Sunday, September 15, 2013

Game idea #3

Aquarium Tycoon

My third idea comes from my personal hobby: Aquariums. This game will be sort of like the good old tycoon games where the player is in control of the whole map in the game. Examples are Rollercoaster Tycoon, Zoo Tycoon, Sim City and so on.

The Story

The storyline of this game concerns a newbie hobby aquarium enthusiast. It's up to the player to decide what he wants to achieve in the hobby. He could think big and go for the aquarium empire, opening a public aquarium for everyone to watch or he could just keep it small in a little aquarium of his own. The player is free to develop his aquarium as he wishes to. But an aquarium can only be upgraded if enough experience has been achieved.

The Gameplay

The player will start out with a medium sized aquarium. He gets to choose what kind of aquarium (fresh (easy mode) / salt (hard mode)) it should be and decides which livestock and the 'aquascape' to have in it. While the aquarium is running he has to check if the water conditions are right (PH values for freshwater and a long range of values for saltwater), while remembering to feed the fish and corals (if saltwater). Eventually problems may occur in the aquariums and he has to solve these problems.
Buying livestock and new aquariums comes with experience in the hobby. As the aquarium probably gets bigger, more rare livestock can be added and healthy aquariums gain both prestige and experience in the hobby which can be spend on new cool stuff. It is important that the game is as close to real life aquariums as possible - This is the real challenge of the game.
'Fish Tycoon' with poor graphics

The Technology

Since everything concerns aquariums, the graphics of the game plays a vital role in the user-experience. Therefore the graphics has to be impressive. This is doable in HTML5 which has shown impressive graphics before. While searching for games like this i found that there is actually several small games with somewhat the same concept, but the graphics suck and makes the games unattractive. To the right you can see an example of 'Fish Tycoon' which has very poor graphics (build up on images) and the gameplay itself is not at all like the one i wanted to develop.

Game Idea #2

With inspiration from already existing games where you have to use your knowledge of geography and history, this idea consists of a mobile app that tests and improves the users' skills in especially geography and history while letting them interact and get social with each other. I am not sure of what to call this game yet, as there are many challenging games of the same sort out there.


The Story

The game has no real story to follow. This means that the game doesn't have a starting point or an ending point. Instead it consists of a large amount of tasks for the user to solve and while solving the tasks the users get more and more points. The points are used to show how good or how active a user is in the game and lets all users compare their scores to each other.


The Gameplay

The gameplay itself is not very complicated. The user creates an account (Or logs in via Facebook) and is able to play the game. The game consists of tasks for the user to solve. First the user is asked to go to a specific location as shown on a picture. This could for instance be Mt. 'Fuji' in Japan. The user then has to navigate, on a map, to the location where he or she thinks the picture has been taken. Depending on how close the user is to the right location, points are given.
No matter if the user is close or far away from the right location, he/she will be shown where in the world it is and will be prompted with up to 5 questions about the specific location. The harder the questions are the more points are rewarded. If a player has trouble answering a question, hints can be given for a points cost OR in-game friends may be contacted, also for a smaller points cost.
The user can exit the game at any time and the points score will be saved.


Technology

This game does not require special technology for graphics or anything. In fact it could be made easily within Objective C for a nice Iphone application. The game could also be made in javascript or HTML5 as we are supposed to work with in the course.

Game Idea #1

When i signed up for the class game programming, i did not do it because i had an idea of a game i wanted to develop, but because i wanted to experience game development in case i got an idea in the future.
But anyway, i have tried to come up with an idea of a game and since we're on Hawai'i i have been very inspired by this place and its locals. A possible title for the game could be:

"Hang Loose"

I have always thought that RPG's or games where you follow the same character throughout the story and watch it develop are awesome. With this in mind i wanted to create a game where the player had to customize his/her own character in the beginning of the game. After customizing the character, the player is bound to this character for the rest of the game, unless he decides to delete it.

The Story

The storyline of the game is about a young local Hawaiian (The character) who has just been given his first Surfboard for his/her birthday. The character dreams of becoming a true Surfboard Legend by competing in the world championships at the legendary 'Pipeline' on Oahu's famous North Shore. 
But as the character has never surfed real waves before, he has to train his surfing skill and the different styles, learn important tips from the pros, make friends in the environment, customize new and better surfboards and most importantly he has to win surfing competitions for cash prizes to make it all happen. 

The Gameplay

There will be different types of gameplay in this game. When walking around in the towns and interacting with NPC's the gameplay will be like most other RPG's where you freely control the character walking around and interacting. What could be really nice would be to have the gameplay be like in Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, where every single action and interaction made by the player has consequences for the story. 
The customization of surfboards and the character brings up windows where the player can customize what can be customized. 
When training and competing in the water there is a whole other gameplay where the player has to learn how to ride the waves and avoid rocks, wave-breaks and more, while surfing as smooth as possible.

The Technology

As the game story takes place in Hawaii, the full game experience will be very poor if the graphics suck, so the demands on graphics for this game is high. Using somewhat the same technology as Bethesda did for developing Skyrim is impossible because they created their own engine, but that's what i'll have to do then! 
 Each mini-game within the game (A surfing competition for instance) does not run the RPG gameplay thing and the technology is therefore a bit different, but still with high demands on graphics. This could most likely be made in HTML5 for a quite nice result. I just don't know how to do it yet :)