Musings on next thing to design

[Callan S.]

I've been considering what to add on next to my game, Driftwurld.

I've been thinking of having a landscape you can walk around on, kinda like in urban dead.

But the thing is...what's fun about that?

I know urban dead is kind of fun, but it has dozens and dozens of things implemented in it.

I don't want to have to implement dozens of things before I get something kind of fun.

And indeed is urban dead fun because of that, or do all the dozens of implemented things simply confuses the senses and baffle them?

I like to try and cut straight to the fun, instead of coding dozens of features in until they reach a certain critical mass that is in some way fun.

Now I've enjoyed grand theft auto, several of them, and even more so, mercenaries on PS2. But with these alot of the moment to moment fun is reflex based (backed up by pretty graphics, but the reflex comes first - atleast for me)

I did love roving around in mercenaries, seeing an enemy base and deciding "I'm going to demolish that" (since you could destroy buildings in it). Then it'd get down to reflex fun aiming head shots, planting c4, hiding behind buildings...

Instead of reflex fun, what do you have, standing on an urban dead like world grid?

Any ideas?

[Callan S.]

I'm thinking of something a bit like age of fables multiple choice system and you can gain tactical skill, brawl skill and crops from wandering through it and just making some choices. Age of fable actually gets a fair bit of traffic, if you look at it's project wonderful ad data...