# Where's the weird and wonderful?



## kabbes (Mar 30, 2010)

When making a computer game, the designers could literally make it about anything, starring anyone and set anywhere.  It could be completely abstract or it could be as weird and wonderful as they wanted.

Yet almost every game stars the player as a humanoid creature (and normally a human) and is set on a planet that is not entirely unlike Earth.  Either that or a spaceship of some kind, blasting geometric shapes.

It seems to me that that this is a bit limited.  Where is the game in which I play a kind of cross between a jellyfish and amorphous space ghost and can use my ability to detect electricity to do something incomprehensible in a suphurous lava pit?  And even that pales into insignificance compared with what somebody could come up with given more than five minutes on a bored Tuesday afternoon.




Damn, I have to do something with this thread, don't I?  Er... come up with your wacky game ideas here!  Yes, that'll do.  Or give me your thoughts on the matter.  Or something else.


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## fogbat (Mar 30, 2010)

Something like fl0w?


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## kabbes (Mar 30, 2010)

Yes, something like fl0w.  I'm not saying that there isn't the occassional game made by an Indy somewhere.


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## Shippou-Sensei (Mar 30, 2010)

unfortunately  it seems  weird and interesting games   don't sell that well


a case in point  was  the   phenomenal  Grim Fandango  a game  which  was just awesome   won awards...  and  didn't really sell at all ...    it  kinda  killed the adventure game market


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## Santino (Mar 30, 2010)

How about a computer version of noughts and crosses?


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## kabbes (Mar 30, 2010)

Santino said:


> How about a computer version of noughts and crosses?



An interesting game.  The only way to win... is not to play.


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## kabbes (Mar 30, 2010)

I want to play a 100-legged creature, in which I have to control each leg separately.


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## Santino (Mar 30, 2010)

How about... Space... Fish Racing.


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## Santino (Mar 30, 2010)

Or Sellotape Coffee Challenge.


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## kabbes (Mar 30, 2010)

Sellotape Coffee Challenge sounds intriguing.  Tell me about it.


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## Santino (Mar 30, 2010)

Ghost Robot Farm


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## kabbes (Mar 30, 2010)

Oi, this isn't a game of Noun Noun Noun.


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## Santino (Mar 30, 2010)

Spoons


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## fogbat (Mar 30, 2010)

kabbes said:


> Yes, something like fl0w.  *I'm not saying that there isn't the occassional game made by an Indy somewhere*.



Doh. My post wasn't intended to come across as smugly pointing out your errors. 

It's one of my favourite games, and I wasn't sure whether it'd fit your description


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## Santino (Mar 30, 2010)

kabbes said:


> Sellotape Coffee Challenge sounds intriguing.  Tell me about it.



The player represents the principle of Brownian motion.


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## Santino (Mar 30, 2010)

Metaphysicist!

In which you play a European philosopher who has to win arguments about the fundamental nature of reality. When you successfully win an argument, reality itself adjusts to fit your worldview.


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## Santino (Mar 30, 2010)

Moon Golf


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## FridgeMagnet (Mar 30, 2010)

Scanning through my iphone, in Trundle you are a gearwheel of some sort. In Flickitty you are a cat with an oddly extensible neck, performing meaningless tasks in a satire on capitalism. Zen Bound is a game about wrapping wooden sculptures with string - I'm not sure that there is a character involved there at all. Perhaps you are supposed to be a ball of string.


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## the button (Mar 30, 2010)

FridgeMagnet said:


> In Flickitty you are a cat with an oddly extensible neck, performing meaningless tasks in a satire on capitalism.



Firky?


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## mrsfran (Mar 30, 2010)

In Spore you can evolve to be whatever the hell you want to be. You can have 100 legs if you like.


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## Santino (Mar 30, 2010)

Invisible Hand, in which the player takes the role of capitalist market forces.


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## Santino (Mar 30, 2010)

Lego Cricket Lightsabre Deathmatch


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## kabbes (Mar 30, 2010)

iPhone games arew not games.  They are diversions.

No, srs, you can certainly get weird and wonderful one-man-band indy productions, as per the Good Old Days of the Speccy.  

But for the Xbox?  It's as Shippy says -- weird doesn't sell at the srs commercial level.  People want to play games about being people -- normally footballers or racing drivers, at that.


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## Diamond (Mar 30, 2010)

Santino said:


> Invisible Hand, in which the player takes the role of capitalist market forces.



I hear the Price Mechanism expansion pack is well worth investing in.

But seriously, the problem is that most games will have to be anthropocentric  because it is rather difficult to create a tense, gripping narrative/environment without some human focal point.


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## FridgeMagnet (Mar 30, 2010)

kabbes said:


> iPhone games arew not games.  They are diversions.
> 
> No, srs, you can certainly get weird and wonderful one-man-band indy productions, as per the Good Old Days of the Speccy.
> 
> But for the Xbox?  It's as Shippy says -- weird doesn't sell at the srs commercial level.  People want to play games about being people -- normally footballers or racing drivers, at that.



No, it's because people with Xboxes are unimaginative peasants who fear the unknown. If they saw anything apart from men shooting stuff, men playing sports or cars driving about, they'd probably try to burn the telly as a witch.


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## kained&able (Mar 30, 2010)

I want to play a game where i get to be a giraffe and do giraffe things only not, yes.


dave


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## Epona (Mar 30, 2010)

Shippou-Chan said:


> a case in point  was  the   phenomenal  Grim Fandango  a game  which  was just awesome   won awards...  and  didn't really sell at all ...    it  kinda  killed the adventure game market



I adored Grim Fandango, I still have the disks somewhere but I suspect my floppy drive is full of dust, I haven't used one for the best part of a decade


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## The Groke (Mar 30, 2010)

The Answer is .


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## fogbat (Mar 31, 2010)

Andy Warhol's Adventures in Space.


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## Jon-of-arc (Mar 31, 2010)

double wires, anyone?

alright, so you're a "man", but your only purpose is to go through a void, swinging about till you die...


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## Jon-of-arc (Mar 31, 2010)

or Rez? go thru the story of evolution whilst destroying a computer virus..


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## ohmyliver (Mar 31, 2010)

there's Samorost
http://www.amanita-design.net/samorost-1/

which is beautiful and odd, and has you doing things like switching records on a record play so that it plays some drum and bass to wake up an owl


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