Back in the day I playtested this game concept under an NDA, but since it expired I can talk about it.
An FPS game in an open map with buildings, has 12 players playing but when someone dies, they respawn right there but swap to the opposite team. The last person to get shot gets eliminated and then the teams split again. This goes on until 6 players are remaining, who are declared the winning team.
You could mitigate that by coms only being proximity and no indication of how many players each team has. Thst would also make offensive playstyles preferable.
My new pet theory is that CS:2 came out so that Valve had all their IP sitting at 2. So then at some point, when their audience is too old to play games anymore, and the youth don’t even know that Valve ever made games, they’ll release a 3-box with HL3, Portal 3, LFD 3, CS:3, TF3, and DOTA 3.
So, while INFRA already does fully exist, I’d love to see more games like it. It’s really hard to describe what INFRA is without major spoilers, but if you’ve played it then you probably know what I’m talking about.
It’s like… take the new Chernobyl game and remove literally all the death states, then fill it to the brim with easter eggs, lore content, secret rooms and pathways, challenging logic puzzles, stuff like that. INFRA ticked all those boxes for me and I have yet to find a game like it.
Every game that I’ve looked at and been recommended as being “like INFRA” always has some major flaw or some concession that really sets it apart from the original game. INFRA is pretty much all about exploring your surroundings to uncover the plot of the game and even change some of the story if you’re vigilant enough about the puzzles. You can literally complete the game just as a walking sim while doing fuck-all, but I think most players will find the intrigue of the story interesting enough to be almost coerced into going down the other fork in the road, so to speak. Like there are sections in every chapter where you have to use your knowledge in civil engineering to repair some sort of machinery using intermediate logic puzzles, but you’re always able to just skip it. However, completing these puzzles allows you to unlock the story as the puzzles require exploration. Hope that made sense.
I wasn’t expecting to see INFRA mentioned but it’s one of my favorite games for a lot of the reasons you mentioned! It really had a sense for exploration and environments to tell more of the story. And it really is part puzzle game without having any single gimmick like other first person games. It reminds me a lot of Half Life 2’s puzzles (which makes sense since INFRA was also built in Source as far as I can remember).
I’m really itching for more expansions or games like it. Not sure what happened to the DLC they were working on, but there were some groups working on mods.
A true modern successor to The Guild (aka Europa 1400). That concept has soooo much potential imo, but the games after the first were notoriously underfunded, half-baked and riddled with bugs!
Environmental Station Alpha is a good metroidvania IMO, and it has just over 1000 reviews on Steam. It has good platforming, combat, sound design, and chunky pixels. Not the most expansive or complex metroidvania, but it’s surprisingly polished and costs less than $10.
Destroyable environment like Company of Heroes but modern rts setting.
Cities Skylines in the latest Unreal Engine.
Stardew Valley in pretty 3D graphics with no tile system. Valheim comes close but the graphics, while unique, is far from highly detailed.
Teardown multiplayer shooter.
General a lot of single player could use a simple coop that’s just playing the game together. It’s very rare that coop is more of an addition than a game focus. While often I just wish I could share the fun with friends together. It’s sadly because of the complexity of adding coop, vs rewards when it’s “just” the same experience but with friends, instead of a competitive like mode where they can sell skins and shit.
I personally always wanted to build a battle ship simulator game with crew system and destructible ships, with harsh survival elements like in the movie Master and Commander. Where you’re very close in the action and ships get real impact holes. Most indie games don’t come close enough on the realism level I’d like to see. Sea of thieves is somewhat there.
It used to exist, but not so much anymore. I miss heavily community based FPS multiplayer games. With custom servers and so on. I played Counter-Strike: Source last night, what a breath of fresh air!
Same, I played some Day Of Defeat: Source also a while back. I got onto a server, people were talking about random things and seemed to know each other, there was a sense of community, it felt like a local bar.
It’s 3am and I’m chilling and talking with strangers while surfing on CS:S. God, I miss this.
I miss that in newer games. It’s all matchmaking, all competitive and in many ways, modern games like this feels “no fun allowed”.
Pretty much. It’s always competitive. Always on the grind. You can’t just play for fun, no. You have to be at your best every time, because now, there is this skill-based matchmaking algorithm watching your every move in game and so on.
I feel like I’m starting to get old when I say this, but every time I go back to play one of those old games, I get reinforced in this idea… so many games feel like jobs nowadays. It’s just like the real world, it’s all so competitive. No fun allowed. You can’t ever be goofing around, you have your rank to worry about… every shooter now keeps on getting updated, the meta keeps on changing, and you have to keep up with it constantly otherwise you’ll get left behind.
I can’t put it into words exactly, so excuse me if what I’m going to say sounds odd… But I feel like most of the modern entertainment available to me is really stressful and I can’t explain it. To be honest, it’s the first time I’m voicing this feeling, but I find it really distressing…
I think that I fully understand how you feel. It’s pretty much why I stopped playing online games. I want to be able to not think about being good or absolutly winning every single game. Most of the time, I would rather prefer trying out “dumb” stuff in the game or simply having random conversations while having fun.
A modern take on the (pre-NGE) Star Wars Galaxies style MMO, mainly the social aspects like player housing and player driven crafting system it had. We have still not seen such a deep crafting and resource system as SWG had in any game since.
While there are still private servers around in abundance, they are all too small to properly support the social aspects properly, and the dated engine really hold it back. A newer game engine and some modern QOL and UI changes is all you really need, and although the Star Wars IP would be great it would be fine with a lesser IP or fully unique setting.
There have been a few indie attempts at this but none have finished development, with the most recent one pivoting to AI and then going dark earlier this year, though to be fair indie MMO have a pretty bad track record for actually completing.
My fear is we won’t ever see it because a game like that gives so much control to the players and the crafting/economy and skill system really stains back end databases.
It would be interesting to see what a modern dev could tack onto the concepts. SWG was weak on quests and end game content. You wouldn’t have to make it WoW in that regard, but it could use some of that. Or with the rise of “cozy” games, what extra decorations that could be added.
Hell, take the game system and pull Star Wars out of it. Space games do appeal to the community.
Zombie apocalypse game with souls like combat but all slow zombies. The game takes your GPS coordinates (or any coordinates you enter) and uses a maps API call to generate the game map based on the real world. It would take things like residential/commercial/industrial areas and generate similar structures but not exact to not be a privacy issue. All major landmarks would be generated. So you could start from your house, or the Eiffel tower, or the middle of the Amazon. Things like grocery stores and malls and schools would be in similar locations, roads and highways etc.
The game would generate slightly different every time you create a map so while always based on the real world, things would be different.
You then must rescue your partner who is across the map (random generated) and find shelter.
There would be some crafting and survival mechanics, but mostly action based combat, skills to level up etc. Minimal if non-existent gunplay, though I’d be open to it if done well.
Very gorey, rogue like/light with persistent stats and incremental style progression (get so far then reset/start new map with higher their upgrades)
So think dead rising meets dark souls, mixed with vampire survivors and incremental games, all with this AR framework. I also considered a multiplayer persistent map br style mode but would prefer a single player experience myself
I want to play a game like Fallout, with perhaps a light plot, but a much heavier settlement building mechanic.
Like, you found a settlement, and it’s filled with trash, debris, and burnt-out structures. As you scavenge and collect things, and attract people to your cause, the place slowly becomes cleaner and more structured. You can have settlers scavenge for themselves and fix up structures, farm for food, treat wounded, lead small armies against mutants and generally secure an area of a map, and really be able to treat the settlement as a home base.
Playing Fallout 4, I was bothered by how I could build out all these settlements, place structures and whatnot, help these people, and still no one had the sense to pick up a broom and sweep up the pile of trash in the street.
Two player retro JRPG (a la Chrono Trigger, etc) where each player can play independently in the same world, but the story lines intersect and must work together in many parts of the story. Would work great if the story filled in gaps when you replayed as the other player.
Would both people always have to be playing at the same time? Or would it be possible for one person to play and progress while the other person isn’t playing?
I think the idea of an open world RPG with more than one player, not necessarily competitive or coop, but each with their own quests and motives, is interesting. I’m often hanging out in discord with friends, and we’re all just chatting while playing different games. We might as well be playing in the same world, and occasionally influence each other.
You’d have to somehow make it clear to the players that the goal is not to party up and just walk around doing everyone’s quests together, though. Ooo what if it was the world of the last airbender, and each person started as a different bender in a different part of the world? And maybe one person is secretly the avatar, but they don’t know until they’ve progressed. Ok, I’ll stop intruding on your idea lol.
Would both people always have to be playing at the same time? Or would it be possible for one person to play and progress while the other person isn’t playing?
I think you could go either way. If you want to be able to play without the other person also playing, you’d need a server or someone/something hosting the “game” where you connect in. If you were really clever as a programmer, you may be able to sync actions after both people are online without having a server, but that would be a challenge.
The other option is something like couch multiplayer, where you’re both playing on the same device. If one person isn’t there to move around, then no biggie.
I think the idea of an open world RPG with more than one player, not necessarily competitive or coop, but each with their own quests and motives, is interesting. I’m often hanging out in discord with friends, and we’re all just chatting while playing different games. We might as well be playing in the same world, and occasionally influence each other.
Me too! One thing I’m looking at trying out soon is the multiplayer mod to Elden Ring. It’s enables a mechanic that’s very similar to this goal, but not entirely.
In an open world where just a few people are playing their own game, together, you could have very fun friend interactions like trading and helping with quests or missions.
You’d have to somehow make it clear to the players that the goal is not to party up and just walk around doing everyone’s quests together, though. Ooo what if it was the world of the last airbender, and each person started as a different bender in a different part of the world? And maybe one person is secretly the avatar, but they don’t know until they’ve progressed. Ok, I’ll stop intruding on your idea lol.
Right – I imagine when you both start the game you both get a very different intro, and are clearly starting in different parts of the world. I don’t know much Airbender lore, but that sounds like a great theme for a game like this.
One feature I’d like to see is the two players’ stories intertwine in such a way that you absolutely do have to help/meet to beat the game. Like, one player is arrested in jail and the other has to help them break out, because the one in jail is the one that can get the one not in jail access to the dungeon/castle/area that he wants to go to. Ultimately, I think it’d be important to kill the final boss/end the game together.
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