First off, I'm not a games developer, nor do I know anything about making games. This is just an idea I had, and I thought I'd post about it and see what other people thought about it.
Now, I realize that most people are going to see the words "lawn mowing game" and immediately think to themselves something along the lines of "Oh God, you can't possibly be serious!" but just hear me out. Yes, I'm talking about a game where lawn mowing is the main part of the game, but not one where lawn mowing is the only thing there is to do. There have been a very small handful of lawn mowing games before, but they are all very, very basic homebrew or old flash games. I'm talking about one that is much grander in scope, that takes place in a town or just a neighborhood within a town that can be fully explored. There would be a story, NPC's, things to buy, sidequests, and secrets.
So here's the basic idea: I'm thinking of a sort of open world, sandbox 1-player game. Something somewhat similar to Harvest Moon or Animal Crossing. You'd earn money and experience points(and eventually levels) from mowing peoples yards for them. The less obstacles you ran into(such as rocks, bird baths, lawn furniture, garden veggies etc.) the more you'd get paid, and some people would pay a little more then others based on how difficult the yard was to mow. Sidequests would consist of doing favors for people in town(not mowing), which you'd also get money and experience for. Also, people would be doing different things depending on the time of day, and also depending on the day of the week. Some sidequests could be done repeatedly, either every day or just on certain days. However, other sidequests would be a one time thing. You may also find loose change on the ground that people have dropped just laying around in random places throughout the game. These places would be randomly generated by the game each day, and this could be anything from 1 cent to 1 dollar, but nothing higher then that. This loose change would be a rare thing to find though, just as it is in real life. In fact, most days you wouldn't find any change laying around anywhere. (This wouldn't add much to the game, but I think it would be a neat little easter egg to throw in, and it would make for a good quest if the game had them.)
As for what leveling up would do for you and what the money would be used for, I don't know yet. Maybe someone else reading this who likes the idea can offer suggestions. I figure that maybe money would be used to buy clothes for your character, upgrades to your lawnmower, a bicycle to travel faster around town, or maybe even a fishing pole for fishing. (Perhaps you could sell the fish you catch, or maybe even eat it and fill your energy meter if the game ended up having such a thing?) All I can think of for leveling up right now is that maybe you would have to be at a certain area to unlock certain things. Maybe you have to be a certain level to do things like fish, or maybe to access certain areas in the town.
Anyway, it would be really cool if this community came together and collectively thought up an idea for a game, and then someday someone came along and actually made it. Anyway, this is really just for fun. I thought it'd be interesting to see where this idea goes, considering enough people actually respond to this topic and share there ideas.
