Challenge 10: The Frankengame

This challenge is inspired by a comment made by a game designer I know.
I forgot where he originally posted the idea, otherwise I'd link to it.

Anyway, your challenge is this:
Design a game out of the left over bits you didn't use in other games you made.

As the submissions here are largely thought experiments and not final games that could actually utilize unused art assets, I will modify what I'm asking for a little bit:

Design a game out of game mechanics you devised, but which were ultimately cut from the final design, in at least 2 different games you've worked on in the past.

(But hey, if you want to actually go out and do a digital game using old unused art assets that's fine too!)

Challenge 9 - First (and only) Strike

I realize this is really, really, REALLY late, but here goes nothing.

This game puts William "BJ" Blazkowitz from Wolfenstein into Duck Hunt. Yes, you heard me. Chain guns in Duck Hunt. Kill ducks to earn points. You can shoot the dog if you want to, but only if you want to piss of Mecha Hitler.

Okay I think that about covers it.

Challenge 9: The Classic Game Character Swap

Note: Decided the office-crab challenge was so fun I had officially made it last week's challenge. Congrats to Dan for actually winning the prize! This challenge has been bumped up to be for this week now. :)

Last challenge went so awesomely, we're going to continue mixing things up.

This next challenge is a bit more... out there:

Rom Check Fail is an interesting little indie game you should go check out right now. Basically, the game mixes together classic video games-- one second you might be the ship from Asteroids, flying around in the Pac-man maze, shooting at Goombas from Super Mario Bros, and suddenly the game flips again and now you're Link, trying to battle the space invaders in the Mushroom kingdom.

The game keeps taking various game characters and their associated mechanics and putting them into different contexts.


So, your challenge this week is to create another similar pairing not already in Rom Check Fail-- in other words put the player character from classic game A into classic game B.

What would Super Mario Bros. be like if the Bionic Commando had to rescue the princess instead, with his lack of jumping ability but his special grappling hook arm? What if the square from Adventure had to defeat the Sinistar? (I'd imagine he'd be pretty screwed, is what... )

Unlike Rom Check Fail which pairs mechanics randomly, you are actively designing a pairing-- challenge yourselves to make a combination that's fun, and maybe even better than the original mechanics.

Challenge 8.5 -- The surprise office-crab challenge! Brian's Turn

I couldn't help but try this one myself...

To recap from Dan:

@deliciousbees of Harmonix posted this challenge recently on Twitter:

"My stress-induced insomnia is your gain. Best game pitch involving Opilio crabs in an office situation gets a RB Country Track Pack code."



Alright! My submission is an RTS called Inter-Cubicle Crab Apocalypse.
Each player playing starts with a human avatar and a cubicle in a cubicle-farm style office space, and a handful of crabs. The player's human avatar is much like the King in Chess-- a player loses when his human self is killed, and although it can be selected and moved like any other unit... it's best to keep him hidden away and walled up behind a line of defenses.

It turns out your defenses mainly consist of an army of Opilio crabs.
Things you can command your crabs do to are attack NPC humans 'creeps' to clear them out of their cubicles so you can claim them (the now empty cubicle) as your own, patrol areas or defend key units (a human avatar, traps, etc.), set up crab nests in empty cubicles to spawn more crabs, etc.

Crabs may also raid cubicles and supply closets for office equipment which can be used to equip crabs with various items like tape, scissors, staplers, etc. Many of these office supplies can be used as weapons --a scissors wielding crab can do more damage than a crab with no weapons-- but many of the items also allow crabs to build certain traps or defenses-- tape-wielding crabs can string reams of tape between cubicles to make a sticky web-like barrier that enemy crabs will get caught in. Scissor-weilding crabs are of course equipped with the tool that can defeat the tape webs, etc.

Crabs may also man certain large 'traps' found around the office-- dispensing coffee from the coffee machine as a sort of boiling-oil to burn crabs traveling below... dispensing water from the water-cooler to create a slippery spill... dispensing cans of soda from the soda machine that roll through the office causing damage as it runs over crabs. (Cans could then also be damaged to turn into a second type of explosive, fizzing, spraying weapon of carnage, and can be moved into strategic positions to use this as a trap-- set up some soda cans as a kind of explosive barrels to be hit with projectiles to explode when enemy crabs are near.)

Groups of crabs can also be used to do more complicated tasks:
-Infesting an empty cubicle with a crab-nest, and maintain the nest (some crabs have to stick around makin' crab babies...)
-Moving office furniture or large appliances (desks, photocopiers) around to use as barriers.
-Disassemble empty cubicles to use their walls as barricades or to expand your main cubicle-fort.
-Moving the large traps around to more strategic locations. (i.e. mount coffee machine traps on your fort so any crabs attempting to enter get scalded, etc.)
-Three crabs can equip a rubber band to form a catapault-- any equipment the loader crab is given is loaded into the rubber band and fired as a long distance projectile.
(Crabs can also be asked to load themselves into the rubber-band catapault as a means of troop transport!)

soda cans fired from the rubber-band-catapault would be like explosive mortar shells, etc.

This game would probably be a beast to balance, but sounds hilarious and could be a hell of a lot of fun.

Hmm... thinking about it, I think there's crabs in WarCraft3-- I could totally make this into an actual playable mod! Would take some heavy scripting work though, but meh.

Challenge 8.5

Before going onto challenge 9, @deliciousbees of Harmonix posted this on Twitter this evening:

My stress-induced insomnia is your gain. Best game pitch involving Opilio crabs in an office situation gets a RB Country Track Pack code.

The idea behind this game is it The Office meets The Deadliest Catch. You play the manager of an Snow Crab Tech Support Center, and it is your job to make sure that the employees at the company do not wander aimlessly into crab traps and to make sure that they are doing the best job they can. The game plays kind of like an isometric fusion of Lemmings, World of Goo, and The Sims.

Each level is a different floor of the Snow Crab Tech Support Center, and the layouts get more complicated as the game goes on. The goal of each level is to get the crabs to their cubicles safely by giving crabs tasks in the office. For example, there are two kinds of security guards: turning and deflective. Turning guards make crabs turn 90 degrees and keep moving. Deflective guards make crabs turn 180 degrees and go back the way they came. Then there are also Trap Destroyers. These crabs go kamikaze on the crab traps so the other crabs can get past them. Finally, when the crabs get to their desks, they can be set to Work, Eat, or Sleep, each of which adds to one game-metric and subtracts from two. Work increases your money, while decreases your Comfort and Alertness. Eat increases your comfort, while slowing down your money intake and decreasing your Alertness. Sleep increases your Alertness while slowing down your money intake and and Comfort.

Each level has different goals to be completed on different playthroughs, ala Mario 64/Sunshine/Galaxy. For example, a level's goals may be "Make $15,000" or "Maintain 100% Comfort for 3 Minutes" or "Avoid All Fishermen," which would be traps and hooks that are thrown down to the game-space during the level which the player must avoid. The player receives a different colored Crab Medal for the number of completed goals: Bronze Crab for 1, Silver Crab for 2, and Golden Crab for 3.

Between levels, players spend their earned money on hiring employee types between levels. Unlike Lemmings which have a set number of umbrellas, bombers, miners etc. per level, here it is up to the player to determine what they need and which playstyle fits them best. General workers do not need to be purchased, but Security, Bombers, and any other special job types do. These basically equate to your inventory.

The main multiplayer mode I can think of would involve one player dropping traps, nets, fishing lines, and all sorts of other crab-catching paraphenalia on another player who is trying to avoid them and get the crabs out of the maze. Whichever player has the most crabs at the end wins.

So while players are mainly concerned with completing the level's objectives, they must also watch out for traps sent by the enemy AI/other players. If the overall alertness of the crabs is low, they react slower to your clicks to make them move. If they are hungry, they move slower. If they are hungry and tired, they're just overall sluggish. But keep them happy, healthy crabs and they're lightning fast.

Challenge 8 - Second Assault

Zombie Karaoke Uncensored

For 1-2 Players

Platforms: XBox 360, Wii, Ps2, PS3

In Zombie Karaoke Uncensored, players design their zombie slaying/American Idol-esque badass and take to the stage to clear the audience of the zombie horde - that is, to say, everybody - by belting their hearts out and blasting their shotguns.

The game comes packed with a microphone and microphone stand, as the use of a controller is also necessary. While singing, the game plays similarly to Rock Band or Karaoke Revolution. The words scroll across the screen from right to left, as well as a line representing the pitch, and an arrow showing how your singing matches up to the song. There is also a thin vertical line near the left side of the screen which indicates where to sing a certain word or syllable.

As you sing, you gain damage multipliers for your attacks. Normally, you have a 1x multiplier, which means regular zombies need 4 hits to kill. That can be brought up to a 4x multiplier, which means regular zombies can be killed in 1 shot. The longer you sing consistantly, the fuller your Will-To-Live meter goes. If you get it full, your current multiplier is immediately multiplied by 4, so you can have up to a 16x multiplier, which causes major damage and, depending on your character, earns you different abilities. For example, a character can get Napalm Bullets which eat through zombies in a line, or Nitrogen Bullets which slow zombies down, faster fire and reload, etc. Players select their perk when they make their character, and unlock more perks as the game goes on.

Attacks are performed in two ways. One is while you are singing, which is done in a quick-time event fashion. A directional arrow and a trigger icon appears in an icon under a word, and if you hit that button combination when the word is sung, your character shoots a zombie with power equal to your current multiplier. On the Wii, the triggers display B or Z instead. The movement part is done by aiming the Wii remote in the indicated direction. The player does not have to aim the direction at the same time as they shoot. They can aim beforehand. If they do shoot before the word hits, though, their gun jams.

During instrumental sections of a song, the camera shifts to a behind-the-shoulder view, and the player must drag the cursor over approaching zombies, which the player's avatar then shoots on-beat, ala REZ. Depending on the player's weapon, they may be able to shoot many zombies or only a few per beat during this part. For example, automatics can hit many zombies at once, while the shotgun can only hit about one per beat. The more zombies shot during this part, the higher the player's multiplier goes, and kills can be racked up fairly quickly regardless of weapon.

There are also several boss battles which eliminate the fighting system in exchange for a regular scoring system. The player must reach a certain score in order to beat the boss. The boss is a smarter zombie that has retained the ability to sing. The winner kills the other.

The game has several modes of play. The mode described above is the basic Single and Multiplayer (called Face-Off). There is also Singing Shooter mode, where your character's shots are dependent solely on your singing capability. The better you sing, the more they shoot. Multipliers are added up the same way.

"Infected" Mode is an unlockable easter egg where you play as zombies. The fighting mechanics are eliminated for regular scoring, but the words in the songs are replaced with various moans and groans, and any word that rhymes with the word "brains" is replaced with such.

Single-player and Face-Off multiplayer is where everything is unlocked. You can unlock everything from outfits to dress up your character, to weapons which do more damage from the start or can hit multiple enemies, such as the Shotgun which does 3 damage instead of 1, and the Rocket Launcher which causes splash damage to other surrounding zombies.

As the game progresses, new kinds of zombies start appearing. The zombies at the start of the game are just the regular stumblers, but soon running zombies start appearing, as well as exploding zombies, zombies with guns, healer zombies that if left alive continuously heal any zombies you shoot, and necromancer zombies which can raise zombie attack dogs.

And now for the hopeful tracklist, in no particular order:

• Jonathan Coulton - Re: Your Brains
• B52's - Love Shack
• The Darkness - I Believe In a Thing Called Love
• The Cranberries - Zombie
• Rob Zombie - Living Dead Girl
• Michael Jackson - Thriller
• BJ Thomas - Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head
• Bobby Picket - Monster Mash
• Blue Oyster Cult - Don't Fear the Reaper
• Tom Petty - Zombie Zoo
• REM - It's The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
• Journey - Don't Stop Believin'
• Morris Day and the Time - Jungle Love
• Spinal Tap - Stonehenge
• Tokyo Police Club - Graves
• The Bee Gees - Stayin' Alive
• Our Lady Peace - Superman's Dead
• The Presidents of the United States - Lump
• GWAR - Sexecutioner
• Verix - Drop the Dodongo

Feel free to comment with suggestions for more songs.

Zombie Karaoke Uncensored, coming soon to an uninfected console near you.

Challenge 8: Brian's Turn

Just for fun, I'll tackle the remaining three the other guys didn't take!

Romantic Sudoku Onslaught:

Okay, what I picture for this is a DS game where the gameplay is a series of sudoku puzzles (big surprise) but all strung together with a narrative told in comic-like panel-based cutscenes. The story is about a young man trying to woo a sudoku-loving gal. The sudoku puzzles and how/why you interact with them would progress and change based on the situation in the story. Early puzzles would just be done straight as the man tries to impress her with his sudoku skills. Then he'd try doing sudoku with the girl, and it could be a race to see who can complete their puzzle first-- the player or the AI controlled girl. Then, finding her still unimpressed, the man decides to quest to the secret Temple of Sudoku in an Indiana Jones kind of parody. Can he solve the sudoku puzzles of the temple to unlock the secret rooms and avoid the deathtraps so he can return and win the girl over with the gift of the rarest of artifacts: the Holy Sudoku Tablet of Ra?

Heavy Office Competition:

I have two ideas for this one...

1.) There was an episode of the Office where they did office Olympics-- a bunch of simple sport-like games that can be played around the office, like tossing crumpled paper into a wastebin. Basically, that's what I'm envisioning for this game, only in video-game form. It'd be a multi-player party game for the Wii, consisting of a collection of mini-games all based around wacky new games that could actually be played in an office, with office supplies. Cubicle nerf-wars, wastebin basketball, three-legged-wastebin-on-your-foot races, some sort of game where you compete to make the best photocopies of yourself on the photocopier, etc.

2.) This title totally fits a game idea I've had in my head for a long time and never actually got around to making... a miniatures wargame played on one's cubicle desk, with office supplies as the pieces.

The rules are to be inspired by those of Fuzzy Heroes where the stats of a unit are based on the physical properties of the item used-- size, color, etc.
The bigger it is, the slower it moves but the more hit points it has, the slashing damage caused by a pair of scissors is a function of the measurements of it's blade, etc. Paper is easily afflicted by slashing, cutting or impaling damage (from a scissor, staple-remover or pencil/pen/paperclip) but is resistant to blunt-force damage and has the ability to transform (via folding) into different shapes like paper airplanes or origami critters to give it new movement modes and attacks.

Movement (and measuring) done with a tape-measure... might need other, non-office-supply like equipment like dice for conflict resolution.

European Rainbow in the Desert:

The player plays as a Leprechaun (Irish of course-- just to get the 'European' criteria in there...) who's trying to find his pot of gold. As we all know-- leprechaun gold is at the end of a rainbow. So he flies across his Irish rainbow and finds the other end is deep within an inhospitable foreign desert filled with savage hungry beasts. His pot of gold is too big and heavy to fly back up the rainbow with, so he'll have to lug the gold all the way back to Ireland, using the rainbow as his guide, with nothing but his pot-o-gold and his leprechaun trickery for aid as he makes his way past the hungry creatures of the desert. (The game ends when you get to the ocean-- where the leprechaun catches a ride back to Ireland from a friendly whale or ship captain or something.)

The game would be a 2D side-scroller puzzle-platformer as you try to figure out how to get from point A to point B in a level with your big'ol pot o' gold. Could use it to activate pressure-plate sort of switches, or dropped onto enemies to defeat them, etc.

Challenge 8: First Glance

Aww, Dan took the best ones. I guess that's what I get for taking too long.

Ok, so here goes:

Professional Balloon Training:
This is a game where you, a savvy sky captain of the Victorian skies, attempt to get your war-balloon license by competing in the London Steam-Balloon Training camp. Players learn to navigate their balloons early on in training stages, and then compete against their classmates for the ultimate prize, the SteamSchool Cup! The first of a series of games based in a Steampunk England setting, this game introduces players to the quirks of 19th century aero-navigation.

Unpleasent Dentist Party!:
Ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes at the dentist? Now you can know! Playing as the Evil Dentist Dr. Drillandfill, you and up to three friends compete to see who can cause their patients the most pain! Make sure you justify it though, because patients who are unhappy and unsatisfied will have their lawyers on you like bracers on a 13-year-old. Exclusively for the Wii.

Mary Kate and Ashley's Lowrider Spies:
I had to do this one. It would be wrong not to use such a gem of a name. In this mystery adventure for the Wii, our favorite detective twins, Mary Kate and Ashley are infiltrating a gang of lowriders in order to find out...um...that...I got nothing. I can't believe I am going to say this, but I need to actually play one of the Mary Kate and Ashley games to do this one. Forget that. NEXT!!!

ok, for reals this time.
Biblical Workout Carnage:
Fat is the work of the devil! In this Christian exergame for the wii, the player runs along the inside of their body, beating up the little devils that cause the fat. Running controls are done on the Wii Balance board, while the attacking and casting out of the demons is performed with the Wii-mote. The worse shape the player is in real life, the harder the game is. After all, they need it more!

Let me know which to expand on.

Challenge 8 - First Strike

A little late to the punch but if I do another post tomorrow, it's okay.

To start, I will do one paragraph on each game idea, then based on the favorite I will fledge that one out in the next post.

1. Zombie Karaoke Uncensored
   The idea here is that you are singing karaoke in a bar in the middle of the zombie apocalypse. Your singing directly determines how much zombie ass you kick. So for example, say you get Love Shack by the B52's. Your character in-game has a pistol and a microphone. As you're singing, zombies are approaching. If you are singing well, your damage multiplier continues to increase and your character keeps shooting the heads off of zombies. Sing poorly, your multiplier goes to 1, your gun jams, you get bitten, and eventually die.
2. Satan's Soccer Adventure
   Satan and his soccer team are on a quest to win the world cup! After taking down Brazil and Italy, the Forces of Heaven begin to realize that something is wrong and form their own team to beat Satan back to hell, and soon all manner of religious and mythical characters enter the fray, leaving Earth's soccer teams to wonder just what the hell is going on. The game plays like a mix of Fifa and Devil May Cry. While you can go ahead and play soccer, score points and all that, you can also whip out your guns, swords, and spells to win by any means necessary.
   
3. Awesome Writing Fighter
   This game pits literature's most awesome writers of all time together to duke it out and prove that the pen is, in fact, mightier. Choose from Machiaveli, Edgar Allen Poe, Steven King, J.K. Rowling, and more! Each has abilities representing their writings, such as Machiaveli's swordsmanship and swooning, Poe's dark and depressing imagery bombardments, King's horrific axe mutilations, and Rowling's wizard-esque spells (Avada Kadavra would, of course, have the most ridiculous button combination ever).

So, which one is your favorite, i.e. which should I expand upon further?

Challenge 8: The Randomly Generated Game Title Extravaganza

We've decided the challenge format was getting stale--

As much as I kept adding new things to my random game generator to spice things up, because the results are always in the same format, it was starting to get a bit dull.

So today I'm going to mix things up.

At the studio I work now, people passed around a website a week ago or so that randomly generates hilarious titles for video games. I started to realize that some of the game titles it was producing would make for good challenges for here. So I began to collect a list of some of the ones I had rolled, and other people at my studio had rolled and posted, that held interesting potential for game challenges for you guys...

So here's how it's going to work this week.
I post 10 Randomly Generated Titles from that website, and you pitch 3 of them as games, fleshing out at least the basics of how the game would work.

Here's the list:
1. Professional Balloon Training
2. Romantic Sudoku Onslaught
3. Heavy Office Competition
4. Awesome Writing Fighter
5. Biblical Workout Carnage!
6. Zombie Karaoke Uncensored
7. Mary Kate and Ashley's Lowrider Spies
8. Satan's Soccer Adventure
9. Unpleasant Dentist Party
10. European Rainbow in the Desert

So pick three of those and go nuts.

Challegen 7 - Second Assault

In the last post, I detailed a real-time strategy game based on Battlestar Galactica that would give the player a feeling of paranoia. What I described outlined the basic premise of space battles and controlling the fleet, and the paranoia part came from not always knowing when the Cylons would attack.

I did make brief mention of on-foot missions, and this brought up an excellent point: trying to figure out who the Cylons are within the fleet would make for an even more paranoia-inducing experience. So for this second assault I will touch a bit more on the ships but focus more on the on-foot and NPC interactions within the game.

Starting with the ships, I have come to the realization that they should be treated more as both buildings and units at the same time. So each ship is given its own tasks that it performs within the fleet, can do research and can construct/refine resources. Meanwhile each ship has the ability to construct and/or launch smaller ships that make up the colonial fleet's attack force, resource gatherers, and political committee. For example, Galactica would have the following abilities:

• Move: Moves Galactica to the designated location.
• Attack: Attacks a Cylon fleet using main guns.
• Build: Build vessels and technologies.
  - Build Viper Fleet: Builds 1 Viper Alert Fighter.
  - Build Raptor: Builds 1 Raptor Science Vessel.
  - Build Nuke: Builds 1 Nuclear Warhead.
  - Build Blackbird: Builds 1 Blackbird Stealth Ship.
  
• Launch Nuke: Launches a Nuclear Warhead. Only available after building.
• Launch Alert Fighters: Launches Viper Fleet.
• Launch Raptor: Launch a Raptor Science Vessel.
• Research: Research abilities.
  - Enhanced DRADIS: Temporarily removes Fog of War when used.
  - Raptor Nuke: Allows a Raptor to carry a nuclear bomb to a targest destination.
  - Blackbird FTL: Allows a Blackbird Stealth Vessel to enter an FTL jump.
  
• FTL Drive: Spins up the FTL Drive for launch to predetermined destination.

There'd probably be more but that's just to get an idea. So while Galactica acts as the base of operations, it, as well as all other ships in the fleet, is fully controllable. You can move it around, use it to attack, and align it into formations with other ships.

This game would also feature a unique zoom function. Most RTSs nowadays have a function that allows you to use the mouse's scroll wheel to zoom in and out of action. This would do more than that. When you zoom in far enough, the game cuts to an overhead interior view of the ship you have zoomed in on, allowing you to see the inner workings of the ship and who is around. Your controls inside the ship are identical to how the game controls in ground-based missions. Inside the ships and on ground missions, you control individual NPCs and small NPC squads in order to complete objectives, hold off Cylon intruders, or engage in conversation. Your tasks when controlling NPC squads or individual NPCs differ, but usually they are one of the following:

• Find and capture a cylon among the crew.
• Destroy a group of cylons.
• Bring an NPC from Point A to Point B (The crew with the Arrow of Apollo on Kobol, for instance).

Individual NPCs, like ships, also have their own abilities.

• Move: Tells the select unit(s) to move.
• Attack: Tells the select unit(s) to attack another unit or area.
• Regroup: Regroups units together.

Special units, i.e. the show's main characters, would also have their own, unique abilities.

Finding a Cylon among the crew is the tricky, because before the identity of the Cylon is revealed, you cannot capture them (even if you know from the show that they are a Cylon). However, if rumors of one are reported on the ship, they can end up causing extensive damage (such as Number Five's Suicide Bombing).

Though it is the player's job to juggle both space combat and life on board the ships in the fleet, the player is never forced to do both at once. When viewing the inside of a ship, for instance, space combat goes on outside and is handled by the in-game AI. Converseley, if anything is happening on the ships and the player is in the middle of combat, the AI can be told to handle the situation. Doing this, though, is like rolling a die and hoping the outcome is positive. It is up to the player to decide which situation is more urgent. For example, if there is a Cylon with a nuke on board Galactica, that would probably require the player's attention instead of mining for Tylium, which the AI can handle on its own.

I think that about covers it. Time for a nap. =D

Challenge 7 - First Strike

There are a lot of obvious choices for this one. My first thought was a game based on M.A.S.H., though outside the hospital, which would end up being pretty self-explanatory, but I think the funny would have outdone the paranoia.

So instead I am going to do this challenge about Battlestar Galactica, especially because Tom is taking the week off and this will seriously make him jealous.

The nice thing about Battlestar Galactica is the way the Cylon attacks are set up. Sometimes the Cylons attack the humans at random, sometimes in time-based patterns, and sometimes, after FTL Jumping to a different location, the humans simply bump into the Cylon fleet and are like "Oh... crap." This is the basis for the paranoia in the game.

In the game, it is your duty to control the Colonial Fleet on its quest to find Earth. You can select the entire fleet to move it around, but other ships have other uses as well. For example, Galactica, Vipers, and to an extent Colonial 1 are used for battle, while Refinery Ships are used to process tylium mined in asteroid fields by Raptors. There would also be on-foot missions where you control individual characters from the show, like Starbuck, Helo, Boomer/Athena, Apollo, Anders, and even Bill Adama. Individual units, much like ships, also have their own abilities, but as ground missions are more focused on completing immediate objectives rather than the general survival of the fleet, their abilities are focused accordingly.

I think in order to demonstrate the paranoia that comes from trying to outrun the Cylon fleet, I should make reference to the very first episode of the first season, simply entitled "33." In this episiode, the Cylon fleet attacks every 33 minutes, and as the fleet is overpowered and underarmed at this point, they have no choice but to switch on their FTL (Faster Than Light) drives and hope for the best, at which point the clock is reset. Though the game would probably be running faster than the assumed real-time events of the show (so let's say every 3 minutes and 30 seconds instead of 33 minutes), it would still induce the same kind of fear, like "Okay I need to process this much tylium in this amount of time before the Cylons attack... crap there they are! Crap I'm under attack! Crap my ships are getting destroyed! FTL! Crap I left 3 ships behind. They're dead now. Reset the clock." The goal of that specific level would be to simply survive until the Cylons stop attacking, meanwhile tensions run high throughout the fleet from all the jumping and your tylium deposits continue to drain quickly from all the jumping. Definitely not the friendliest of beginner levels.

I feel like this works simply because, in the show, the humans are already paranoid of how powerful the Cylons are. The Cylons have destroyed their civilization. The humans are not a species, they're a gang. They have to survive and are facing near-impossible odds of doing so, yet they choose to persevere in hopes of finding Earth. Bringing these feelings of paranoia and hope into the gameplay would be key to making this a successful game.

Challenge 7: The TV Tie-in Paranoid RTS

Agh, sorry this is a bit late and a brief post... I've been rather busy.
The next challenge:

Design an RTS game about a popular TV show that makes players feel paranoia.

Temporary Hiatus

I will be taking a small break from the random game challenge this week, as I have another design challenge to complete, this time for a job offer. Since I need to devote all of my time to getting this done and done right, I will be taking a break for the next week. I shall return when I am finished, however, and hopefully employed!

Challenge 6 - First Strike

Seeing as the Palm Pre works on a card-based UI, this is less difficult than you'd think, especially with its multitasking capabilities, so I will design this strictly for the Pre.

The game is made up of different people, wedding outfits, cakes, flowers, etc. The goal is to have the most perfect deck (i.e. the most perfect wedding) evar!

Each deck comes with a bride, a groom, their respective families (one father, mother, sibling, and pet per, groom's denoted by blue bordered cards, bride's denoted by pink bordered cards). Each character has certain attributes, including:

• Likes: Little icons denoting what a character likes. You can tap the icons for a full description of what they are.
• Dislikes: Opposite of the likes. Again, tap them to see more details.
• Social Trait: Introvert or Extrovert.
• Alignment: Lawful, Neutral, Unlawful
• Salary: Amount they make per year.

The game keeps a constant calculation of how good a match the bride and groom are. This is based on every character's relationship within their own families and into the other's. You trade cards to try and improve relations within and between each family. For example, the groom may dislike the kind of cake that is currently within the deck, while the bride hates the groom's brother.

While trading away the items in your deck like cakes can be done freely, trading away people is much more difficult. For example, if there are tensions in one family between the father and mother, you can trade away one of them for a new one, however they come with new siblings and very possible hatred on the part of the bride or groom, especially if its their new step-parent.

Meanwhile, if things just are not working out between your bride and groom, you can trade them away for a new one, but they bring an entirely new family and items. Sometimes you may get things to click, sometimes not. The game is a constant back and forth of rebuilding families just to get one marriage to work.

In terms of where the Pre comes into play:

If you are not familiar with the Pre's UI, each window is referred to as a card. This game would be handled much the same way, and each card would appear as a separate window. Normally, flicking a card away closes that window. However, if you have agreed to trade a specific card with another player, when you flick that card away, it gets SMS'd over to the other player and one appears on your screen as if you were actually trading cards.

That's all for now. Must leave room for comments and the like.

Challenge 6: The Mobile Marriage Virtual CCG

Well well well, looks like it's another Monday.

It's time for another random challenge:

Design a collectable card game about marriage that is designed for mobile phones.




Hmm. You have fun with that one...

Challenge 5 - Second Assault

To recap, the game I designed in this week's First Strike was about Metallica and Copyright Infringement. It was a Facebook game that combined elements of Parking Wars and Mafia Wars while attempting to teach a lesson about what happens when you steal music. This part about the teaching is what needed work, so here it goes.

Copyright Wars

You have at your disposal a list of songs, each one worth an amount based on their in-game demand, which is in turn based on how loved the song is in the real world. For example, Enter Sandman would most likely be more sought after than St. Anger, and The Unforgiven would be worth so much more than The Unforgiven III.

You can gain songs in two different ways. One is to legitimately purchase them and the other is to steal them. Games are cheap in-game, and any song you purchase legitimately cannot be charged against you by other players. However, it still costs money, and people can still steal the tracks from you. Stealing, on the other hand, is free, and so you can rack up a big tracklist by stealing.

Every hour, your songs increase in value. If you purchased your songs, they give you a constant $15/hour. This value does not change over time. If you steal a song, however, it starts out worth $25/hour and its value increases by $15 every hour. A stolen song also comes with a note that says "Stolen From [whoever]" so if someone ever finds that you stole a song from them, they can catch you. If you are caught with a stolen song, you pay that song's value x10 to the rightful owner of the song. So on the one hand, you may build up a legitimate music collection and plan to just catch anybody who steals your songs and make your music that way. On the other hand, you could steal a lot of songs and hope to not get caught. Remember, the more lawyers you have, the better chance you have of winning if someone claims you stole their songs. Heck, you might have, but with enough legal representation, you're off the hook.

The twist: If you steal a song back, it is still a stolen song, even if it was legitimately purchased in the first place.

I'd say the main education this game has to offer is that the current copyright system is flawed. The RIAA drains regular citizens of all their money for downloading a song or two, when said songs cost 99 cents on iTunes. My attempt here was to design a game that goes to same lengths to show just how ridiculous and flawed the system is, that even legitimiately purchased songs can be stolen via file-sharing, and even people who purchase music can be persecuted.

Challenge 5 - First Strike

Good god. Well, here goes.

This game is about Metallica and teaches kids about Copyright Infringement and and Digital Piracy. You start the game with a set amount of money and a handful of songs. The more songs you have, the more money you earn per hour. However, you can visit other people's accounts to steal songs from them, and thus they earn less money.

As of right now, on iTunes, there are 150 songs by Metallica, so I see this acting as a sorta kinda trading game, only instead of trading, you are stealing. If you catch someone stealing and can name which songs they stole from you, you earn back your songs and a huge chunk of money from them. In the game, you act as one of Metallica's lawyers, and you can add other lawyers via friends joining you and in-game variables that act as lawyers that can be paid for. If you have enough lawyers, you can prevent some people from stealing your songs, but not all, much like Mafia Wars' battle system.

Though this game is not directly educational, it would demonstrate the approach that certain bands and the RIAA take toward music piracy, and how the consequences outweigh the crime.

Challenge 5: The Edu-Rock Facebook App

Because both Thomas and Dan went pretty in depth with their submissions to last week's challenge and (due to my late posting of the challenge) they had less time to work on it (and hey it's already the next Monday) -- It's been decided that their 1 submission is fine enough.

So it's time for this week's challenge!

Design an Educational game about a famous rock band that is designed as a Facebook application.


You can pick whichever band you like, but remember the game has to be educational, so it has to teach something valuable.
Ideally something typically valued in traditional education, like math or reading skills, but I'm open to whatever you come up with.

Challenge 4: First Glance

Ok, here goes.

iPhone+ARG+Freestyle Rap.

The game is distributed via an app on the iPhone. The app allows players to register as 1 of 2 categories, each with individual scoring methods and routes to "winning," as much as you can win an ARG.

The first category is your Rappers. Rappers gain rank in two ways. The first, and most important is by winning rap battles. Any rapper of a certain level can challenge another rapper of equivalent level to a rap battle. These take place over the iPhone, via the phone using the app. As the two rappers face off, they use a beat from a pre-made selection that is built into the app, which plays over each rappers phone as he lays down his rhymes, or with a third party beatbox player, which will be explained later. The battle is then recorded and uploaded to a server, where player in the third category, the fans, can listen to them and vote for who they think won the battle. After an amount of time, the winner is decided by the most votes. The winning rapper then gains cred (basically Rapper XP) until they rank up, allowing them to challenge higher level rappers, and continue to climb the ladder.

The other way that rappers can gain cred is to have a following. Followers act as a multiplier for the amount of cred that they gain each time they win a battle. That way, a rapper with a huge following (such as if Snoop Dog or Busta Rhymes joined the game) would not have to spend much time challenging the lower level rappers to climb towards the top where they belong.

Listeners are another type of user for the app. Listeners gan respect (Listener XP) when the rappers they follow do well, as well as gaining a little respect each time they vote on a battle they have listened to. Listeners can only follow 5 rappers at a time though, so they have to choose carefully who they want to follow. In addition, each time a rapper they are following ranks up, they respect they recieve from that rapper gets a multiplier. That multiplier is lost if they stop following and then return later, encouraging them to choose very carefully who they follow.


This needs a bit more thought, and someone who can program for the iPhone, but I like the basic idea a lot.

Challenge 4 - First Strike

Oh man. Here goes nothing.

This game is about a freestyle rap artist friend of yours who has been murdered. In order to find their murderer and expose them, you enter the underground world of freestyle rap competitions, only to become engrossed in its workings. As you start to win battles against real-world opponents, you get offers in the game from recording companies and sponsors in order to gain money and notoriety. In-Game Money would allow you to purchase beats from the online game store as well as songs uploaded by other players, bribe in-game characters, and could once in a while be worth special offers for real-world stores. Notoriety determines how much money you are worth to defeat in a rap-battle. The more battles you win, the higher your notoriety goes. Higher notoriety earns you more in-game offers from recording companies and would let you into upper-class real world parties based on players of the ARG. So, for example, a club could be rented out for the night and players would have to present the bouncer with their in-game profile on their iPhone/Pre to prove how high up in the game they are, and only people with a high enough notoriety would be let in.

Since ARGs often require some kind of real-world interaction and not just snooping around on the internet, the idea behind this is that you'd actually have to partake in real-world, freestyle rap battles. The game comes pre-installed with beats to rap over. The game automatically detects when you are finished rapping and enters Applause-O-Meter mode, during which the beat continues but neither you nor your opponent may rap for 5 seconds. During those 5 seconds of Applause-O-Meter, the game detects how high the decibel level gets from the applause in the room and scores you accordingly. The louder the applause, the better you did. In the battle screen, the game allows players to login to their accounts on a single iPhone/Pre and displays their name when it is their turn to rap. Alternatively, players can fight in the "Simple Battle" mode, in which they login, and the DJ is responsible for simply pressing the name of whoever won. This mode works on more of an honor system on the DJ's part, but it allows for DJ's to use their own beats and not the ones that come with the game and more leniency in applause time.

When not battling, players manage their career and continue to search for who murdered their friend. Players can manage their contracts with the in-game recording companies, can record and upload songs to the game's store using the in-game beats which players can purchase using the game's money, read through the story and fictionalized criminal records of NPCs in order to solve the mystery. The game also gives players invitations to real-world parties when one pops up and allows them establish a crew based on their phone's contacts and other players' user-names. A bigger crew means higher notoriety.

The appeal of this game is the real-world interaction. To play this game you must participate in real-world rap battles, as this is the fastest way to earn money and notoriety. If you want, you can just read through the story and play it as a basic ARG, but certain parts that reveal more info will require you to have a certain amount of notoriety, and unlike in-game money, this is something you cannot buy with a credit card. In a way, you are writing your own story while solving another one, and even when the pre-written story is solved, your story continues. Even if your story starts as an alternate reality, it is possible that if you really become good enough, it may not be so alternate after a while. This is a game that because of its non-violent PvP, ego-boosting applause-o-meter, and real-world events could become really immersive.

Challenge 4: The iRap ARG

Sorry I couldn't get a new challenge up on Monday.
Here's your new challenge:

Design an ARG about freestyle rap battles that is played on the iPhone.


I guess because it's an ARG, it doesn't have to be played entirely on the iPhone, but at least predominantly.

Enjoy!

Challenge 3: Second Look

Since the last time I posted, I have been informed that what Brian meant was a one-Switch game, where everything is controlled via a single switch of some type, for accessibility purposes. Not a one Button game, like on an atari, which has a joystick. Oops.

I have a fix for this, but it is one that will have to wait for the morning. Goodnight.

Challenge 3 - Second Assault

As I typed my previous post on my Palm Pre and at the last minute to do so, I was not able to go into very much detail about the Hacker SHMUP. Comments on last week's posts also demanded more narrative, so I am going to attempt to integrate that as well.

You play as a soldier in the very first Cyber War. Not nearly as fancy as anything like TRON, this war instead involves hacking into enemy country mainframes and shutting down major power grids, spreading viruses into the private sector, and so forth. The ultimate goal is to leave the enemy country totally defenseless for Defcon 0.

This is where I alter my post from last week. Instead of shooting bandwidth beams that just make things go boom, bandwidth actually slows your enemies down, forcing them to take routes around the bandwidth to you. Instead of you being able to deflect viruses and whatnot, you always have a specific virus installed that you can pass along to enemies by crashing into them. However, if those enemies grab the corresponding anti-virus software, they become immune. You can change your virus by flying over different ones (each represented by a color) but if you grab an anti-virus software by accident, you can no longer use that virus for the level. You can also stack viruses and the more viruses you have, the more damage you cause.

If you flood an enemy with too much bandwidth, they'll stop dead in their tracks, at which point they can be killed with more bandwidth or can be hacked. Only bigger enemies can be hacked, which is performed by colliding with them and firing bandwidth before your viruses destroy them. When you hack a bigger enemy, you gain a Password Fragment. When you have a full password, at which point a boss appears, and must be hacked for the second level password to shut down the level.

Each country is made up several levels, which of course opens up the possibility for DLC and maybe even cooperative online play. Each computer you can hack is shown in an overworld, with the difficulty to hack each one denoted. When you beat a level, you earn points toward approaching Defcon 0. Private and Commercial Sector computers are easy, Defensive Networks and Mainframes are more difficult. However, you approach Defcon 0 faster by taking down Defensive Networks and Mainframes. After you hit Defcon 0, you can click a red LAUNCH button, ending your operations in that country thanks to its nuclear destruction. If you wish, however, you can play through all the levels to clear the country. You do not have to press LAUNCH until you feel you are ready to do so. When you press LAUNCH, the success of the launch is calculated based on how many levels you beat and how long it took you to beat them. The more levels beat and the faster the time, the higher your grade.

I see this game working with Achievements too, like clearing a country of all levels, or clearing a level in under a minute, etc. There's a lot you could do, but you get the point.

Challenge 3 - First Strike

I am writing this on my palm pre. How awesome is that?

So my idea is this. You play a hacker in a green vector cyber space. With the one button, you can do two things. If you press it, you can fire off bandwidth beams to damage opponents. The beam can also be modified with different viruses which cause damage over time, slow you down, etc. If you hold the fire button, you project a firewall which deflects beams. If you have a specific virus, the firewall will deflect the one you have if an enemy shoots you with it, but other ones will pass through and infect you.

Challenge 3 : First Glance

Ok. One Button SHMUP about computer hackers.

This should be easy.

.........

ok, got it. That took way too long.

As the code scrolls down from the top of the screen, you pilot your cursor and try to input pieces of code into the line that will maintain functionality, but help to give you access to the program. Little changes that over the course of a level, each of which is a server, that add up to give you access via a backdoor.

The only button is to fire, with one analog stick that allows the cursor movement.

Beware however, there are anti-spyware and anti-virus programs that will seek and destroy your pirate code, so you have to be quick and find the correct places for your input b4 they lock down the files in quarantine.

Just a first glance. I'll think about it more this week and put something more up later.

Challenge 3: The 1-Button Hacker SHMUP

I'm glad that you both said you'd like to develop your final results to the 2nd challenge as a real game. That's awesome, and I'd encourage you to do so.

In the meantime, it's Monday now, and so it is time for a new challenge.

I hit F9 for the random re-roll and what came up was the following:

Design a SHMUP about computer hackers that uses only 1 button.



That one doesn't sound too difficult, but it sounded fun so I went with it anyway.

Have at it, boys!

Challenge 2 : Second Look

Ok, I was happy with my earlier idea (players playing wolves in a nature show) but spent the rest of the week watching the discovery channel. They have been seriously pushing the show "Life after People" this week, and so that got me thinking...

The tabletop takes place in the ruins of a post-human earth. Each character is a wolf in a pack, with a designated leader, decided in advance. The pack is trying to secure hunting grounds, or kill a rival pack, or clear an area of previously domesticated dogs, or whatever. That is for the GM to decide. But as the pack progresses, each player can upgrade their wolf (more hp, better attacks, etc.) and can also gain new specialized skills, like enhanced smell, or hearing, better darkvision, or, at a high enough level, the ability to use the left-behind human tools.

The game would naturally advertise for the discovery channel, and for the show. Players who have watched the show would know about specific dangers that exist when people just disappear, and would have ideas about where they could find preserved human food. Yes, it encourages a bit of meta-gaming, but players will always meta to some extent, so why not use it to boost ratings? Other products could be advertised in the game as well. The source books could list specific locations and attractions (advertising for cities/tourism), or specific products useful to the pack.


I think I might start working on this, minus the advergaming aspect. This sounds like a lot of fun.

Challenge 2: Second Assault

My major issue with the first strike on this challenge was that it did not address the "tabletop" aspect of the game enough. It sounded more like a Twisted Metal style racing game than a tabletop RPG. So in this Second Assault I intend to fix that.

As you know, the original challenge was: Design a tabletop RPG game about wolves that also advertises a product.

What I like about this take on the challenge (remember: badass anthropamorphic wolves in a NASCAR-like organization out to collect sponsorships and blow up caribou) is that it sweats IP. I see each player as starting out with some kind of toy car. Maybe you could sell big boxes of "Junkyard Scraps" so to speak, which would be like booster decks, filled with all sorts of different pieces you could put onto your car. So in a way your toy car would be like your character sheet.

So you build up your toy car with all sorts of guns and armor plating and such. How then do you get the hunts going? I would say the game comes with a few different terrain mats, each laid out in hex-grid format that the cars can drive around on. You would roll dice to move and perform actions like shoot your guns and do stunts like flying off of mountains and finding out whether your car lands upright or flips over. You could even have terrains that are just race tracks for players to race through, or terrains specifically designed for different game modes.

At the beginning of each race, you are given the opportunity to earn different sponsorships by completing different tasks. For example, Pepsi may offer you $10,000 for being the last surviving racer, while PenzOil may offer you $20,000 for never firing a shot and being in the top 5 racers. Each car can hold a different number of Sponsorship Stickers, and each sticker has a corresponding card with what you must do to earn the sponsorship money per round. Some sponsors offer one amount, while others offer different amounts depending on what you do. In order to maintain a sponsorship, you must meet at least one of their requirements per race. Bonuses for completing multiple requirements could also exist.

Once this game got popular enough, you could expand it into different formats like Twisted Metal style racing games, a cartoon series, a live action movie based on the cartoon, comic books, etc. As I said, it sweats IP.

Crap I may have to prototype this.

Later Introduction

Now that my flu has finally settled I can give my introduction. I am Dan, another recent graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design and good friends with the two other guys on this blog, Brian and Thomas. Right now I am an independent game developer, meaning I am unemployed and happy about it.

My hope for this blog is we spur some creativity in the game development scene. It'd be great to see someone reinterpret these challenges in their own way.

Late introduction

I just realized I never mentioned my name, and my account doesn't display it!

I'm Thomas Whitener, a recent graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design. As a friend recently put it, I want to make games for money when I grow up. For now, I just make them for fun.

I hope all who read this blog enjoy the reading as much as we enjoy the making.

Later!

Challenge 2 : First Strike

Glad to be here everyone.

So seeing as I am a bit sick and delirious from the drugs, I'm thinking I'll throw out something completely wacky... and AWESOME! The idea here is that you play a bunch of anthropomorphic wolves (not werewolves mind you, we're talking like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles kind of stuff) who are all racers in a NASCAR-like organization, only their cars are much more "Transformers Beast Wars" than regular cars. Your leveling is not so much for your character but for your car: engine, wheels, tires, shocks, suspension, whatever. The goal in between races (battles, so to speak) is to collect sponsorships from in-game advertisers (these can be real companies, like Purina considering the subject matter, or not, you did not specify that it had to be a real product, Brian). The more sponsors you have, the more money you can collect per race.

The twist, however, is that for each race you are not so much racing each other, but racing a "prey." The goal of the race is to chase down the prey and destroy it using weapons you attach to the car. Some prey fight back, which would require some amount of teamwork on the part of the players, others are defenseless but fast making for much more competitive races.

See you at Second Assault.

New Author! Dan Silverstein!

Ok, so, this week it is my pleasure to introduce Dan Silverstein, our new author. We will both be producing new games based on the challenges Brian puts out, and then each week, you, the people, will get to exercise your democratic rights and choose the winner of our design challenge metagame!

Dan will be sticking to the same schedule that I do (or that I try to...), and so here we go!

Challenge 2 : First Glance

Ok, first glance idea for an advergame tabletop RPG about wolves.

Hmm. First idea is a game based on a Discovery Channel show. The show would need to be developed around a pack of wolves, and it documents their lives. The tabletop game tie-in for the show would be where each player takes control of one of the wolves in the pack and is able to act out their lives while the GM (or you could call him the Executive Producer, heh) gives them challenges and dangers to overcome in their struggle for survival.

This is a challenge because tabletop RPGs are not really suited to advergaming as the market stands now, and I don't see it really becoming one any time soon.

Challenge 2: Wolf-Centric Advergaming Tabletop RPG

Well It took quite a few re-rolls before I found something I liked, but here you are for your next randomly-generated challenge:

Design a tabletop RPG game about wolves that also advertises a product.



And for a real challenge, try to make the product advertised something that is not at all wolf-related.

Challenge 1 : Second Look

So, Brian and I graduated last weekend, so we decided to take the week off. Since I started this challenge however, it should get finished.

The Challenge: Produce a Space exploration RPG that provides exercise.

Ok, so the game I've come up with doesn't completely satisfy the requirements, but I think it is a good enough idea that it should be let out.

The idea is for a Augmented Alternate Reality Game. With the recent advances in Augmented reality technology, the time is rapidly approaching when we will be able to have a wearable computer interface that is able to augment our vision to show us things that are not actually there. These could be used in conjunction with the typical trappings of alternate reality games in order to give a more immersive experience. Imagine walking down a street in a major city, and through the glasses seeing an actor standing on a corner with a glowing yellow exclamation point above his head. The actor could be real, marked with an RFID chip on his person, and the computer in your pocket overlays the image of the luminescent punctuation in order to mark him out from the rest of the crowd.

Obvious copyright infringement aside, Game Masters could use this technology to leave clues around the real world play-space that players would be able to find and add to a digital inventory, while the rest of the world would never know it is there, eliminating the problem of having your game pieces removed by the masses or by cops who think you are trying to blow something up. The story possibilities are endless, and could easily be applied to an RPG about space exploration, while the very nature of the game encourages exercise, since sitting on the couch will rarely get a player anywhere.

Challenge 1 : First Glance

Ok, wow. Starting things off hard, are we?

So, exercise and space RPG. First thing that comes to mind is a cartoony RPG for the Wii, whereby you take your character and explore a galaxy on your "Spaceboard" which is like a surf board, but in space. The controls for the "Spaceboard" use the Wii Fit balance board for steering. RPG elements like a large involved story and inventory system are necessary, and so the game would use the Wiimote as well.

Hmm. That's my first glance, more to come through the week, though maybe with a slight delay since I will be out of town this weekend, so that I can graduate (officially, I graduated last quarter, but I still want to walk).

Challenge 1: Exercise Producing Space Exploration RPG

It's after midnight, so it's technically Monday.
Time for the first challenge!

The random game challenge generator's first offering was:

'Design an RPG game about space exploration, and provides exercise.'


Sounds good enough for a first challenge. Have at it!

Greetings and the Challenge Format

Hello, I'm the aforementioned Brian with the generator I made that will help me post random design challenges. Besides simply introducing myself, I wanted to chime in by explaining the format of the challenges. My generator produces random game challenges in the following form:

Design a [game genre] game, about [topic/subject matter] that [some kind of wacky/challenging constraint].


For example, one I randomly generated earlier was:
"Design a first person shooter game about dinosaurs that has no combat."

Feel free to answer that one if you want, although that's not the first challenge, which will be posted on Monday.
[if interested, my answer for the above was simply: "Easy. That would be Pokémon Snap, only with dinosaurs instead of pokémon." ;) ]

Welcome

So, since this is the first post on the Random Game Design Challenge, I thought I go ahead and post a little bit about what we will be doing here, and how this came to be.

It all started with a class. My professor at the time came to enjoy giving me random design challenges. Usually in front of the entire class. With no warning, I was expected to create a viable game from three or four random ideas, objects, actions, topics, etc.

And wouldn't you know, I could do it.

I don't know how, but it was actually a lot of fun. Which is good, since I was going to school for game design. This continued through the classes and eventually my friend Brian, who is the other contributor to this site, mentioned that he had written a random game generator in excel, and that I should give some of those random games a try.

So that is what we are doing here. As it is now, the rules (which are subject to change arbitrarily, since this is an experiment anyways) are as follows:

1. Each week, on mondays, Brian will post a challenge. This will consist of a genre and a number of things that must be included in the final game. The can be anything. At all. (What am I getting myself into?)
2. By the end of Monday I will post an idea. This will be the first thing that comes to mind, raw and broken as it may be. From there, I will take the idea and attempt to refine it, until...
3. On Friday, I will post a more complete version of the game, with rules and maybe (if you're lucky and I'm feeling artistic) some concept art or diagrams for explanation. This will be the final version of the game, though I may continue to refine it. If so, I'll post the results when they are done, but there will be a post on Friday.

Ok, so, those are iteration 1 of the rules. Brian may change any of them he sees fit.