Intro:
Inspired by @Crowno, thought i'd chime in with a slice of what i'm tackling. I've enjoyed the EZA gang for years, and have often dreamed of making a small game to pay tribute to their unique mix. For this jam, I first came up with a game idea for each ruleset - then settled into Glinny's. (I love over-complicating things, so I planned out ways to incorporate every single rule from the list).
(Aside: for Cahrsurraurher's I was thinking of a beat-em-up like Streets of Rage, but with a ton of talking and dialogue trees. Called it "1920's Bouncer." the idea would be to play as a beefy thug who works their way up from being a bouncer at small bars and jazz clubs in hollywood, until you get roped into handling lawless security for bizarre/shady rich people parties. But it seemed like the kind of thing you'd need to take seriously and research. Soooo, not good material for a quick jam!)
Shire Noble 4: Bureaucraft:: Pro sports to the rescue!
Although I love the EZA boys, I can't connect with their love for Anime, Japanese RPGs, or Sports. So I thought it'd be fun to make a game that slams those 3 things together from a woefully uninformed perspective. I mostly work in VR these days, so this is a Rift game. the idea is to play as 4 pro sports icons who band together to travel the world and solve geopolitical problems. By sneaking around and killing things with their sportsings and magics. And for no reason, the whole thing is drowning in a medieval fantasy (like lord of the rings. or final fantasy and harvest moon? I haven't played those so, i dunno). On some major level, this is a love letter to suda51.
I've had a lot of fun sketching up strange characters and environments. Going with your basic elf, knight, wizard, barbarian (who play golf, baseketball, baseball, and foothockeyball respectively). And they' sneaking through the poisonous gasses of LA, sandy farmhouses, volcano hospitals, and icy United Nations. (before tackling the jungles of wall street and the underwater whitehouse. and maybe ending in a space castle). Figured each level should have an extreme hazard theme, like donkey kong country.
But what will the game be?
The core of it is managing 4 characters to an end point. THRILLING!?!?! Hoping it'll be fun to switch between the mindset up where you'd like this person to move (thinking stealth. each level has a way to be seen by the end boss) and the usual first person VR carnage. When you screw up stealth, a short horde of baddies will flow in. I picture it like a turn based tactics thing, but with this added/unique intensity that each character starts playing out their turn the moment you leave them. That's about it. It's an experiment to see if this simple combo of mechanics is fun. And then there's a ton of gags planned that make fun of RPG spell menus and First Person weapons. ho ho, jokes.
Dev so far...
I setup the system for controlling your path in VR (you draw a line from your feet to where you want to be, then when you switch to a different character that path will be followed). Mocked up some 360 cut scenes in Tvori. And started modeling the main characters in Oculus Medium.
Definitely won't implement all the game levels by next week, but hope to have the basic intro cutscene, world map for level select, and first level (LA traffic court) playable.
Next:
Today: Hoping to finish sculpting the main characters (and first-person hands), retopologize them with Instant Meshes, and rig with Mixamo.com. Grab some animations from mixamo, and maybe free filler models from Sketchfab. Need to decide whether Tvori's 360 video export is better for performance than it's "animation objects" export. And need to program character-POV-swapping and magic menus in Unity3D. weeooo. Also need to get my kids to record some of that dude's music with their recorders.