My first idea for this project was very physics-based. The idea was that you played a firefighter/water elemental/forest spirit etc in a burning forest. Your job would be to extinguish the fires and regrow the forest as quickly as possible, points would be awarded not relative to how much of the forest you save but relative to how quickly you do it - prompting fast action and quick combos.
You would be able to extinguish fires by using a jet of water. The interesting bit comes when the jet of water is also your only means of moving and navigating the forest - to move in one direction you must fire your jet in the opposite direction. You would also be able to 'jump' by aiming your jet downwards. One technique would be to build up some speed by jetting along the ground then launch yourself up in the air and spin at everything that's on fire before you slow down.
My main problem with this idea is that although I have a good idea of the mechanic and how it would work I don't have a solid character design or an aesthetic for the game, and since I want to make something as visually strong as possible this was a real hurdle for the idea.
My second game idea sprouted in completely reverse order. I latched onto an aesthetic I'd come up with a couple of years ago for a random Photoshop project: a landscape in varying shades of blue with glowing white trees/foliage. The aesthetic already highlights nature and I think it would be really effective and strongly visually unique as a way of presenting a game.
My initial problem with this idea was that although I had the aesthetic I had no idea of what the actual mechanics would be. Since at this point I had one idea with a mechanic and one with an aesthetic it would seem obvious to try and combine the two but the feeling I got from my first idea clashed very strongly with the aesthetic so I decided to work on mechanics for the second.
The mechanic I came up with was a relatively simple one, you play a fire demon who ignites everything he touches. While this mechanic would lend itself very easily to wanton destruction I wanted to make the game a little more than that, so I thought what you might have to do is get to the end of each level while destroying as little as possible. This would be accomplished by speeding through the landscape as quickly as possible and chaining jumps so you were touching the ground for a very small amount of time. You would have to avoid touching trees or any foliage as they would ignite everything around them.
Edit: New idea. I could make this an auto-scroller where hitting a tree causes you to burn out.
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