I think U.F.O.: A Day In The Life and Endonesia are brilliant gameplay ideas.
U.F.O. is a hidden object puzzle game like Pokemon Snap, Where's Waldo, I Spy, or casual adventure games, except that you can't see the hidden objects. Your alien brethren crashed into an apartment complex (luckily, they and you are cloaked) and are trying to escape to the mothership before they die. You can warp to any moment in time (within 24 hours) and space (within the apartment complex).
So, how can you find them if they're invisible? You look at environmental visual and audial cues that show the apartment changing over time (the game plays out in accelerated real time). If a well-trained cat doesn't use its litterbox, it's probably because something's in it already, for instance. You take a picture, get it developed, and if an alien's in the negative, the mothership beams them up.
So, why isn't it a guessing game? Because you have to tail people and discover their habits in the Love-De-Lic style. An alien will always mess with a new object or being, so you never have to wait in an empty room taking random pictures. You can also guess where aliens will be based on the apartment dwellers' habits and personalities.
So, why isn't it boring? While you're waiting, these people are doing funny, shocking, and dramatic things. The game takes place over 24 hours (And that's great, because you don't need a demo level. Most people will be asleep at 3 A.M., so that functions as a demo level, for example.) and an entire story is told over the course of those 24 hours. You can only play 1 hour at a time before getting sick, so the game basically plays out in 24 serialized episodes of 9 different rooms/series. As you find more aliens, more environments and events occur to give you access to more aliens. It's quite elegant.
So, if it's just 9 different serialized plays, why is it amazing? Remember when I said you can travel to any point in time and space? When you warp aliens out, whatever they were affecting isn't affected anymore. I don't want to spoil the game's story, but when something changes, you get to essentially watch an "alternate timeline" of what occurred when you did something or your alien buddies didn't. So, if an alien tripped a salaryman during his morning jog and he was late, his boss could flirt with his secretary (who likes the salaryman) and had to stay late at the office. If you capture the alien who tripped him, he gets to work on time, the boss gets romantically frustrated, and you get an AWESOME payoff when the boss uses a "secret room" for his...weird...fantasies. Then, someone else comes in if you solve their problem, and more hilarity ensues. Awesome. PLUS, at 10:00 p.m., an alien outlaw faction arrives and reveals that THEY have aliens scouting out Earth. They threaten to blow up Earth if you don't save their buddies in 2 hours, Earth sees the U.F.O. in the sky, and the military threatens to blow YOUR buddies up. Since this whole game's about choice and how one should live one's life, you get to see 2 awesome emotional payoffs. 1st, you get to see how these people you've been with act when they think they're going to die. Minor, not-that-interesting spoiler here: for example, the Japanese salaryman comes home late and goes straight to sleep, thinking there's going to be another day tomorrow that he has to work, work, work through. So, you get social commentary like that on career-obsessed people (that's the least good one by a lot, but I still think it works as satire, especially if you've been with for 24 hours). 2nd, these people talk about what they WOULD have done today if they knew the world was going to end. Since you've seen all of their possible actions, you get to see if they're lying or not. It's extremely powerful.
But wasn't it was only released in Japan? Wrong! Well, it was, but 99.5% of the whole thing's in pantomime, since your alien language is gibberish and you don't understand Earth's languages.
All of this design ties together to make, basically, Pokemon Snap + Rear Window + Groundhog Day + The Legend Of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Yeah. It's that awesome.
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/lovedelic/lovedelic2.htm
http://www.youtube.com/user/SketchesOfMoondays#grid/user/C98EDBBD54634F3F
Endonesia's the better game, I think, but the artistry is less dependent on the gameplay. It's still brilliant, though. You're a tiny kid who hates his life. While waiting on a park bench, you get warped to this island. It's a standard (phenomenal) adventure game from there on, as you try to find out what the island is and how/if to return home. The brilliant bit, though, is that the whole game's about how adolescence sucks and how one becomes an adult. Your mop-haired kid gets "Emo powers" by helping people on the island. You can only get out of situations by harnessing your Emo powers/powerful emotions and putting them to good use. This means that you have access to all of your inventory/powers at all times instead of them disappearing after use, so puzzle-solving is based on observing islanders' habits, the environments, et cetera (like before). So, basically, it's an adventure game where your character IS the inventory. For example, you start out with no powers. After wandering aimlessly for a bit, you get the power of Hunger. If you use "hunger"on a mushroom-dog hybrid that's following you, it eats away some vines, opening up the next area. You later find these helium balloons that give you the power of Fun. If you use Fun on a fish in the water, it leaps out of the water, gets eaten by a bird, which gets eaten by an alligator. You then get the Food Chain power, which helps you learn an important lesson about life later on. After getting all 50 powers and unlocking all 50 gods of Endonesia, you get to make a final decisive choice about what being an adult means. Again, brilliant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endonesia
http://www.youtube.com/user/SketchesOfMoondays#grid/user/F6D30C2A672A33F1
Also, the SAME GUY came up with these ideas. Amazing.
OnPoint said:
Puzzle League?
Puyo Pop?
Meteos?
Lumines?
Puzzle Fighter?
Puzzle Quest?
Trash Panic?
Poker Smash?
Zoo Keeper?
That said, it is a brilliant, obvious-when-one-thinks-about-it idea.
GrotesqueBeauty said:
Tail of the Sun: Wild, Pure, Simple Life
I seriously miss Artdink's art period. If only they had done that game correctly... Still, No One Can Stop Mister Domino remains incredibly fun.
