I like to collect ideas for game mechanics that come to me, or interesting mechanics I’ve observed in existing projects. Some are more fleshed out than others.

Mechanics to Consider

  • Game mechanic where you have to manage your doctors and nurses and other medical things to keep your population healthy

Stressful Events

Weapon Reloading

  • a mechanic where weapon reloading is more than just pressing a button – designed with the intent of making reloading a usually-trivial task, but easier to mess up or be wasteful with when in the middle of a battle or something

Repair Mechanic

  • repair mechanic for game
  • two items at 50% can fix the item beyond 100%
  • but two items at 5% don’t get it past 10%
  • makes junk items less valuable to pick up, only thing player hauls back is stuff that’s in good shape

Crimes

Money Laundering

  • a taxation system that can somehow be gamed in order to launder income
  • let other players delve into uncovering laundering operations

Contracts and Agreements

  • Giving players the ability to create and sign contracts with their own custom terms
    • for example in strategy games: treaties and trade agreements

Real Estate/Land Control

  • I like the idea of being able to purchase land and property in peaceful areas, and take away land by force in war zones and contested land

Item Rarity

  • I like the idea of giving certain consumables a rarity rating (common, uncommon, rare) so even mundane things like coffee can be split into multiple categories and given different effects in a balanced way

Equipment

Jewelry

  • Adding clothing or armour sets can be time consuming – provide stats and abilities to players via jewelry like rings, necklaces, etc.

Immersive UI

Operating System UI

  • Using the menu bar to house the UI for an idle game that’s meant to be checked on every so often and then discarded
  • Using multiple windows creatively – i.e. in a platformer having the player stack the windows in such a way that the player’s character can walk from one platform to another
  • Providing extra tools for the game in additional windows (i.e. auction house window that opens a separate app along with the game that you can alt tab between)

Tunable one-way and two-way radio

  • A more tangible item for voice communcations to be based around

Immersive Stats

Potions & Consumables

  • Instead of showing a meter that displays the remaining amount of a potion,
  • have the player perform some action that results in the flask being held up, (possibly against a light) and check the remainder that way <— That’s neat. (~parhamt)

Tight Hardware Integration

Trackpad Integration

  • Some games are awesome to play because the inputs are designed super well
  • Imagine a simple, polished RTS game for macOS that makes use of the trackpad well by designing all its interactions around the trackpad’s abilities

Alternative Controls

Rest API

  • An idle game with inertia – things operate a certain way forever until you hit the endpoint and input some change
    • flesh this out more

Notable Game Mechanics

Scarface (PC/PS2)

  • You could hire henchmen, each with a specific role
  • Some henchmen brought your vehicles to you
  • You would call them up and wait around a little bit and then he’d come down the road

The Colonists

https://thecolonistsgame.com

Game Ideas

Innkeeper Game

  • Taking inspiration from Prosperous Universe and brainstorming
  • Players are old innkeepers who sold everything they owned in a country that no longer exists
  • The setting is some sparsely settled country
  • The beginning of the game has players pick a length of road to establish an inn across
  • This is a management game where innkeepers have to keep supplies going to keep the inn running, while also running their own side hustles on the side to keep the lights on
  • I want each player to be able to contribute to the game by setting up their inn
  • The most popular players will have giant hubs that many other players rely on
  • Settlements can begin around more popular inns
  • The progression of the game can see a player eventually establishing their own county (this does not sound historically accurate so find the nearest real thing and use it for inspiration)
  • prosperous universe does not have PVP because they are in a ideal perfect world scenario
  • here we are travelling back in time so it does not make sense to exclude combat – it must be accounted for

Divinity: Original Sin – LoFi Clone

  • no reason a game like this that runs on all devices shouldn’t exist
  • pull back the complexity of the mechanics to match whatever worlds we settle on (single angle orthogonal, 2d, …)

TMORPG

https://summer-afternoon.vlucendo.com/

A: a lot of about this is checking off a lot of boxes for me

P: Yea same man. Multiplayer, cool low poly graphics, chill gameplay, web accessible. We should make a tiny MMO with this

A: great idea I like the idea of a tiny MMO TMO

P: Haha TMI

A: TMORPG hahah

Stone Age Neptune’s Pride Concept

  • played in real time with a 1:24 timescale (24 in game hours = 1 real life hour)
  • focus on combat
    • risk-like mechanics in real time
      • battles happen over time with losses occurring over time
        • option of retreating at any time (+ other mechanics?)
      • such that backup arriving in the nick of time is a thing
  • focus on trade
    • managing inventory – making decisions like leaving behind cargo or selling at a loss to free up space or lighten load
    • hiring crew
      • outfitting crew
    • trade knacks come from special skills assigned to each player
      • through unique tech trees?
      • each player gets a random perk?
      • this is required to make trading favourable in some situations
  • focus on managing personnel
    • assigning people to build stuff or do combat roles or whatever
  • messenger birds to send messages around
  • travel time and stuff like that is calculated accurately using realistic map size
  • magic is part of the universe?
  • played on a giant hex grid(?)

Questions

  • who should the main player be?
    • a single entity representing the player (escorted by a party) that should be protected at all costs
      • can still have limited manager-like mechanics
    • a god-like manager that can control many things at once

Speeds

  • average walking speed 5km/h

TCG Concept

Start off as iOS game with extendible back-end?

Brainstorming

Ways to get more cards

  • Buy cards (spend money)
  • Face AI to win more cards (spend time)
  • Pokemon-GO style thing where you gotta go out and get the cards
  • facing people gives you cards? or facing people gives you synthesizer fuel bullshit which is used to make cards

Random

  • iPhone 5 screen size 1136 x 640 (4 inches diagonally, 16:9 with 326 ppi)
  • the game’s structure and mechanics should depend entirely upon the schema of all the game’s data
    • so this separates the interface and the card itself, the card will just be a description of a card (“spell” vs “monster” and details and other stuff
  • maybe there can be a screeps-type other part of this game which is how cards are generated in the first place
  • cards should be unique somehow
    • need to find some way to give the feeling of uniqueness to a digital thing
    • tangible shit can be unique cause its the item that is itself
    • to make intangible stuff unique it has to have some permanent shit
  • It should be possible to play casually without putting too much shit into this or you can go 200% pro and get really into it, both playstyles should be plausible Mechanics
  • Trade cards
  • Improve cards or somehow upgrade them before trading

Themes

  • Big on bitmap fonts
  • Tron-esque graphics

Setting

  • What kind of world does this game take place in?
    • Our world, only it’s a simulation and the game hints at it
  • Who are the players?
    • Programmers
    • Scripters
    • Script kiddies
    • “Players”
    • Users
  • What is being traded?
    • Scripts
    • Programs
    • Executables
    • Binaries
    • Bots
    • Daemons (spell cards? lol)

  • Battles (Deadlocks?)

  • there are multiple kinds of battles

  • arcade battles, fought for fun or to bet credits, can only be initiated face-to-face

  • competitive battles which are fought for rank to increase your user id’s rep (should maybe look into some interesting alternative ladder systems for this attribute)

  • idea: a tcg where each card is unique and tradable and transactions are secure and done in person over BT or some shit (maybe some transactions can be done over the internet but BT is preferable because it’s more secure? I dunno)

  • graphics style would be pixel everything with voxel art for the actual monsters maybe they pop out of a pixel picture on the pixel card idk lol

  • this would attempt to solve the problem of having to pay more and more money to get stronger

  • maybe this can be solved with a simplified server less model of gameplay where big revenue isn’t necessary to carry on

More Game Brainstorming

Game Brainstorming

  • Play as a crazy AI within a space ship
  • “I’m afraid I can’t do that”
  • Back to Tinker idea, the space station can be upgradeable and heavily modifiable
  • Leverage things that are only possible in a voxel environment
  • Use Ancient Greek music for inspiration
  • Think whether or not anno mechanics can be worked into tinker
  • First step
  • Write a voxel renderer
  • Maybe too ambit is
  • Start with 2d thing
  • Xcom + RTS with board game elements
  • Escort construction workers etc
  • Squad based game should be first one maybe
  • RTS where speed isn’t the skill you’d want to develop
  • The idea of supply lines and trade sounds like fun
  • In order to make the computer mechanics fun it would make sense to have the components that are available follow the principle of “do exactly one thing very well”
  • so making something complex would involve adding up a bunch of tiny parts, which will look cool

Random Mechanics

  • Instead of tackling a game that includes many computers, start with one that re-imagines a single computer as a creative setting
  • Have (very unintelligent) no AI, so the player has to guide everything until it is automated if they want to get any sort of efficiency out of it
  • Players are in space stations or their player homes on their ship which they heavily decorate and modify
    • For example, you can set up yours with a server room or ammo room based on the sort of capabilities a room has
    • these capabilities can be enhanced by taking that room out of order and upgrading for a little while
    • The players would be able to do everything that is done in OpenComputers and more
  • Screeps alternative
    • limit the number of subroutines that can be installed per unit
    • this naturally leads people to create their own specialized units
    • also it would be cool to be able to use an existing unit as a template (or have a simulation feature like in EVE with ship fittings)
  • mobile game where players try to control more than half the system they are in
    • they try to take over planets and their moons and build structures on each which grant different things (produciton/workers, drones for recon to reveal fog of war in a patrolling pattern, or fleets of fighter ships?)
    • players are encourages to form alliances as the start to be able to continue at a reasonable pace because trade deals will make things easier (if you have some valuable resource)
    • low poly graphics like the peter molyneaux game
  • actually useful enhancements for mid to high income players (in-game income) can make use of (so there are actual benefits to using that shit in game)
  • xcom style game where you play as a bandit leader or a dwarf settlement leader
  • A clicker game involving something medieval (Cyrodiil inn?) or something tech-y like server shit (This is just a theme/skin)
    • I want experimentation to be a major part of the game
    • Also can set automated tasks to occur while you’re away
  • a game where you manage a space station or spaceship and there are many different facilities like in Xcom and you build new ones constantly and have control over their position and function (whether to focus on X or Y or …)

Things I’m Interesting In Doing

  • simulate lights and slowed propogation in liquids
  • a graph simulation where the nodes bounce around
  • doing that effect where squares come in from all sides to build a 5x5 square (like in space plan)
  • simulating planetary gravitational
  • industrial shit with pipes
  • a game about stoned astronauts called spaced out
  • I think the key is to find some kind of fun interaction and then pushing it to the limit in the game so we get all the pleasure of doing the thing and it’s designed to be fun and easy
  • Game where u play as a pizza guy but it has a twist so the drive back to the pizza place isn’t boring anymore (so I mean make use of that fact)
  • Couch coop game where you gotta form an assembly line of some sort with friends and plan shit out for efficiency
  • Wake up in the same reality but slightly different every time
    • Somehow only noticeable after a while?
  • take the premise of wooden bender on an island with other robots and use it as a narrative

Achievements and Badges

  • Let players earn achievements which reward them with badges which pimps out their in game presentation
  • Up to three can be displayed at a time, so the player picks out the badges they’re most proud of to present themselves in game

BIG THOUGHT

  • A game with the cozy feel of dwarf fortress

  • The dwarves are all working together and they can brew ale and at night they do fun stuff and celebrate I dunno

  • It would be fun to make something like that and have it be simulated that would be an incredible project

  • You can do alchemy and brewing and stuff with realistic recipes like that one stick game rpg I heard a podcast about (if we go with the AI thing, rather than brewing we can have 3d printing and molecular synthesis)

  • Pay raise requests are a cool feature

  • Should be about drones or nanobots or some shit

  • As practice remake something like stone hearth with METAL to learn it

  • Factories aren’t a feature in the game but because of the way things are set up and the interactions you have, you can design things that behave as factories or more like a supply chain

  • For example the process of going from metal ores found deep within a mountain range to

  • ^ so at first, you’d be like a little dude who does every single step

  • then you get a helper and now you can do twice the amount of work, or set up an assembly line of sorts

  • maybe the mechanic will be to assign each person to an individual task

  • I don’t know if a game like that exists yet I’ll have to look it up

  • so you select each worker, then assign a task by clicking some shit

  • One narrative could be that you’re an AI that’s sent to colonize the galaxy and the idea is you want to land on a planet, expand and control it

  • Maybe then

  • Even if something has to be done in a way that isn’t physically possible, it still has to make sense to the player and be something that could possibly happen in that universe with the rules we’ve defined

  • The presence of a grid is almost necessary for this kind of game at this point but I want to try to and do this with “vectors” and low poly art

  • If I go with the idea of a game about a king commanding his people (the player is the king lol) then it would be cool to have a feature where some workers could ask for pay raises and you’d execute them lol

  • If I do go with voxels, I can include things like pipes and other stuff that are in popular Minecraft mods to give it that sort of steampunk feel and make use of the tiny pixel size that we can do

  • It can also be like a chunk is 8x8 blocks and a block 8x8 voxels

  • The idea of having it be like a computer AI thing seems like it’ll make more sense because the tech and replication is all there naturally

  • Having there be dwarfs is a nice idea but it might need to be scrapped just for the sake of simplicity

  • This could become a scripting game after all

  • But that would be making it too easy for the player

  • The solutions that the player comes up with should be dependent on the environment they are in and their available resources and tech

  • There should be many ways to do any specific thing

  • The automation should happen less on the scale of open computers and more on the scale of TIS 100 or even better on the scale of human resource machine – individual drones shouldn’t be very capable or smart – they should follow the same paradigms and principles as programming languages and shit like that

  • Is Drone Station a possible name? possibly

Unstructured Ideas

  • A game where you enter peoples’ memories/dreams/hypothetical shower-thought scenarios and, for example, make their most embarrassing moments good ones
  • Freestyle open world coop game where you run a delivery company and meet quotas using a variety of fancy gadgets and vehicles (starting on a skate board, progressing to drones, cannons, etc.)