The concept is that you have a creature you start with out of a random pile of start creatures. As the game progresses things you defeat you can opt to capture or kill.
If you kill you gain points that you need to upgrade creatures. If you capture you can splice creatures together if you have the proper amount of points to do so. Spending points like cash to splice creatures together.
The outcome will be predetermined based on the 2 creatures. Which means I'd need around 100-200 different creatures.
I also thought maybe instead of different creatures to allow you to take parts off of existing creatures for different costs. Ex: Crab claws for 40pts or Shell for 30pts.
I haven't thought of an end term yet. i'm thinking maybe you need to spend x points to win but by upgrading you can get points faster even though you spend some.
But that causes run away leaders so maybe tryin to get to a certain evolutionary step would be better so you need to try and collect the right creatures to splice with and kill others.
You fight creatures in a central map. Different areas hold different monster types. Some rare ones will show up from time to time again too. Capturing these are always hard b/c they are so powerful usually they will need fled from.
Any ideas or imput to complete the thought product and make this more solid of a game are welcome.
DNA Splicing game
You've got a good start, and another approach to the same creative potential of mixing DNA to create creatures and work toward some sort of endgame. I see some influence of Pokemon in what you're discussing, as well as some influences akin to what 2 of the entries from last month's GDS Challenge likely pulled from.
The vast body of options in a DNA based game are very attractive (i.e. practically guaranteeing high replayability), but tend to become stodgy and repetitive when applied to combat games (that is, it's the obvious application of the mechanic, and really not hard to develop). If you really want to go the "build-a-beast" route, I would suggest a non-combat scenario. Perhaps players are geneticist mad scientists, creating the latest and greatest in abominations for supervillains to buy and use against their hero nemesis; the winner would be the player who makes the most money in a set period of time. Or even just something as simple as building a creature with abilities to match a condition and scoring points for how closely they fulfill it, the winner being the one with the most points after [x] turns.
I fell into the trap of "combat is the simplest route" in my GDS Challenge entry, and in hindsight there are a million more interesting things to do with millions of available puzzle pieces when using real-world DNA sources. I'd say the first thing you should do is come up with more unique premise than fighting, and the rest will likely begin to fall into place of its own accord.
that the players are scientists actually splicing genes, or that it's evolution?
You could even have each game have a different set of victory conditions, i.e.
Meteor Impact:
- Flourish with Foul(Ash) atmosphere
- Live without Sunlight
- Shortage of Food
Heavy Flooding:
- Swampy Land
- Heavy Insect Clouds
- Poisonous Food
Player's creatures would stand up against the three objectives and score points on how well they do in comparison to each with a threshold on each objective showing 'death' of the species.
Impossible Creatures is a PC game that came out on this subject a few years back.
Add I think a BGDF/Protospiel alumni had a game called Gene Pool on a similar subject?
SJ
Yes, Gene Pool is a DNA card game (great game, BTW) by Mark Goadrich (ensor). Theme there is replicating specific DNA chains.
My game is based on a PBEM game I ran back in 1999. It concept of the game is a cross between pokemon and monster Rancher. The concept of finding the creatures in different terrains is from pokemon as well as different types of attacks you can gain and lose. But you get attacks through training and fighting. And also when splicing creatures together the new creature starts with one random attack from that monsters attack deck. No 2 monsters of the same type will have the same attack. So this will make people try and vary up what they want to use as thier creature. I was thinking maybe having the players trying to get all different metals some would involve combat but others would need ot do other things to get them.