Brainstorming Next Game (Jan 02 2026)

This week I updated Randomly Generated RPG with all the new translation features. This took many hours of work, as the game has a bunch of text. There was also a lot of sloppy code that I wanted to change in the process. One thing I had to figure out was a way to determine if a translated line was in an enum or a function, as enums have no substitutions while functions do. I found a way, but it’s not very pretty. Then I decided to do all of this again with Swords vs Shields, which didn’t take as long, but was still annoying to do. 

This week I was also planning on making more content for the games too. More levels for All Shapes and Sizes, more cheats/challenges for Relentless Waves, more player abilities for Randomly Generated RPG. The bad news is that I didn’t come up with anything for any of those games. Which suggests the actual thing to do is to come back to those games later, after I finish up another game. Now the question is, what is that game? (The game I tried in December isn’t happening.) One genre I haven’t tried yet is tower defense, and considering Plants vs Zombies was probably the first time I had a favorite video game growing up, I thought I really should try a game like that. 

My initial idea for a tower defense game was that you get handed a random amount of multiple defenses, and those are the only ones you can work with for the entire level (and the enemies are randomly chosen too). The game would have to carefully work out the power level of all the defenses you’re given, to make sure it’s enough to fight anything the game throws at you. But I didn’t know how to make those defenses and enemies feel different from each other yet.

While thinking of this, I realized another game I liked a lot as a kid. Okamiden lets you draw directly on the screen, and what you draw affects the world. I tried to program something like that, only to quickly realize this is very hard. Registering where on the screen you were drawing is doable, but figuring out how the game recognizes what you drew (a line, a circle) was much more challenging, especially since humans can’t really draw perfectly straight lines, or perfect circles. And gameplay wise it would be much simpler if instead of drawing, the things you could draw were automatically given to you. 

Then I realized I could combine these 2 ideas for very different games. Instead of being given defenses, you were given different shapes that damaged enemies when you dragged them onto the screen. It’s like Plants vs Zombies but everything was an instant-kill. You would have to use the correct shape to damage as many enemies as you could. I could also have some things deal damage, while others do things like move enemies around. So far this is what my brainstorming has come up with, and maybe I can make this fun. 

I should probably explain why my mind went to having a limited supply of things. The main reason is it’s the most different from the games I’ve made so far. Games need things to make sure you can’t just spam the most powerful things over and over. Randomly Generated RPG had cooldowns on abilities, which meant I shouldn’t do that here. Swords vs Shields have different payments to use abilities on cards, which means I shouldn't do that here either. Plus Slow and Steady also had energy costs and cooldowns on the 3 abilities, and I don’t want to make this game too similar to that (since they’re both about killing enemies before they reach the edge of the screen). Plants vs Zombies had some levels with a conveyor belt that gave plants in a random order, but to me that sounded a lot like drawing random cards, and I already made a lot of those games. A limited supply was the most new of all the options.

Finally on wednesday I played Pacific again. This time the other players understood the game a bit better, although they had to keep checking what the 4 tokens did (even though the tokens never change). It was probably less overwhelming when they only had to read 2 other player’s cards instead of 3. This time I won by getting a ton of fish with Breeding Program and Proliferation, then turning all of them into hotels. Later I added factories with Expand and profited with Pet Rocks and Brochures to win with about 95 money. Pacific's fun, I like it.