Here's a thread for posting your leftover game ideas.
By the way, if you're making freeware Android games, I might be interested in creating the graphic. I can be contacted at kasperhviid REMOVETHIS @gmail.com
I'm no programmer, so I have a lot of unused ideas myself. But first:
Some Suggestions to Android Game Creators
Take advantage of the hardware. The Android has a lot of input devices - touchscreen, trackball, GPS, camera, compass and accelerometer. With this in mind, the Android is NOT the right platform for games like Pacman, Snake or any other game developed specifically to be played with a 4-direction input device such as a joystick or arrow keys. Tetris clones are not exactly a new idea, and making yet another clone on a device which doesn't has the proper controls is just silly. Instead of cloning outdated games on a device which they don't fit into, try to create some new games, based on the new input possibilities.
The screens low resolution means that you can use pixel art for graphic, something which is quite cool. It also makes sense to write a particle engine which uses single pixels instead of sprites. For good use of pixels, check out the game Noiz2 by Kenta Cho.
Don't underestimate the importance of good graphic and sound. This will make your game take up a lot of space, but is worth it.
Now to my game ideas:
Duel
One player uses the Menu button, the other the uses the Back button.
On the screen you see two two figures, pointing at each other with some heavy shooting irons. Above them hangs a traffic signal. When it turns green. Each player press his button as quickly as possible. The quickest one, shots the other dude, blood and gore spraying all over the screen.
ghostScanner
This is a camera program with the extra feature that it is able to track down ghost and takes photos of them. All quite fake, of course.
By using the GPS, "ghosts" are placed at random spots. There should be most ghosts at night, and one have to be a bit lucky to find a ghost.
A radar tells when the mobile is close to a "ghost". The radar is most active when the camera is not only close to the ghost, but also pointing at it with the camera lense.
The mobiles middle button takes a photo. If a ghost is within range, a ghost sprite is placed on the photo. (the ghost are just manipulated photos of people with an opacity layer)
Ideally, the cameras position and angle in the real world is compared to the ghosts position in a 3D space, and the placement of the ghost is based on this. But it is also possible to make it a great deal more simple than this.
It is likely that it will need some work to get the photos and the ghosts to fit together. I guess giving both ghost and photo some noise, some blur and a bluish color overlay might do the trick. The photos should be real low res, either screen size or something slightly larger.
The application might also need some work to give the user a feeling of spookiness. The radar should have a real spooky ping sound. The GUI should appear quite cheap, so that the user won't guess that there is some more advanced stuff going on beneath the surface. The camera might be greyscale only.
On top of this, the program could create events and random intervals. Spooky voices, handwritten text across the screen, or a face which suddenly appear on the phone for 1/20 sec. This should not happen very often.
Ghouls, Guts & Gold
A 2D horizontal-scrolling Diablo-clone with a twist: The monster fighting are automated, and the players focus is on picking up stuff, drink potions, selecting equipment and placing skill points. The game should develop very fast, so that the game can be finished/lost quite quickly. The right part of the screen is reserved for a GUI with tabs for Character, Inventory, Skills and Quests
Throw Your Phone
Using the accelerometer, this game calculates how hard the phone lands when the player throws it to the ground. The goal is to get as hard impact as possible, without destroying the phone. The game should feature instructions, online high scores, and a very well-written disclaimer.
Greed
A multiplayer game, where 2-4 people plays using the same phone. Each player has a button he uses to control a small vehicle of the screen. The button can be Menu, Trackball, Back and Seach. The button toggles the vehicle between two states: turning around and moving forward. The playfield is fixed: no scrolling.
When the players move out of the game area, they will reappear at the opposite edge.
This concept could be used for different games, but this is what I thought: The goal of the game is to collect some small diamonds which appear randomly on the screen. The player who first collects a certain number of points will be transformed to a larger vehicle, and will then have a certain number of seconds to hunt down the other players for additional points.
Some bonus objects would be nice.
By the way, if you're making freeware Android games, I might be interested in creating the graphic. I can be contacted at kasperhviid REMOVETHIS @gmail.com
I'm no programmer, so I have a lot of unused ideas myself. But first:
Some Suggestions to Android Game Creators
Take advantage of the hardware. The Android has a lot of input devices - touchscreen, trackball, GPS, camera, compass and accelerometer. With this in mind, the Android is NOT the right platform for games like Pacman, Snake or any other game developed specifically to be played with a 4-direction input device such as a joystick or arrow keys. Tetris clones are not exactly a new idea, and making yet another clone on a device which doesn't has the proper controls is just silly. Instead of cloning outdated games on a device which they don't fit into, try to create some new games, based on the new input possibilities.
The screens low resolution means that you can use pixel art for graphic, something which is quite cool. It also makes sense to write a particle engine which uses single pixels instead of sprites. For good use of pixels, check out the game Noiz2 by Kenta Cho.
Don't underestimate the importance of good graphic and sound. This will make your game take up a lot of space, but is worth it.
Now to my game ideas:
Duel
One player uses the Menu button, the other the uses the Back button.
On the screen you see two two figures, pointing at each other with some heavy shooting irons. Above them hangs a traffic signal. When it turns green. Each player press his button as quickly as possible. The quickest one, shots the other dude, blood and gore spraying all over the screen.
ghostScanner
This is a camera program with the extra feature that it is able to track down ghost and takes photos of them. All quite fake, of course.
By using the GPS, "ghosts" are placed at random spots. There should be most ghosts at night, and one have to be a bit lucky to find a ghost.
A radar tells when the mobile is close to a "ghost". The radar is most active when the camera is not only close to the ghost, but also pointing at it with the camera lense.
The mobiles middle button takes a photo. If a ghost is within range, a ghost sprite is placed on the photo. (the ghost are just manipulated photos of people with an opacity layer)
Ideally, the cameras position and angle in the real world is compared to the ghosts position in a 3D space, and the placement of the ghost is based on this. But it is also possible to make it a great deal more simple than this.
It is likely that it will need some work to get the photos and the ghosts to fit together. I guess giving both ghost and photo some noise, some blur and a bluish color overlay might do the trick. The photos should be real low res, either screen size or something slightly larger.
The application might also need some work to give the user a feeling of spookiness. The radar should have a real spooky ping sound. The GUI should appear quite cheap, so that the user won't guess that there is some more advanced stuff going on beneath the surface. The camera might be greyscale only.
On top of this, the program could create events and random intervals. Spooky voices, handwritten text across the screen, or a face which suddenly appear on the phone for 1/20 sec. This should not happen very often.
Ghouls, Guts & Gold
A 2D horizontal-scrolling Diablo-clone with a twist: The monster fighting are automated, and the players focus is on picking up stuff, drink potions, selecting equipment and placing skill points. The game should develop very fast, so that the game can be finished/lost quite quickly. The right part of the screen is reserved for a GUI with tabs for Character, Inventory, Skills and Quests
Throw Your Phone
Using the accelerometer, this game calculates how hard the phone lands when the player throws it to the ground. The goal is to get as hard impact as possible, without destroying the phone. The game should feature instructions, online high scores, and a very well-written disclaimer.
Greed
A multiplayer game, where 2-4 people plays using the same phone. Each player has a button he uses to control a small vehicle of the screen. The button can be Menu, Trackball, Back and Seach. The button toggles the vehicle between two states: turning around and moving forward. The playfield is fixed: no scrolling.
When the players move out of the game area, they will reappear at the opposite edge.
This concept could be used for different games, but this is what I thought: The goal of the game is to collect some small diamonds which appear randomly on the screen. The player who first collects a certain number of points will be transformed to a larger vehicle, and will then have a certain number of seconds to hunt down the other players for additional points.
Some bonus objects would be nice.
