Haven't made a game in a while and im out of ideas. HALP.

As mentioned in the comments for Plarform RC I've been contemplating a series of games based round the wrong Klik & Play movement options.

I really like games with awkward controls, or controls that take some learning. A lot of old games seem to work like this, but for some reason mastering their control is approached as a part of mastering the game, rather than as a deficiency in their design.

This post is to get the ball rolling, the mind ticking, and to be somewhere to dump ideas.

Ideas:

1. A single-screen racer with eight directions movement.
2. A platformer with path movement. (interacting by changing speed to avoid moving hazards (enemies, gates, etc)
3. A shooter with race car movement.
4. A breakanoid with race car movement.
5. A point-and-click adventure game with platform movement for the cursor.
6. A Joust clone with race car movement.
7. A maze game with bouncing ball movement.

Probably any genre with RC movement will work.

You are most welcome to make suggestions, or use the idea yourself, like EffBee's ace Pretend You're Platforming. I doubt I'm the first to come up with it!

I'm reading Tracy Fullerton's "Game Design Workshop" book. One idea she puts forth is don't worry about playtesters stealing your ideas, your game will be just about as hard for someone else to make as it will be for you, and you obviously have a head start...

Those economics don't quite apply to quick and dirty KotMK-able games, but I'm still a little nervous about sharing because A. i guess i'm "paranoid" about some stealing, but would that be such a bad thing? B. I'm worried I might disappoint people who see this list and what I'm NOT working on

So here is the list from my iPhone "glorious trainwrecks" memo, with explanations, roughly in reverse chronological order

• space war with rotational inertia - I heard Space War originally had rotational inertia, which is an element usually left out. I'd like to find out what it feels like
• space war boxing - thinking of the old 2600 boxing, overhead view, along w/ playing Little Big Planet. What would it feel like to swing big fists?
• like unfinished swan game demo, but 2d... use paint gun to see otherwise invisible area and monsters - most likely next Trainwreck - http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/10/30/the-unfinished-swan.html but in 3D. I'd almost like to try it KnP, but I'm not sure I know how it handles "invisible" objects. Also I'm total pants at KnP
• katmatari damacy using sprites - I did this a bit with cosmicarkatamari for the Pirate Kart, I think I would want it with more colorful sprites (maybe Atari?) and having the mass of cuaght things rotate a bit...
• like sperm game but you have to lure sperm into contact with something - Preggers was another Pirate Kart game... just my general love of simple smooth motion physics games
• javascript game library - just thinking about what a generalized javascript game library would look like...
• slingshot - I kind of this OLPC Physics Game Jam - which reminds me, I really should use the Java wrapper for Box2D stuff, one of the maintainers of that port was that the game jam, and it would probably be much more solid than my half-assed "engine"
• pick up the phonebooth and die 2600 - if I ever get around to using Batari BASIC, this would be my first game that about 8 people would find conceptually amusing
• atari basic simulator - Atari BASIC Programming is classically weird and wonky, but I admire the effort a few people have made to make playable games in it-- unfortunately i haven't been able to really see the games, because the emulator support is so-so for the keypads, and the keypads used such a weird ass way of entering commands. But an emulator that could let you type in the code might work...
• cellular automata system CAoleslaw - SpindlyQ would love love love to see this.
• life war, majority wins - maybe glider gunner? - a bit like Conway West, but more Life- centric. I was thinking the player could fight the ghost (or, heh, a 2 player network version... dreaming...) in painting life blobs. Normal life rules, but every live square has a team color, and for birth, the new cell gets the color if the majority of its 3 neighbors. It might turn out painting isn't a good enough game, so another variant would be firing off glider guns...
• atari rips..... - I think this is shorthand for "smash bros w/ atari characters", grabbing the sprites from the game... though the motion and attack forms would be tricky.
• heatseeker via repositioning? - heatseeker is this old C=64 game I might still do a Java processing or maybe even Batari Basic 2600 port of -- here I'm wondering if KnP could do it.
• game where firing is done when you collide with object, like a cannon - if/when I do a KnP game, this is a mechanic I might like to try. Typical "run from the monsters" but with cannons that are constantly rotating (or maybe not) and the player running into them fires... just exploring the indirection
• assemble little robots to do fighting for you -another study in indirection. I love the idea of having to craft an army... one idea I've had for a while, but w/o the right interface or gesture recognition, is rock paper scissors, where you draw circle, square, or x, and then fling what you draw at your opponent who is doing the same. Or the way ASCII bots has 1000 robots based on head, torso, feet, having to put together your minions to do your bidding might be an intereting game. Or snowmen from 3 diff sized snowballs? All of this might be tough to implement, but still, not my worst idea
  

UPDATE Half asleep, I had some more ideas for some of gamebuttons, games where the display and input is all a "normal" HTML pushbutton.

• "Birth control", target little ~o as they come swimming by
• Olympics - archery, hurdles
• slot machine
• Rock Scissors Paper
• some kind of hungry hungry hippo
• sideways lunar lander
• Some kind of RTS gaiden, where your the local commander of a base and just have to press a single button when told to to make a unit.
  

Most of these ideas are pretty bad