Portfolio 8 - Game Ideation

For the upcoming team project, I've worked out a few ideas which might hold water.

Game Idea #1 - Spellcasting Game

My idea for this game is that you play as a witch's apprentice in a world of spirits and monsters to solve puzzles and fight with spells which you cast by drawing them on screen with your mouse. I envision this game taking place in first person in a graphical style reminiscent of Smile for Me by LimboLane, where the game's characters are drawn in a 2d style imposed on a low-poly, 3d world (or, though the styles are more primitive than what I have in mind, reminiscent of early 3d games such as Doom and Wolfenstein).

Smile for Me, image sourced from https://store.steampowered.com/app/1018850/Smile_For_Me/

I have, in fact, a rendering pipeline in mind for this game geared towards making PlayStation 1 styled graphics, which I think would add a fun visual flair. I've used it personal projects before, and it can be found here. As for the core spellcasting mechanic, I believe this might be the component that would be the hardest to get to work, but there are a wide variety of resources for implementing gesture recognition in Unity (many are based on freely available research code). Relating this idea to the provided theme "connected", the player connects strokes to achieve magical effects. The prototype of this game would focus on the spellcasting mechanic, but if time permits, fleshing out the setting and the witch character at the least would make the game more immersive. The target audience of this game would probably be 18-30 year olds who perhaps grew up with the adventure games of the 90s and 2000s. While drawing glyphs to cast spells is not inherently a new idea, I believe its use as the main mechanic in a game that combines both puzzles and combat (perhaps combat encounters that ARE puzzles) in the setting I envision provides an experience unique enough to pursue.

Game Idea #2 - "Worst Contact"

The idea for this game is that you play as the crew of an alien ship who are trying to gather information about Earth so that they can safely make contact with humanity. The core gameplay of this idea revolves around moving your ship around a small setting to try and do things like abduct cows to understand how Earth creatures work and draw crop circles to gauge the reactions of the humans below you, all while trying to stay hidden so you don't blow your cover early and invite hostility, perhaps of the military kind. The style I imagine for this game would be a cartoonish isometric low-poly, such as the styles used in Sizeable and Monument Valley, for instance. The setting would either be broken into small slices, or it would be on an simplified Earth conveniently made into a very small, easy to traverse size.

Sizeable, image sourced from: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1333910/Sizeable/

The one hurdle that immediately comes to mind is if the idea did end up using the "small world" setting, it might take a significant amount of work to get right. Otherwise, getting the individual mechanics to come together would be the hardest part, especially considering writing AI code for human NPCs and the like. In this idea, the theme "connected" relates to how the aliens of the spacecraft are trying to make first contact with humanity, but doing so in a rather roundabout way. The prototype of this game would focus on a few important mechanics, such as NPC AI and stealth elements. The target audience would likely be more casual gamers of all ages- it would be deliberately designed to have wide appeal with its cartoonish environments and lack of serious or mature themes. I believe this would make a successful game for its relatively unique core concept and wide appeal.