Game project ideas
I was thinking about some of my game project ideas and how practical they really are without an artist. I do have good programming skills and can write a story, but I’m no artist. In addition, I want to evaluate my ideas based on originality, because my motivation to develop a game is greatly diminished if there’s already something out there that’s very similar. Here’s a list of my game project ideas with some assessment of art requirements:
- openwarrior FPS project – almost completely unoriginal, given all of the FPS titles out there right now. I’ve been playing Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, and that game is basically what I would have made if I’d had near infinite resources. Art requirements are quite high because multiple levels must be rendered plus some human characters that need to look good up close. There was never any real story planned.
- Sail 1600s project – fairly original, since I’ve never seen an historical naval combat game from the first person perspective before. Art requirements are fairly high because there need to be large numbers of well-animated NPC crewmembers, plus a set of ship designs. Water & land would be easier in terms of art. I don’t have a story planned; it was a sandbox game sort of idea.
- Space game project – not terribly original with games like X3: The Threat and EVE Online out there, but I think my approach to the genre is a little original. If I stay away from allowing walking around ships/stations or getting too close to a planet, then the art requirements are low — just a few spaceships and some planet textures. Again, there is no plan for a story since I figured it’d be a sort of sandbox for the user.
- Sub simulation – not original 5 years ago, but these days you don’t see any modern sub games on the market. Art requirements are quite low, since really all you need are the 2D interface graphics and a few surface ships. The story would probably be something simple.
- Castles clone – fairly original since I haven’t played any games like this recently. Basically, it’s like the old Castles game but in 3D. You place castle elements from a top-down view and then do battle with invaders. Art requirements are somewhat high but this guy has already done most of the work (it’s expensive, though). The only additional art would be soldiers, but I could probably buy a soldier and do an OK job animating those since they’d be so small on-screen. No story ideas spring to mind.
- Skiing game – original, since I’ve never played a good skiing game. It’d be an open ended skiing game, with the full ski resort at your disposal, and you take lifts to get to the different runs. Art requirements are medium to low; I could probably handle the mountain but for the skier character I’d have to buy something… but animations wouldn’t be too hard. I think this game type specifically prohibits a story.
Unfortunately, most of these ideas have no story behind them. I’d love to write an in-depth story, but those require characters, and characters require extremely prohibitive art, unless I found a way around that.