From time to time, you have an interesting idea for a game — as a developer, but also as a player — which you know will probably never come true. Or could they? Well, here are a few of mine.
Everyone who’s into games probably has a list of games they’d love to see and play — ideas that just pop into your head one day, usually sparked by a random thought like ‘What if Nintendo made a Soulslike?’ or ‘Why isn’t there a game where you play as a Koopa?’
I would like to present to you a few of my personal favourites.
My crazy Game Ideas
Without further ado, let’s dive into my ‘wishlist’ of sorts:
Game 1: The Sheik Stealth Game
I’ve been talking and writing about this for a long time, actually. Sheik is one of my favourite characters from the Zelda series, and I would love to play a game with her as the protagonist.
A stealth game is the logical genre for this kind of character, I suppose, but …
What would it actually look like?
Well, imagine Tomb Raider (the reboot), but replace Lara with Sheik! Add some fancy magic and some acrobatic moves. Then also add some elements from the Zelda series, like locations, characters and items. The Temple of Shadows could be a place you visit. The Yiga clan could be there — as allies first, then as enemies? The Lens of Truth could be an item you use to enhance your vision and gain an advantage over the guards you want to sneak past.
As far as the story is concerned, maybe it could be the origin story of how Zelda learnt to transform into Sheik and then acquire all the ninja abilities we see in Ocarina of Time and the Smash Bros. series?
Or maybe we could learn that Sheik was, in fact, a real person (also a princess?) long, long ago, and we follow the original Sheik on her quest to save the Sheikah tribe and maybe build the alliance with the royal family of Hyrule along the way? (That is not already canon, is it? If it is, please let me know in the comments!)
There are countless possibilities to make this game a very cool and very dark Zelda spin-off, I think. We might even want to incorporate horror elements like in the well dungeon in Kakariko …? There couldn’t be a greater opportunity to explore that side of The Legend of Zelda a bit more, could there? And I know we all loved that part.
Game 2: The Kid Icarus Metroidvania
My second idea is similar to the first in a way: We also take a Nintendo character who has only appeared a few times thus far — including the Smash Bros. series — and put them in a game of another genre.
A metroidvania seems the perfect fit for a Kid Icarus game!
Metroidvania means that there’s a large map where paths are blocked off. Your goal is to collect items and/or abilities that allow you to remove or overcome the barriers and thus unlock new areas one after another until the whole map is accessible — including the final boss, of course.
The Metroid and Castlevania games are structured like this, hence the name of the genre. But there’s also the Ori series, Hollow Knight or Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.
The original Kid Icarus games (there was one for the NES and one for the Game Boy) were 2D platformers, which isn’t that far off from a 2D metroidvania to begin with. But then there were the labyrinthian dungeons, where Pit, the main character, had to find his way to the boss. That’s very metroidvania, I’d say.
Pit’s weapon is a bow, a ranged weapon that is, in terms of gameplay, pretty similar to the beam weapons Samus Aran from the Metroid series uses.
Moreover, Pit could collect a number of items in the original games that enhanced his abilities. For example, he found the Flaming Arrows and the Pegasus Wings. Items like these could be used to open up new paths in a metroidvania.
You see, this game I envision would basically be a Metroid game with a mythology theme instead of a sci-fi theme. That might not sound like a huge difference on paper, but I’m convinced it would feel like day and night in comparison. In addition to the theme, Pit being able to glide and, eventually, fly could also be a very interesting gameplay element not found in Metroid.
Game 3: The 60-Hour Quintetesque
I’ve written about long games before. I argued that most games don’t really need to provide as much content as possible, and that 60 hours might be a bit too much for the average player — who probably has a busy life, but still wants to finish a reasonable number of games.
However, I have also written about Illusion of Time and Terranigma — which had been life-changing experiences and which are, therefore, still my favourite games of all time. And so, I really wouldn’t complain if a game studio decided to release a similar game that is, in fact, 60 hours long. Or longer. Or a series of games.
But what does that even mean: a similar game?
Well, I tried to capture the essence of the Quintet masterpieces in the blog article linked above. But in short, I would say that the main appeal of lllusion of Time and Terranigma lies in the combination of three things:
- The games are set in the real world, more or less, and reference historical facts.
- They have a melancholic atmosphere and emotional cutscenes.
- They deal with philosophical topics and make you think.
That doesn’t sound as if it was that hard to pull off, but I don’t know any other game that is even remotely like these two classics. Earthbound and Mother 3 are similar in some regards, Eternal Darkness as well, but I’ve yet to discover a game that I would consider a true spiritual successor.
One day, there will be a game just like Illusion of Time and Terranigma for us. I’m optimistic.
Game 4: The Zelda JRPG
Well, it worked for Mario, didn’t it? If it works for a platformer, it certainly works for The Legend of Zelda, which is thematically and gameplay-wise much closer to your standard fantasy JRPG.
What could or should a game like this do differently, though?
Let’s have a look at stats first. While we might still want to use hearts as HP (similar to Paper Mario, the HP values should be kept relatively low then), the main stats could actually be Power (physical ability), Wisdom (magical ability) and Courage (tempo and luck).
For magic, we already have things like Din’s Fire (fire AoE), Farore’s Wind (haste) and Nayru’s Love (healing and barrier). There are also the spells from The Adventure of Link that could be implemented with some changes to their effects.
We have different potions and jars as healing consumables, but also bombs to damage all enemies or Deku Nuts for single-target stun.
Regarding equipment, a Zelda JRPG would also work just fine! There have been numerous swords, bows, boomerangs, shields, body armour and accessories throughout the series that could all be used here.
The same goes for allies and enemies. And locations. And NPCs.
Oh, now that I write this, Sheik would be a pretty cool rogue-like character in this genre too, right? We could also have Zelda as a priest- or mage-like character, a Goron as a tank, a Zora as a dragoon, a Deku as a bard, a Gerudo as a physical damage dealer. You know, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom actually showed whole groups of heroes where the roles in a turn-based battle system would have been somewhat obvious, didn’t they?
I see absolutely no problem here. It would, in fact, be amazing, I’m sure, and a lot of fun working out how the spells, items, characters and enemies should be adapted to a turn-based battle system.
Game 5: The Ancient-Cave Roguelite
You guys all remember the Ancient Cave from Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals, right? If you don’t, here’s how it works:
About halfway through the game, you find an optional dungeon with 99 floors called the Ancient Cave. When you step in, your party members get reset to Level 1, and you have no spells, no items and no equipment — except for equipment you found in special blue chests within the Ancient Cave itself on a previous run.
On each run, the floor layouts, chests and enemies are randomly generated, and you have to find the stairs to reach the next floor. You’re trapped in the Cave until you either die or use an escape item found somewhere around floor 20. Or you could make your way to the bottom and defeat the boss, of course. Which takes a lot of time (there’s no save point, so you had to keep the SNES running, sometimes over night) and is very, very challenging.
With the blue chests, the concept is pretty similar to the genre of roguelites. But I haven’t seen a JRPG roguelite that would basically try to remake the Ancient Cave, but better, for example with …
- more heroes to choose from,
- spells and passives carrying over,
- more interesting equipment,
- mini bosses,
- shops inside the dungeon to spend money gained during the run,
- multiple dungeons with increasing difficulty and
- save points as well as some sort of checkpoint system.
In my opinion, there’s a lot of potential here. I might even try it myself one day if I find an engine that is very good at randomly generating dungeons.
Game 6: Nintendo Hearthstone
Are you familiar with Hearthstone? The digital card game made by Blizzard?
In Hearthstone, there are 11 classes (like Warrior, Mage or Priest) with sets of cards, plus neutral cards any class can use. Cards come in various types. Minions, spells and weapons are the most common ones.
In a game of Hearthstone, you play against another person, and both of you normally use decks of 30 cards. There’s a lot of strategy involved when building the deck and when actually choosing which cards to play when.
Now, what if we took this concept, but gave it a Nintendo theme?
Instead of classes, we could use Nintendo IPs: Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Pokémon and Kirby, for example. The Smash Bros. series has shown that they can be combined like that. Then, instead of minions like ‘Boulderfist Ogre’ or ‘Dr. Boom’, we could have characters from the franchises: Luigi, Sheik, Pikachu and Meta Knight. Instead of spells like ‘Flamestrike’ or ‘Blessing of Kings’, we could have spells and items like Fire Flowers (deal damage to 3 random enemies), Fairies (revive a minion that died last turn), Pokéballs (50% chance to take control of a damaged enemy minion) and Maxim Tomato (fully heals a minion). In terms of weapons, we could have a Hammer, the Master Sword, a Cubone’s Club and the Rose Staff instead of ‘Fiery War Axe’ and ‘Truesilver Champion’.
See? It would totally work. And I think it would be a lot of fun coming up with card designs.
Game 7: Pokémon Tower Defense
With evolutions.
You spend your Pokémon Dollars on Pokémon which defend your base:
- Bulbasaur uses its vines to attack in a straight line,
- Pikachu shocks an enemy and all other enemies that are in contact with the primary target,
- Mewtwo uses its psychic powers to damage enemies and shove them off the track.
Legendary Pokémon can only be put on the battlefield once, of course. Or maybe they can only appear in the form of finisher-type moves with long cooldowns.
Your Pokémon gain experience points when defeating enemies — which may be Pokémon sent into battle by Team Rocket? Something similar to Ultra Beasts? Alien Pokémon? —, and eventually, some of your Pokémon will evolve:
- Venusaur uses even longer vines,
- Raichu uses Thunder.
The number of Pokémon you can send into battle at a time is limited by your Pokémon Dollars, so levelling up and evolving your Pokémon is key to survive the ever-growing waves of enemies.
The battlefield could either look like the ones in Plants vs. Zombies or like the ones in Bloons Tower Defense.
At the end of each battle, you get a new type of Pokémon. Which could be random if we wanted to make this game a bit roguelite or even roguelike (even though I strongly prefer the former).
We might need evolution stones for some of the Pokémon — we certainly want Eevee in the game, right? I’m not sure about other items like potions or TMs, though. There might be a way to incorporate them, but maybe we don’t really need to. What do you think?
How realistic are these Games?
Well, some are more realistic than others, I’d say.
While I don’t think a Zelda JRPG is ever going to happen, the Sheik stealth game seems so obvious to me, given we had Link’s Crossbow Training (a pretty strange spin-off) and Echoes of Wisdom (with Zelda as the player character).
I have very little hope for another Kid Icarus other than Rising (remake or new entry).
The 60-hour philosophical RPG set on a magically charged version of Earth? Yeah, that’s going to happen one day. There’s bound to be some talented author eager to create a spiritual successor to the most beautiful games in history, and a talented indie game dev who also knows and cherishes the melancholy of the Quintet classics.
The Ancient Cave roguelite dungeon crawler seems likely as well. I mean, I could even imagine that it already exists and I’m just not aware of it. If that’s the case, please let me know!
Finally, Nintendo Hearthstone and Pokémon Tower Defense … well, I want to say it’s pretty likely, but probably not exactly how I envision it.
A Nintendo card game, that could happen, but with minions, spells/items and weapons? That’s too close to Hearthstone, and Nintendo likes to innovate or at least change things up quite a bit.
The same goes for Pokémon. Even though we had Pokkén Tournament and Pokémon Unite, I don’t think a Pokémon tower-defense game would play anything like Plants vs. Zombies or Bloons Tower Defense. They would try to put a twist in it somehow, I think, and adding evolutions won’t cut it. But this is just a feeling. I may be wrong.
All in all, there’s hope for some of the dreams described here to become reality. And even if Nintendo won’t use their IPs to realise these concepts, there will certainly be other studios developing very similar games with their original characters.
If some of the games I outlined here have indeed inspired you, please go ahead and use my ideas! I will closely follow your project on every channel, help you promote it and get the game on launch day.
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What are your ideas for games that don’t exist, but should? Which of my ideas did you like?
Let me know
in the comments below!