* I have no renown or experience in the creation of games I simply played my fair share of different genres of games and am expressing a thought *
I've played a fair share of games, hour count recorded is 12k+ if that could help convince people. Some of the best games I've played were flash games. Now I'm not saying this purely because younger years tend to be the better ones. What really captivated me was the variety of types. A big one you tend not to see these days are decent Tower Defense. Others were ones you got to play as the monster. The last game that was well advertised as a tower defense, but never properly went down that route, was fortnight. Personally was disappointed because I was looking forward to a new tower defense game. I don't mean games that are RTS, two different things.
The biggest idea for game planning / design that I want to put a spotlight on are games where you play the bad guy and you stay the bad guy no redemption arc. Not even games where you choose if you want to play as the bad guy or the good guy just solely the bad guy. There's a lot of unique story writing opportunities, ways to grab the player's attention.
Another lesser seen is where you play the monster or creature in whatever world. One game that has a place in my heart for this is Natural Selection. Where it was aliens vs humans. specific elements of being a monster that game got right were things like
not finding or upgrading weapons as a creature instead you evolved
different types shapes sizes
not humanoid even if bipedal
creepy from the human view but as a creature you felt right at home, you felt like the predator.
Another game I'd like to shout out is Century: Age of Ashes. The game is player vs player team battles, except everyone is riding dragon. What this game got right was
The dragon models moved like they were alive, flapping wings, moving tails, head bobbing. It wasn't just a static body with a cycling walking/flying animation
took classic game modes like capture the flag or team death match and added a twist to either better suit the main style of the game
The maps are all great and have different balances of dips, sharp turns, open/crowded air, various power ups or map specific interactable that don't lean the fight to one team.
In short you could say they simply took the basic team based game gameplay that has been around practically since the beginning but the important part is they tweaked it. They gave it a less seen main theme, tweaked the elements of classic game modes to fit said theme, and most importantly they balanced it all.
I firmly believe if that game got some proper advertisement it'd be a leading game, who doesn't love the excitement of a high speed air battle.
To keep this all short there are a lot of themes, styles, and already released games that if are worked, tested, and properly scrutinized they could easily bring in more than the manufacturing cost, customer loyalty, and publicity than any game reskinned. One of the reasons I'm even posting this on Obsidian's forum is because I think they could defiantly pull it off. Most of all I'd like to see more unique games that you'd have to argue are just the programming lovechild of two previously published games.
Off topic but please support games being quietly worked on and tested, too many good ideas and early released games get ruined because they're rushed. Even if the game in the end becomes great it could miss it's time to shine due to all the advertising and publicity was used too early.
