Just to start the ball rolling, here's a couple of things i've been thinking about, although they're pretty embryonic right now:

- What would it be like if you expanded the cursor 10 concept to a full FPS setting? You could launch multiple times into the same level (like racing game 'ghost cars') and your previous versions could be pressing buttons and shooting targets for you. Enemies with a.i are a problem though.


- A game where you have no offensive weapons, only gravity/magnetic effects guns could be interesting. That way you'd have to kill the enemies only by throwing them into the void/into a trap.

Could use something simple like an air gun to push some monsters out, but maybe metal bad guys would only be affected by the electromagnet gun. One gun I had in my head was the 'Planet-Shrinker' which would launch a small ball into mid-air, and everything but you in it's near proximity would start to orbit it. Maybe on it's own it would only buy you time, but launch it next to a 'black hole' and the planet is sucked into nothingness, taking it's satellites with it.


- Another variation on this is having guns that are affected by magnetic fields clearly indicated in the environment. So, you can see there's some sort of magnet thing going on, and it means that if you shoot forward, it's going to arc to the right, so you have to start compensating. This would be pretty satisfying, like having to hit targets only with ricochets


- I don't know where I'm going at all with this brain-fart, but since the whole bullet-time thing has been pretty overdone, has anyone considered situations where speeding up time could be a useful game mechanic? Maybe only useful if the game was about how rocks erode or something. Hmm.


I'll probably think of some more later, that's enough for now. 

What about the Q3 engine? It's GPL and creating content is relatively easy.

Planet-Shrinker: jump puzzle? Grab some item to orbit the ball yourself, then speed up time until you've gained enough momentum and release to be catapulted over an obstacle? 

The Q3 engine would suit pretty well, I think.

Exec's want to see high quality artwork, even if its concepts that won't be seen in the finished game. They don't care so much about a clever piece of programming or design, they want to look at pretty pictures. Knowing your work that shouldn't be taxing.

Concepts are also good, but only alongside the aforementioned good artwork. A well drawn character throwing a box at another and killing him in storyboard form would work well because it shows a solved problem in a visually complete way.

I'd be wary of "additional ideas" penciled into margins because they'll assume you're not happy with the main idea, or that you haven't thought it through enough.

As to what game concept to make, it's a competition based on concept so you don't have to follow the industry standard of "copy game X" you have to have a great concept. I'd avoid FPS's because they've been done alot and for them to function now, to an exec, it means years and years of dev ie. a massive risk.

I'd suggest something third person based around a single strong idea which is based within an integral part of the gameplay. Keep it as basic as you can - it'll get complex faster than you can blink.

A rough idea might be - battle chess where you fight in an arena when two pieces meet, armed with close combat attacks.

That sounds like a simple idea but that's enough to keep a ten strong team busy for a good dev cycle, depending of course on how much they limit themselves - only 2D, cellshaded 3D etc.

Hope that helps. 

You don't have much time so go with something that makes good use of your team's strengths.

Don't spend/waste too much time thinking, pitch the ideas you have now to each other and pick the most promising, have the others improve those ideas. If not entirely unrealistic make quick prototypes of the top ideas and then focus on the one showing most promise. Iterate.

Hmm now that I re-read your post was the idea to just have a game concept after five weeks and nothing playable?

In any case I do believe in the iterative natural selection approach of ideas and prototypes instead of spending lots of time on polishing your first turd of a game design. 

Thanks for the feedback. To answer your questions, our team is three 3rd year computer science students, one guy doing physics/computer science and computer graphics student. So 4 out of 5 can code, one guy is especially interested in getting some cool physics on the go, and 2 of us (me and the graphics guy) have previous experience in graphic design and 2d/3d artwork.

I think I didn't explain the time frame very clearly... when the competition starts, we would have 9 weeks to make the game, but we have to come up with concepts and pitch the idea first, and then go through the interview/pitch phase where we'd show the execs our concept/plan. We don't even have to get the application form in until the 15th of April, so we've actually got a lot of time to come up with concepts and ideas.

I like your idea of the evolutionary process. We were currently going for something similar: the plan right now is for each of us to come up with 20 rough game ideas each, nothing too thought through or fancy, and in 2 weeks we'll collect them all together, giving us 100 ideas to think about. The next step in the plan is to look at all the ideas and try mashing the best ones together, and see if we get anything we like. Then take the best ones from that and develop them all a bit. Is that similar to what you were suggesting? 

The Q3 engine is definitely worth thinking about, thanks for the suggestion. We'll have to give everything a try out soon to decide what works best for us. Also, neg|ke, I like the Planet-Shrinker idea, cool stuff.

Ijed, thanks for all the pitching tips, I'm definitely taking all that on board. I'm glad you think execs actually care about the artwork in the pitch, because I love that stuff, comic strip panels to explain the gameplay, maybe an animation or two, concept art, logos etc.

I liked the specific advice such as that 3rd person games are a good way to go, especially those with one original idea that affects the gameplay, one idea to really focus on. I'd never really thought about how focusing on too many ideas would dilute the impact of the concept, and it's good to bear that in mind.

Point taken on not picking too wide a scope too. That's something they apparently really worry about and actively mention on their site: the likelihood that you can actually make your concept. I like the idea of coming up with a simple original idea and just making a small sized game around it, making sure it's really polished and coherent and plays well. Same with the looks as well, I feel like we should be going for something polished and stylised, but nothing overly detailed or complex.

I'm actually quite hyped up already, as you can probably tell... 

the whole game happening on a huge planet that is shrinking constantly and you have to battle for survival space?

It might be shooter or even RTS style... Or multiplayer? Q3 might be useful.

Some math and physics there for the sphere mapping and gravity too.

I have to say Mario Galaxies (?) influenced this idea a bit though. There the boss fights happen on a sphere that has a diameter about ten times the player height and you can run around it any way you want.

You could have bodies of water with waves and floods and volcanoes shaping the landscape too.

Of course, all that is not very simple. :(