# Come up with non-violent video game ideas!



## BloodyHellSausage (Aug 22, 2017)

I just felt like making this thread, but I think this question is suitable for a community of writers. Come up with ideas for video games that involve very little to no fighting or combat. Instead focus on other creative ways to introduce a conflict, or other gameplay mechanics.

To make it clear, even seemingly light-hearted games like Mario or Pokemon are out of the question, because they still share the same basic elements of combat as games like Mortal Kombat, for instance, and I know it seems strange to compare Mario or Pokemon to Mortal Kombat.

It's not out of some moral consideration, but rather a creative consideration. Whether it's humans that shed blood and gore, or whether it's fantasy creatures that don't shed recoginisable blood at all, the gameplay mechanics are very similar.


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## pmmg (Aug 22, 2017)

Pong...

I think most sports games would qualify for this.


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## Devor (Aug 22, 2017)

I'm curious what people will say.  But there's already tons of non-violent games, sims come to mind (city-building, dating sims, music sims, etc.).

Trying to put it into fantasy, though, I'm thinking of some sort of castle-building kingdom simulator with make-your-own spells and creatures minigames.


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## Ban (Aug 22, 2017)

*Orator* a game based around the simple 3 answer dialogue system available in most bioware games. Only in this game there is no paragon/renegade system. The morality of your actions depend completely on you.

The game starts you off as a regular guy/girl in a quiet town. You can walk around, do some fun stuff and most importantly talk to people about various things. Each conversation gives you three responses applicable to what has been said. After having done a talked about a certain number of things you go to sleep and a season passes. Each time you wake up you will notice the impact of the advice you gave. This impact can be minor or major. The game ends after 40 seasons (or more who knows). The end state of your town will completely depend on what you said to people. You might get people to marry, enrich the town in various ways, impoverish the town if you give bad advice, get people elected for things, help a kid pass high school, create a public park, help start a fortune 500 company, encourage people to follow their dreams, crush those dreams, the opportunities are endless.


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Aug 22, 2017)

I just thought of a fantasy cooking game where you can make various magical dishes with magical ingredients and start a restaurant and there are like 1,000 recipes you can unlock which all have various magical effects


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## BloodyHellSausage (Aug 22, 2017)

Banten said:


> *Orator* a game based around the simple 3 answer dialogue system available in most bioware games. Only in this game there is no paragon/renegade system. The morality of your actions depend completely on you.
> 
> The game starts you off as a regular guy/girl in a quiet town. You can walk around, do some fun stuff and most importantly talk to people about various things. Each conversation gives you three responses applicable to what has been said. After having done a talked about a certain number of things you go to sleep and a season passes. Each time you wake up you will notice the impact of the advice you gave. This impact can be minor or major. The game ends after 40 seasons (or more who knows). The end state of your town will completely depend on what you said to people. You might get people to marry, enrich the town in various ways, impoverish the town if you give bad advice, get people elected for things, help a kid pass high school, create a public park, help start a fortune 500 company, encourage people to follow their dreams, crush those dreams, the opportunities are endless.



That sounds like an interesting idea.


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## BloodyHellSausage (Aug 22, 2017)

Devor said:


> I'm curious what people will say.  But there's already tons of non-violent games, sims come to mind (city-building, dating sims, music sims, etc.).



I'm interested in fresh game ideas, but I made a thread about non-violent game ideas because nearly the vast majority of games involve combat. I think music games are kind of samey, because I think they involve little more than pushing buttons at the right time.


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## Devor (Aug 22, 2017)

Banten said:


> The game starts you off as a regular guy/girl in a quiet town. You can walk around, do some fun stuff and most importantly talk to people about various things. Each conversation gives you three responses applicable to what has been said. After having done a talked about a certain number of things you go to sleep and a season passes. Each time you wake up you will notice the impact of the advice you gave. This impact can be minor or major. The game ends after 40 seasons (or more who knows). The end state of your town will completely depend on what you said to people. You might get people to marry, enrich the town in various ways, impoverish the town if you give bad advice, get people elected for things, help a kid pass high school, create a public park, help start a fortune 500 company, encourage people to follow their dreams, crush those dreams, the opportunities are endless.



I had a story idea about a trickster "tomte" gnome.  Every time he came out of his tree home decades would have passed around him, so the story would be about the way he watches and affects this little town as it passes through history.  And he would go from despising humans to caring about them.

That would merge perfectly with your game idea, and it would be lots of fun because he could pull pranks on people, then find out the results were way worse than he ever imagined.


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## DMThaane (Aug 23, 2017)

Devor said:


> I'm curious what people will say.  But there's already tons of non-violent games, sims come to mind (city-building, dating sims, music sims, etc.)



The Sims? Non-violent? Oh how the denizens of this world would weep if they were to suffer one skerrick, one jot, one iota of the suffering I have reigned down upon sims in one incarnation or the other. Building's have burned, assassinations have been arranged, swimming pool ladders have disappeared, all to satisfy the whims of a mad tyrant god that knows neither pity nor mercy. An endless world of torments and cruelties lay before me, inescapable to its inhabitants except by boredom and deleted save files. They say true agony can only be expressed in simlish.

More seriously there are any number of ways to spin out ideas for a non-violent fantasy game, although a distinction should be made between games where you enact violence and ones where violence occurs as part of the narrative. Puzzle games are an obvious one and you could build that around magic, alchemy, or even a thief working through enacting a heist on some great treasure vault. Platformers are another that aren't necessarily violent and lend themselves to fantasy. City-builders and management games are viable, although a lot of them like to include the potential for outside threats with violence as an option for solving them. Even some 4X games lend themselves to non-violent play styles and the Endless Legend's Roving Clans can't even declare war. Visual novels or Adventure games lend themselves to most kinds of storytelling and can have some rather involved decision making.

As for a single idea, some sort of magical doctor game could be interesting. Give the player magic and potions and have them try to investigate symptoms, figure out if its mundane or mystical, administer cures. Have it be a little 'LA Noire' except you're investigating illnesses instead of crimes. You could have resource management components fairly easily and include a central narrative, maybe throw in heavier RPG elements and include a romance option or two. You could even have the locals gain or lose trust in the player so that even success could lose trust if your methods were harsh or inscrutable. You could have multiple endings with some of the decent ones actually requiring harsh decisions or losing trust with certain people. You could even streamline the gameplay and go for something more 'Long Live the Queen' in style. Would I buy it? Probably not, but there's some relatively untapped markets out there.


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## TheCrystallineEntity (Aug 25, 2017)

Oh, this is awesome; I've always wanted to make or at least play a game that has no combat system and has trading and bartering instead of currency, and exploring the world as part of the main adventure.


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## BloodyHellSausage (Aug 25, 2017)

TheCrystallineEntity said:


> Oh, this is awesome; I've always wanted to make or at least play a game that has no combat system and has trading and bartering instead of currency, and exploring the world as part of the main adventure.



Off-topic, but I found this article about a Facebook page that does bartering, if that interests you. Who needs money? How (and why) online bartering maintains its mass appeal | National Post


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## TheCrystallineEntity (Aug 26, 2017)

^Thank you.

The closest games I can think of are Harvest Moon games, but even those involve money. I prefer Rune Factory; 4 is one of my favourite games ever. I typically leave combat to my pet fairies and focus on the farming and exploring and cooking and so forth.


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Aug 26, 2017)

TheCrystallineEntity said:


> Oh, this is awesome; I've always wanted to make or at least play a game that has no combat system and has trading and bartering instead of currency, and exploring the world as part of the main adventure.



I love the bartering idea. You could even negotiate and haggle for better prices.


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## TheCrystallineEntity (Aug 27, 2017)

^It would be fun to play as a character who could go into forests and find nuts and berries and such-like, and the rarer the item the rarer stuff you could get in return.


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## BloodyHellSausage (Aug 27, 2017)

TheCrystallineEntity said:


> ^It would be fun to play as a character who could go into forests and find nuts and berries and such-like, and the rarer the item the rarer stuff you could get in return.



That makes me happy. No more war games! (Well, maybe less war games anyway, to protect freedom of expression.)


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## TheCrystallineEntity (Aug 29, 2017)

Ooh, the main character could choose to get a cat or a dog at the beginning of the game, and later acquire a rabbit to help with foraging, a horse to get places quicker, a bird of some kind to scout over long distances, and possibly a dragon to ride.


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