I broke down three ideas for games I was thinking about when the intellivision Amico was first coming out. Since that does not seem to be happening, I thought I would expand my search for a different platform.  I believe these game ideas have some promise. I honed it down to this basic gameplay.

I’d be curious if any of you:

1) thought these games had any merit

2) knew what my next steps would be to garner interest in it from someone / a company /platform.

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“FRACTAL FIGHTER”

2D Space multiplayer fighter

You control a fractal which is your ever evolving spaceship. As the fractal evolves, it starts showing different ship parts. Pointy parts become laser weapons and stubby parts become ship exhaust. The cool thing is that your ship evolves while you are flying it. The randomness of the fighter evolving will create some “turn-the-tables” types of situations in battles against other players.

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“POD POPPERS”

2D Spaceship fight strategy with hunter/gatherer element

Imagine a vector-like 2D color landscape. Lunar Lander looking backdrop, but surrounded on all sides so that you cannot leave the screen. Your ship would bounce off the walls as you would in Omega Race and off objects (even players) as in Yars Revenge or Sinistar .

Simply put, this is a multiplayer game where small ships fly around a 2D landscape that looks like a cave. Your ship will start out with 10 seeds (fuel of sorts) and you generate 1 seed every 5 seconds within your ship’s core. The players can plant seeds on the playfiled (preferably in a group) where they will multiply outside of the ship. These seeds would need to be protected because any player can gather them up and use them. The more seeds planted, the quicker the generation of new seeds. (imagine seed generation as in the Apple II game Agent USA)

Players may convert the seeds that are in the ship into a a special energy shot to launch at opposing players. They may also consume 1 seed every 2 seconds as a shield to protect themselves. These seeds have to be INSIDE the ship to be used

Killing a player throws their seeds all around the playfiled (Sonic-style like when he dies and loses the rings he has collected). These may be gathered up by any player (even himself if he can get there quickly enough after respawn).

At its core, it’s a strategy game because of resource building and consumption while also being a standard ship shooter.

The game can be made into co-op to where the ships are identified individually by color of ship and team by the same exhaust fumes. One player can be farming and the other one could be fighting

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“LAND BAST IT”

2D Tank game

2-4 people

A bit like battleship, but *not* turn-based and players are out on an open grid.

It also has a capture the flag element to create a second objective.

Players are in bubble-like machines (maybe steampunk rolling marbles?) and they cannot fire projectiles. The way to destroy your opponent’s bubbles are with mines.

Players can travel through one another.

The players plant HIDDEN mines during gameplay. As a player, you would have to watch and remember where the opposing players have been because they may have placed a mine in your path. Your own controller will communicate (remind you) where your mines are through vibrations

You cannot trigger your own mines. A player has different kinds of characters which can withstand damage from 1-3 mines. Each character has a different speed they may move. All of them can plant mines.

The object is to get to the enemy base, grab their flag and bring it home or destroy all of the other team’s bubble-like machines.

Monkey-wrench: Secrets are not secrets forever. If a player makes it to the center of the playfield, the entire map shows where all mines are from all teams. The entire game is in pause mode (nobody can move) while the player in the center decides how long they want to expose all of the mines on the playfield to everyone to see/remember. As soon as they move away, the mines are *not* visible and all players have to go by memory where the mines are. This has an element of that memory game from childhood while also giving an advantage to the team which has less mines.

After an exposed event, players may walk over their own mines and pick any of them up (or just talk smack that they are picking them up.

The ability to take damage depending on his character (Faster character = less armor)

Any thoughts on these game ideas?

Again, I am looking to see if:

1) Anyone thought these games had any merit

2) Anyone knew what my next steps would be to garner interest in it from someone / a company /platform.

Thank you for reading.
-Dino T. Manzella

1) FRACTAL FIGHTER Sounds like a idea with a merit

2) my recommendations to get publishers and developers interested are get a team of developers to help make a game get a lot of the game done decide if your game will need a publisher then find a publisher

Land Bast It has unique gameplay, unfortunately I don't think it's engaging. Not being able to damage opponent directly is a problem, using mines to damage opponent is not effective cause you have to wait for unlucky opponent to step on it. OTOH if say you know your opponent planted mines surrounding their flag, what can you do? wait for the mines to detonate on its own? or rush through them while enduring damage to capture the flag?

“FRACTAL FIGHTER” sounds cool but it really depends on what kind of evolutions player could get and how long it would take to evolve a part. If it takes too long to evolve, you might end up players fighting with basic weapons they'd have from the start. This really need trial n error to get good balance.

“POD POPPERS” sounds good but I think there are some missing details:

1. Where the seeds are when match starts. If 10 seeds are already loaded, players could immediately fly toward opponent and start fight without bother planting any seeds.

2. Can player hurt opponent without seed or not. I assume they can only do it with seed.

3. Other uses of seeds. If seeds could be used to construct, say, turrets, this could give incentive to plant seeds instead of using them for ammo.

4. Player's HP versus energy from seeds. This is linked with #1 above.

Overall, just like Fractal Fighter, it needs trial n error to get good balance of this seeds mechanic.

As for merit, Fractal Fighter has merit if evolved weapon or parts is good enough for fighting.

With Fractal Fighter you might want to make the ship adapt itself during combat. Changing itself to better fight the enemy and protect itself from their attacks and the environment.  Could be simply time based for each encounter or could be reactive.  Make it appear that the ship is learning and adapting (redistributing it's power points).  Might want a way for the pilot to request a previously adapted form (if he knows he's going to fight Slugons rather than Blastons for example).

Evolution would be a more gradual process that increased the ships total power and enabled new adaptions.  Be careful not to end up in a situation where you have to start making rediculus power ups just to win the next fight.