How would you design your perfect video game?
I already did.I get around six pretty good game ideas a year purely by accident. I could probably come up with one a week if I was trying to do it, but the problem with ideas is that they’re only words.I brainstorm each idea in a text file, and try to take it as far as I can, filling in all the gaps for gameplay, art, progression, sound, and story (if applicable), or until my imagination runs out. Then I put it the vault with all the other ideas and don’t think about it again for a while.When it’s time to pick a new game project to work on, I open the vault and start narrowing it down. Brainstormed ideas get fleshed out more, and the best ones get turned into actual game design documents. Most of those still don’t get worked on, though.Why? Because even though I have two or three designs in there that could become really incredible big-budget, triple-A games, I’d have to be a lead designer at a big company like Bethesda, Rockstar, or WB to pull them off. I’ve got to pick an idea that’s realistic for a team of one or two people, or seriously water one of the big ideas down.My perfect game? These usually end up being exploration-leaning, quest-oriented playgrounds with sci-fi themes, procedurally-generated elements, myriad branching storylines, emergent gameplay, upgrade-able characters, modify-able weapons and vehicles, and an unusually high level of user-customization, environmental interactivity, and creative assembly.So I suppose it would be a futuristic open-world action-adventure-rpg-shooter-survival-builder.This is why I haven’t tried to make it. At least, not lately.
What game(s) do you actually enjoy despite mostly negative Steam reviews?
Tharsis has a mixed rating at Steam, usually that means the game is awful and should be avoided. However, I really enjoy Tharsis.In Tharsis you are a team of astronauts on a mission to Mars. Things go bad and you have to survive for 10 more weeks in order to reach mars.Tharsis is like yahtzee with a theme in that you are throwing dice to resolve room events.Tharis on normal setting is really hard, I only managed to finish it once when demonstrating to a friend what an unforgiving game Tharsis is. Ironically I breezed through the 10 weeks without any real problems and got the good ending. Luckily there’s an easy level when you just want to feel the satisfication of getting the team to Mars.I like Tharsis because I like the how dice throwing works in Yahtzee so if you add a Sci-Fi to Yahtzee it obviously must be good right? I also really like the atmosphere created in Tharis using the soundtrack, voice acting and simple cut-scenes.The developer teased us with that there might be a boardgame based on Tharsis, which shouldn’t be that hard as Tharis the computer game plays like a boardgame anyway. Personally I am salivating at the thought of owning Tharsis in cardboard.If you try Tharis you probably hate it like most gamers but some of you might be like me and really enjoy it.