collider they begin to cancel by reducing the extent of the colour on the given gradient. If a positive and a positive collide they both increase along that gradient. The aim is to set up a system that resists the natural entropy of the system, by setting up loops, perhaps with barriers? or just by moving them around into different arrangements.

This could also be done were each node is only on one gradient and doesn’t interact with others outside of that gradient, unless they have reached 0.

Another variation could be outline squares and small squares when a small goes in a big they combine to mix colours if the colours combining both secondary they make a grey or a solid if they are the same they reproduce, if they are opposite they cancel. The objective is to beat the entropy of the system. Perhaps the grey mechanic could be applied to true colours.

TRADE A game that starts with a player producing a certain type of good - and then having to trade with others eventually developing currency.

FINE LINE An infinite runner style game with elements of snake that uses a very fine line that chooses between different maze sections to get through (need to be acutely aware of blocks

TIME TRAVELLER A story about that teaches kids about different periods in time. The game would be html based you would collect codes which would unlock other sections in time. Perhaps a downloadable spreadsheet could be used to store your codes. There would have to be a text entry box in the page to enter codes

FORCE OF NATURE About a young girl who can manipulate things with her mind

ROLLING SHUTTER A video installation that records people in a virtual mirror situation, but with a slow horizontal scan - left pixel line at real time and right most 10 seconds delayed… giving the impression of being stretched going one direction and squeezed going the other.

GARDEN A virtual garden that has real nutrients, sunlight, water etc, plants grow procedurally depending on how much nutrients they get.

COMMON ENEMY A game about the fact that we need an enemy to band together

ROGUE CHESS An adventure game where you have to defend your king through a forest of chess pieces and sacrifice your pieces to protect your king,

A GHOST IN THE LEAVES [INFERENCE] A platform game where your player is a collider that interacts with environmental materials

… like snow or leaves falling. In some cases it might interact differently with different objects which fall on it or otherwise are illuminated by it. Another interesting aspect would be to get gravity to pull the particles around by having the world locked to the camera location and having the camera rotate to get gravity to move in different directions, so you would see how the wind is blowing by watching the leaves, and would get blown about by it as well. This is an extension of the idea about paintings that move

ALIEN ALONE A 2d gravity game with control over the boosters ( camera locked to the rocket ).

The aim is to get through an endless runner without running out of fuel. You can even land and refuel - I think I worked out code for this navigation, where you steer from distance from ship to angle relative to the ship

RAINBOW HIDE a game where you have to get past guards like metal gear solid, but instead you hide in 2d by blending into the background

WILDE BEASTIES - you're trying to juggle a mad load of different species invented in Dr Wilde’s lab

BLACK SHEEP

PILES A node-map game where to go deeper you have to go broader

TURTLE SHELLS A turtle game where you must break open puzzles to take on more answers - answers prompt more questions

This is based on an episode of Veritasium - where he talks about having to break preconceptions to take in new information

LIGHTNING A simulation of lightning that takes a hexagonal grid and takes in a charge and a path until that path reaches the bottom of the screen then the resulting node path lights up like lightning.

DISCOVER A game about navigating a neural net towards a new discovery - you activate neurones which gives you power to access new random experiences. You have to build a narrow or broad network to get to a goal first. Like neural checkers

PONZI - Tabletop game A game where points are awarded in a ponzi scheme - you need to buy and sell into each other’s schemes to win You might need to set your own price and rewards system (in secret - by writing on a card) You might have to have a scheme price - or you might want to set your own price (knowing how much you have to pass up the chain You have to pay a proportion of your earnings up the pyramid

SUSTAIN Given variables you must designate behaviours and frequencies to achieve the longest life - This could use the ML in Unity

PREJUDICE A game about prejudice towards high and low choice groups

OVERWHELM A VR experience where you are the blue dot in the orange mass

IF I WERE YOU A game that puts you in the position of your opposition and makes you argue for them. (This is the only way I have changed someone’s mind, to one of truth).

SPLIT A split screen game where scenes are revealed through split screens

WHISPERER A monster whisperer who helps feuding monsters get along by creating symbiosis (could be combined with personal space / disarm and Bad ash with elements of pixel smash - namely the destructible blocks. I’m thinking there’s a destructive action this character can do, like a stomp or fire breathing that helps get through walls but also scares smaller monsters Smashes walls and gets gems and rocks - can use rocks to build areas There is an opportunity to create a much simpler prison architect - this could be about creating a monster farm The character could be still, facing towards the player the ground sloping away - you move the ground instead of the player where you click is where you go - you tap to leave a inward ripple ring - or to target - ring grows and pulses to surround character or element to interact with

GENTLE You are a monster and everyone in the game is afraid of you, you have to assemble a team to tame a larger beast

ONE TASK An organiser called one task / uses a matrix to determine what task should be done next Tick and on to the next / with breaks

PERSONAL SPACE To proximity Neutropia where each agent has circles of personal space / Fear / Anger and staying within a band of proximity helps increase trust space - The game mechanic would be about destination routing Fear could inform general avoidance - therefore an avoidant agent is easier to control because it is less likely to collide and cause issues

DISARM A game with high powered guns where your objective is to play against yourself. You must create a reverse arms race in order to win A way to make political change could be to develop media that goes viral that appeals on the surface to right wingers but encourages left wing thinking

TREE ARCHITECT There is a root structure that grows when cut, when rings are created that part rots back ( ref: Wulfsyarn )

BAD ASH A game where you control a gun nut - but you don’t really control him he gets excited and fires his guns randomly, the aim of the game is to do the least damage, but you can’t help but pick up bigger and bigger weapons. Potentially children pick up discarded guns and hurt each other with them Hates weakness - and backstories are told in his voice - The game would seek to appeal to people on the right - and would take them on a journey to bleeding heart liberal Innocent people are constantly being killed by accident / ricocheting bullets (bullets continue to bounce a number of times - falling walls) Starts all about personal responsibility - but it is revealed that the character is actually a fraud (Clint Eastwood’s family were part of a country club) Is put in a position where people help him without a motive - Kind for no reason

CIRCLE OF TRUST A game about spheres of loyalty - in which colors represent different people Each color has a rank of trust / loyalty to all the other colors You must get a secret about one color to another color without the color the secret is about finding out

The scenario could be that you have to get the secret about a murderer to a person with a greater weapon without the murderer finding out

In order to send a secret you must choose a character that is loyal to you but not loyal to the murderer? Your secret becomes a rumour, where it is spread to everyone who is trusted more than each teller (not the witness, but the person passing the rumour) in each person’s sphere

Perhaps each person has a different tool and each tool is ranked in effectiveness against other tools (similar mechanic to trust and could have some paper scissors rock elements)

PIXEL SMASH A game based on a pixel art aesthetic where every pixel is a collider and can be smashed off a body that has a returning to origin mechanic that stops working at a certain distance, so by firing projectiles of different sizes at each other you can break your opponent up - perhaps original positions could be based on jointed body-parts that also have the same mechanic

RE-JIG (combine with turtle game) A game where you build puzzles, you complete shapes but then find, once you’ve completed a shape you have more pieces arrive, each time you have to break your previous puzzle in order to fit the new pieces into the a new rectangle This would reinforce the idea than in order to learn new information you have to be willing to break neural structures that are “complete” This might actually be quite easy to game design yet hard to play You would designate edge partnerings shapes that can fit together, when a shape reaches an adequate vacinity it snaps into place.

NON-SAVE GAME Remember game I was thinking about where you can only save leaving game, not for death - if you die you lose your saves. Increases drive to survive. Based around Edge of Tomorrow - where there are no saves, and each time you wake up in the same position. You must either win or die within the day to save the world. If you are injured you must kill yourself, and at various stages where you die, or your partner dies, you find out vital information to make it through the next time. Those vital things change each time you completely start the game again, so it is impossible to win on your first try if someone else has given you all the secrets. You then need to work out how to use the secrets - for example in Edge of Tomorrow she tells him her middle name is Rose, this will enable him to convince her not to take the helicopter. While the movie is a lot like a game, the additional elements they have included have not been used in games, and in fact could be very interesting.

FAMILIAR

DEAD AIR A sound only game where you are left blind and need to escape with your daughter, she is your navigator, you teach her “on you 6” etc, (you teaching her is a form of tutorial) she learns with you and helps you around a maze, with a big gun, at points in the game she runs away from you to get things, you worry, at some point she is taken away, yelling down the corridors, you have to follow via surround sound. There are puzzles / locks, memory challenges, and in the end when you die, you realise she will be okay, because of how independent she is, you see yourself in her.

HUD You wake up in a world where your are trying to break free of a feed in your vision

MYTE A game where the smaller you are the stronger you become.

NERF WAR A 1st person shooter where the protagonist shoots nerf darts or flowers and rainbows into an angry violent environment, turning enemies into bunny rabbits and using love grenades to create safe-spaces for peaceful animals to escape the violence. This could be a patch on an ultra-violent game.

Q A game about queuing

ENCIRCLE A game where you capture an enemy by circling it. Reach a certain proximity and activate a circle Complete that circle without it being broken and you capture that enemy Perhaps you opt to begin a circle at any time but if you are making a circle and it is broken you die You could use walls to protect your circle

PENGWINGS Incorporate cannibal robots Your goal is to make it away from a shrinking Antarctica to NZ, only to find your machines pail in comparison to the cannibalistic robots that now rule the planet.

DARWINGS A variant of Pengwings that where you evolve greater and greater efficiency wings

STEALTH GOD Populous type game where you have to save the world without being seen and convince the world to be atheist, revealing fossils etc

UP A game where you pull tension on tramps to propel an infinite character up

STICK FIGHT / BUN FIGHT

HIDING PLACES

YELLOW ROAD

UTERO

THOUGHT A game where the protagonist is a thought bubble. The bubble would absorb experiences and categorise them. Then would be able to combine the elements of experiences it’s had into novel objects, this could actually be built into the mechanics of the program so that creations were actually novel, you could combine the same things in different ways and have different effects.

NO MANUAL A fat lazy woman with no military training is abducted by aliens and has to defend the earth from the invaders, suffers from asthma, heart problems and is constantly given the impression that she will get to read a manual to operate this alien machinery with extremely high powered weaponry, but is cut off and has to learn in the middle if a ridiculous situation, to use the guns you have to use crazy combinations and often the guns are way too powerful for the situation.

UNDER-BITE About a stray dog - against the odds.

MATHS TETRIS

PARADOX / CATCH 22

COG

WATER-FILLER PROBLEM SOLVER

WHEELCHAIR WIZARD A platform infinite runner game, where you are unable to jump but can manipulate the world around you to get to your destination A quirk of this game would be the the avatar does not want your help. He “can do it myself!”. This is funny to begin with, leading to funny interactions, and sometimes you have to help him But the more you can get him to do himself the more automatic skills he builds up, which is required to achieve later levels.

ELEMENTAL A platformer where you can shift between different elements, in order to score higher hit points or be more invulnerable

FOLLOWERS Agents follow your touch, your goal is to move the agents through a maze and avoid obstacles an other agents This could be integrated with neutropian ideas. Different types of agents (or agents in different states might react to your touch differently (approach - run away - hover) You leave food behind when you lift your finger, and that attracts the agents. You can chase agents or lead them with food

You could hurt the neuts by touching them - (making them fearful) instead of muck the food could be more like small pulsing beacons Aggressive neuts attack, and hurt you You need to hold down for a long time to generate food making you vulnerable

CAMP

A game about escaping from a prison camp through starvation - very sparse fighting, instead of building fighting skills via violence, build them via hunting and cutting trees etc - so that it doesn’t become a brawler, and instead has short intense moments of violence where you have developed enough skills to fight proficiently from other activities - This will make the fights more dramatic, but not have you feeling uncoordinated (Also, use very conventional controls so people can transfer fighting skills from other games)

The dialogue As a reader, had it not been for the exclusive diet of soviet propaganda books I might have survived many years in that library, consoling myself in the words of others - perhaps even noting some thoughts myself - and continuing a free life of the mind, but the reading of “provocative” fictions, and “enabling” non-fictions were of course disallowed leaving only the particular fictions that the party deemed non-fiction, the re-education materials would not get me further than a month - like skinning thin scraps of thought from the carcass of dogma, was an intellectual exercise that did not sustain.

The one freedom of the prison was the certain knowledge that our unfortunate plight was not of our own making - we knew who was responsible. We had been stolen midway through lives that for all their freedom were stamped with the flaws of our own person. The failures in those long forgotten lives were ours, we were responsible, the freedom from such responsibility was our single respite - until that word rose in our mind, a word that brought back the terrible weight of personal responsibility, the word that pitted us against our own flaws, our own fears. The word, the possibility of “Escape”.

VERMIN A game where you are a bug trying to escape the hands of humans, rolled up newspapers, feet, bug spray and other vermin are your enemy. Until one day you meet a friendly mouse, caught in a trap. You help it to escape and make friends - turns out a bug is super strong and can lift a mouse trap. The game is about making a life in difficult circumstances. The visual style is hand drawn, cute. (look at phone photo for reference) as a bug you can get squashed completely and jump back up - ala wall-e cochroach You can walk up walls You create an unlikely band that can work together to solve problems, but also have numerous vulnerabilities. Mice - strength - size - scares away stomping feet vulnerability - traps Bug - strength - wall walk, torque strength, small size vulnerability - spray, stomp, rolledUpNewspapers Fly - strength - flying - slow-mo vulnerability - spray, swat There are safe corridors underneath - and a fez style switch in perspective when you go down corridors and around corners. —

Use a game to make the participants produce a product or solve a problem in the real world

Make Rude Goldberg device with Mindojo is doing the same (path-wise story telling) thing as this in education