ForumsGamesWould You Play "The Pipe Game"? (By: Reton8)

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Reton8
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Reton8
3,173 posts
King

So I've been playing a lot of Clicker Heroes lately and I was thinking of ideas for idle/clicker/incremental games myself.

I thought of this: The Pipe Game
http://i1287.photobucket.com/albums/a627/Reton8/AG%20Image%20Uploads/The-Pipe-Game-Reton8-1.png

That is a mock-up of what the game would look like if I could actually program it. (I did the whole mock-up myself with the program G.I.M.P., it's like Photoshop. I could work on the user interface a bit more too.)

The way the game works is this:
- You buy pipe with cash and then you place it down.
- You start with one piece of pipe automatically.
- Clicking on the pipe directly earns you cash and helps pressurize the water in the pipe.

- You lay the pipe from left to right on the screen.
- When you lay enough pipe to be the length of the screen the game scrolls the screen right.
- After laying so much pipe you will see that water can only flow so far and some of your new pipe will not have water flowing in it (this is indicated by the darkened pipe in the picture above). That is when you will need to buy and place a pressurizer. You will place pressurizers every so often.

- You can hire workers to place pipe for you.
- Eventually you will be able to hire special workers that place pressurizers and other special pipe pieces automatically for you (when needed).

- After placing enough pipe, you will eventually scroll across landmarks like the city (shown) and other things like fountains, parks, farms, golf courses, etc.
- You buy special sections of pipe to supply water to the landmarks.
- Landmarks provide bonuses like earning X amount of cash per second, increasing the strength of your pressurizes, or speeding up how fast your works can lay pipe.

- There would probably be a prestige system, where you reset/restart the game and earn new bonuses, items, and features (think hero souls and ancients in Clicker Heroes). Also the games backdrop/setting may be different, like an alien civilization on a different planet.

I haven't worked out all the kinks, but I'm thinking when workers lay down pipe for you the screen will automatically scroll, but if you click and drag the screen will stop auto scrolling and allow you to view old sections of pipe. There would be a button you could click to return to the newest section of pipe being laid.

There may be a few other snags I haven't worked out, but there would be more ease-of-use features to aid the player during gameplay.

Anyway, if you could would you play this game? What are your thoughts?

  • 4 Replies
BrounieMan
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BrounieMan
42 posts
Jester

Having to buy workers to place the pipes and being able to buy and pressurize the pipe yourself seems pretty confusing. I think workers should be the ones building the pipe [represented by a percentage bar on an outlined version of pipe which increases in opacity until it becomes solid], and you earn money by pressurizing the pipe as well as for each pipe completed. Pressurizers should provide increase to money per second and there should be you should be able to buy specialized workers to allow you to increase damage per click, etc. I could also see negative things happening later game, like leaky pipes which would lower pressure until fixed, and things like that.

I like the concept of this game though, and I totally think I would play it.

Reton8
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Reton8
3,173 posts
King

It looks like I did forget to mention that pressurizing and building pipe should gain you income per second or some sort of bonus.

dandeliongames
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dandeliongames
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Farmer

I like the artwork provided, but the game idea itself seems pretty lacking. Sure I'd probably play it, but the description of the game here is pretty much the most basic feature set of every incremental ever... you click stuff to go faster, you buy stuff to idle better.

I've been playing a bit of clicker heroes myself and while it's a very pretty game, and it's got a better than average prestige, it's not what I'd call one of my favorites. I like some of the things that Save the earth idle has done and idling to rule the gods has some interesting 'expansion' of what you can do as you go, Then there is anti-idle which I consider my favorite of all time though it's mostly a collection of ugly terrible games, an OK idle RPG, and a mess of *things* you can do besides sit around, and presumably about the hardest to have made from a code standpoint.

I would like to see some kind of 'skill' game for active players, something that's fun on it's own, but happens to benefit the idle game itself too. I think by choosing to make your game about 'pipes' you are limiting one aspect of what is typical in idle games (bigger units, are you going to have blue pipe, red pipe, square pipe, etc as the upgraded versions of pipes? But... on a different note, pipes have a lot of potentially interesting and not super complicated to make mini game possibilities. You could have a pipe maze game where solving the maze get's a bonus (must get mouse from one side to the other). A simple avoider game could also work (maybe these are sewer pipes and you have to dodge *stuff* coming through the pipes). Could even have the 'connect the pipes' style games (where you have to turn various shaped pipes until they form a connection).

Reton8
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Reton8
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King

...but the game idea itself seems pretty lacking.

I totally agree. I didn't want to list to much in my first post and make it overly long, but some other things I was thinking items/upgrades in terms:

- Larger pipe diameters upgrades.
- Stronger/better pipe material upgrades.
- Different types of valves.
- Different types of pipe joints.
- Different types of ways to connect the pipe (like rivets, welds, etc.)
- Different types of workers and upgrades to existing workers.

- Perhaps contracts with cities that increase income or other such negations.
- Perhaps landmarks could also have mini-games attached to them. So if you provide water to a golf course, perhaps a golfing mini-game that provides benefits. Also, so those benefits are actually useful they would be specific to the mini-games and offer something new to unlock, but you wouldn't have to play the mini-games too much because some players may not enjoy them. This would be a lot of code for sure though.
- Perhaps prestige would introduce building railways, and then another level of prestige laying utility wires, and the next prestige roads, etc.

- There would be loads of different landmarks you pass (not all with mini-games if mini-games be implemented) that would give the player incentive to keep going to see the next landmark. Some landmarks may repeat.

I know there are a lot of aspects to pipe and pipe laying that I am unaware about, so I'd want to research that and have the game itself implement real life aspects of industrial piping in a fun/creative way.

I enjoy the idle/clicker/incremental games, but also notice the frequent walls you hit where you sit and do nothing. I would want this game to try it's best to have the player constantly doing something, but also make that something you do be helpful and useful, much like the idea behind the anti-idle game you mentioned.

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