Now what?

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