Someone Make This: Minion Madness

No matter how many iterations my blogging may take, I will never get tired of having gimmick segments. To that end, welcome to the newest segment of my newly game-focused blog, "Someone Make This," in which I come up with game ideas for people to steal. Specifically, I come up with game ideas in order to illustrate an idea I'd have trouble getting across otherwise.

Today's game is inspired by this article on The Escapist, about "crossplay." The idea of crossplay is to merge single and multiplayer experiences, and isn't strictly a new idea. People have been playing with the idea of "single player games in which other players control the enemies" for years, and to an extent it's been done. Left 4 Dead, for example, allows people to play as the zombies and harass the protagonists. There have even been variations on Pac-Man which allow other players to be the ghosts. Still, this got me to thinking about other ways you could pit players against each other in ostensibly "single player" situations.

I want you to picture a game called "Minion Madness."

Minion Madness is played online. A bunch of people join a game, and their roles are then randomly selected. Specifically, one person will be chosen as the "Hero," the other as the "Overlord" and everyone else as "Minions."

From the perspective of the "Hero" the game is a sidescrolling platformer, akin to the Mario series. The goal is to get from one end of the level to the other, avoiding or defeating enemies and collecting powerups along the way. Maps are procedurally generated, but the platforming itself is always fairly simple. The main challenge comes from the enemies who will stand in your way.

This is where the "Overlord" comes in. From the Overlord's perspective, the game is more like a tower-defense strategy game. When the game begins, the Overlord is given two minutes to set down the enemies in the level. The Overlord has limited funds with which to do this, and more powerful enemies cost more coins to place. The Overlord's goal is to prevent the Hero from completing the level. Once all his minions are placed, the Overlord must sit back and watch the Hero run his gauntlet.

When the actual platforming starts, the rest of the players, the "Minions" take control of the enemies which have been placed. The gameplay of a minion is very limited, and many enemies have one-button controls. An enemy which can only walk back and forth for example, uses only one button with which to change direction. Other, more powerful enemies will have more advanced controls to allow the minion to hinder the hero more effectively. The goal of a minion is, of course, to kill the Hero as the Hero comes charging through. What's in it for them? Well, this is where the overall structure of the game comes into play.

Again taking a cue from Mario, each "game" of Minion Madness consists of four levels, or "rounds" if you prefer. If the hero runs out of lives during any of these rounds, the Overlord's team wins. If the Hero makes it through all four levels, the Hero wins. In addition, each person's performance in a level can help them out in a later level. The Hero, for instance, can collect coins in order to earn more extra lives. The Overlord, by contrast, receives all the coins the Hero didn't collect in the level to bolster his funds for the next. (The Overlord also gets a hefty bonus of coins whenever the Hero loses a life.) The Minions don't care about coins, and instead are fighting for "ranks." If a Minion kills the hero, he or she will become a "Gold-Rank" Minion. The next time that Minion is placed, they will be more powerful than before (faster, more resilient, etc). As a result, gameplay in each level is very much about powering up for the next level, hopefully raising the stakes each time the Hero makes it through.

The fourth and final level of the game is unique in that it has a Boss Chamber at the end. Once the Overlord has distributed his minions, he himself takes control of the boss creature at the end. Depending on how many coins the Overlord has when all is said and done, his boss form will be more or less powerful. Minions don't have much to do with the fight, though their job is obviously to prevent the Hero from ever reaching it. Whoever wins, the game will ultimately start over, with roles being re-assigned.

What I like about this game is that it's a fusion of many largely single-player experiences into a meta-multiplayer game. From the perspective of the Hero, this plays just like a standard platformer, yet it makes the experience much more personal. Most platformers have a "one man against the world" element to them, but this time you're really being pitted against an army of other players, including a living, breathing Mastermind behind it all.

From the perspective of the Overlord this plays very much like a Tower Defense game, but what I like about it is how much it simulates the "evil overlord" experience. You're the one with all the plans, but in the end you must sit back and watch your clumsy and perhaps foolhardy henchmen carry them out. You get to really see what it's like to be a video game supervillain.

For the Minions, it's a somewhat more unique experience, but one I've always kind of wanted to see captured in a game. What's it like to be the little dude on level 1 whose only means of attack is to waddle back and forth, waiting in rapt anticipation for the two or three seconds which will determine your victory or defeat? Maybe I'm alone in wanting to step into that guy's shoes for a moment, but I think it's something that would be interesting to explore. So many multiplayer games, particularly MMORPGs, try to make every player feel like the hero of the story to the point where no one really is. It would be kinda cool for a game to have the balls to say "You're not special. You're a grunt just like 95% of the people here. If you want to be special, you're going to have to earn it."

This is why I think "crossplay" is so interesting. It allows players to step into the shoes of characters who have largely existed as abstractions in video games past. It turns every moment into a real, person vs. person narrative. I don't know if video gamers as a whole would relish the idea of being a Buzzy Beetle for a day, but as far as my personal tastes go, I want someone to make this.