I'm making a turn based strategy game. I have the core mechanic but I have more than one idea for a theme & a title (surprisingly the mechanic fits almost equally to all of them).

This topic is purely about how *you* personally feel about these theme, which one makes you want to play it. That's the most important criteria.

1) Industrial Revolution - you run a small island country in a Victorian era and try to convert agrial society into an industrial one, there is no war/combat.

Topic: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/650519-industrial-revolution-strategy-post-mortem-and-ideas/

2) Steampunk Industrial Revolution - like above but less historical and more fictional. With zeppelins, weird steam machinery, mad scientists.

3) Dictator - you are a dictator of a small island. Less focus on industry and more on internal struggle with rebels, coups, etc (there is combat).

Topic: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/650697-dictator-rebels-uprising-coups/

I don't want to vote negative and not contribute anything positive. So here's a list of past strategy games where I enjoyed the theme a lot. But you can ignore this if it's not actually helpful. ^_^;

- Evolution: improve your monster species for typical 4X goals.

- Gardening Tournament or drive to earn X$ by day Y by efficient worker placement and upgrade purchasing/filling orders in a farm or garden setting.

- Factory/Tailor/Pet Breeder: produce objects or items to fill customer orders before the customers get impatient and leave.

- Caveman Town Builder: Like an RTS single-player mission without combat, the goal is to complete mission objectives as fast as possible, and mission objectives generally involve constructing and upgrading buildings, collecting resources, building up population, or removing obstacles.

- Insect hive/insect-like alien hive: build up your base and unlock new unit types to grow from being a single insect to being a fully-staffed hive. Probably this would alternate sandbox play in the hive and strategic play outside the hive.

- Produce a complete set by experimenting with recipes or crossbreeding; this could be pet breeding again, or it could be cooking or creating jewelry or paintings (automated by the game, not realistic artistic creation).

I don't want to vote negative and not contribute anything positive.

Don't worry, statisticly the "I dislike all of the above" option should be voted by like 90% of people no matter what the theme is :)

(even if it's "ninja robot zombie pirates", OK, for that one it should be only 70%)

I added that option mostly to prevent polluting the pool by those who choose one because "it's a lesser evil". So, don't feel bad when choosing it :)

Thanks for voting!

From a design standpoint and my personal opinion I'd probably choose the Dictator option because of the chance for excitement with Combat

I personally like open word action games. But if you could explain further on the options, all of them could be made into a game series from my pov. I know how it would be if it were mine

I personally like open word action games. But if you could explain further on the options, all of them could be made into a game series from my pov. I know how it would be if it were mine

No, these don't have even a distant similarity to action games :) Not even realtime, pure turn based strategies.

I went with the steampunk option. I think it would be a lot of fun to develop the tech tree for a steampunk strategy game. The added element of fantasy opens you up to develop some fantastic units.

It's really a matter of taste though. I prefer the fantastic to the realistic.

Since it's a small project, I voted industrial revolution (without steampunk). Fantasy means more work for you!

Since it's a small project, I voted industrial revolution (without steampunk). Fantasy means more work for you!

Actually, it might be easier, in this particular case...

Anyway, what do you feel as a player? Which seems more tasty to you? Which is most likely to open your heart (and wallet)? :)

I would go with steampunk as well. Not only that it gets more popular recently, but also opens up a lot of interesting possibilities for your project. For some reason I find all that's dark/gloomy/magical very appealing lately. Btw, do you know a game called Machinarium? :)