So the theme of the jam was revealed and hey, it's revealed on 9 pm here. What this means is because I'm not really a professional at not sleeping, I will probably make actual game progress today. Instead, I just brainstormed some ideas that hopefully, I would've decided by tomorrow. In the meantime, however, I decided, why not share them here? I'm not gonna use all of em, so why not let these go to waste? And so this post was made. Also, feel free to drop your ideas here too if you like. Anyways, back to my ideas:
1. Lose for Profit
The first thing I thought was, surprisingly, about arcades and carnivals, where owners would rig their games so that most tries will end with a lost with the occasional win to keep the visitors interested. Or, if I rephrase it, a lost to the player means progress to your bank account. Of course, the challenge becomes "How much is too much" where you have to balance between wins and losses to get the maximum amount of profit. Too many wins, and you barely make profit. Too many losses, and nobody will play your game.
2. Take it Literally
Ahh... my favorite method to crack game jam themes. Just take the literal meaning! Tho this time since this theme is somewhat literal already, my thought goes to literally losing stuff to progress. This manifests in ideas like:
- Lose all your lives and/or coins to win
-Card game that makes the first one to drain their deck wins, with card that draws cards from deck to hand, cards that sends cards from deck to the graveyard, cards that sends the opponents cards back to the deck, cards that prevents any of these to happen, and many more
You can even explore this idea deeper and tackle things like moving on where the goal is to forget about the past and embrace the present.
3. Inner Spooks
Another thing that came to mind is Among us, specifically the fact that after you died, you still can do stuff like finishing the task, and... well that's it so that's why this idea exists: "How do we make playing as ghosts still interesting?" Maybe make it so you can still come back to life if you go back to your body within a time period. Maybe make it so while you can walk trough walls, disappear, and fly, there are still many obstacles like, I dunno, a ghost catcher trying to catch you while you are in that form. There's many more ways to spice this up but that's for morning me to figure out.
4. An eye for an ey... um... arm
The last idea I had for tonight is similar to the second idea, but instead of it being the goal, it's the method to reach that goal. So this idea manifest in things like:
-Trees losing their leaves so they could survive during winter an other natural phenomenons
-Throw away some of your treasure so your ship doesn't sink and/or you could still win the race while getting a lot of treasure
-Movement switches, basically platformers, shooters, or other moving games where you don't have access to every type of movement and have to lose some of your abilities (jump, double jump, move left, move right) to another. Take this to the extreme and maybe the game becomes a game that consists of a single "move" button but you could change the utility of that button from move to jump and maybe even shoot
Anyways, that's all the idea I had for tonight, and while I haven't really figured which one I want to pursue, I will allow you guys to choose any of these ideas, no credits required! Also, like I said earlier, feel free to drop any of your ideas here. Anyways, that's all from me tonight, thanks for reading! See ya!