How to create completely brilliant games ideas
Before we start
- Turn off your PC. All you'll end up doing is Googling old computer games, your brain is a vastly more interesting resource than the Internet. Trust me.
- Get a mate. Brainstorming on your own isn't much fun and even if you're the one doing 99% of the ideas, having someone else about to go, "I like that bit" is worth it's weight in panda babies.
- Use a pen and paper. Using tech will result in spending half your time fiddling with the menus (oh, I know it does arrows, let me look it up) rather than concentrating on the job in hand
Oooh, we're starting, hold on to your syrup
Some claim ideas are hard - they are wrong - ideas are the easiest things in the world - the hard bit is getting anyone to give you money for them.*
Anyway, we'll worry about money later, firstly let's make an ideas machine. A FRICKING MACHINE WITH LAZERS ON ITS HEAD.
Talent imitates, genius cheats like a cheaty cheetah
Sometimes it's hard to come with something from scratch, so a great shortcut is to bodge bits of old tat together to see if it sparks off your brain into thinking of something interesting.
For this example we're filling it full of retro-games because we're proper old, but you, you crazy young kids, might want to use new modern stuff like Super Mario World or Lemmings.
Holy sock cheese Batman - that sounds awesome! Let's roll some dice and give it a go.
Pacman Vs Snake: Like Pacman but every time he eats a power-pill he gets longer, thereby increasing the likelihood of being got by a ghost. Sounds hard.
Space Invaders Vs Breakout: You play a nippy little bat that kills aliens by batting a ball into their evil invading faces. Oooh, we'd quite like to play this for 5 minutes, just to see if it works.
Space Invaders Vs Space Invaders: If the dice calls the same number twice, we'll play the joker: reverse it. (We've just made this rule up, because we're the Dungeon Master mofo) Hence "Reverse Space Invaders" - this would need extensive play testing to get the balance right as 50 aliens Vs 1 invader might be a tad easy.
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