So, the theme is "the toys are alive". I'll confess that I wasn't enormously enthused when first I read it: a cutesy game wouldn't work well with my current mindset, and toys seem to be harder to twist to my liking than other themes.

However, ideas began to flow; turning away from the cute, the next clear option was horror. Now, I'm no great fan of Chucky-style slasher or gore-fest horror, so that's out. On the other hand, I have been thinking of late about ghosts. This led me to two main options: a first-person haunted house mystery, perhaps taking some cues from the gaze-related gameplay of P.T., and a horror-themed rogue-lite (similar to The Binding of Isaac, but without the nausea-fuel or religious-horror overtones).

The former I very much like--it's a game that I could see myself playing, I think--but is somewhat light on gameplay (which is, of course, a category in which out entries are judged), may involve more complex core gameplay (even if I use only very simple "physics", there's still somewhat to be done there) and involves a fair bit of content-creations.

The latter is of a genre that I find fascinating, but don't much play. On the other hand, I've been toying of late (pun intended ) with rogue-lite ideas, the interactions should be relatively simple to make, and content-creation might be reduced via tile-based 2D graphics and random generation of levels.

For now, at least, I've settled on that latter idea: a horror-themed rogue-lite.

To be specific, I have in mind what is more or less a small-scale survival-horror rogue-lite: the player finds themselves exploring a haunted orphanage, assailed by toys controlled by the spirits of children who died there. Health is in very short supply, items are few, and there are no lives (perhaps barring some rare item or other). The player has some ability to attack, but it's very limited.

I'm hoping to manage three randomly-generated levels, three endings, and some implied story.

Alas, I do realise that there's quite a bit of cliche there, and I'm not happy about that. But, well, time is limited...

Thus far I've come up with concepts for several toys, a handful of room types, some props, a few items, scattered events, the basics of the three endings and a skeletal (so to speak ) backstory concept. On the technical side, I've started a new project in my personal source control repository, and have the basic template program up and running (ah, the joy of finding all the bits that you forgot had become important to the running of a given piece of code...).