Now what?

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 21:59 — beerman

So with Sheep Snaggers 2 all done with (pending bug fixes passing testing), I guess it's time to find a new project to play with. Which of course brings me to the eternal quandary of the indie developer :

Which one of my countless unrealised ideas do I work on next?

Sensibly,I should probably pick up a fairly small, self-contained project that will let me fix up some of the crappier parts of the engine I built under SS2 and leave the gigantic world-spanning epics for a later date.
Which means my steampunk biplane combat game set in a massive persistent 3D world full of armoured Zeppelins and giant landtrains and sentient self-configuring fortresses* might have to wait a while.

Meanwhile, back in sensible developer world...

Of the less epic ideas I have, the best options pretty much boil down to the following:

  • Arena Chainsawer
    Basically the same setup as your standard Arena Shooter, only without the shooting. Surrounded by the various monsters/zombies/whatever, your only weapon is a constantly running chainsaw which you have to keep fueled.
  • Mini Action Roguelike
    Elevator pitch: I'm pretty much thinking of a hybrid of Desktop Dungeons and Gauntlet. I like a lot of the RPG mechanics in your average Roguelike, what with the leveling, changing equipment, spells etc., and I loved the 10-minute gameplay idea from Desktop Dungeons. But at a core level, I still love to run around and shoot things!
    So I'm thinking of something that combines the gameplay of Gauntlet with the quick-fix gameplay of DD and the long term depth of Rogue. Could be fun.
  • Asset-less shooter
    Pretty much your standard vertical/side-scrolling shooter(haven't decided which yet), only all the graphic assets are replaces by text sprites. So your ship looks something like: 
     P
LAY
ER1
    the enemies look like: 
       BOSS
   BOSS
  GBOSSG
 U     U
N      N
    and the bullets are 
    PEW!
    and 
    BO
MB
    I can't draw to save my life so I'm thinking this could be a pretty cool looking way to get around that...
What I'm thinking right now is I should knock up some quick prototypes and see what works well. If there's anything you'd particularly like to see though, well, there's a comment section right below there and it'd be nice to have something not written by Russian spammers in the approval queue for a change...

*Why yes, I do read Girl Genius. How could you tell? :D

Comments

Hookers and Blackjack... but

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 22:07 — Piku (not verified)

Hookers and Blackjack... but without the blackjack.

Err Arena Chainsawer. You could make that work in an afternoon. People love chopping Zombies, especially if lots of gore is involved.

Hehe - for a second there I

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 22:16 — beerman

Hehe - for a second there I thought you were another bloody spammer, with the hookers and the blackjack!

ooh ooh! i know! you could

Thu, 06/02/2011 - 22:08 — Piku (not verified)

ooh ooh! i know! you could finish Gun Bastard ;-)

I probably should, yeah. It's

Wed, 06/15/2011 - 23:17 — beerman

I probably should, yeah. It's been on hold for a good two years now.
Would pretty much mean starting from scratch given the state of the codebase but that didn't hurt Sheep Snaggers 2.
It does bug me a little having it sitting there in the 'projects' section and me not doing anything with it so I might just pick that up and dust it off before I move on to anything else.

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