digitalfurbelow
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Growth Genre Proposals
🕑 Added 2025-01-24 16:57:32 +0000 UTCSome ideas for the genre of my next project, nothing is concrete yet, just want to get some feedback for what other people may want. And I am interested in hearing if any of you have some fun ideas for growth games.
I'll try to keep this brief since I want it to be readable, when I come back I'll have full design docs for the most popular genres. I have split up each genre in different sections:
Overview: brief description of the game and why growth would fit it
Difficulty/Time required: scale of 1-10 on how difficult it would be to implement and the time it would take, for reference I think GrowthRPG would be a 9
Scale of Growth: Size of characters at endgame. This would mainly be for height as that is the one that would cause most issues.
Speed of Growth: How fast/much your character would grow
Impact Growth has on the game: How Growth affects the game
Also small update to GrowthRPG went live, should hopefully fix some issues with crashes for some people.
4x Grand Strategy
Overview: Like Civilization but the more power/influence you hold the bigger you are, work to expand your civilization and yourself. I think this would work pretty well for growth because it would support a very large cap for growth, and the games center around amassing influence and power which would reflect itself in your player character.
You would start with being able walk inside of each tile when you are small but when you get bigger it zooms out more and they become tiles the size of a normal game, and all the interactions would go into a menu to make it easier to manage. Each tile would be its own little instanced level to keep that reference of exactly how big you get.
It would lend itself well to have different sources of growth with each different path of victory having the influence on your characters looks.
There would also be a great deal of focus on the personalities and interactions with the other civilization leaders.
Difficulty/Time required: 4/10 Other than map generation/loading I don’t think anything would be terribly difficult, grand strategy games are more about balance than anything else.
Scale of Growth: Planet. This would probably have the biggest scale of growth out of any proposal, a possible endgoal would be outgrowing the entire world. The downside to this is it would be focused on size more than anything, to keep everyone in the same relative field you would have to get bigger.
Speed of Growth: The length of each game I would aim for around the 5 hour mark. Although with the large disparity between the start and end scale there will be a lot of growth.
Impact Growth has on the game: Growth would be more of a reflection on what type of society you build, like your character would have muscle if they decided to be militaristic.
City Builder
Overview: Similar to Black and White where you would be the avatar of a civilization and the more they prosper the bigger you are. Similar to 4x, however this is a much smaller scale with no verses element, where you would be able to do things like talk to villagers or help gather resources. It would lend itself well to the character system, having all the random villages be submitted characters. This would also include the same tile system as previously mentioned in 4x along with swapping out interactions with menus to make it more manageable at higher levels of size.
Difficulty/Time required: 5/10 I don’t think this would be too terrible, the most difficult aspects would be map generation and AI.
Scale of Growth: Skyscraper
Speed of Growth: long/slow. Citybuilders often have decently long campaigns, most without a concrete ending, so possibly between 5-10 hours a map.
Impact Growth has on the game: Growth would be used to solve various problems and help develop your villages. Getting large enough would help you create new clearing that your villagers could build upon and each attribute would have a resource they make you better at collecting, like muscle for gathering stone and fat for growing food.
Tactics
Overview: Turn based tactics similar to Baldur’s Gate. It would essentially be like if the current active combat for GrowthRPG were turn based. So a lot less happening all at once, which would lend itself for greater amount of complexity, you still have movement, abilities would have certain ranges and accuracy. It would also have a stronger emphasis on companions giving them more diversity in skills to help you.
Difficulty/Time required: 10/10 By far would be the most complicated/time consuming
Scale of Growth: limited by arena size
Speed of Growth: long term growth with short term combat buffs similar to what GrowthRPG has now. Full playthrough being around 10+ hours.
Impact Growth has on the game: Tactics games have a lot of variable for combat anywhere from movement distance, pushback, to anything in between. Teammates could hang back to provide buffs to those in the frontlines, fat oriented characters could act as tanks, preventing enemies from getting past while legs would increase movement speed for flanking. All in all a lot of opportunities for different attributes to affect how the game is played
Slice of life
Overview: Casual game similar to Stardew valley, no combat but there would be minigames similar to what exists in GrowthRPG that would facilitate growth. Along with that there would be some sort of management mechanic like farming which you would use to passively increase stats and gain items. A focus on character interactions and developments such as being able to get married.
Difficulty/Time required: 3/10 This one would be short and easy, the most difficult parts would be coming up with characters and dialog along along with making the minigames fun and engaging enough.
Scale of Growth: Since this would be focused on living in a community with other people the size would be fairly limited, and instead the game would have to be more focused around expansion instead.
Speed of Growth: Slow. Full playthrough would vary with how much you want to do or beeline to the end. Growth having to be very limited at least in terms of size it would be fairly small and slow.
Impact Growth has on the game: Mechanically it would have very little impact, the game would be more sandbox, the mechanics serving growth instead of the other way around.
Action RPG
Overview: Top down RPG similar to Diablo or Path of exile. If people want me to continue the GrowthRPG this is what I would want to change it to. Everything would be on the overworld, no more loading into a fight, you meet enemies and defeat them on the overworld. There would be a bigger emphasis on stacking and maintaining buffs. There would be one central hub world along with randomly generated dungeons. The hub world would contain NPCs who you could do quests for or form relationships with. And dungeons would work similar to what they are now, but with more variety.
Difficulty/Time required: 9/10 It would be very mechanically dense along with requiring a good number of assets. It would only be slightly easier than GrowthRPG is to develop because there is no awkward loading between the overworld and fights, and most of where you do your growing would be in an instanced random gen level.
Scale of Growth: Limited by hub size when out of a dungeon and limited to the entire map of a dungeon when you are in it.
Speed of Growth: small long term and large short term growth. You would level up much like you do now, but as you progress through levels you would earn level long buffs, like say if you defeat an enemy you get more muscle for the duration of the level, or be able to activate buffs making yourself bigger.
Impact Growth has on the game: Similar to how the GrowthRPG works right now but no more sacrifice mechanic, instead a more traditional skill tree.
Roguelike (Subgenre)
Overview: This one is a bit more vague as other game proposals could also be roguelike, but I think its worth mentioning. The genre lends itself well to growth because roguelikes are about stacking as many synergies as you can to increase your numbers as much as possible along with developing your character. The more buffs and synergies you stack the bigger you get. If I were to aim for a specific type it would probably be a bullet heaven like Vampire Survivor
Difficulty/Time required: varied, however in general roguelikes are easier to test and bugfix than regular full scaled games.
Scale of Growth: varied
Speed of Growth: fast short term growth, perhaps slow long term with being able to upgrade your character through repeat playthroughs.
Impact Growth has on the game: Varied, going to depend a lot on the type of game.
Survival (Subgenre)
Overview: Similar to roguelike more of a subgenre, but still I think it fits the Growth theme well. With survival games its about going from just scraping by to thriving. Often this is through progression with either items or character skills, but this would also be with growth.
Difficulty/Time required: varies
Scale of Growth: varies
Speed of Growth: slow. Survival games usually take quite a while for a playthrough, though theres no concrete details it would probably be around 10 hours.
Impact Growth has on the game: Similar to the citybuilder different attributes would help you gather different resources
Comments
DigitalFurBelow
I really want to do 4x, but I have very little actual experience with it. Citybuilder I would probably be best with.
Ex-Advanced
disregarding the poll, you should go with whatever you feel best equipped/most excited for!
Ex-Advanced
i love the idea of being either a huge, lovable, caretaker or a massive, monstrous dictator
Lucky
Honestly i think 4x would be great for those that prefer the larger side of growth and roguelite for those that prefer the smaller side of it. But i personnaly like the 4x idea more.
Top Snapper VZ
Dope. Cant wait
DigitalFurBelow
I don't ever see myself making anything scifi. Its both not my strong point as an artist and I'm not a huge fan of the aesthetics. More than likely it will be anachronistic fantasy like GrowthRPG.
JapannMann
I'd love if the grand strategy game had the ability to grow so fat you literally become bigger than entire cities
Domadet
City Builder would be amazing if it could be done. Being an avatar overseeing villages, growing bigger and stronger as they prosper. Getting to interact with the increasingly-tiny beings, showing off just how huge and powerful you're becoming~
Top Snapper VZ
I find a city builder to be so interesting and open to interpretation in this set up. It could be built with similarities to a 4x game. I think that slice of life elements could also work in a city builder. How you deal with un friendly neighbors simular to 4x and how you associate with citizens and friendly neighbors more slice of life. Also given the wide array of city builders and how it pairs with other genres, it could have a powerful ability to potentially be pivoted if you or your fans find a specific direction appealing. Im a big fan of slow burn growth content. theres not really alot of it being done well out there, but slice of life is a good match for it. pure slice of life games tend to be super narrow in scope, but i guess that can also be an advantage in small scale. When it comes to rougelikes, im a bit iffy. I love the genre and some of my favorite games are rougelikes, but ive run into so many games that could have been better if they didnt fallow the genre. Maybe im sick of restarting runs, games that aren't random enough to justify being a rougelike, and how some games mistake difficulty for content. I like the randomness, but plenty of games can stack on randomness and events/items without going full rougelike. It was never really brung up with GRPG and its definitely to early to be relevant with up coming projects, but i would like to hear about setting a bit. Like fantasy, sci-fi, interpretive modern, fantasy-sci-fi fusion like the ff games, and much more. I lean more fantasy personally, and i guess im just curious what setting your open to for new projects. I know your very interested in our imput but i hope your putting value in what you want, its good to work on a project you like y'know. Anyway its good to see a poll after quite some time.
DigitalFurBelow
yeah I could do that I would just need to think of and implement a SFW equivalent.
Razor4K
just have it as toggle mode just like in GrowthRPG as patreon exclusive etc
DigitalFurBelow
I need to rewrite a lot of the main systems for Growth RPG so turning it into a different genre wouldn't be that bad, I would still be able to use all the assets already created for it. The milking farm could be part of the Slice of Life genre. Although there would also have to be some SFW equivalent too, just as a rule I would like for people to be able to enjoy it with or without any sexual element.
Pyren
I like the idea of roguelikes because I've always been a fan of enemies that can also scale against the player, so a roguelike growth focused game would be perfect, not just keeping your numbers on par with their numbers...but also trying to stay big enough to not get stepped on! XD
GitBot3994
City builder sounds interesting. I dont know anybody with sutch koncept
Razor4K
good ideas but idk if its good if you change Growth RPG into an whole different type then, unless you would just include the mechanics of Diablo-like games like the progression system and having a much more constant way to upgrade your scalings etc. or you could take examples from game idea of mine with the "Cowgirl" styled milking farm (Simulator / Sandbox) **Overview:** basicly you got a small map where your player character starts in a (barn / Facility or whatever other ambient you like) like in a point & click variant as freecame mode where youre selling your produced breast milk in order to progress further by buying upgrades to improve the breast milk production, efficiency and Capacity corresponding to "Speed", "Duration" and "Size". (for male characters it would be only Dick and Scrotum based scaling unless both genders should have more body affecting growth aswell like fat ontop of it). **Difficulty / Time requires:** Since this is supposed to be a much smaller game it should come out much more handy for trying a different type of game unless you want to be SFW instead. **Scale of Growth:** Linear with a balanced mix of a exponential curve (buffed by perks or prestige mechanics etc). **Speed of Growth:** should be slow first time and then ramp up more the more often you play to unlock more upgrades, map ambients and tools to serve the purpose (but the difficulty shoud be controllable at the game start where you should have settings how long should it take based on a multiplier). i can give you more details about it on discord if youre interested :3
Norm Horseman
Yeah, I forgot about those aspects lol. I just like the simplicity, POV and destruction. Theoretically we could attach those things to another genre or mix it up.
DigitalFurBelow
yeah it seems like a natural extension of the game. Especially something like Total War where it has the champions on the map already and some can even grow. Obviously it will be nowhere near as complicated as that though.
DigitalFurBelow
I don't really like those types of games because it feels like you get nibbled and pecked to death which I don't find is a very satisfying. Plus I would like to encourage as many sources of growth as I can and that would limit the scope to just one.
DigitalFurBelow
Not quite sure what you mean, do you mean which one makes the size difference more apparent?
Norm Horseman
What about something like literally a rampage clone? Would be pretty low scope and the side-view features a lot of visuals and comparisons that macro fans are looking for. You could modularize it so you could expand it into a 'rogue like action rpg' if you wanted to.
DarkStar
Which would give the players pov more apparent? They can see their size, or the size of the NPCs/opponents?
Some One
I feel like a rougelite might combine the best of getting monstrously huge, while still letting you 'connect' with the game without getting into the 'trying to figure out how to talk to that guy smaller than your toe' or wondering why this guy is intimidating when your bulk IS the world map
Sam Wolf
I don’t think I’ve heard anyone talk about doing a growth 4x grand strategy game before but that sounds super fun!
John Wick
Top down might make the growth aspect feel like a io game but I'd still play it
xBladestrike9
Survival could be fun
DigitalFurBelow
It would also be good for testing and feedback in general, very short playthroughs that people might try once a month or so instead of a full RPG.
The sniping spy
A rouge like would be good, the growth could or rate of growth could be one of the permanent factors
Legeden
I really like the idea of a city builder akin to Black and White, except no need for AI creature because you're the big creature now. But what I liked about GRPG is the idea that you can also customize companions and try some different weapons for them. Meet other somewhat randomized characters and such, that's why Tactics game sounds pretty neat to me and if it's something like a Band of Brothers with randomized content and building up a team that fights against the odds and have to grow literally in order to survive would probably suit me best. As long as tactics isn't JRPG that's also a good direction for me.
DigitalFurBelow
well theres a large portion of the audience that doesn't much care for gameplay that just wants growth and character interactions, so I figured something like that would fit well.
Legeden
I'm fine with anything but Stardew Valley like :D those put me to sleep
