Games You Wish Existed - The vidya we'll probably only see in our dreams

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A game about tunnel rats in Vietnam. It could either be being the North Vietnamese (like a mixture of logistics and tower defense game, lay traps everywhere, dig your system), or it could be American (like a 2D roguelike where you have to try to navigate this hellish guantlet of roof snakes and punji stakes and gooks hiding in dugouts). The tunnels were fucked up. The more I read about Vietnam, the more it seems like everything notable about fighting in WW1 is there too, these tunnel systems were as remarkable as trench warfare. View attachment tunnels-used-by-viet-cong-forces-during-the-vietnam-war-v0-olxf171k3zha1.webp

Also, I really like this extraction shooter trend and would like to see it in some more novel settings and melee settings (not fantasy). Off the top of my head some good ones (some obviously have way more mass appeal than others) are:
1) Guerilla warfare/counterinsurgency setting like Vietnam, it may not really be an "extraction shooter" at that point but reading about SOG Green Berets and how they had to put so much thinking into navigating their environment and noise and stuff like that, extremely intense game of stealth with parties hunting each other...
2) Same idea, but Indians/colonists on the old Frontier. Iroquois warriors jumping down from trees to bush skulls in with clubs to steal beaver pelts/guns/rum.
3) Medieval knights, fighting over... something? Like, Chivalry combat, but somehow turned into an extraction shooter.
 
GTA like San Andreas set around Chicago, Detroit, and Lake Michigan. It wouldn't be as diverse as San Andreas or my favored idea of a Texas GTA, but you get two big cities, each with a somewhat different vibe (Detroit in particular would have its vast abandoned neighborhoods). Then it could have Wisconsin be the farmland area, Lower Peninsula be like a small rural towns area, and Upper Peninsula be a deep wilderness area.
 
I had this nutty idea that I don't think would work in a game because of the intense stigma surrounding it, but it would be an internment camp simulator, so think a cross between Prison Architect and something like Frostpunk or Tropico.

Basically, the idea is you're a nation at war, so you stick citizens thought to be potentially disloyal and other dissidents in an internment camp, with all sort of facilities (farms, education facilities, hospitals, entertainment, etc.) all while putting them to work to create profit/weapons/food to fuel the war. Your goal is to grow the camp while the war wages on (there's a time limit, you have x years) and get enough resources to win the war.

While the idea is to remain profitable, there are several ways to go about this, you can create an ideal working environment for the residents, including leisure time (with things to do, so libraries, theaters, etc.) and plenty to eat to keep everyone happy and productive, or be incredibly cruel to people, have them work until they drop dead, feed them meat patties made with their own children, and inflict needless punishments just for the fun of it.

Could be both an interesting take on the city-sim genre and a psychological thought experiment at the same time.
 
Xarpho's Return said:
I had this nutty idea that I don't think would work in a game because of the intense stigma surrounding it, but it would be an internment camp simulator, so think a cross between Prison Architect and something like Frostpunk or Tropico.

Basically, the idea is you're a nation at war, so you stick citizens thought to be potentially disloyal and other dissidents in an internment camp, with all sort of facilities (farms, education facilities, hospitals, entertainment, etc.) all while putting them to work to create profit/weapons/food to fuel the war. Your goal is to grow the camp while the war wages on (there's a time limit, you have x years) and get enough resources to win the war.

While the idea is to remain profitable, there are several ways to go about this, you can create an ideal working environment for the residents, including leisure time (with things to do, so libraries, theaters, etc.) and plenty to eat to keep everyone happy and productive, or be incredibly cruel to people, have them work until they drop dead, feed them meat patties made with their own children, and inflict needless punishments just for the fun of it.

Could be both an interesting take on the city-sim genre and a psychological thought experiment at the same time.
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So you want Concentration Camp Tycoon.
 
Ughubughughughughughghlug said:
So you want Concentration Camp Tycoon.
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Tycoon games imply extremely shallow gameplay as it was used extensively in mid-2000s shovelware, and "concentration camp" is such a dirty word, but yes.

Probably will have some random technology thrown in across the game to try to downplay the obvious Holocaust comparisons.
 
Xarpho's Return said:
Tycoon games imply extremely shallow gameplay as it was used extensively in mid-2000s shovelware, and "concentration camp" is such a dirty word, but yes.

Probably will have some random technology thrown in across the game to try to downplay the obvious Holocaust comparisons.
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Concentration camp is a neutral and accurate description that goes back to the Cuban concentrado and British internment of Boers.

Personally I want Plantation Tycoon with Sims like characters.
 
I don't know if this counts exactly, but when I was a little kid I would look at pictures of Resident Evil in EGM and imagine being able to play it co-op with you and a friend being able to explore the mansion on your own in the same game and maybe team up when necessary. Of course back then I didn't have internet so I expected it to be split-screen.

Also a football game that focuses on special teams because that's what Bill Belichick does.
 
I really don't understand how there aren't more - and by more, I mean like, ANY - doctor/surgeon games. See, the thing is, you have tons of spergy simulators for every kind of autist out there. If it's a vehicle that moves, there's a simulator (even if it's a shitty one). If it's a business to run, it probably exists. Police, different games exist in different forms. Tacticool milsim, yes. Fireman? Yes, even that exists. Lawyer? Not as a sim, but Ace Attorney exists.

And yet, one of the things that a lot of people take an interest in as children, and many people continue to watch on TV as adults, doctors, nope. The closest you get is Surgeon Simulator, which is a joke game, it's Operation in digital form.

I personally like the idea of combat surgeon games (mentioned here before MASH Korean War, Civil War, and combat medics), which there's a combat medic game coming up but I wouldn't count on it to be anything other than indie sim dogshit. But even just bogstandard "diagnose the patient"/"cut the patient's kidney out" is missing from Steam.
 
Ughubughughughughughghlug said:
I really don't understand how there aren't more - and by more, I mean like, ANY - doctor/surgeon games. See, the thing is, you have tons of spergy simulators for every kind of autist out there. If it's a vehicle that moves, there's a simulator (even if it's a shitty one). If it's a business to run, it probably exists. Police, different games exist in different forms. Tacticool milsim, yes. Fireman? Yes, even that exists. Lawyer? Not as a sim, but Ace Attorney exists.
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If Ace Attorney is good enough for you as an attorney game, then the Trauma Center series might be what you are looking for, which is basically an anime surgeon arcade game.
 
I really, really wish there was a game that was Battle Cry of Freedom, just... good. The core gameplay, the basic idea of it, is absolutely amazing. But the game has no production value, so many minor things about it are fucked up. I can't stop playing it but I fear that it's lack of success means no one will ever make a better one that could actually draw more players.

BCOF is only alive because of Commander Mode. You are an officer. If you die you take over the next soldier in the chain of command. You march your soldiers around and give them orders from atop your horse (until that's shot out from under you). It turns out that it is engaging enough, requires enough input, that this is enough, by itself, to make for an interesting match, and there is actually some sense of playing well or playing badly (you play more, you get to understanding nuances of how to position, how to move, and start to become clever). And it's thrilling. Play too long and like any multiplayer game you stop seeing the romance of it and just the game beneath, but at first it is thrilling to ride along with the cavalry slamming into the backs and flanks of enemy lines, or to feel a volley rip through your lines and see the men falling around you and get a glimmer of insight into what it would have taken to stand there under fire in real life.

But it's so niche of a thing, I think that if anyone ever made another go at it, they would need to broaden the scope. American Revolution, Napoleonic Wars, Civil War, Franco-Prussian War, Mexican-American War, whatever. Which is a bit of a problem, because every time you do that you have to add more uniforms and weapons and assets for the maps, potentially more languages too. BCOF lets you play a handful of different units for infantry (for cavalry and artillery you're fucked, there's only one regiment) and even those get old real fast. But, then again, War Thunder can make tons of different planes and tanks, so should it be that big a deal to just add some new skins? Holdfast seems to be fine with it.

I really hope this genre-of-one-game doesn't die, but I bet it will.
 
LowLowHighLow said:
If Ace Attorney is good enough for you as an attorney game, then the Trauma Center series might be what you are looking for, which is basically an anime surgeon arcade game.
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Eh, I just threw it out there as an example. Never played it but know what it is. I think it's kind of stupid how every Ace Attorney case ends with the defense attorney proving the prosecution actually did it, that's like Scooby Doo writing.

I think it'd be neat to see something about being a corrupt district attorney where your power is in choosing who to prosecute and how.
 
Ughubughughughughughghlug said:
Eh, I just threw it out there as an example. Never played it but know what it is. I think it's kind of stupid how every Ace Attorney case ends with the defense attorney proving the prosecution actually did it, that's like Scooby Doo writing.

I think it'd be neat to see something about being a corrupt district attorney where your power is in choosing who to prosecute and how.
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I see two inherent problems with that are already present in games.

The first problem is that they'd have to have a "right" answer that's hard-coded, even if it requires extra information that's not presented at the trial or other evidence, because trying to have a "right" answer and a just-as-easily-plausible "correct" "wrong" answer is bad writing.

The bigger problem is how morality is depicted. Every DA thinks they're doing the "right" thing, even when it's obvious to everyone else that they aren't. You could look at someone like Chesa Boudin, and given that he was booted on 55% of the vote, and even if you figured that a good chunk of the 45% "yea" vote was fraudulent, you'd still find at least a third of the vote supported him...and the way video games are written now being sympathetic to non-whites (blindfolded Lady Justice be damned) is the "correct" answer.
 
The original version of dark void with the full campaign and world before it was frankensteined and massively cut down into its current form.

That game was true one of a kind kino and we'll never see the true vision the devs had :(
 
I wish the Warlords series still existed.

They ended badly on their 4th installment.

But, imagine a 4x game that's very simple and battles are instantly resolved.

There was a browser based spiritual successor, but it's lame...
 
Its impossible but I want a new Growlanser. I don't even need it to be drawn by Urushihara anymore, but the series was really pioneering personality flowcharts and really absurd level design up until the 3D era hit and they couldn't scale their games anymore. I know part of their team lived on in Atlus and went on to make the DeSu games, but the DeSu games (although i liked them) never continued CareerSoft's old ambitions to make a game where the player creates the personality of the main character through subtle decisions.

I want a new game where entire routes are locked behind the player's personality values. The kind where you need to have complimented someone's tits at least 20 times within the first 5 hours of the game to unlock a secret route.
 
Had a shitty idea way back when of cruise ship tycoon. After playing a bit of Anno 1800 and Planet Coaster, I know now what it would look like:
You build cruise ships, meaning you pick a certain hull/type of ship and then decide on the layout of the ship's interior, as well as schedules of events (like classes, entertainment acts, etc.) for the rooms and menus and such. So that alone is basically an optimization game, how to maximize profit for a limited space (which might entail specializing it, given different tourist types).

But, that's just one aspect, and this is where the Anno (or make comparisons to Tropico) comes in. You can lay down routes for your ship between ports - when you sell tickets on a ship, it's for a specific itinerary of ports of calls at specific times - and the ports have their own local economies, lots of industry and residences and such just for scenery but what's relevant to you is attractions in town, which on a port call your passengers visit. Then, you can invest in them, you can build your own private attractions in ports or help fund (for a share) attractions, or strike group deals (shit like your passengers get X discount because you paid Y amount per month). And the world grows, dynamically like Sid Meier's Pirates, around the commerce of you, rival cruise lines, and naturally, cities grow and shrink, sectors expand. If you get big enough you can not only have whole fleets of ships but even open resorts where you try to make whole package deals of attractions on one island.

And at any time you can go ship sim with sailing the cruise ship yourself (to reenact Costa Concordia).

Maps would be for places like the Caribbean, Polynesia, Mediterranean, and fjords of Scandinavia, and riverine/lacustrine maps in Europe and America where the scale of the gameplay is smaller but the concepts are all the same.

Would be the ultimate merger of tycoon game concepts with Anno-like networks of islands.



Another one, Spelunky meets tycoon game meets dungeon crawler like Darkest Dungeon. You are curator of a museum of antiquities/archeology/paleontology in generic Two-Fisted Tales (like, the vague comic booky time where the Germans are have zeppelin Prussians and half Nazis) times. In the tycoon mode, you build up a museum. But, to procure the artifacts you must send your treasure hunters on Indiana Jones-like expeditions into whatever hellhole, permadeath, to overcome traps, savages, nature, and the Germans to get your hands on that artifact. I call it, "It Belongs in a Museum."
 
Xarpho's Return said:
Tycoon games imply extremely shallow gameplay as it was used extensively in mid-2000s shovelware
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Idk man late 90s early 2000s sims and tycoons were extremely ahead of their time to the point nobody can make a competent sim or tycoon game in 2023 and everybody including myself is forced to play Zoo Tycoon 2 or TTD or JPOG instead of fucking planet whatever the fuck or Jurassic park evolution. Even some of those shovelware like fish tycoon had some fucking excellent mechanics like functioning on system time ie the game reads your OS time and adjusts the game statuses based on that time, such that it functions in real time even when the device is off. Thats the only game Ive seen that mechanic on and it was fucking brilliant to a 10 year old kid.
 
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