Topic: Game Ideas

I was thinking of a 3rd Person Shooter Bullet Hell ARPG as a game idea.

Story:
When the World of Wynstalt was born, it was lifeless and empty, only being inhabited by the war-like gods that fought until the last one was standing. This battle ended with the victorious Goddess, Alciex, when she discovered how to rip space, causing a dimensional hole to form. The dimensional holes would be the ultimate weapons that would kill off the other gods as they would be sucked inside into black nothingness, but by the time she has become the last god, she realized that she was weakening. Alciex learns that the dimensional holes were also emitting a strange energy that would corrupt this realm by twisting reality and defying the laws of nature. Since her well-being was tied to the stability of this dimension, she sealed off the holes, but was left heavily crippled with most of her divine powers being lost. However, the energy that was now flowing within this realm has condensed and made souls, finally giving life to Wynstalt.

Wynstalt's most advanced creatures that were born out of the souls were humans, who resembled the gods in both appearance and intelligence. Curious humans eventually went climbing up a mountain and found the Goddess resting there. She told the humans everything about what happened and they believed her, congratulating Alciex for being the last one standing. The humans would soon migrate to the mountain to protect the Goddess and deem her the ruler of Wynstalt, eventually leading them to build the mountain city, Helirus. Alciex was very pleased with the loyalty of the humans until the Advent of Magic came.

A group of scientists have discovered how to manipulate the dimensional hole's energy to do various purposes that would improve and revolutionize society. They called this energy "Magic" and formed the Occult Organization, studying new ways to use magic and make new tools like wands and staves. The use of magic was met with extreme disgust by Alciex as she fears that humanity could get carried away with "bending the rules" and banned the use of Magic and disbanded the Occult. This has caused mass uproar and protest from the humans and they rose up to the Goddess. Thus started the war known as the Battle of Magic, where it abruptly ended when the Goddess was accidentally shot multiple times from magic bullets and died. Her death caused many humans to feel guilt and devastation over the loss of their goddess, but relief soon hushed their sadness away. In an attempt to keep their reputation from being ruined, the Occult has managed to preserve Alciex's heart before it could wither away with magic, claiming that this would keep her "alive". It was an extreme stretch, but the humans believed them and rejoiced over the fact that they believe that their goddess is "not dead".

120 years after the Battle of magic, a new Occult Leader by the name of Felix Dranthem strived to add more magic into this dimension by extracting magic from another dimension without creating a dimensional hole. He was soon successful with his research and many people had began to mine for magic near the places where Alciex originally created the dimensional holes as they were the easiest to farm magic. However, bringing in more magic meant that the dimension became more and more unstable as reality started to warp and so much magic had been added into this realm that a phenomenon formed within the space-time continuum. That phenomenon would soon manifest itself into the physical realm and be known as The Eldritch. The Eldritch desired to bring Wynstalt into chaos and oblivion by creating a dimensional hole so big that it would suck up everything in the universe, only leaving magic behind for it to create a new world. However, it needed to become a god in order to rip the dimension, so it tried to look for the heart of Alciex. Everywhere it went, it was emitting corrupted magic, which would enter empty bodies and revive the dead, but transforming them into hideous and horribly mutilated demons known as Eldritch Abominations. More of them were appeared the more people died.

The Occult has decided to create a new god that would have enough power to fight against the Eldritch, so they used Alciex's heart and a fragment of a hero's soul to create Xarpys, the God of Magic. However, they died from the Eldritch Abomination epidemic, leaving Xarpys incomplete. Soon, Xarpys would open his eyes for the first time, going out to defeat the Eldritch and his abominations before they extract Alciex's heart from him.

So yeah, how did you like the overall story? The plot progression will be non-linear as you can access interconnected areas with their own lore, similar to Dark Souls. Now let's move onto mechanics:

Mechanics:
In this game, you can only shoot in this game and you cannot use physical attacks. The gunfire is done with the L2 button. The bullet count is also very small compared to other shooters as wands have 20 magic bullets within them. However, regular enemies usually die in 4-5 hits, so do not worry about constantly reloading. When enemies attack, they shoot out slow-moving magic bullets towards you which you can dodge by moving around the analog stick, much like a bullet hell. There is no level up system in this game, but you can upgrade your equipment at the cost of Corrupted Magic Souls that is uncommonly dropped by enemies. For example, upgrading the Rusted Prototype weapon costs 3 Corrupted Magic Souls, until you have upgraded it 5 times

You are quite quick and nimble as you can dodge attacks easily, coupled with the fact that you can teleport in any direction in case you are in a tight situation. Teleportation leaves you immobile for a millisecond, so try to use this sparingly. However, the more bullets you shoot out of your wand or staff, the slower your movement speed gets and the longer the immobility lasts after you teleport. Using up too many bullets punishes you and makes dodging attacks much harder, but you can restore your dodge cooldown and movement speed by pressing L3 to reload all your bullets. Keep in mind that reloading also makes you immobile and it lasts a bit longer than the dodge cooldown, so find the time to do so.

Spells are mainly there to just simply augment your attacks like the Widen Spell making your bullets stretch into a wave, allowing you to hit more enemies. Each weapon can hold up to 4 spells, which can be used with the D-pad.

As for aiming, this game will not have lock-on or any sort of aim-assist. That is because the reticle is pretty huge and your bullets are large as well, making it easier to hit enemies and lessen the need to have those mechanics. You can enter first person mode by pressing the select button, but this is mainly for shooting better at a distance. The camera, I am pretty skeptical. Since this is a bullet hell game, you need to be able to see how many bullets are on screen. But then, I saw this game that mastered a 3d bullet hell:

So yeah, like in the video, you have to constantly turn your camera around and around to see the bullets coming after you, and since they are slow moving, it gives you enough time to react and move out of the way. The enemies however, will stop shooting once in a while to reload their weapons. This will give you a chance to either reload too, shoot, or use an item. Hardcore players may shoot down multiple enemies at once without having to reload constantly. By the way, you can reload infinitely.

So, how does this sound?

@MagicGunner Do you work for Square Enix?

Okay my game;

John works for the post office....

One day he notices one of the letters he has to deliver is an empty address at the end of his usual delivery route. It's been boarded up for years.

Following rules he does not deliver the letter and goes back to the post office and Googles the address only to find it actually was the site of his great aunt Hildas death.

What follows is a walking simulator were you deliver letters and piece together clues by asking residents of the streets what's going on. It's also a life simulator as you juggle your family life (you have 2 girlfriends, an unplanned kid to a neighbour, crippling debt and a dodgy back) with your hobbies (you are a radio controlled boat entbusiast) and friends (Colin is boring, Douglas is hyperactive and Hubert is posh)

At the end of the game you find out your aunt Hilda never died and you are actually dating your own cousin and Colin is her brother.

There's a very thorough idea @MagicGunner! Thanks for sharing.

I've been toying with this idea of a photography game for a while now. It would be a little bit like AFRIKA on the PS3, I guess. There'd be large Hitman-esque sandbox levels in a variety of different places. You'd be given objectives from clients to take a particular kind of photograph. And you'd have to explore the sandbox to try and get that snap.

Sometimes you'd have to interact with the game world in order to trigger certain events. You may need to take a picture of someone falling over, for example, so you might remove a "slippy floor" warning sign and then wait for your subject to slip in order to get the snap.

You'd have different cameras and lenses to use, while the photography aspect would be a simulation so you can set shutter speed, ISO, and stuff like that.

In addition to the campaign where you complete objectives and take on assignments, there'd also be a sandbox mode where you're just free to explore the environments and take photos of whatever you please.

@get2sammyb

@Octane Kinda, yeah! Not on-rails, though, with more simulation aspects.

@get2sammyb great game idea, I would play that for sure. It just goes to show the fixation of the general gaming industry on weapons, violence and death is why many view console gaming as a juvenile distraction and holds the industry back from mass acceptance. I would rather play Sammy Barkers Daily Star Celebrity Paparazzi Sim than the next boring shooter.

@get2sammyb I guess those types of games don't really sell, then again, it is a tough sell when games like Horizon come with an awesome photo mode included!

@themcnoisy @Octane I think the reason it would never be commercially viable is because it would be — as you say — very niche, yet it would require an enormous budget. If you're photographing things then you're going to want environments worth photographing, and it would cost a lot of money to make totally unique sandbox levels that are pretty enough to be photographed.

I think it's a nice idea, though.

I've always wanted to give Afrika a try actually.

Thanks for your replies on this topic. But I would also add that the music within the areas while you are not fighting in battles is "epic chillstep" (That's a genre of music). Since the setting of this game is inspired off of Alice in Wonderland in the 19th century, the music will add an anachronistic, bizarre, and out of place tone during the progression in the game:

Anyway, I do not work for Square Enix. I am not even old yet to join a video game company now. When I graduate college, I would possibly join Square, but I am leaning towards Atlus.

@MagicGunner This music is ace, man!

@get2sammyb Thanks.

So would you think the 3rd person bullet hell RPG idea would work? I am thinking of making this as a game in the future.

Welp, now I am thinking of PC for this game idea, since kbm is best for shooters.