Obviously needs a way better and more interesting title.
The idea is simple:
- Everyone is a wizard
- All you can do is cast specific spells: move something, shrink/grow, explode, …
- Everything interacts with everything using very simple, intuitive rules. This means attacks, consequences, defenses, strategy are never the same from game to game.
The rest isn’t clear yet, I just think these types of games are really fun yet rarely done.
It could be competitive: like a shooter, but with odd magic.
It could be cooperative: solving puzzles or just fighting baddies.
You could go the advanced route: give everyone access to all spells, buttons to rotate their spell wheel, lots of control.
Or the simple/family route: players can move and cast a spell. The spell they currently have is decided by all sorts of other things:
- Maybe they can pick up new spells.
- Maybe they can pick up parts that combine into a spell. (Two blue squares + one green triangle = move spell, for example.)
- Maybe there is a shared spell wheel. As such, when it rotates, it changes for everyone.
- Seems really fun, although you’d need slightly more control.
- Like changing the contents/order of that wheel. Or keeping the wheel so tight that there’s only exactly one spell for each player.
- Idea (BEST): the wheel is “imaginary”. The spell you currently have is above your head/on your person. When rotating spells, it simply checks where players are right now, matches it to a circle in 2D, and rotates that.
- This way, you can change and rearrange contents automatically! (And we don’t need UI, or buttons, or explanation for that. Just move.)
It would require a systems based approach: everything can interact with everything. So you can kill a monster in many different, creative ways.
- Shrink them until they fall into holes.
- Grow something else so it falls onto them or traps them
- If they have magic themselves, you can counter that.
- Forcefully move them around into dangers