ld50/ideas.md

LD50 Ideas

Delay the inevitable

• advancing army: eg., FTL
• chess where the opponent keeps getting new pieces
  • space invaders
• tomogotchi with a medical condition: keep managing it. while trying to acheive some other goal?

Fragile

• hang on to something with a precarious control scheme, eg. waiting tables with a stack of plates
• low health (bullet hell, or 1-hit KO)
• navigate social interactions
• perform a task precisely: small errors may have large consequences
  • eg., solder simulator. components crack when overheated, or esd death when touched
  • surgeon sim but more serious? heh

Make connections

• crap puzzles like missing pipes or wires
• make your own mental connections in solving a puzzle based on clues
  • detective work
• making (and breaking) connections to manage a systemic capacity (eg. MiniMetro)
• social engineering
• connecting pieces with no particular goal: frankenstein monsters, hip bone is connected to the toe bone?
• connect different concepts or systems in a process (eg. that medicine making puzzle game)

Mutation

• alter yourself to fit better, or to succeed
• the challenge keeps mutating: you need to adapt
• managing with extra functionality due to mutation (eg. your job now has extra tasks that you need to do)
• identifying mutations (spot the difference?)

Teleportation

• teleportation is complicated. your star trek teleporter takes you through hell before you rematerialize
• you can only teleport, and so have to go back and force to solve a problem
• movement is always in steps instead of linear. eg. you move like a chess piece while everything around you moves freely

A single resource

• literally any game with just one resource: life, time, etc.
• finding 'creative' uses for the one thing you have

Folklore

• an experience based on a folk story?
• story building "I heard that..."
  • make combined with some elements of a rock-paper-scissors version of burning wheel's social combat to try and find which narrative is accepted as part of the story

Shelter

• crosses over in part with infestation
• survival
• home maintenance

Infestation

• burn all the things
• the paranoia and discomfort of living with bedbugs
• spending energy to control or modify a chaotic environment to prevent the infestation from coming in
• where's waldo
• bop 'em reflex thing

Road trip

• bored again trail
• cross country canada
• management of driving resources
  • attention / awakeness
  • consumables (snacks, water, coffee)
  • activities (games, stories, podcasts/music/etc)
  • need to pee
  • gas / cash / grass
  • passenger irritation
  • weather / heat / where the
  • does your cruise control work

Tunnels

• is this like a special case of make connections?

Overgrown

• is this like infestation?
  • more precise in not wanting to remove something?
• difficult to move or see what's coming

Out of order

• find pieces of a thing
• find a way to return to calm
• enforce the order beat 'em up

Space is limited

• any game I make basically
• many games progress from small levels to larger. perhaps fixed size, or they progress from larger to smaller and it becomes more difficult (how?)

Combine

• put items together
• connect different concepts or systems in a process (eg. that medicine making puzzle game)

Garden

• a large multi-tomagotchi situation
• sorting or optimization problem: given space and plants and their neighbour interactions, get the best results possible
• plant identification (lol just flash cards, but in the compo I can't use outside pictures of a thing unless I take them myself or alter them in a meaningful way)