Ideas Dump

[brigid]

The last one sounds particularly cool. I hope someone does something with it. (Not me, at least not anytime soon!)

There's a definite lack of good ren'ai games for the female gamer. Most of the games I run into are for guys... who desperately need to get a life.

[renkenjutsu]

I have one idea that's been tickling my fancy at the moment, but I'm already working on something else. So, somebody else might want to take this up?

How about a group of female taxi drivers in a very unique taxi company? The unique part? All their taxis are modified to be speed demons under the hood and these girls are really awesome drivers. You play one of these girls of course, and one of your passengers has a very interesting twist that'll make you use your driving skills to its fullest.

The cool thing is this short beginning could springboard into a myriad of story choices, like:

Taking the racing underworld gig by storm like Fast and Furious.

Using mad skills to outwit bad guys that the heroine just happened to run into like Taxi (the French version).

Your mad skills are used for bad ends and you must find a way out due to a hostage situation.

Make the taxi service into an emergency service for those that need to get somewhere FAST, and run into usual romance down the way with doctors or passengers, etc.

Or.... all of the above

[monele]

Definitely reminds me of Taxi... and it would be fun to actually be able to *play* that ^^. I like the idea that instead of fighting crime (Taxi), you would help more regular people with everyday stuff. But I'm also wondering if this wouldn't be better as an arcade game?

[Guessmyname]

renkenjutsu: Nice idea! It certainly kicked my imagination into overdrive just from reading it - it has a lot of potential. Go for it!

WitchFire (Visual Novel)

Welcome to the world of WitchFire. It's not a fun place.
Put simply, it appears the worlds of humans and daemons (note: daemons are essentially magical humanoids, and are not connected to any mythology. They are neither good nor bad) are merging after a catastrophic event occurred in the daemon world back in the 70's. Magical energy has overloaded their world: rift storms are common and millions have been driven insane by it's effects. Rifts between the two worlds are now popping up on a regular basis as reality comes apart at the seams, and refugees are pouring into the human world in the vain hope of safety.

Trying to deal with this is the WitchFire organization which, officially, does not exist. It has so far managed to keep the existence of magic and the daemon world secret from humanity from the 70s onward, but keeping the collateral damage caused by the whole mess is near impossible: as a result, the Cold War is still ongoing to this day. Due to fears that both sides may attempt to weaponize the daemons and magic in general, WitchFire has decided not to go public, but in this technological age, keeping secrets when you're underfunded and terribly overstretched is no easy task...

Enter Dash (player character), a newly minted agent of WitchFire, who is assigned to the squad of 5 Agents operating in London (Yep, things are that bad that they can only spare six people for a country's capital). As the situation gradually deteriorates, can Dash manage to rally the dysfunctional squad and save the world from dying in a chorus of nuclear fire?

The idea is that it will have 3 routes with a total of 6 endings (3 good, 2 bad and one non-standard game over) depending on who Dash partners with (3 options, 3 routes, you get the idea). The choices are thus:

Rasputina: named after Rasputin for being very difficult to kill, and is quite nuts to boot - she lives only for war.

Charmer: A rather ironically named agent / fire daemon who wants out of WitchFire and is a bit of a coward in combat.

Aurora: An air-daemon (person with wings) agent who appears to have the emotional capabilities of a spork, sees herself as expendable (given the current situation) and acts as team sniper.

With supporting characters Roman (stoic dual-wielding pistol expert) and Royal (Squad leader, very smart and prone to getting drunk)

I'm still hammering out details and so on, and have made no start on actually making the visual novel, so it might end up getting scrapped. I'm just tossing the idea out there in case anyone likes it and for comments and so on.

[gekiganwing]

Brigid stated, "Most of the games I run into are for guys... who desperately need to get a life." Don't worry, I understand. Even though I like boy x girls stories and games, I'm tired of the same old same old. I would be happy with a few less harem games. And I've been a shoujo fan for over nine years. I'd love to see more English games which include shoujo elements, or at least don't repel female fans.

Also, I've often thought that female fantasies are somehow superior to male fantasies. It could just be my culture and my upbringing. Or maybe I heard someone convey the idea that "fanboys" are the lowest form of fans, and believed it. I've heard sophisticated (elitist?) fans declare that products which cater to fanboys should be ignored or scorned.

On the other hand, there are often differences in art and storytelling. Romance novels are definitely different from their male oriented equivalents. Shoujo is more often about couples than trying to pick a favorite from a harem. And I suspect that one of the attractive parts about boys love is that none of the characters are meant to represent the audience. Call 'em bishie fests if you want, but intelligent fans will defend them.

The immature part of my personality would say this in far fewer words... more like "fujoshi FTW!!!"

...Anyway, I've been thinking, and here's something I'd like to see: a ren'ai game which combines elements of Professor Layton and possibly also the DS game Urusei Yatsura Endless Summer. I imagine that someone could make a pretty thoughtful visual novel in which the main character is challenged to figure out puzzles. No, I don't think this would work as a full-fledged Tokimemo-esque dating sim. But I can imagine a game in which the main character can earn points and trigger event flags by solving NPCs' puzzles. Especially if a hint system is integrated. I don't have enough patience to play old style PC adventure games where the solutions to puzzles are obscure...

Why did I bring up the UY game? Because it is a "Dai-Renai Simulation" in which the hero can freely walk through town (there's no ticking clock) and meet characters, no matter whether they're friends, rivals, or love interests. It reminded me just a little bit of Professor Layton, because in that game, the same basic thing is true -- the hero can walk around with no time constraints, and meet anyone. Of course, if you want to work a town into a game, you can use the more simple "select a place" method, as seen in Da Capo and Duel Love.

[sake-bento]

This has been brewing in my mind for a long time, and I'm just gonna dump this here to see if I can get a bit of feedback. I really enjoy writing cute stories with light romance (as you probably know), but I've been wanting to write something more surreal. The game would focus a lot on visuals with less focus on plot. In fact, the game would be nearly plotless. A lot of questions would exist with no answers and no intention to answer. The game itself is the experience of being the main character moving through a fantasy world. If you've see Kino's Journey, the plot would resemble that. The main character just exists and things happen with a thin plot thread that connects these events together, but no major conflict or resolution. Would something like that be interesting, or would it feel unfulfilled?

[papillon]

Would something like that be interesting, or would it feel unfulfilled?

If it feels like you're intentionally stirring up mysteries you have no intention of answering and just trying to screw with your readers, it might feel unfulfilled.

However, if you ask thought-provoking questions, don't take sides, and invite your readers to discuss... it could be very involving.

IIRC Kino's Journey does have conflicts of a sort (of course, I've only seen maybe three episodes, but things definitely *happen* and issues are raised) ... it's not just wandering around looking at colored lights without meaning.

[sake-bento]

IIRC Kino's Journey does have conflicts of a sort (of course, I've only seen maybe three episodes, but things definitely *happen* and issues are raised) ... it's not just wandering around looking at colored lights without meaning.

Well for that, I meant that it's episodic with no final goal. Kino merely traveled from one town to the next because it was what she wanted. She had no overriding quest, and she rarely tried to change anything, even if she didn't agree with it. She would simply move on.

[PyTom]

IIRC Kino's Journey does have conflicts of a sort (of course, I've only seen maybe three episodes, but things definitely *happen* and issues are raised) ... it's not just wandering around looking at colored lights without meaning.

Kino's journey is very much of an anthology series. Conflicts happen, but they're confined to an episode or two, and then Kino and Hermes move to a totally different place. That being said, it's a very good series and some of the conflicts are quite powerful.

Like the one where she spends her winter with the traders killing rabbits to survive (man vs nature) only to find out that they're slavers who are after her. (man vs man)

[azureXtwilight]

Hmm... How about story which have sequels?
I'd like to write a story about the first thing a girl involved in a great turning in a kingdom, she can choose which side she was in, the kingdom or rebellion side, fell in love with a guy in one side, decide what the world will turn to, then the sequel started with another girl in the same kingdom with one of the endings from the previous game as background! Khu...

[rocket]

Like the one where she spends her winter with the traders killing rabbits to survive (man vs nature) only to find out that they're slavers who are after her. (man vs man)

Best ep in that series IMHO, followed closely by the one about Kino's origins.

Despite my desire to love it (influenced no doubt by my love of talking motorcycles) I found most of the eps of Kino's Journey to be a tad unsatisfying and a touch predictable. Mushishi followed a very simillar format but in contrast, I found most of those eps to be more finely balanced - in large part because the plots were tighter and more suspenseful.

Of course both of these were stories, so when the plot was predictable, slow, or padded, it distracts.

On the other hand when playing games I often wish I didn't have to deal with the game goals and objectives and instead could just wander around and enjoy the rich environments and fantasy world created. If the world and characters were truley captivating enough, exploring what is interesting to the player might be reward enough...

[azureXtwilight]

On the other hand when playing games I often wish I didn't have to deal with the game goals and objectives and instead could just wander around and enjoy the rich environments and fantasy world created. If the world and characters were truley captivating enough, exploring what is interesting to the player might be reward enough...

I'm completely agree tough, so I like RPG a lot

[josh]

Idea:
An Episodic Yotsuba&! Series of Visual Novels.
I'm gonna get onto making that.

[monele]

Kinetic I suppose? Lovely

[chronoluminaire]

Hmm... How about story which have sequels?
I'd like to write a story about the first thing a girl involved in a great turning in a kingdom, she can choose which side she was in, the kingdom or rebellion side, fell in love with a guy in one side, decide what the world will turn to, then the sequel started with another girl in the same kingdom with one of the endings from the previous game as background! Khu...

Heehee. Well, on the one hand I don't like games which are designed to be incomplete on their own.
But if you've got one game which stands alone (like the first game in your example), then yes, having the sequel "carry on" from the ending of the first one is a superb idea, and one which Ren'Py supports via its MultiPersistent variables

In fact, that's what Elven Relations 2 will do. If the game detects that you've played Elven Relations, it'll offer you a menu of which of the ER endings to continue from, and the plot of ER2 will be affected by which ER1 ending you're following on from