game idea: "Many Bothans"

Man, it's quiet around here today. Too quiet. So here's something:



Video game idea: "Many Bothans". Basically a Star Wars-themed Lemming game. You could have two kinds of units: Bothans With The Information, and Bothans without. When one without touches one With, it also becomes a Bothan With The Information.

Your goal is to get at least one Bothan With The Information to the exit... but on the way, many Bothans will die horrible deaths in a variety of nasty and amusing ways.

Discuss.

 

Sounds interesting. I must wonder how you'd control the Bothans. Or would some or all be AI controlled? If so perhaps you could be playing the part of a god trying to prevent the malicious stuff from killing them by changing the environment in various ways or something.

 

Why not the opposite? Bothans are trying to get our plans, design traps with these resources and make sure non get out alive!!

 

Bothans TD

 

I like that. You could have all kinds of unreliable obstacles like Stormtroopers with terrible aim, and traps with ridiculous vulnerabilities such as an exposed exhaust port, to make it difficult to stop them all.

 

These has copyrights, if it makes money it will be stolen, by George Lucas - - But, Nice idea . ...

I also don't like pointless violence, but if deaths were mostly funny and, some Very violent, I Like the Idea . ..

 

Sounds like a bunch of people who have never played Lemmings. You control the Bothans by clicking on a mode (e.g. "building stairs" or "digging downward") and then clicking on a Bothan. In a few cases, this just gives them a tool or skill (such as an umbrella, for slow-falling) that they use later. In any case, you have only a limited number of these commands/abilities for each level.

And yeah, I'm normally not a fan of violence in video games either, but in Lemmings it was very cartoony, pixelated violence — and strictly environmental, not person vs. person. As the player you're trying to save your many Bothans from such violence, not inflict it (though there is usually no way to save all of them).

Of course Disney's lawyers would come knocking with grumpy looks on their faces were you to actually make this. And my family pointed out at dinner last night that Bothans, originally implied to be a smallish nonhuman race, became just a population of humans in Rogue One. Apparently the whole movie was about how and why all these people died to acquire the plans (I saw the movie, but have virtually no memory of it). All of which makes the concept considerably less funny and more disturbing.

Maybe instead of Bothans, it could be Boodles? ...Loses the whole cultural tie-in though.

 

I like the idea. A sci fi Lemmings could be a lot of fun.

You can probably get away with using the word Bothans. They are only ever mentioned once in any of the films, are not even explained who they are, and are never shown. If you stayed away from any other specific Star Wars content, and just went with a general space or sci fi theme, I think you're fine. Also, a bothan is an obscure English word, not just a Star Wars thing.

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/bothan

I Am Not A Lawyer

 

Will you use your pixelsurface asset? Seems like a good fit.

If Bothans don't work, maybe Bogans will?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogan
I meant that half as a joke, but reading a bit of the description it almost makes sense.


My favorite Lemmings-like is "Zombie Night Terror"
https://store.steampowered.com/app/416680/Zombie_Night_Terror/
Made in Unity too.

 

I don't intend to actually do this myself... mostly just threw it out for discussion on a slow day. If I did do it, I'd probably do it in Mini Micro, which does indeed use PixelSurface.

That's a term I didn't know before. I learned something today!

Neat! That's gone on my wish list. They've certainly taken the basic concept in a whole new direction!

 

As I am not really fan of StarWars (I watched (9 of) them once), I din't clicked initially with BotHans. I thought it suppose to be BotChans. Which is obviously something different, than BotHansSolo (probably?)

But I would love to see modern take on lemmings series.

 

Twothans? "Bothans" containing the word "both" which implies a count of two.
Just don't confuse them with Toucans.

I think a parody would be great here, Spaceballs being an excellent example