I have a few ideas that I will almost certainly never develop. If someone wants to use them, please do. These are games I wish existed.
Here they are:
The first one is a game where you play as Mormons, and the goal of the game is to be nice to people no matter the cost. It would start out with fairly easy things, but then you come across increasingly hostile or dangerous circumstances where you have to choose between negotiation or fleeing. You can't "die" in the game because, if you are about to die, either God or the angel Moroni will intervene. At that point, you must restart a mission. Then again, I'm not that opposed to the player dying either. I know not that much about Mormonism other than that I've known Mormons throughout my life. :)
Another idea I have is for a game I call "Monkey Town". It's somewhere between Sim City and The Sims, and takes place in a world where monkeys and various apes take the place of humans. They are as intelligent as present-day humans, but they do thinks in their own monkey ways. You are the mayor of Monkey Town, and you must build it up and maintain it. There are problems you have to deal with like monkeys pooping everywhere, political corruption, ape speciesism, infrastructure failures, monkeys rioting, monkey insurrections, etc. The monkey culture would have some differences from human society like knoodling being allowed in public, networks of vines are used for monkeys to swing between neighborhoods, bananas as currency, and so on.
My third idea is a game called "Shut Me Up", which I think of as more of a short arcade style game where your job as the player is to harass and scream at people so those people start telling you to shut up. But you keep doing it so that they start physically attacking you to get you to shut up.
As a former Mormon, I can see that first idea being absolutely hilarious if implemented correctly. I'm imagining all sorts of increasingly absurd scenarios you could place the Mormon main character in and the kinds of jokes you could make, there's a lot of potential haha. Stuff like coffee and tea being special attacks that the bosses can use, or dialogue with lots of really unusual swear substitutions. I think letting the player die and having the degree of heaven they get into be based off of their score in-game could be a really hilarious feature.
I think mixing in just the right amount of janky ragdoll physics and glitchy NPCs would actually augment the game, and I could see it being a game that streamers and their audiences would find funny too.
There would definitely be some ultra-strict/traditional Mormons who would be offended by a game like this but I'd say the vast majority of the membership would find it quite entertaining.
Edit: Could call it Mormon Missionary Simulator to both give the game a slightly tighter focus/story and also indicate that it's part of the wider genre of "XYZ simulator" games that are often pretty absurd and funny.
I'm working on Archapolis, a cross between sim city and the sims (and inspired by Dwarf Fortress, Cities Skylines). I'm working on real time traffic / pathfinding currently. My game can handle 100K to 300K agents path finding simultaneously to random destinations.
Game is still very early development, but here's a tech demo video
That's really impressive! I haven't even come close to developing a game since I played with the old school Game Maker back in high school, but pathfinding seems like a very intriguing challenge. You've got a new YouTube sub. :)
What's the tech stack you're using for the game? I'm not really familiar with how games are typically made these days other than that it seems like a lot of people are using Unity.
I'm using C++, SFML (graphics framework), and SQLite (for data storage/saves). Game & engine is developed from the ground up.
A lot of people choose existing engines for their games. I definitely would if I were to go 3D.
With 2D grid based games, it's not too difficult to get an engine up and running. It took me around 6 weeks IIRC (no physics or networking code though) to have basic tile placement functionality and outputting the game world to the screen.
Such an interesting, orthogonally-aligned set of game ideas. Being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I feel like I've been playing 'your game' my whole life!
My IT department manager at a previous job was Mormon. He was a big Star Wars geek and could code with the best of us (but never had time to do so in his position, too many meetings). I didn't know for several months he was Mormon. His only tells were some self-censoring (like saying "cheese and rice" or "cheese and crackers" instead of certain common blasphemic exclamations) and he had six kids. Really cool guy. He eventually moved back to Utah to work for a tech startup there (the tech scene is actually pretty big in Utah).
LDS is huge and contains very smart people and, despite some questionable historical beliefs, they’re not AFAIK anti-science in any way. HN is huge. Definitely gonna be some overlap
As a non practicing Mormon it was extremely strange to me when in my 20s I was exposed to the broader Protestant/Evangelical world in the US how many weird anti science things existed that I’d literally never been exposed to as a Mormon.
When I moved to a nicer neighborhood and went to church once or twice I was amazed how many Pediatricians and Pediatric Surgeons who work at the local childrens hospital are Mormon.
But... why? Education is hugely emphasized in the church. There are tons of members in all the STEM fields and they read the news just like anyone else. Have you ever seen a Tesla? The security chip in it was designed by member. Have you ever used an intel pentium processor? The original one was designed by a member. That person eventually moved up into management at Intel and recruited heavily from BYU so many Intel chip designers are members.
The Mormon game concept is a good one. As a former and still somewhat Friend (Quaker), I can relate to the concept of "no good deed going unpunished." One can see the humor, irony, playability and enjoyment of it in a video game done well. As Mormon themed it would have limited reach but it would have dedicated followers. The TTRPG "Dogs in the Vineyard" is outstanding for what it is, has limited reach in RPG circles, but it does have a dedicated player base.
The game concept is something I would play. It would fit well in any setting historical or fictional. A half-dozen elves trying to bring sensibility among Orcish chiefdoms guided by an avatar of Illuvar. A unmodified human among the transhuman houses of the galactic empire trying to re-cultivate aspects of humanity guided by an enigmatic Foundation, etc.
Regarding "Monkey Town," you might like Keith Laumer's book "The Other Side of Time." It starts off slowly, is all over the place, but has an alternate universe with several sapient primate species working together.
It's interesting that you say that. That really wasn't how I imagined it, and I'm a little confused how you interpreted it as such. My thought was that it's a point of view that most people haven't experienced or thought much about. Just because the playable characters would be from the LDS church wouldn't mean that all or even most of their interactions would have a religious motivation. I imagined it more like getting "boy scout badges" for good deeds from the perspective of that particular religious group and for the game to be more light-hearted rather than dead serious, or even suggesting any sort of religion to the player.
Maybe you're right and I'm suggesting something that isn't really appropriate. I would play games more if there were more slice-of-life type games from different perspectives, but with some humor in there too.
Honestly, I like the concept of this game. If you dropped all the proper names you mentioned and just call it "Just Be Nice" it would be palatable to 1000x bigger audience. You don't need to be religiously motivated to find it challenging to be nice in particular scenarios. It's a theme I've never heard of explored and I would like to play it (but without the Mormon stuff)
I guess that doesn't resonate as much with me. Your point is totally fair, and maybe people would like your idea a lot more. Despite my atheism, I'm much more intrigued about a game that's more from a particular point of view and I just don't have a problem with characters that are religious. A more culturally homogenous game might be less appealing to me. I'm sure it could be done right, though. The Mormon aspect, I thought, would give such a game a lot of interesting gameplay scenarios out-of-the-box that wouldn't be as easy to explain in a more generic game.
FWIW: I think most members of the LDS church have a good sense of humor for things like this done in good taste, even if they're not 100% representative of their beliefs.
source: am one myself. This is true for the other members around me as well (friends, family, etc)
I am imagining they are aliens instead of Mormons, but they look exactly like humans. Maybe they moved here (secretely, of course) because some other mean aliens have taken over their planet. Since they are unfailingly nice, they just left their planet instead of fighting for it. Now they're here on earth and dealing with humanity's response to their niceness.
Here they are:
The first one is a game where you play as Mormons, and the goal of the game is to be nice to people no matter the cost. It would start out with fairly easy things, but then you come across increasingly hostile or dangerous circumstances where you have to choose between negotiation or fleeing. You can't "die" in the game because, if you are about to die, either God or the angel Moroni will intervene. At that point, you must restart a mission. Then again, I'm not that opposed to the player dying either. I know not that much about Mormonism other than that I've known Mormons throughout my life. :)
Another idea I have is for a game I call "Monkey Town". It's somewhere between Sim City and The Sims, and takes place in a world where monkeys and various apes take the place of humans. They are as intelligent as present-day humans, but they do thinks in their own monkey ways. You are the mayor of Monkey Town, and you must build it up and maintain it. There are problems you have to deal with like monkeys pooping everywhere, political corruption, ape speciesism, infrastructure failures, monkeys rioting, monkey insurrections, etc. The monkey culture would have some differences from human society like knoodling being allowed in public, networks of vines are used for monkeys to swing between neighborhoods, bananas as currency, and so on.
My third idea is a game called "Shut Me Up", which I think of as more of a short arcade style game where your job as the player is to harass and scream at people so those people start telling you to shut up. But you keep doing it so that they start physically attacking you to get you to shut up.