Recently, I've been more interested in designing "simple" games that can be comfortably produced by a small dev team. For instance, I'm currently fleshing out a design for an RPG that eliminates dungeons and towns. (Again, many thanks to the helpful folk in the Game Programming forum for their advice.) Now, I'm also considering doing a "tetris-style" puzzle game design, just as a warm-up design. People that know me from at least a few years ago, know that this is in stark contrast to the types of game design I wanted to produce way back when - like fighters and fantasy sports games. I still want to do those games sometime, but I'm currently of the mindset that I should focus on games that require a small amount of resources. Anyway, my question... Although I realize that this may vary by design for the most part, I'm curious as to what games you think require the most/least resources based on your experience or expectations. Right now, if I were the designer, I think I'd need the least amount of resources for puzzlers, traditional RPG, and possibly old-school shooters. Most resources for fighters, team sports, and MMORPG. -The Well-Suited Punk- [edited by - The Well-Suited Punk on June 30, 2002 1:24:51 AM]

Look at the 3rd party independant market is flooded with:
Casino games, puzzle games, basic arcade style games like pac-man, and shooters. These are the easy to make games.

Traditional RPG is a low-technology genre, but balancing gameplay and providing content are probably too much for a small team of amateurs. I see a lot of people convinced that they can come out with the next Chrono Trigger, RPGs are tough. I''ve got a fairly good backing in design and management, programming, and networking, and I know exactly what I want in my game, and its still frustrating to me (how long its taking).

rpgs are high resource. lots of art, balaencing, story, play field design. not to mention a flexible system that allows easy adding of dialouge, and placing of npcs. also of events, and any sort of cutscenes. items and all the stats as well are quite a lot of work. also good music is required. this is for traditional console style rpgs and action-rpgs like zelda, just on a smaller scale.

old school shooters. medium resources. no need for a story, just art for monsters. ai is simple pattern based stuff. levels are auto scrolling and created without too much work (well depends on how good your artists creates tiles and puts them together). little in the way of animation as well. music aint to difficult, anything thats fast and has a beat. no need to set much mood.

puzzle games. low resources if the game is simple, medium resources if the game is complex. ussually no music to simple music. artwork can vary from simple abstract to pretty stills. puzzles have to be well thought out and can be quite challenging to create. if its physics based puzzler like arkanoid, the actual physics and collision detection may be difficult.

fighters. very high resources. tons of animated sprites that are large. many moves per sprite. complex collision detection. requires very percise input system. balancing of the fighters moves. simepl storyline. ai can be difficult to create.

team sport games. medium to high resources. after art is created, all players can be "cloned" from a few designs and then use color swapping for team differentition. use names under the sprite to show who they are. the stats ortion is tough as well as balancing the teams. rules may be difficult ti implement depending on the game. ai is difficult as well. no story needed. control system needs to be thouyght out.

MMORPG: dont even think about it. TREMENDOUS resources. not only do you need tons of player sprites, npc sprites, items, monsters, expansive levels, great network, missions, etc. you need many powerful dedicated servers connected to very fast network lines to support the players. expensive and not worth the trouble.

card games: simple. graphics are easy, ai is not too tough (well depends on the game), and all the rules for games can be found online.

casino games: same thing, pretty easy. though it can be made complex if you go for physics simulation of the roulette tables and dice.

billards: easy to medium. not much art, but the actual physics simulation can be daunting.

platformsers (2d oldchool). medium. basically create art and level design. collision is just basic boxes. basically a shooter in which you control movement.

It depends on what you are good at, but for a starter generally the bottleneck is content, not programming. This means art, levels, scripts, etc.

Do something with relatively simple rules and not a lot of art needed.