Game Brainstorm

In the four game ideas I have pitched below their is inspiration taken from some of my favourite games as a kid. I have not yet worked out he logistics of each game these are just ideas/starting points. I have read through two or three of my classmates blog posts on this same subject to make sure my ideas are original and realistic. 

Game idea one: 

As I mentioned in my "Favourite game" blog post (here) the Mario franchise created my favourite games as a kid and probably to this day. I liked the basic 2D games they made but when when I played Mario galaxy I was mind blown seeing the Mario characters in a 3D world, it was a game changer. Obviously a game in space with huge animated bad guys and lots of different words is a bit too ambitious for a beginner but I really like the basic idea and rules of Mario. The simple concept of controlling where you run, dodging or killing bad guys and picking up coins. I kept this idea in mind when coming up with my first game idea and want to Create a game with this is mind. I would like to have a protagonist in my game based on a strong female character. I would also like a few obstacles/bad guys and a motive/aim/reward.

My main protagonist will be a princess with blonde long hair (I'm basically making a game about myself because why not?). It will be based in history maybe the 8th century with knives and castles. She travels across her kingdom dodging evil little minions collecting Books from an old secret library full of knowledge and spells  along the way making her more powerful. Her aim is to reach a castle to claim the thrown from the king, or something along those lines. I would like to make the game continuous she will constantly run forward but the player will control her direction and be able to make her jump. I imagine this game being played on a pc where you could use a mouse and arrow keys to control the game. This concept is basic but I think it would be fun to create and play. 

Game Idea Two: 

My second game idea I want to draw inspiration from puzzles, when we first started talking about games we like to play and want to make I mentioned some of my favourite games to play on my phone are 1010, sudoko and candy crush but when I read the first document of our Reading Week03 task labelled "What is a game anyway" I realised these are more puzzles than games. The quote read "Costikyan  says they are not games, although they may be contained with in a game". This gave me the inspiration for a game that is fun to play but still has the challenging  and rewarding aspects of a puzzle. My inspiration was draw from Minecraft, a game I used to play when I was younger. My brother was obsessed with it mining and hunting for food and supplies but I just liked to put it in creative mode and build my dream world with the endless supplies. I was also scared of the monsters and the sound effects in survival mode. With this in mind I would like to create a game inspired by the building and creativity of Minecraft and add some puzzle in there. I want to have a simple background works of just grass and sky, the character can be just a regular Joe. To start the player will be given a picture or blueprints to a structure like a house or a tree simple things to start and it will get harder throughout the levels, It will stay somewhere on screen for reference. Then they will be given the materials to make this structure starting on level one with maybe only four or five "building blocks"or shapes like a roof or a window, more will be added throughout the levels. The aim of the game is to pick these up and place them in the right order to create the picture they were given at the start. I like the freedom in Minecraft of picking up and placing the blocks where you want and being able to move around the world, this game idea has a similar style.

Miro board I created to brainstorm

Game idea three:

For my third game idea I thought about our reading week three task "What is a game anyway?" the interviewee in Annakaisa Kultimas paper who said to look around during everyday life. So for this game I drew inspiration from my mother. From a young age when I image imagine my mother I picture her in my back garden gardening. During the spring summer months my Mam thrives because one of her favourite hobbies is gardening. She loves buying planting and potting flowers. She does our back garden up every year, she loves sitting out the back in the morning to drink her coffee. So with all of this in mind I would like to make a gardening game. The aim of the game would be to plant seeds water them and grow flowers to then sell them maybe in a market or the character can own a florist. With the money you make you can then buy different types of seeds the need differentiations levels of care and sell for more money. The controls of the player will be able to control the character/gardeners movements to walk around, place the seeds where they want, pick up the watering can, collect the flowers ext. The players can simply pick things up and place them down. Im not that sure how I would add pressure to the game, the better you do the more money and seeds you can get but I can't think of how their could be a danger or consequence. Maybe the flowers could drown if overwatered or die if they don't get enough water. This idea is very simple and sounds a bit childish  but I think it would be very calm and satisfying to play which I would much rather than a loud violent game.

Game idea four:

I struggled a lot coming up with a fourth game idea. I knew what my first three would be as soon as I saw the task but I couldn't seem to think of a third one. I decided to ask around, I started by looking at a few of my friends blogs to get an idea of what was expected of us, I read Seans and Mellisa's blogs. They both had amazing ideas but the one the got me and almost made me nostalgic was Seans first game idea paragraph where he discussed the Nintendo wii and wii sports. This was a huge thing in my house hold, every Christmas we played the wii and my favourite game was wii sports resort my favourite thing to play was the airplane game where you went through the hoops and flew all around the wii sports resort island. I would like to make a game inspired by this where the player controls a glider or airplane up in the sky. They have to dodge birds, hot air balloons, thunder clouds etc and collect something like coins to buy more parts for their plane and make it better as something to work towards. The plane could purposely go through gusts of wind to get a little boost. Like my other game ideas I feel like this is a bit simple and happy but they are the games I like to play myself and I think they would be fun to design and create.