Science-based dragon MMO
Someone should take this project on as their first foray into game dev. Bonus points if it’s a middle-aged woman.
I wish there were more Sims like games. I feel that under EA, the games aren’t living up to their full potential, and they could be so much more.
There are a few on the horizon, look into paralives and life by you
Cities: Skylines but ecosystem repair. Plant forests, regrade areas of mountains to mitigate landslide potential, reintroduce species and study their functional relationships with each other… Game progression comes in the form of additional research grants or new area assignments which present new challenges and unlock a new set of tools/procedures, but the successes from previous sites allow for migration of the reintroduced species into the new site.
Terra Nil is like 80% of this.
I’ve only watched gameplay of Terra Nil, but it seems like it’s just an environmentalism themed puzzle game. You could replace all the titles with colors, and all the buildings and what they do with arbitrary rules, and it seems like it wouldn’t look anything like an ecosystem sim. It would be like taking the game Lights Out, changing dark spots to “growth”, light spots to “wastelands” and saying the goal is to balance out the ecosystem.
I didn’t see the late game though, so maybe I didn’t see where it shines.
I was hoping this was the direction Dyson Sphere Program would go. I think it would be an interesting twist on the factory management genre if nature was working against you; not in a Factorio “aliens will attack you if they see your pollution” way, but a “you’re producing pollution, this is creating more in-climate weather that is damaging your factories and changing the landscape dynamically” sort of way. I think this was the natural next step given that the game is already about climbing the Kardashev scale, producing more energy so that you can construct the means to produce exponentially more energy. Seemed like the natural next step would be exploring the balancing act that has to happen to achieve that energy production without also creating systemic issues for yourself that make it infeasible.
Instead their latest patch adds aliens that attack you 😕.
A remaster of the original two Thief games of the quality they did with Dead Space.
I guess this game just doesn’t exist, but remember that tweet of the guy who had a dream about an open world pirate exploration game with Waluigi in it?
That game.
Now I’m just imagining AC Black Flag, but Waluigi just replaces Edward whole cloth, just does all the voicelines and everything, everybody else just pretends he’s a normal guy.
If you go role play as Waluigi in Sea of Thieves, that’s kinda the same thing.
There is/was a fan made version of this in development! I don’t know the status of it currently, and I heard that development was rocky for a while… and they haven’t posted on the blog since 2020. But take a look anyway!
The WoW raiding experience, but without the MMO, and possibly the addition of rogue lite elements (each raid is a run with its own progression, but wiping would be allowed and embraced).
The format of DRG or Gunfire Reborn is pretty close, but 1) I prefer the high fantasy setting of warcraft to the gunplay, 2) I’m not interested in procedural levels, and 3) I want the focus to be on polished boss mechanics.
Dungeon Defenders is also close, but 1) you’re defending instead of delving, and 2) it is also focused on killing waves of trash mobs rather than boss mechanics.
Destiny bosses are sometimes well designed, but 1) don’t care for the gunplay, 2) classes hardly matter, 3) it’s a max of 6 people, and I think closer to 10 is the sweet spot.
Gauntlet from a few years back was probably the closest, but still far from the mark. It could have used more mechanic heavy bosses, more meaningful gear, and a larger party size.
1: An open world exploration game that doesn’t have combat … like Breath of the Wild but without all the fighting and with lots of short stories and puzzles.
Basically I want to be able to go wandering off and uncover ancient ruins etc without having to fight for my life.
2: Snowrunner, but with a good narrative story mode and gearboxes that actually work.
There’s so much potential to have engaging stories in that game, which could be tied into improved game structure (namely restricting truck / tire choice to make some tasks challenging in an interesting way).
Give Outer Wilds a go.
This fits OP’s description perfectly. Great game. It’s on PS+ if you play on Playstation 4 or 5.
Need for Speed: The Run, but good. Give me an uninterrupted race accoss the US (or any other continent), against 199 other drivers, with strategic decisions to make such as fuel stops, sleep breaks, multiple paths… Make it a rogue lite with unlockable vehicle classes, police chases, weather changes, racing through traffic… Bonus points for realistic physics and VR support.
I want a game that’s somewhere between Animal Crossing and Dwarf Fortress - something with the extensive world gen of DF, but with cute goofy animals, and maybe a little less grisly. So less sudden death by wildlife/zombies/collapsing ceilings, and more adorable wagon travel, trade and founding of settlements - which you then get to live in!
Me and my SO had this idea (based on where we live lol) for a game that’s like Animal Crossing where it’s all cute and you build houses and a town for cute animal characters, except they’re all shitty crackheads so like you build a park and the next day there’s shit on the floor and all the streetlights are broken, you have to fish in the river to get old bikes and shopping carts out and so on.
That sounds like a great idea. I’m picture something with the world and artwork of Root, but yeah, gameplay like Dwarf Fortress or Rimworld.
So when you say “less sudden death”, would there still be death? Or would it have the potential as a kid-friendly intro to the simulation genre?
A bard/artist game that really makes use of the creative potential of music/painting. A great example of a “tech demo” of what I’d like is the magic system in Tchia. You got a ukulele that you can play super freely (possibly the most realistic thing if you don’t play it irl), but depending on what notes you play, you unleash different spells (kinda like in the old Zelda games with the ocarina).
I would absolutely love if the creative spell freedom of Magicka (or Fictorum) was combined with the freeform instrument play of Tchia.
Animal Crossing with a super deep friendship system, where you play intricate minigames (like a full tennis sim) and go on adventures together.
I like all those kind of chill “X Simulator” games, but I’d love to see a bunch of them all combined into one mega-game.
So like if there was a game where you could find parts and build a PC like PC Building Simulator, and also build a vehicle like Car Mechanic Simulator, you could cover huge areas like American/European Truck Simulator, grow crops like Farming Simulator, build a shelter like Construction Simulator, keep the place clean like Powerwash simulator and/or House Flipper and so on.
It’d actually be really good for a post-apocalyptic type of game I think, where you could scavenge all that stuff and build a base.
Star citizen
Hopefully our grandkids will play a game like that, or be it in real life by the time it is complete… I’m saying that as someone who backed in 2013 and have about 2k worth of ships.
Eve Offline, with all other players being NPCs.
I have a mental hangup with the very real dread of when hosted multiplayer games die, that all the time and effort I have spent, and all the things I’ve built, will just suddenly disappear. It’s why I run a private G17 Mabinogi server on my pc, rather than playing online.
This what got me into the original .hack on PS2.
Saw this trailer the other day that might interest you, it’s an offline type mmo where all the other players are simulated. Erenshor Offline MMO Trailer
It used to exist, but not so much anymore. I miss heavily community based FPS multiplayer games. With custom servers and so on. I played Counter-Strike: Source last night, what a breath of fresh air!
Same, I played some Day Of Defeat: Source also a while back. I got onto a server, people were talking about random things and seemed to know each other, there was a sense of community, it felt like a local bar.
It’s 3am and I’m chilling and talking with strangers while surfing on CS:S. God, I miss this.
I miss that in newer games. It’s all matchmaking, all competitive and in many ways, modern games like this feels “no fun allowed”.
I really miss these days where games were more than just the game itself.
I also feel that newer games only focus on the competitive aspect.
Pretty much. It’s always competitive. Always on the grind. You can’t just play for fun, no. You have to be at your best every time, because now, there is this skill-based matchmaking algorithm watching your every move in game and so on.
I feel like I’m starting to get old when I say this, but every time I go back to play one of those old games, I get reinforced in this idea… so many games feel like jobs nowadays. It’s just like the real world, it’s all so competitive. No fun allowed. You can’t ever be goofing around, you have your rank to worry about… every shooter now keeps on getting updated, the meta keeps on changing, and you have to keep up with it constantly otherwise you’ll get left behind.
I can’t put it into words exactly, so excuse me if what I’m going to say sounds odd… But I feel like most of the modern entertainment available to me is really stressful and I can’t explain it. To be honest, it’s the first time I’m voicing this feeling, but I find it really distressing…
I think that I fully understand how you feel. It’s pretty much why I stopped playing online games. I want to be able to not think about being good or absolutly winning every single game. Most of the time, I would rather prefer trying out “dumb” stuff in the game or simply having random conversations while having fun.
