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[Paxiecrunchle]

I wish a game like sim ant existed, except you would be managing the growth of a warren of potentially intelligent rabbit, some part of me thinks that would be extremely fun.

[Dunamisdeos]

I wish a game like sim ant existed, except you would be managing the growth of a warren of potentially intelligent rabbit, some part of me thinks that would be extremely fun.

The spider can be replaced by a hawk, and if you advance enough intelligently you can produce a hawk-trap.

[Egan_BW]

I wish a game like sim ant existed, except you would be managing the growth of a warren of potentially intelligent rabbit, some part of me thinks that would be extremely fun.

Only if it's just as bloody and terrifying as Watership Down. Complete with eldritch horror humans.

[Paxiecrunchle]

I wish a game like sim ant existed, except you would be managing the growth of a warren of potentially intelligent rabbit, some part of me thinks that would be extremely fun.

Only if it's just as bloody and terrifying as Watership Down. Complete with eldritch horror humans.

Oh totally, I would have no problem with that, although setting it Australia rather than England would probably increase the horror factor greatly.

[RAM]

Australian rabbits are an eldtritch abomination. Maybe not individually, but together they are a formless mass of insatiable mouths that instantly restores itself after any damage inflicted upon it, Basically shoggoths... That said, there is nothing wrong with playing as an eldritch abomination!

[Gatleos]

So, in the Matrix movies there are action scenes where somebody's navigating a giant office building or city streets or whatever, and there's an operator that has a bird's eye view and gives them directions in real-time to guide them and warn them about enemies.

Co-op. That is all.

[Parsely]

So, in the Matrix movies there are action scenes where somebody's navigating a giant office building or city streets or whatever, and there's an operator that has a bird's eye view and gives them directions in real-time to guide them and warn them about enemies.

Co-op. That is all.

In No More Room in Hell we ghosted each other pretty often since drops are random and you don't want to use up supplies getting to a room that doesn't have the right kind of ammo in it. You'd really have to think of something to make it a little more special than that. Maybe the operator has to interpret an interface, so his information is not perfect; he has a wider view but less detail than the player on the ground. Hopefully he also has useful ways to communicate if the players can't use VOIP as well.

[RAM]

The concept reminds me of an air-traffic control simulation. Which is, like, a real game I played once. No idea what the name was though as it was very ancient. But the idea of playing as a navagator in not unheard of. You could also go for things like being a navigator for a taxi service or something. Then you could go for an organised crime deal. Taking evidence and hear-say and using that to speculate upon how best to approach a mission and what resources will be required. Dwarf Fortress is similar in a lot of ways too, what with organising dwarves with your clear concept of a design and making it work with chaotic dorfs.

My thoughts for all that rambling is that you need to lay the groundwork for a compelling oversight game in order to get people to play. You would also want A.I. if possible to account for connection instability or slow times of day or people who want to practice alone before hooking-up with a stranger...

 Once you have some experience of how to do an oversight perspective in an entertaining way, then you could probably go in for something based upon hacking. Maybe similar to Shadowrun or Invisible Inc.? The "agents" could do their thing interviewing contacts, casing the target, setting up distractions and reinforcements and putting guards on sick-leave and such while the hackers have a pile of dossiers and records and client data to go over and assemble a mission plan and prepare their hacking tools. Then the mission happens and the agents are running around first-person-like, while the hackers scramble for video feeds, commandeer automated systems, compromise/corrupt communications, disable alarms and override locks... all while keeping the agents informed of enemy movements and what the target is doing. And, of course, they have to do all this while keeping a low profile as they are probably going to be spotted first and if they get located then they can be shut down, hunted, and will probably get all their gear, and possibly themselves, fried by a counterhack. So then everyone is treated to a third-person replay of what the agents did after oversight went offline, accompanied by Yakety Sax...

[JoshuaFH]

I thought of a game, perhaps similar to Animal Crossing, where you play as a person with some kind of illness, and the doctor declares you have 100 days to live, but offers you a chance to be placed into cryostasis, and then unthawed for one day every year, so you can see the future elapse very quickly, with one day representing every year, and get to see how everything you know evolves over time, then on the dawn of the new century, you finally succumb to the illness and die, with the three or four generations of people you got to meet throughout the course of the game getting to see you off, or perhaps other people that have taken the same cryo-deal as well having to say goodbye.

I think the theme of the game would be about the inevitability of death, but perhaps more importantly about how no matter how no matter how much things superficially change, even over such a long period of time, things stay the same. "The more things change, the more they stay the same" as it were.

[Niveras]

So, in the Matrix movies there are action scenes where somebody's navigating a giant office building or city streets or whatever, and there's an operator that has a bird's eye view and gives them directions in real-time to guide them and warn them about enemies.

Co-op. That is all.

This happens a little bit in a meta sense when you are playing a team game using third party voice, and other people in the channel are spectating. And with streamers in competitive games, although it is drama/frowned upon there.

[Sirus]

I thought of a game, perhaps similar to Animal Crossing, where you play as a person with some kind of illness, and the doctor declares you have 100 days to live, but offers you a chance to be placed into cryostasis, and then unthawed for one day every year, so you can see the future elapse very quickly, with one day representing every year, and get to see how everything you know evolves over time, then on the dawn of the new century, you finally succumb to the illness and die, with the three or four generations of people you got to meet throughout the course of the game getting to see you off, or perhaps other people that have taken the same cryo-deal as well having to say goodbye.

I think the theme of the game would be about the inevitability of death, but perhaps more importantly about how no matter how no matter how much things superficially change, even over such a long period of time, things stay the same. "The more things change, the more they stay the same" as it were.

I find it a little hard to believe that absolutely no progress would be made towards a cure, even a partial one, in a hundred years. Especially if medical science is advanced enough for cryogenic freezing to be effective for humans.

[bloop_bleep]

Though.... how would that be a game? It just seems like a first-person narrative to me.

[JoshuaFH]

Though.... how would that be a game? It just seems like a first-person narrative to me.

I just thought that the emotional impact would be stronger if the player interacts and learns about the game world of their own volition. Barring that though, yeah it could just as easily be a really pretentious arthouse movie.

I thought of a game, perhaps similar to Animal Crossing, where you play as a person with some kind of illness, and the doctor declares you have 100 days to live, but offers you a chance to be placed into cryostasis, and then unthawed for one day every year, so you can see the future elapse very quickly, with one day representing every year, and get to see how everything you know evolves over time, then on the dawn of the new century, you finally succumb to the illness and die, with the three or four generations of people you got to meet throughout the course of the game getting to see you off, or perhaps other people that have taken the same cryo-deal as well having to say goodbye.

I think the theme of the game would be about the inevitability of death, but perhaps more importantly about how no matter how no matter how much things superficially change, even over such a long period of time, things stay the same. "The more things change, the more they stay the same" as it were.

I find it a little hard to believe that absolutely no progress would be made towards a cure, even a partial one, in a hundred years. Especially if medical science is advanced enough for cryogenic freezing to be effective for humans.

Shhh Sirus *Jedi Hand Wave* It's all very believable.

Though it could be something else, like the world is going to end in a hundred years, and the MC, being an eccentric and curious millionaire anthropologist that doesn't personally have a fear of death, sets up the cryogenics idea in order to better study people throughout the next century, gauge their reaction to the impending meteor/unsurvivable alien attack/cthulhu death cult omen, and then get to personally witness the end, which he would imagines would be a fitting way to die, as it's all inevitable anyway.

Though honestly the idea is just getting more ridiculous by the second.

[Sergius]

That sounds a lot like what they did with "A Mind Forever Voyaging", you got to see how the world evolved in increments of 10 years. While the plot what about something else entirely, that style of game seems like it would suit that narrative.

[Mesa]

TL;DR: Dwarf Fortress meets Emacs. Or Dwarf Fortress with built-in DFHack, and built around it being there.


A game (probably ASCII) that offers you basically no interface (initially) to speak of - just the game output screen and a console at the bottom.

Into said console, you can input various commands using the game's programming/scripting language - something akin to Emacs Lisp, though maybe a bit easier to grok for the average person - and receive fancy output in the output log.

Then you also have a bunch of built-in docs for said scripting language (which would come with all the standard bells and whistles of a scripting language like control flow constructs, variables, functions and maybe even some basic GUI stuff), and some sort of API for retrieving data about the game, and hooking up into its (ideally) many systems - resulting in everyone's game looking and feeling slightly different (at least until people would start sharing their code, which they'd ideally do), being as automated and input-light, or as manual as one would desire.

The gameplay itself?...Probably something akin to Dwarf Fortress, just because I can't really imagine any other type of game really working with that kind of "control scheme", short of more easy-to-stomach, non-roguelike RTSes.


(And of course I'd probably be doubly....-triply-discouraged from actually PLAYING it, because I suck at Dwarf Fortress AND I suck at programming AND I suck at using Emacs. But it would be fun to watch others tinker with.)