LÖVE

tentus wrote:What about a fighting game, like Indie Brawl (which is like Smash Bros in turn). Create a system by which members of the community can develop characters that the project coordinator can put into an official build. The characters could be caricatures of ourselves or perhaps crossovers of our various games.

This.

I am very very new to Lua and Love, but I have lots of experience working with python and pygame (and got fed up with them both ). So, I'm not sure of the capabilities of Love, but creating an open-ish world for a MMO is tough. However, like any game, playing with other people makes it way more fun. So, my vote goes for a space MMO (which also incidentally, I am most interested in).

/me imagines flying around in his super awesome space superiority fighter looking for other players allied with an enemy faction. After a long and exciting battle, flying back to his station in high geo-synchronous orbit around a pretty sweet planet, all battered and smoking, but victorious. Then, doing some mining or something while drinking a victory space beer.

With so many projects stagnant or abandoned I think it might be good to select one of these defunct projects and resurrect it. Usually the devs get burned out after most of the hardest work is already done, which would leave us to more of the content creation. It would save a lot of time and greatly increase the chance of something actually getting finished.

im all for the fighting game,
space game would be cool too, aslong as it looked suitable neo-retro.

if you make the fighting game, concentrate on making it online and allowing custom character skins for the vanilla characters in online fights

Personally, I don't like fighting games. Button mashing games just don't get much interest out of me. I like games that involve a bit more thinking, like an economy/exploration based space game.

I'm not a huge fan of fighting games either, but I've seen the communities they create firsthand for years (I am college friends with some of the best Super Smash/ Street Fighter/ Guilty Gear/ BlazBlue players in North America). Even for people with no skill like myself, an interesting variant on the genre can make for an enjoyable game.

For example, perhaps there could be two parts to the character select screen. First you select a Lover (or create your own), and then you endow them with a handful of special moves and properties. That way we get an exponential number of possible playerables, without having to worry too much about balancing or art creation. If a certain combination is ridiculously good we can maybe add new moves that answer it in turn, or try and use a community honor system of not being cheap.