play with me, a kodu game idea

I’ve been playing with kodu some but not to a great extent. A couple of nights ago, I was finally able to connect to a game sharing room and downloaded several games. Some were good and worth replaying, while I quickly aborted playing others. Invasion RTS, for example, is an ambitious RTS, in which you create two types of buildings which in turn create different types of units, giving you 3 types of defenders/attackers. And you have only 2, unreproducible kodu units to collect coins which allow you create things. Meanwhile, an evil red factory is busy pumping out attacking units.

It’s hard but enjoyable. The author PariahtheGod stopped work because someone else had a produced what he considered a better RTS.

I understand the reasons, but a couple of things interest me. Invasion RTS, whatever its design, was still a different game from the one that he liked [which I've not been able to download and play], as the other gamers have said. What intrigues me is that this pull to create something different is strong.

Yet, with many, duplicating and recreating is perhaps stronger. There are practical reasons, of course–when learning how to create a game, copying or recreating an existing game is a very standard practice. Porting, imitating, recreating dominates the homebrew scene, in fact. Yet, game developers like jayenkai who visit this site do both–they hone their skills while being creative. And many recreations are creative in their own ways, taking a different tact or changing gameplay here and there. Plus, creating a game from scratch can often lead to feature creep, leading to complex games.

With Kodu specifically, we have a game lab that is really best suited for simple games. Yet, I’m seeing people trying to create RPG, RTS, FPS, and other complex games. Recreations of Command & Conquer, of Halo, Diablo and others. And some don’t work very well, mostly due to Kodu’s limitations. I’m not complaining or criticizing, only observing, and it got me to think, well, smarty pants, why don’t you do something.

I like how Shigeru Miyamoto often takes game inspirations from life and not from other games. So, as my dog jumped in bed at 6 am to get me to play with her, I immediately saw a game idea. In fact, I saw in it a theme for several small games, all centered around friendship. I’m still working the first game in the series, but here’s a rough design of the first one.

Friendship 1 – Play with Me

Setting: You are a young, frenetic bike. And you want to play.

Objective: Get at least six different creatures to play with you. When you have played 6 times, you will be tired and have to take a nap.

Gameplay: Many other creatures are in the game world, but almost all don’t want to play, at least at the moment. They have other things they want to do, and then they will play with you. For example, one creature just wants to sleep for a while, and you have to keep other creatures from bothering her while she sleeps.

Controls: You can do several actions with your bike:

• Move
• Jump
• Pick up/drop
• Speak
• Emote

Speaking will actually be a large part of the game. The A, B, X, and Y buttons represent 4 general types of speech, such as request, warn, and plead. With these and the  few actions, you have to help each creature get what they want before they can play with you.

I’m still working on the controls, because I’d like to use the d-pad to set a tone or mood, like aggressive or sad, that affects the basic speech actions.

I’m not saying this is how creating in kodu should be done or that recreating games is bad. And, no, I don’t consider myself anywhere near Shigeru’s level. But after I tried to work on game ideas in Kodu that were roughly based on other games, working on a game inspired by something personal feels easier and more interesting. We’ll see if it doesn’t suck. Certainly, I welcome feedback.