I want to make a game that is a Flash version of a turn-based game I used to play with another player, a pencil, and a piece of paper.
The idea was that each player drew a space station and a fleet of ships facing one another with empty space between.
Each player would declare that they were going to shoot or move and then they would hold the pencil vertically on top of a ship with a single finger on the eraser. Then the player would slowly tip the pencil back towards them while maintaining or even increasing the pressure.
Eventually, the friction of the point of the pencil on the paper would be insufficient to keep the pencil from moving and it would skid suddenly and erratically forward, leaving a relatively short, unpredictably oriented line behind it.
Then the player would erase his/her ship and redraw it at the end of the line, perhaps erasing the line itself, and declaring the turn over. When two ships came within firing range they would typically duel and attempt to blow each other up.
The game was extended further by creating turrets on the space stations, and alternating the amount of moves/shots a player could take during one turn.
My idea is to style the game by creating it entirely with recognizable office supplies and perhaps with sounds they make. I am planning to create the assets primarily with a scanner and photoshop.
One novelty might be to have an "Asteroids" inspired origami boulder (paper ball) floating around and to have it be destructible like in asteroids. Another idea is to have the background cycling to various kinds of paper (like in MTV's "Stick Figure Theater").
One of the challenges to make the game work will be to decide whether to program an AI for another player, or whether to try to make a multi-player game (which in some ways would be easier).
As I think it through, my idea for an AI would be to to make an algorythm for having the AI player decide what to do at each turn. I think the computer should weigh moving to and attacking the player 1 base against defending against attacking ships based on how far away the player's ships are.
I can see immediately that having an asymetrical set of combatants would allow for a more forgiving impression of the quality of the game, rather than trying to make an AI that was a believable player. I think that an AI enemy would have to move and act be more like space invaders than how I have played the game in the past.