i think we've got ourselves a hit

I have too many ideas for the time I have (which is why now I'm working on two new games and doing updates to my recently released game). And I've already got two more I want to do after that.

But I'm not about to share those ideas, sorry... you'll just have to come up with some of your own. I take a lot of inspiration in the types of games that I like to play and then try to put my own unique twist on them.

Here's something I posted to another forum I read:

I've noticed a few big unfilled niches in Xbox Live Indie Games, and although I plan to tackle a few of these at some point, I can't cover them all, so hopefully other people will make the rest.

• A bullet-hell shmup. There have been a few shmups on XBLIG, but nothing approaching something like a Touhou game. A lot of people have high hopes for Duality ZF, but I have concerns about trying to make a vertically-scrolling shmup on a horizontal widescreen TV. (I'd be happy to be proven wrong, though!)
• A "tactics" game. Operation Darkness is the closest thing to a tactics game anywhere on the Xbox 360, which amazes me. A halfway-decent tactics game could totally clean up on XBLIG.
• A roguelike. There are a couple in development, but so far nothing has materialized, and I know that one of those is a vanilla roguelike with ASCII graphics, which will appeal to some people but turn off people who aren't used to "the roots" of the genre. Something with pretty graphics like Shiren could really do well.
• A traditional versus fighting game. Funky Punch is a start, but there's a lot of room for improvement. I strongly suspect that enterbrain will port Fighter Maker to XNA, at which point we will see quite a few.
• A metroidvania. Some people hate them, but some people love them. Grapple Buggy looks like it will nearly fit the bill, although I thought I read somewhere than Nathan has been very careful to distance Grapple Buggy from metroidvanias. It also seems to me that Inferus could be steered in that direction, but is currently sticking with a linear design. Before Shadow Complex came out a few weeks ago, Symphony of the Night was the only metroidvania on the Xbox, and I think there's still room for more.

those are the ones that immediately jump out for me. What unfilled niches have you seen on XBLIG, and Xbox in general? (First person to say "GOOD GAMES LOL AMIRITE???" gets a wedgie.)

I'm totally going to make a metroidvania game at some point, unfilled niche or not.

Judging from how well some of those reskined racing kits have done (Blueprint racer for instance), I think there would be a big market for someone that really developed the racing starter kit into a quality game.

I also keep considering making a simple, open-source, renai game "construction kit" for XNA, but I can't decide if that would result in good things or absolute terror. Probably a little of both. :)

You could create a game where at the start of the game you have to "set up" your game, basically involving the asking of questions, dependent on each other, until a "game path" is figured out for you. This "game path" would try to determine and place you as best as it can in your shoes today. You would have to make all of the decisions and do all of the things just like you do in real life. But what is the point of that, right?... The point is that people could "set up" the game in some false way, maybe a way that they want to be or a position that they wish that they were in. So that 40 year old computer hacker could create himself as a young 25 year old doctor going through med school. You could even go as far as to have  to study the material and take a version of the exam to become a doctor or things like this, depending on the person, their current on-goings, goals, dreams, etc. The game would take a lot of work to build well, but if built well, and perhaps built extensible enough so that others could create and share their own content, so that you don't have to do it all (build the framework, instead) I think it could be a very cool (and not to mention viral) game.

Just my $.02,
--
Adam Peterson
If you want to be happy, be. -Leo Tolstoy

This site has some games that could have potential.

Hamsal:

let me guess, your a pizza delivery insect weaving past all obstacles to get to your date sim. Annnnnnd then your date turns out to be an alien so it turns into an fps.

yeah i would buy that.

That's a solid gold idea there Hamsal.

If anyone is into RPGs and needs some game rules as a guide or something then I came across some Star Frontiers sites on the rpg web-ring that have the rules for download. And before the bull dogs latch on to my ***, Hasbro also seems to be ok with it.

Is there any FPS on XBLIG yet?

jwatte:

Is there any FPS on XBLIG yet?

The closest thing is Jhonny Crush AFAIK. There's also GamerBots Third Robot Shooting which was at the top of the charts for a couple weeks.

I'm not sure if an FPS is a good idea for XBLIG though. You'd be competing with Halo, Gears of War, and <insert long list of other AAA FPSs>. Then again if the scope is kept very small and you do something unique that isn't in the big games (since it'd be pretty crazy to try to compete directly with them), you might have a shot. Something like Portal, but that hasn't been done before.

or a card mini game... thoes are always a good inclusion to a game.