There are two random ideas I’ve had and before I put work into them I’d like thoughts on whether they’d be interesting games or not. I didn’t feel like they’d be popular because there aren’t many short-term goals to reach or don’t require much mental investment to play.
Concept 1
Players spawn in a Safe Room at the center of a randomly generated indoor map, of connected hallways and rooms. Their goal is to find the exit of the map and after reaching it the game restarts, but a timer begins before the restart if there are multiple players.
The main obstacles to the players are “ghosts” which wander the map. But these ghosts can only be seen and interact with players when the lights of the map turn off, which they will randomly do periodically. When caught by ghosts players will respawn and lose items. Players need to do as much as possible while lights are on and hide in locked rooms when they are off, or avoid ghosts effectively. Ghosts will sometimes interact with objects while lights are on; players can use this to know what areas are dangerous before the lights are off (possibly players interacting with objects will attract ghosts).
The Safe Room cannot be accessed by ghosts. Inside the Safe Room is a map which is updated with new sections every time a player returns to the Safe Room, assuming the player explored new areas. Other players can use this map to find the exit.
I thought this concept was kind of fun; players can join the server at any time and immediately be caught up in progress. Wandering around, collecting things, and finding safe places to hide reminded me of survival-horror games.
But the gameplay is slow and it won’t constantly throw things to do at players.
Maybe it’d be more interesting if ghosts automatically know where players are and players have to run instead of hide, or if players were dangerous to other players when given weapons.
Concept 2
The game is played in rounds by two teams. Team 1 consists of guards and Team 2 consists of escapists. Each team will have a few special members with unique abilities.
Escapists will find weak points on the map and overtime create an escape route through teamwork.
Guards will find potential escape routes in-progress and undo them or secretly build traps at the end of them.
But it’s not simply “walk over to this spot and escape” or “shoot anyone running away”. Each escapist has a schedule that they have to follow, otherwise they’re out of the round. These schedules take escapists to different rooms with weak points that can be turned into escape routes or tools that can be used to make escape routes. But usually a single escapist isn’t scheduled to visit a room with a weak point and one with a tool, so they have to meet up with another escapist whose schedule intersects with theirs and who also visits what the team needs. During these meets escapists can swap tools or information while avoiding being caught by guards.
Guards don’t have schedules and can walk around freely. But their power is limited; a single guard can only search escapists for tools they may be hiding and look out for weak points. If a tool is found on an escapist the escapist is given 1 point. A group of guards can vote to Contain an escapist, the number of guards required to vote is reduced if the escapist’s points are higher. A Contained escapist is temporarily removed from the round, making it harder for their team to operate.
Guards can also build traps overtime, much more quickly when working together, at escape routes they think will be used. Escapists using an escape route with a trap at the end will lose. This means that even if the guards can’t stop the escapists’ efforts enough they can still win.
Regarding those “special members with unique abilities”, escapists can have a member that has no schedule and therefore can move around freely for them or maybe an escapist can hide tools and be immune to searches. Guards can have a member that can Contain an escapist with a single vote or there can be a guard that after finding multiple escape routes in-progress can Contain multiple escapists.
I was thinking this might be too complex or not immediately-rewarding for players. Additionally everyone on your team would have to know how to play otherwise it’d be frustrating. With the fact that players are suppose to be sneaking around it might feel like nothing’s happening. Being a team-based game also means that it’d be difficult to properly test how fun it is.