Crazy Game Idea 6: Metria

Premise: Life in Metria will never be the same. The day the waters came, it flooded the bubble city destroying the outershell. Looters greedy for the value of its technology, ransacked the city, and sold parts all around the world. Some of your loved ones are trapped in Metria! They left you a note detailing a safehold beneath the bubble that provides enough food and water for a year. Metria should never have been built anyway, but now you must leave school and recover the pieces so you can get the people out. Go it alone or build a team, you will need all the intellect, agility and courage you can muster.

ESRB: E10+

Features:

• Solo play or cooperative play between up to four people


• Select from four races of players with vastly different abilities - defenders, puzzlers, scouters, and molers.


• High replay value, game can be played with any combination of characters.
  
• Group shared bank of collectibles and upgrade points


• Players initiate split screen or transparent overlays that allow them to access interfaces unique to their character's abilities


• Players can purchase upgrades, tools, outfits, dance animations that add to the fun and social aspect of the game.


• Visual progress indicator by watching the bubble city get rebuilt, players earn extra points by piecing together the city


• Players can purchase keys that allow them to open mysterious sealed vaults throughout the game that lead to mini-games, extra story elements, funny peepholes into the NPCs lives and beautiful vistas that you can enjoy as a group


• Asynchronous play - play the game whenever you get a chance from a website or cellphone; Mini-games allow you to help your character gain experience, mine gems, and collect money that you can later download into your game


• Instant messages from the trapped Metrians provide clues and hints throughout the game.


• Game clock follows real-world time to measure the remaining time the trapped ones have

Why make this game: This is a blend of casual gaming and console gaming. Metria is a cooperative game that a stay at home mom or a working mom can play with her kids. She could play as much or as little of the game as she wanted. For example: if she chose a puzzler role, she would work on puzzles that would give her team cash to pay off bullies who are exacting a high ransom. In her every day life, she may not get treated like a hero for doing household laundry, but she will get praise for mining in the game. I wanted a cooperative game that was truly diverse. Playing Gauntlet and the Incredibles ROTU, I got a sense of the range you can have with your players. I wanted something where everyone had an advantage. I also wanted one shared collection kitty, so that people would work as a team. Since you could work almost infinitely just amassing money, I put in a lot of extra fun stuff like group dance animations and vistas so people would have something to socialize about. I imagine that there is a lot of talking happening outside of the game. I imagine families coming together and realizing despite our real-world differences, we are a unit. It's 'the family that fights together, stays together', kind of thing. One other note, while there is a time pressure indicated in the premise statement, I mean for the pace of the play to be fast at times and leisurely at others. It's just a nudge to keep you going. Puzzle pirates was an inspiration to this game and my research at the WIGI conference.