Four words: “Tug-of-war” Olympics.
What’s the idea?
Two teams. One left, one right. You’re pulling on a rope, trying to move its center across some threshold.
Now, at the start, you’re obviously equally strong and nothing will happen by just pulling. That’s why there are loads of minigames around you. As some of your team keep pulling, other members peel off to try and win a minigame.
Winning games gives you powerups to become stronger and influence this rope pulling.
- You need to run around and collect other powerups to become stronger/faster
- You need to run around to collect weights to attach to the rope
- You can get more people (so now you control two characters at the same time, both of whom can pull.)
Of course, most minigames are variants on tug-of-war in some simple way. The idea of pulling ropes can of course be extended into everything. Pull a rope to open something or activate something. Keep a rope between players to move the ball. => This could even be a puzzle (platformer) game then, where the main gimmick is “tug-of-war for everything”.
Continue this way until one team has pulled this “line” towards their side completely.