Here is a thread where you can post all those ideas you have that you don't think you'll ever get around to do. So that others might get some inspiration and ideas for their games.
And remember, folks: you can't own an idea, you can only own the implementation of an idea... (
riiiiight... tell that to Bill Gates
)
Anyway, here goes...
Idea Nr 1.
A "claymated" game.If I had a digital camera, I might, just might try and make a small claymated game, just for curiosity's sake.
It's an interesting idea, and if you want your game to feel and look different then all the rest Myst clones and Monkey island lookalikes (bless you, Ron), this might be one way to go.
For those of you that don't know, claymation is when you take pictures of lumps of clay that you have shaped into, say, the game character or a table, for instance. Then for the next picture, you make just a little change to the clay, and take another picture. And when you show those pictures in a sequence, you have a claymation. The tricky part, I guess, would be to get the lighting right.
Then the question is if you should try and make the game mechanics "realistic", or if the physics of the game world should follow the clay's properties (for example, that the characters can change themselves into other forms).
As for the clay... well, colorful, "kids clay" would probably be fine for something like this.
Moving on to...
Idea Nr 2.
A realistic-looking gameTake pictures of real people, real places, and real objects, with a digital camera, and make them into a game. This would mean that everything would look and feel more real and realistic, and the players immersion in the game might be increased.
One of the advantages of this idea is, that you don't have to think about rendering 3D characters and backgrounds, or even hand-drawing endless frames for the one thousand animations of the game. But at the same time, this idea would probably only work with a first-person game, where you have mostly static pictures and just a few images for each "actor"...
Then you try to make everything look as real and realistic as possible, and throw in a story or a mystery.
A relationship drama? A ghost story in a real house? Suburban adventures among beatniks, goths, and everyday loosers?
A detective game?
You can probably do plenty of stories with a real-life setting and "real" characters.
And, the way I see it, it's just that a real-looking game would be a refreshing change of pace to all the cartoon games and "faked realism" graphics out there...
And also, one of the ideas here, is to look different, to
feel different, to taste different than all the run-of-the-mill games out there...
Of course, looking any different doesn't mean that the contents of the game will be good. But it will at least give you a chance of standing out in the endless stream of same-looking games that gets thrown our way. And you also have a chance here of taking gaming in a new direction, with ultra-realism and really real-looking graphics.
So are you up to it?