In the realm of things that would actually be feasible for small teams or individuals to build:
- I'd like to see some some fully offline, single-player CCG/Deckbuilding RPGs in the style of the old Pokemon CCG Gameboy games. Balancing single-player card games is a lot easier than balancing multiplayer deck-builders, and I'd be fine with pixel-based top-down graphics (in fact I might even prefer them). RPG formats work well with CCGs; I want to run around and find rare cards in areas where my AI opponents have themed decks and gimmicks, and I want to be able to build a card collection and make little decks without worrying about microtransactions and online ladders. A nice little offline RPG with cards.
- I'd like to see more games (in general) of any genre experiment and iterate more with Breath of the Wild's weapon durability system. BotW pretty much single-handedly changed my mind on the potential of durability systems, and I think there's a lot of interesting things that could be done by designers who sit and really work through what made BotW's system work so much better than durability in a lot of traditional survival games. I think a lot of people glossed over (or criticized) what I think is possibly the most innovative part of BotW, so I'd love to see more games jump into that space and try to translate out those mechanics again in a way that players might understand or respond to better.
- I'd like to see some vaguely I-Spy or Where's Waldo games that are designed to be on some level passive backgrounds -- essentially games that are designed to be mostly pretty dioramas with a lot of stuff happening in them, where player interaction is more about just clicking things or seeing how they react to each other. I want a game that takes low resources that I can leave running on a Raspberry Pi or other low-power computer, hooked up to a monitor in my living room, where I can just occasionally walk past and spend maybe 3-minutes interacting with it. I want a game that is mostly a display piece, that captures the feeling of having a nice diaorma or animated scene, but where I can occasionally whenever I'm feeling bored or spacing out click on a few things and maybe hunt for some objects, possibly over the course of a week or two working through a list of hidden objects.
That first one made me think of combining Pokemon with Slay The Spire - each Pokemon has a deck (themed towards poison, electric, etc), and the Player has a deck (utility, healing, battlefield modification, combos)
In battle, you can choose your Pokemon based on the opponent and your hand is a mix of Player and Pokemon cards.
You gain more Pokemon, or cards for Pokemon, by exploring the wilds.
You gain Player cards and gold by battling other trainers.
I guess for a proper modern Rougelite you should have "relics", gained by battling Gym leaders, rare Pokemon, or completing quests by NPCs.
- I'd like to see some some fully offline, single-player CCG/Deckbuilding RPGs in the style of the old Pokemon CCG Gameboy games. Balancing single-player card games is a lot easier than balancing multiplayer deck-builders, and I'd be fine with pixel-based top-down graphics (in fact I might even prefer them). RPG formats work well with CCGs; I want to run around and find rare cards in areas where my AI opponents have themed decks and gimmicks, and I want to be able to build a card collection and make little decks without worrying about microtransactions and online ladders. A nice little offline RPG with cards.
- I'd like to see more games (in general) of any genre experiment and iterate more with Breath of the Wild's weapon durability system. BotW pretty much single-handedly changed my mind on the potential of durability systems, and I think there's a lot of interesting things that could be done by designers who sit and really work through what made BotW's system work so much better than durability in a lot of traditional survival games. I think a lot of people glossed over (or criticized) what I think is possibly the most innovative part of BotW, so I'd love to see more games jump into that space and try to translate out those mechanics again in a way that players might understand or respond to better.
- I'd like to see some vaguely I-Spy or Where's Waldo games that are designed to be on some level passive backgrounds -- essentially games that are designed to be mostly pretty dioramas with a lot of stuff happening in them, where player interaction is more about just clicking things or seeing how they react to each other. I want a game that takes low resources that I can leave running on a Raspberry Pi or other low-power computer, hooked up to a monitor in my living room, where I can just occasionally walk past and spend maybe 3-minutes interacting with it. I want a game that is mostly a display piece, that captures the feeling of having a nice diaorma or animated scene, but where I can occasionally whenever I'm feeling bored or spacing out click on a few things and maybe hunt for some objects, possibly over the course of a week or two working through a list of hidden objects.