Idea Game Idea already similarly used?.. keep on or..

A

Anomaly

Guest
Here's a very rough example of my game concept..
Its based on planting controllable "deflection pads" which you launch at surfaces, then bounce energy orbs off of in order to hit a goal post.
The more pads you bounce off, your score raises exponentially, and the orbs' speed accelerates the same.

Its my first game and is like to make it a fun player vs player game with many upgrades and new environments...


But
I was doing some research checking out new and cool platform puzzle games and came across Nihilumbra yesterday...

(Go to 8:10 in the vid)


The same bouncing- ball off surfaces strategy is presented.
Now, there's the obvious that there are many many concepts used again and again in games... I mean hell it's "pong" / "arkanoid" reincarnated... Nothing new here..

But when you more experienced designers find, a concept you've been working on, might be lessened in value as it may have been done recently in a popular game...

How do you usually treat that corrundrum..
And in comparing my rough and early example with Nihilumbra's element... What is your suggestion as to where I should go with the conflicting element I'm (possibly overreactingly) perceiving here?

Thanks!
 
G

Gerald Tyler

Guest
Yeah that's pretty similar, but why does that bother you? Don't stress out about your work being "Original." Look at Minecraft and Angry Birds, two massive successes built on concepts that others failed.

The concept is solid, your goal isn't to merely get the "Ball" to the goal, but to maximize the amount of deflections along the way. This also means the player has to avoid creating an infinite loop.

A few things to ponder:
The goal sound effect is super jarring, it was painful sitting through the video solely because of that.
Only able to spawn 1 ball at a time, with one of the buttons able to explode the ball in case it gets stuck or winds up in an infinite loop. The multiple balls with the speed increase makes the screen very noisy and it's hard to track what's going on.
Ever play any of the Mario games, where as you're collecting the Red Coins the pitch goes up ever so slightly (But oh so satisfyingly) with each one? Maybe an effect similar to that.
Have some obstacles, so say if you hit a certain type of block the ball is deflated...so a Spike block works for that.
Maybe some challenging mechanics, where if you hit a White tile your ball is now able to go through white warps opening up new bounce possibilities, but it might also hit a Black tile and then get trapped in there unless it hits a black warp.
You could also put some moving blocks so that timing plays a factor, or say a single use block that shatters when the ball bounces off of it, but resets whenever the ball is destroyed or passes the goal.
Maybe change the color of the ball each time it bounces...OR have different Elements to the ball. So say a Fire attuned ball behaves different from an Earth ball. Same concept with the pads that you're shooting into place. Different element pads which interact with the ball in different ways.

Best of luck mate ^_^
 
T

The Sentient

Guest
I think the key is, when you find similarities that have already been done, do it better than the other guy.

Think of what you have and what they have and make your implementation better. That can be done in a number of ways, but that is up to you as the designer & coder.
 
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