Sort of Lemmings Game Idea

[Xaron]

Hey there,

As I grew up with Lemmings I had a game idea in my head for a long time (very long, must be since the good ol' C64 days).

So what about a top down approach. Think of Pac Man (or other maze) level design and several creatures start to walk at different locations and you have to guide them to the exit. Problem, they are not allowed to meet/hit each other (so there won't be 100 of them of course). Your task is to use obstacles, switches (e.g. that they have a direction and you can rotate them by 90 degrees each click), doors, teleporters to move as many of them as possible to the exit.

Being a programmer by myself I'd love to create such kind of a game but would love to get some feedback if that at all could lead to some fun game?

Cheers!

[Proxima]

Sounds a bit like Chu Chu Rocket.

[Xaron]

Googled it and yes, indeed. It goes into that direction even though not that fast paced action.

[Simon]

GS Guys. I wrote this around 2005. Guide the smileys to the goal tiles, without having the smileys crash into each other. Rotate the floor tiles by clicking, and watch the smileys react to various types of floors.

The smileys collect items for you, which give you special powers: Cut down grass with the scissors, set the springboard strength with a wrench, and lay glass tiles to cross gaps.

GS Guys doesn't exist on the internet right now, I'd have to fish it from old backup drives. This game is a Lua script that runs within a completely different C++ freeware game. >_>;

This was a mixture of 90 % route-planning and 10 % dexterity.

-- Simon

[Xaron]

HA! Great Simon. Looks like my idea was not that unique as I though it would. LOL.

Well at least I had it about 20 years ago, so well... Here goes the time...

Nevertheless I think I'm gonna start this just to get it out of my mind finally.

[Simon]

Hnn. It's a flexible core idea. It can't be that my take on it is the only one.

Go for it, I'm looking forward to first results!

-- Simon

[Xaron]

I think the main problem is not the programming part but the level design... But yeah, step by step, we can come back to this later.

[namida]

I had considered something similar at one point in the past to achieve a Lemmings fangame that was more similar to 3D Lemmings, without having to actually make something 3D. It never got beyond the "I have this idea" stage.

Anyway, I'm interested to see how this turns out.

[Xaron]

Interesting! But I won't make this 3d, just 2d top down. And probably both mobile and PC/Browser.

Maybe we can brainstorm ideas here a bit? I will see that I put together my ideas so far in a readable format.