Your Dream Games

[MrFlibble]

A libre open-source clone of Heroes of Might and Magic II and/or III, or at least a similar game inspired by these. I mean a complete game like what Widelands is to The Settlers II or Lix to Lemmings, not just an open source engine recreation.

 

Also a libre open-source clone of StarCraft. There are many games that try to imitate it, but none quite capturing the right balance of gameplay mechanics, story and atmosphere. In fact, one of the closest things to both StarCraft and Warcraft II in the free and open source game department, in my opinion, would be Astroseries, but that one has some shortcomings -- the visuals, while not really professional-looking, have a certain charm to them, but the terrain has some obvious tiling problems which I've not been able to fix. There's also a very neat but non-open-source game called Priority: Survive, but this one refuses to work on modern Windows and is not free as in freedom.

 

A completely libre Prince of Persia like platformer running on the SDLPoP engine. Something like what Planet Cloudius IX is to Commander Keen games.

[Rudolph]

49 minutes ago, TheNoiseClassicDooMfan said:

Surprised I’m the first to say this but Duke Nukem Forever 2001

You might get your wish with the Restoration Project!

 

41 minutes ago, MrFlibble said:

Also a libre open-source clone of StarCraft. There are many games that try to imitate it, but none quite capturing the right balance of gameplay mechanics, story and atmosphere. In fact, one of the closest things to both StarCraft and Warcraft II in the free and open source game department, in my opinion, would be Astroseries, but that one has some shortcomings -- the visuals, while not really professional-looking, have a certain charm to them, but the terrain has some obvious tiling problems which I've not been able to fix. There's also a very neat but non-open-source game called Priority: Survive, but this one refuses to work on modern Windows and is not free as in freedom.

Absolutely! Or at the very least, something similar to OpenRA for the likes of StarCraft.

Edited October 8, 2023 by Rudolph

[Ar_e_en]

4 hours ago, Rudolph said:

So Pink Floyd: The Game? :P

Pink Floyd would only be a part of it. Ideally it would feature several prog rock acts to influence its world and lore.

[The_SloVinator]

- Shantae 1 Remake

- New Duke game

- Actual good Serious Sam game

- System Shock 3

- Freedom Planet 3

 

Those are at the top of my head.

Edited October 8, 2023 by The_SloVinator

[DogsRNice]

9 hours ago, Captain red pants said:

You ever played Kenshi?

i'll have to try that it looks interesting

[Rudolph]

I just thought of what Half-Life 3 could look like as a continuation of Marc Laidlaw's Epistle Three.

 

Gordon Freeman would wake up on a beach in a far, indeterminate future on a post-Combine Earth that would have become overrun by a heavily-mutanted Earth/Xen flora and fauna to the point of becoming barely recognizable. The first humans Gordon would run into would belong to an odd communal society they would have learned to adapt to the radically-altered environments, notably by living alongside descendents of the Vortigaunts and having tamed a previously parasitic species like the Headcrab into a symbiotic one that can bond with a host and act as a organic protective exoskeleton; Gordon would get one in order to communicate with those humans and also to replace his long-gone HEV suit. The arsenal would be much more exotic than in the previous games and the adventure would take you through Xen-esque forests and caves, overrun city ruins and even a dark and gloomy former Combine stronghold where Combine remnants who would have become "feral" would dwell. The game's antagonists would reveal themselves to be an Enclave-like cybernetically-enhanced faction of humans who have chose to embrace Combine technology and use it to colonize the rest of the Solar System, leaving the planet behind; for unknown reason, they have regained interest in Earth and have begun to return to Earth.

[OliveTree]

10 hours ago, Rudolph said:

 

Joking aside, would video games with levels set on the Moon fit your criteria?

 

Because I know a few Mario games have them as well as Duke Nukem and Prey: Mooncrash.

it wouldnt fit my criteria just if theres small segments on the moon, but it's better than nothing =_=

[Rudolph]

Well, speaking of the Moon, I do wish there could have been a sixth Mega Man game ("Rockman World 6") on Gameboy; the Stardroids were an interesting new faction and it would have been nice to see more of them. Maybe this time, Mega Man would have been the one to go on the offensive, traveling to the Stardroids' home solar system to respond to a distress call from the anti-Stardroids resistance - led by Duo from Mega Man 8 - and assist it in taking down the military regime responsible for the invasion of the Sol system in the previous game. Maybe Proto Man, Bass and even Duo himself could join the fun, each with their own gameplay?

 

And while we are talking about Mega Man games, there needs to be a Mega Man X9 done in a SNES style to mirror Mega Man 9 recreating the NES style, with X, Zero and Axl being playable characters. Those two would play like they did in X8, i.e. Zero being the double-jumping melee fighter and Axl the Contra-style rapid-fire character with the ability to hover. Hopefully, the plot would address X8's ending in a way that does not throw Axl under the bus and instead allows him to remain playable from beginning to end.

 

Oh yeah, and make Mega Man Legends 3 already, Capcom. Not that I am a fan of the series myself, but fans have been asking for it and you even started working on it until you abruptly cancelled it for unclear reasons.

Edited October 9, 2023 by Rudolph

[aloysiusfreeman]

Half Life 3

Final Fantasy Versus XIII (just cause I'm curious of Nomura's vision with the bones that made XV)

Final Fantasy 7 if it was developed using the Xenogears script as originally pitched

[Rudolph]

I feel like I am on a roll today!

 

Another game I would like to see is Borderlands Zero, a prequel starring Moxxi (looking to provide for her family and escape the Hodunks clan), Marcus (looking to make money), Zed (looking to prove that he is worthy of a medical license) and Steele (going undercover as a Vault Hunter to embarrass the current Atlas leadership).

 

Oh yeah, and I would love it if Arms Race had been part of a bigger DLC set on Elpis where Salvador and Axton intended to have their show take place in a seemingly-abandoned Dahl compound that they got for cheap, only to find themselves having to fight remnants of Zarpedon's unit. It would have brought back the Oz kits and the Butt Slam, and the actual Arms Race game mode would have been the DLC's endgame.

Edited October 9, 2023 by Rudolph

[129thVisplane]

Blood 2. specifically, a Blood 2 that's been finished, its story fleshed out to make more sense, etc rather than the half baked alpha we got that got pushed out too early.

 

i want a Blood 2 that's as utterly delicious power blasting action packed as the first one, make the explosions and the weapons work correctly, but also i wanna explore the backstory of the brought-back Chosen who are clearly from a different reality considering everything. i want the whole "realities have been falling apart for the past 200 years" plot point to have the weight it deserves and make it increasingly evident throughout the game that things are getting majorly fucked up and only the raw firepower of Caleb and the alternate versions of his long dead culty pals can stop all of existence from melting into an entropic disaster. make the Tchernobog essence manifest in Caleb somehow, that could be cool. technically there's Death Wish for all my Blood 2 needs but still sucks that Blood 2 exists in such a miserably underdeveloped state.

 

and hell while i'm at it i want a prequel to Blood. i wanna see more haunted victorian mansions gimme more of those the backstory. let me see my boi climb up the cult ladder. actually that would be more fitting for a movie oh god dont do that, i've seen one too many videogame movies to want a Blood movie

[Rudolph]

1 hour ago, 129thVisplane said:

actually that would be more fitting for a movie

Not really. I am not very familiar with the Blood lore, but having Caleb climbing up the cult's ranks seems like more than enough of an excuse to have him blast his ways through levels. The game would also have to end where the first one begins, with Caleb and his companions being betrayed by Tchernobog.

[Panzermann11]

I've been thinking about it for a while, but forgot to say here. I wish there was a community-managed legacy version of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive based on the 2012 version much like Team Fortress 2008, to show how CS:GO was like on day one.

 

The CS:GO we have today, much like TF2, is very different than what we have, or had today. There were no weapon skins, crates you need to unlock with keys you need to purchase, and the audiovisual effects and interface were very different. I heard people talking about how they wanted to go back to old TF2, but strangely the same is hardly said for CS:GO.

Edited October 10, 2023 by Panzermann11

[Rudolph]

I would love to see a real-time strategy game that is essentially the anti-StarCraft thematically, by which I mean it would be just as accessible and engaging, but lack the regressive messages: instead of being a heavily-whitewashed homage to the American Old West, the human faction would instead be marginalized people fleeing persecution and the gameplay would involve mostly nonlethal combat and non-destructive resource extraction... well, except for the "evil" faction, which I imagine would be out-of-control machines that actively ravage the land and consume entire planets in its mindless quest for expansion.

[Skullzrawk9]

On 10/9/2023 at 8:47 AM, 129thVisplane said:

Blood 2. specifically, a Blood 2 that's been finished, its story fleshed out to make more sense, etc rather than the half baked alpha we got that got pushed out too early.

 

i want a Blood 2 that's as utterly delicious power blasting action packed as the first one, make the explosions and the weapons work correctly, but also i wanna explore the backstory of the brought-back Chosen who are clearly from a different reality considering everything. i want the whole "realities have been falling apart for the past 200 years" plot point to have the weight it deserves and make it increasingly evident throughout the game that things are getting majorly fucked up and only the raw firepower of Caleb and the alternate versions of his long dead culty pals can stop all of existence from melting into an entropic disaster. make the Tchernobog essence manifest in Caleb somehow, that could be cool. technically there's Death Wish for all my Blood 2 needs but still sucks that Blood 2 exists in such a miserably underdeveloped state.

 

and hell while i'm at it i want a prequel to Blood. i wanna see more haunted victorian mansions gimme more of those the backstory. let me see my boi climb up the cult ladder. actually that would be more fitting for a movie oh god dont do that, i've seen one too many videogame movies to want a Blood movie

That’s a cool idea!

 

I would also love to see blood get a proper sequel. Maybe it could have gameplay reminiscent of Doom 2016/Eternal and have the pitchfork be tied to sone kind of traversal mechanic? I would love to see the sequel go hard with spooky/gothic environments.

 

A Blood movie could also be cool. I would imagine it to be animated with claymation.

[P_A_Z]

A METRO game in open world, which use the totally map of the moscow Metro in a non-linear gameplay, this is my dream.

 

 

...and Half-Life 3 of course.

Edited October 10, 2023 by P_A_Z

[magicsofa]

5 hours ago, Rudolph said:

a heavily-whitewashed homage to the American Old West

 

I thought SC was about how humans are so stupid that they would try to use an alien race as a weapon and then completely get their ass handed to them by said race. (Never played sc2 did I miss something?)

 

I'd love to see a similar game in terms of strategy and charm, without the knuckle bleeding apm barrier

[Rudolph]

2 hours ago, magicsofa said:

I thought SC was about how humans are so stupid that they would try to use an alien race as a weapon and then completely get their ass handed to them by said race.

No, not really.

 

There are a couple subplots that do involve some humans weaponizing the Zerg (usually successfully, until a third party - i.e. the player-character - comes in and sabotages their efforts), but that is only a small part of the story and it is usually there to justify Terran-Zerg team-ups or the Zerg even bothering with the Terrans in the first place.

 

* * *

 

Anyway, another game I would love to see is a Saint Seiya JRPG. The franchise already has all the ingredients for that, right down to the way characters fight in a very turn-based fashion!

Edited October 10, 2023 by Rudolph

[Chezza]

• Medieval Total War 3
• Dungeon Keeper 3
• Black and White 3
• Gladius 2
• Deathrow 2
• A new Crusader No Remorse / No Regret
• A new Hexen made by id Software
• Fallout 76 map ported into a single play Fallout game
• The Darkness 3
• Fable 4 (it's coming, hope it will be good)
• Stalker 2 (it's coming, hope it will be good)
• Spore 2 - but far more sophisticated mechanics, especially in space age

And finally, a game that splices Dynasty Warrior battles (but combat moreso aligned with Shadow Of Mordor mechanics), Mount & Blade open world / RPG elements, and then Total War kingdom and army management. The idea of mixing these is combining 3 different games into one. You can start as a warrior serving a kingdom or for hire, then you progress into officer / marshal (M&B style) growing your individual army, and if you elevate to King the Total War grand strategy and battles come to play - but you can still choose to be in the battle yourself, impacting the success of the battle while on the battlefield.

Edited October 11, 2023 by Chezza

[Rudolph]

11 hours ago, Chezza said:

A new Crusader No Remorse / No Regret

If that happens, I want it to have intuitive controls. -_-

[scalliano]

A sandbox crime game set in Belfast during the 1980s. Choose your alignment through the decisions you make, or go it alone and have the entire city come after you. Engage in missions that run the gamut from madcap heists to terrorist operations that would make No Russian look like Animal Crossing. Participate in fun side activities like bootlegging VHS tapes or hot-wiring runabouts for the local joyriders. All to a banging old-school acid-house soundtrack.

 

Of course, those dinosaurs up at Stormont would immediately try and get it banned, but that's kind of the point. Who needs a marketing budget anyway?

Edited October 11, 2023 by scalliano

[Rudolph]

A Classic Resident Evil-style survival horror where the tank controls and the fixed camera angles are diegetically justified by the fact that you are controlling a caterpillar-wheeled drone from the safety of a surveillance room. Think of it as Five Nights At Freddy meets Duskers.

 

A pastiche/spiritual successor of Alien Versus Predator on Atari Jaguar with more diverse/less flat environments. If the rights to the respective franchises cannot be secured, then replace the Xenomorphs with bioengineered Mutants and the Predator with rogue security robots.

Edited October 11, 2023 by Rudolph

[Shakariki Heisenberg]

Duke Nukem 4D
 

[MrFlibble]

19 hours ago, Rudolph said:

There are a couple subplots that do involve some humans weaponizing the Zerg (usually successfully, until a third party - i.e. the player-character - comes in and sabotages their efforts), but that is only a small part of the story

That small part of the story basically takes up the entire vanilla Terran campaign, the entire prequel/demo campaign, the optional "Veteran Level" campaign (a.k.a. Campaign Editor showcase), and two of the three expansion campaigns. Oh, and I believe it is still there as a large part of Enslavers 2, which IIRC is also canon.

True, we're not shown Terrans trying to weaponize the Zerg all the time, but it forms the entire backdrop of whatever is happening throughout the campaigns.

[Rudolph]

54 minutes ago, MrFlibble said:

That small part of the story basically takes up the entire vanilla Terran campaign, the entire prequel/demo campaign, the optional "Veteran Level" campaign (a.k.a. Campaign Editor showcase), and two of the three expansion campaigns. Oh, and I believe it is still there as a large part of Enslavers 2, which IIRC is also canon.

True, we're not shown Terrans trying to weaponize the Zerg all the time, but it forms the entire backdrop of whatever is happening throughout the campaigns.

That is not quite true.

 

The entire vanilla Terran campaign is more about rebelling against a tyrannical government, the revelation that it was instrumental in bringing the Zerg to the Terran worlds is just one reason among many. It is not brought up again for the rest of the game. In Enslavers, a Zerg brood is being successfully weaponized by a small-time space pirate, yes, but they never turn on the latter; rather, he is defeated by a Terran or Terran/Protoss force (depending on the player's choice) and his pet Brood destroyed. The same thing happens in Enslavers II, except the weaponization is done on behalf of a deranged Protoss cultist; once again, they do not lose control of the Zerg.

 

As for Brood War, weaponizing the Zerg is not even the UED's plan until the very end of Episode V - the better part of the campaign is actually spent on defeating the Terran Dominion and trying to capture his Emperor - and the entirety of Episode VI is dedicated to undoing what has been accomplished in that very last Terran mission. That is the closest the original StarCraft gets to @magicsofa's description.

 

So yes, I do believe my original comment to be accurate.

Edited October 11, 2023 by Rudolph

[RichardDS90]

An Epic Battle Fantasy game that combines all 5 games into one mega world, enemies, weapons and armour and all but with EBF5's gameplay. Maybe even taking sone loose influences and music from the spinoffs. But of course, some new parts too, be the best of all worlds.

[MrFlibble]

18 hours ago, Rudolph said:

The entire vanilla Terran campaign is more about rebelling against a tyrannical government, the revelation that it was instrumental in bringing the Zerg to the Terran worlds is just one reason among many. It is not brought up again for the rest of the game.

But the entire campaign is kicked off by the Zerg invasion of Mar Sara (and Chau Sara before that), which only happened because the Confederacy used Psi Emitters there. Mengsk just uses this as an opportunity to move against the Confederacy more boldly, and when he by chance gets his hands on Psi Emitter schematics, he first uses an Emitter to break the Confederate blockade on Antiga, then a few more to obliterate Tarsonis and put an end to the Confederacy once and for all. Thus, all of the Zerg encounters in the campaign are related to the use of Psi Emitters one way or another, as well as the final assault on Tarsonis -- even though we only see one Emitter in an actual mission. The only levels directly unrelated to this arc are the Antigan revolt and the rescue of Duke.

19 hours ago, Rudolph said:

In Enslavers, a Zerg brood is being successfully weaponized by a small-time space pirate, yes, but they never turn on the latter; rather, he is defeated by a Terran or Terran/Protoss force (depending on the player's choice) and his pet Brood destroyed. The same thing happens in Enslavers II, except the weaponization is done on behalf of a deranged Protoss cultist; once again, they do not lose control of the Zerg.

I never argued that all of the plot lines involving Terran attempts to control the Zerg always end in the Zerg turning on the Terrans. I only commented on your statement about any such plot line being just a small part of the story. Can't agree with that, for the reasons I mentioned above. The entire Terran campaign is built around the idea of the Zerg being first used by the Confederacy and then Mengsk -- all the while the Zerg, in turn, try to use Terrans for their psionic potential and finally get Kerrigan, seemingly by chance. It is clear that Blizzard got to like this idea and developed it further even more straightforwardly, with Terrans gaining direct control over Zerg forces first in Enslavers and then in the UED story arc (which seems to have been influence by the ideas from Enslavers in more than one aspect).

 

Whether this idea of control is the main point in the story of StarCraft, as @magicsofa put it, seems quite arguable, but it certainly plays no small part in the events depicted in the game. However, I think it is quite certain that the entire relationship between the Terrans and the Zerg was in no small part shaped by the lore from the Alien(s) franchise, which does indeed contain the message of how futile mankind's attempts are in controlling the Aliens, so any such attempt on the part of the Terrans is perhaps indeed doomed to fail and/or backfire.

 

Somewhat closely back to the topic of dream games, I do agree with you that it would be interesting to see a different take on a StarCraft like game with different factions. Personally I've always wondered where, exactly, lies the undeniable charm of StarCraft, because the numerous imitations (I happened to try out several South Korean clones) appear to fall short when it comes to creating relatable characters and plot lines, even of the rest of the game very closely copies the visuals and playing mechanics. On the other hand, the Warhammer 40k universe, specifically the Dawn of War games that have been compared to SC gameplay-wise, seems too grim and depressive to me to be really likable.

[Rudolph]

1 hour ago, MrFlibble said:

However, I think it is quite certain that the entire relationship between the Terrans and the Zerg was in no small part shaped by the lore from the Alien(s) franchise, which does indeed contain the message of how futile mankind's attempts are in controlling the Aliens, so any such attempt on the part of the Terrans is perhaps indeed doomed to fail and/or backfire.

No, because again, humans are always successful in their attempts at weaponizing the Zerg. It is not like in the Alien series where the Xenomorphs simply cannot be controlled and always manage to break through containment on their own; the Zerg will mindlessly obey whoever is giving them orders, be it through some MacGuffin or if they are a powerful-enough psychic. I mean, no matter how mutated she gets, Kerrigan remains human, yet her leadership of the Swarm proves to be indispensable in both Brood War and StarCraft II. In that regard, yes, I suppose the weaponization of the Zerg by humans does play a significant part in the story, but the message is ultimately not that it is a futile venture so much as it depends on what you do with them and especially if it works in the player-character's interests.

 

Anyway, I have heard about Five Nations, which look and play very much like StarCraft, except it is set in space and all the units and buildings are space ships and space stations, respectively. Unfortunately, it is nowhere near as compelling or polished* as StarCraft.

 

^{*that one is kind of forgivable, as it is made by a very small team, although they did themselves no favor by being overly ambitious}

Edited October 12, 2023 by Rudolph

[MrFlibble]

29 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

Anyway, I have heard about Five Nations, which look and play very much like StarCraft, except it is set in space and all the units and buildings are space ships and space stations, respectively. Unfortunately, it is nowhere near as compelling or polished* as StarCraft.

Oh, I downloaded the demo just a few days ago and played it a bit. The art is nice but the game feels very bland, the characters don't look interesting (the dialogue is very amateurish), and the whole idea of making a 2D game in space (without any attempt to emulate a true 3D space with six degrees of freedom) is somewhat odd -- was creating proper ground terrain too hard? As such it feels more like a spiritual successor to Star Command Revolution than to StarCraft.

 

I'd say that BlackChain is a far more faithful low-budget StarCraft experience, all the while remaining rather original in some of the concepts. It copies many of the elements pretty straightforwardly, including animated portraits and core mechanics like base-building and commanding units, but still has room for something unique so the game does not come across like a hacky clone. And while it certainly did not feel as exciting as SC, it has its own atmosphere at least.

[Rudolph]

11 minutes ago, MrFlibble said:

I'd say that BlackChain is a far more faithful low-budget StarCraft experience, all the while remaining rather original in some of the concepts. It copies many of the elements pretty straightforwardly, including animated portraits and core mechanics like base-building and commanding units, but still has room for something unique so the game does not come across like a hacky clone. And while it certainly did not feel as exciting as SC, it has its own atmosphere at least.

I played that one! Some of the maps are WarCraft III-hard - in the sense that they force you to lead a force outside of your base, usually in a hurry, while still having to defend the latter - and it could definitely use more than one faction, but as an indie StarCraft II clone, it is alright. The mission where you get boarded is kind of a mess, however; I do not know what the developer was thinking.

 

And yeah, the notion that wars in the future would be fought over cryptocurrency is rather... terrifying. XD

 

11 minutes ago, MrFlibble said:

the whole idea of making a 2D game in space (without any attempt to emulate a true 3D space with six degrees of freedom) is somewhat odd -- was creating proper ground terrain too hard?

 

Eh. Then again, you could say the same about StarCraft 1. Personally, I did not mind at all, since I am not a big fan of 3D RTS games.

Edited October 12, 2023 by Rudolph