2026's Game

I’ve futzed with video game design in the past with my competitive multiplayer Infight, and the cutsie little handheld shooter, Princess’ Last Stand and a few other toys along the way. Last year’s Icarus was a pen and paper hit. So what’s it going to be in 2026? I want to put something new together.

Brainstorm

Inspirations

• The Expanse and The Captive’s War by James S. A. Corey for their hard sci-fi adventuring
• Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson for its hard sci-fi sociology and luddism, earth-love
• Mothership RPG for its sci-fi horror and roleplaying elements
• Citizen Sleeper 1 & 2 for their pen and paper computer gameplay, incredible characters and tone.

Goals

1. Small video game project, taking much of the year, but shipped this year.
2. Ship it for sale on itch and steam.
3. User content thing, where users can publish their own dungeons/runs?
4. Learn new tech. Drastically new or subtly new?

Questions

1. How do we keep this manageable?
2. Do we go with multiplayer?
3. Do we write a scenario, or do a scenario generator like wildermyth?
4. What are the most simple genres that we can play in?
5. Character Rolling

Constraints

1. 2D art
2. Roguelike

Game Genre

1. Role playing
2. Survival, combat
3. Survive, solve, save

Themes

1. Scifi survival
2. Character interactions
3. Daily delve?

Technology

• Godot
• Web
• Discord

After that brainstorm here’s an outline I’d like to pursue:

Discord-attached Survival Horror Co-Op Survival Game

The game can be added to a discord server wherein a channel is selected for the game to live.

Players join the channel and roll up characters. On their own time, and then opt those characters into the next scenario.

Once there’s a quorum of players the scenario can start. A random scenario is chosen? Or they choose one.

They’re then dropped into a game map and then take turns exploring, encountering NPCs, hazards and other story beats as they attempt to survive, solve or save one other or innocents.

Games last a day or two and are played asynchronously.

There’s nice pixel art of characters, and little readouts of their stats along the bottom of the map screen.

They collect or spend items, battle monsters. Take and mete out damage.

If their characters survive the scenario, they get a chance to improve their stats and go on another run.

As they take actions and roll dice their exploits are posted back to the channel. Other users can observe and encourage.

But wait, there’s more…

We make a scenario builder where folks can author their own environments and challenges.

I’ll check back in a while!