Game Brainstorm: Four Ideas For Fun Games

After our first unity tutorials it's time to look into creating our very own game. Of course one can't create something without first coming up with ideas, that's where brainstorming comes in. I began by researching the different types of games and that lead me to this page that explained the different types and was very interesting.

While creating my own game sounds exciting I know that it will probably be harder than I think, so I have come up with for ideas for games that I have always found fun and yet may be easier to create than a game like Skyrim.

Image from Pixabay

Puzzle Game

Puzzle games have been around for years and the reason that they survive the test of time is because they're fun, simple and effective. The goal of most puzzle games is to make the players mind occupies itself with finding solutions to sometimes complex puzzles. However a puzzle doesn't have to be complex to be fun. 

There are many different types of puzzles, mechanical puzzles such as jigsaw puzzles or rubiks cubes, logic puzzles like sudoku or grid puzzles, and that's just to name a few. I found that this website explained all the different types of puzzles very well.  I would like to possibly create a puzzle game that starts off quite simple and works its way up to more complicated puzzles. 

The goal of the game would be to either escape somewhere, like an escape room game, to solve puzzles to collect clues or to solve puzzles to gain points. Like most puzzle games I would like to add a hint system so that the player never gets really stuck because the frustration of being stuck might lead them to not completing the game.

The drawback of such a game would be thinking up enough creative solutions to the puzzles especially for puzzles that I am not particularly good at, for instance sudoku.

Image from Flickr

Fighting Game

Fighting games are very popular in recent years in one form or another, Super Smash Bros, Mortal Kombat and plenty more games like them have the same simple and fun mechanic that everyone seems to enjoy. You pick a character form a menu of different customisable characters and then beat up an opponent or they beat up you. Playing with friends adds an extra layer of fun.

I would like to create a similar game, however the player would not face off against one other opponent, the player instead would face off against creatures. The character would start off with a flimsy weapon and slay monsters and other beast to gain coins they can then use to upgrade their weapon to face off against harder enemies.

Keeping the game interesting may be hard especially with how repetitive beating the same enemies over and over again can get, so coming up with a simple story for why the player must defeat these enemies could help with holding interest. The Legend of Zelda games or good example of what I'm talking about though they do have a lot more in the games than just defeating enemies. 

A simple story would be that your character lives in a land that is overrun with creatures that do harm to others and you are part of a group of people who fight back against these enemies so that the people of this land don't have to suffer anymore. This article that I found online goes more in depth into why people like fighting games and what makes a good fighting game.

Image from Flickr

Endless Running Game

Endless running games are all over the app stores of every phone, for example the popular temple run game, they're all quite similar in so far as you play as a character who is moving in a straight line usually away from something, avoiding obstacles and gaining points and sometimes brief power-ups.

The big difference in these games is the design. Each one of these games has its own story, characters, obstacles and power-ups. Some of them are simple 2D with few power-ups and obstacles and some are more complex with lots of animation and characters, both of them are equally as fun. These types of games, while simple, are effective in keeping people entertained.

For my game I would like to make it 2D and a side scroller with a simple character design and obstacles. I found good video tutorial on this type of game on youtube. I could use the skills I learned in illustrator to create my own simple designs for my character. In my game as you ran you would collect gems or coins in order to gain the most points.

Image from Wikipedia Commons

Platform Game

Platform games are similar to running games as there are tons of them out there and that there are ones with both simple and complex designs. However platform games are not endless.

These games tend to have levels with different layouts to each one and it is all about the jumping mechanic, unless the character is given a helping hand in the form of a rope or a boost then it is the players challenge to judge the jump just right so as to get their character to the next platform without the character falling. Many platforms also have enemies or obstacles in them that are there to make it more difficult for the player to complete a level.

Some platform games also double as rhythm games, for example geometry dash, where the player needs to jump to the beat of a song to complete the level.

My idea for a platform game would be a simple vertical platformer with the character jumping upwards from platform to platform. The theme would be space with the character jumping form star to star and sometimes catching a shooting star to move up more platforms. Possible enemy ideas could be aliens that attempt to knock the character off the platforms.