Idea #2: Robot game

The next idea is for a third person shooter type game. The frame is that the player is operating a long range reconnaissance/combat robot in a war against some alien species. Each level would gradually ramp up the difficulty level, and there would be a number of boss battles every nth level.

The landscapes wouldn't be the nice, smooth landscapes we're used to these days. I'm thinking more along the lines of The Sentinel or Marble Madness. The level is a rectangular shape, divided into squares. Each square is either flat at a discrete altitude, or sloping between its neighbours. Any square below a certain altitude would be underwater (or lava).

Gameplay would vary between stealth and combat -- how much so would be largely up to the player. Once the player attacks the enemies, every mobile baddie on the level would start converging on the player's position. However, if the player can destroy a communication node located somewhere on the level, then they can attack a baddie with impunity without attracting everything else.

Each level has its own objective for the player to complete: blow up the power station, destroy all enemies, locate 5 whatevers, etc. To help the player in acheiving the goal, powerups would be scattered around. The robot would start with a basic laser weapon, and powerups would continue from one level to the next until the robot is destroyed (whereupon it gets reset to the basic configuration).

Control would be the standard WASD key combination from the robot's point-of-view, while the mouse would control the gunsights. This way, the player can blast away at any angle while driving in a different.