Now that 24 hours have passed we have our winner!
A huge thanks to @frezik@midwest.social for suggesting this awesome idea!
A survival crafting game where the tech tree goes backwards. You start in a prepper hole with working water filtration, food sources, etc, and everything is nice. Then something breaks and maybe you fix it. Something else breaks and maybe you fix that. Three things break at once, and at least one of them is going to stay broken. Have to do something more primitive and time consuming.
Eventually, enough things break that it’s no longer sustainable and you die. Game ranks you based on how long you last.
I would also like to thank every person in the comments for making their wonderful suggestions! I’ve read through every single one of them and all of them are really good!
You can view the game’s code at https://github.com/SamLeeway/project-196, which is currently empty at the time of writing this, but every day from now I will contribute code there.
The game currently does not have any name other than “Project 196”, so I will probably host a poll when we have at least something playable.
When the game would be playable? Making games ain’t easy so it’s pretty hard to estimate. I would say in around a week or so I should have a rough prototype if things go right.
Update
Didn’t really have much time to work on this this week, so my week estimate is going out of the window. I will not estimate anymore. But I am still working on things, so game will happen. :)
I have a very similar concept: with gameplay somewhat inspired by job simulator or keep talking and nobody explodes.
The general aesthetic is focused on silly and cartoon aliens, not serious at all.
You’re in your alien apartment dealing with some machine that kinda reminds you of a printer (but silly and strange due to the silly alien theme), but you have no idea what the hell it does, just that it’s broken beyond belief. (If made interesting enough, finding out what the hell it does could be a good hook for the player to keep playing)
The general loop consists of calling support and having the support people troubleshoot you into getting the thing working (you have to mess with it manually, opening flaps and moving pieces like the games mentioned above), except since it’s a silly alien machine, some of the parts have silly names and are silly looking (think of the Plumbus from Rick and Morty), making figuring out what the hell the operator’s talking about a challenge.
For added funny, you could see the portrait of the various operator’s (silly aliens), and even better: you could animate them getting more and more exasperated or bored with you as you try to figure out the machine.
For even more funny, you could maybe give some funny references to common irl printer problems like complaining about no ink when you just replaced the carts. And maybe at the end the machine could do something really silly and stupid, fitting with the comedic tone of the game