Game Brainstorm

Welcome back to my blog. In this post, I will be discussing four potential game ideas that I could work on for my final project. As I am not an experienced game developer, I have chosen to go with easier games to develop over complicated games. 

Maze Game

Maze video games are one of the first type of games to be popularised in the gaming ecosystem. One of the most popular videos games that is labelled in the maze genre is Pac-Man, which I'm sure most people reading this will be aware of. Maze games can come in a variety of different styles, such as entering one side and trying to find the exit, or maybe running away from something just like Pac-Man does, as he must clear the maze of all pellets, avoiding the monsters to reach the next level. 

An image of a maze

Source: Flickr

If I was to create a maze type game, I would probably develop a first person game, where you maybe have to find something within the maze and then find the exit. I could even develop on this idea and add some horror into the mix. Having you try to avoid a monster in the maze as well could be a very interesting idea to build on this, as I've seen it been done very successfully in other games, such as "Amnesia". In Amnesia  the player must play the story, solve puzzles, while having to avoid this monster. When the monster comes, the player gets a heads up by hearing him on his way. You then have to hide or he will find and kill you. I feel like this could be some great game mechanics that would work in my maze type game. 

When doing research on the maze genre, I found this post on Fandom, that gave me a great description of what a maze game is, and also had a lot of information on the genre as a whole. This is the link to my information source Link. 

Overall, I like the idea of making a maze based game because it doesn't seem to offer many challenges from what I can see, but could end up being potentially boring as well. 

Horror Game 

I really like the idea of making a horror game as they can be really fun, very creative but also not require an endless amount of mechanics like other games. In my opinion you can develop a good horror game with a great story, startling scares, a run mechanic and maybe an interact mechanic as well. This is an article I read to learn more about different types of horror games, before I started to look into the game I'd like to potentially develop SHACKNEWS.

An image of a the game Amnesia

Source: Flickr

A lot of indie developers have done horror in interesting ways such as "Five Nights at Freddy's", "Amnesia" and "The Forrest". These three games all share the same genre of horror but show its versatility in the way they're all completely different in their own way. Five Nights at Freddy's is a click based game where you monitor cameras and rotate power between things to survive the night. Amnesia is a puzzle story based game, where you try and survive avoiding the monster and then The Forrest is a survival open world, crafting game. These three different horror games show the versatility within the horror genre, which would give me a lot of room to work with If I was to go down this path. 

One idea I had for a horror game was to create a house of horrors. The idea goes that you the player turn up to this large house and must search for something (maybe fuel for your car or maybe a key). Once you're in the house, you discover that it's not quite as normal as you may have thought. A monster is coming after you, there are jump scares and the place has spooks around every corner. I got inspiration for this game from the indie game "Gone Home" and "Amnesia". Both games put you in a position where you are searching for stuff to complete the game. "Gone Home" has the type of environment I would like to create for my game. 

An image of a the game Gone Home 

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Overall, I really like this idea but it could be very challenging to actually create. 

Racing Game

Another very popular genre of game I'm looking into is the racing genre. This is a hugely popular genre of game, which has numerous triple A and indie title releases  every year, such as "Gran Turismo", "F1 Racing", "Mario Cart" and so on. This genre doesn't really interest me as much as others, as I am not personally a big racing game fan, but I've decided to choose it as I can see the potentially easier game ideas I could go with. 

An image of a SuperTuxCart racing 

Source: Wikimedia Commons

When researching into racing games, I can see a common theme of game modes that appear in most. These include general racing which involves racers taking each other on in a race around a track. These usually involve three laps and about 10 different racers. Another game mode that appears to be very popular is time trials. This is where one racer takes to the track on their own, to complete the race track while being timed. This continues with every racer completing the time trial and the fastest racer being the winner. This is the leading game mode of "Dirt", the rally racing game. Here's a link to a Dirt 5 time trial if you want to see what im talking about Link.

My idea for a racing game is that I would design up a track, build a car model and then make the game into a time trial game, where you try to beat your previous time on the track over and over again. If I was to add more difficulty to the game, I could maybe make it where easy mode would have no obstacles on the track but if you were playing on normal or hard, there would be obstacles that you would need to avoid so they don't slow you down. These obstacles could include oil slicks, brick walls or maybe other cars that get in your way.

An image of a Mario Cart  

Source: Flickr

Overall, I really like this idea of making a time trial racing game. It has potential to be fun and I could get very creative with the overall project. 

Puzzle Game

My last game idea is a puzzle game. One of the inspiration I have for this is "The Room" which is a mobile escape room based puzzle game. Here's a link to there website The Room. The idea behind these types of games is that you need to escape the room, and to do so you must solve puzzles. These games do not require much from the player, in the gameplay mechanics side, as you can literally play them on mobile, no remote controller or keyboard needed. I personally haven't played many of these types of games before but from what I have played, the main thing that is required for the game to be good is a nice art style and creative puzzles. From what I know, people don't mind the puzzles being too easy as long as they're creative. The player feels a sense of achievement once they finish a puzzle that really made them think, so that would be the goal for me if I was to try and create game like this. Another thing I would really have to consider is difficulty. The easiest way to scare off a player is to make it nearly impossible, so that is definitely something I would have to look out for. 

An image of Live escape room game  

Source: pixabay

My idea for a puzzle game would be to build a first person, room searching game. The first room would be small in size, with a door with no knob. Your goal would be to search the room for the hidden door knob. Once you've found it you would pick it up and place it on the door. The door would open and you would proceed to the next slightly larger room, where you would do the same. This would be the overall idea, where the rooms would get bigger each time, and maybe instead of looking for a door knob, you would look for a lock combination to open the next door. 

Overall, this is probably my favourite of the four ideas. I feel like it could potentially be achievable and also very fun to design all the puzzles.