Minecart Game Danger Ideas, For my minigame thing

Some of you might be surprised to learn that this project is still going, now I have holidays, I also have a little time to keep working on it. For those of you who don't know what the project is, it's called Mario Land: Minigame Mayhem, and is a minigame orientated game, based around earning coins to play the games in a theme park.

This particular minigame is a side on Minecart game, similar to something you might've seen in DKC 1 and 2, or some portions of SMRPG when you're side on. The original concept was top down, but was far too limiting, so i'm going the side on route instead, and I need ideas for dangers. So far i've thought of:

- Pits and jumps (obviously)
- Thwomps
- Falling spikes
- Other minecarters
- Rising and lowering walls
- Crumbling bridges
- Bombs on the paths
- Rotating objects

You can brake to slow yourself down, though some jumps can't be made at slower speeds. The way coins are earned in this minigame would be random placement, so it's not always the same minigame over and over.

Keep in mind, my platform engine doesn't really allow for sloped floors, only flat.

Here's what it'll look like (basically)

This post has been edited by KritTheRed on Dec 23 2005, 01:54 AM

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Lava pits with jumping Podoboos, perhaps?

Thought of that just after I posted.

bombs/explosives in the path?

Good idea. And also spinny things using that rotating object engine of yours. Maybe I could do a cool pseudo 3D one to make things more interesting.

Bullet Bills that fire from offscreen.

Can you finish it by the time the holidays are over, or do we have to wait until next Christmas?

Well, there's a lot of thought has to go into this. I don't want to slack off on level design on any of the minigames and the overworld, it's very important that it looks good and is not only designed well in terms of how it plays out, but has plenty of eye candy and fitting graphics.

Also I am having trouble coming up with ideas to make minigames FUN, I can easily bang together a bunch of rubbish games and throw them into the mix, but it's not worth it. I want my minigames to feel GOOD to play, and give people a reason to come back. I could post another topic asking for minigame ideas in the fangame forum I guess, but no one ever seems to help very much in those.

As for this minigame, the engine is all complete, it's just a matter of level design, i'm thinking of having 3 different "zones" for it, an Underground Mine, Bowsers Castle, and a Factory of some kind, each with fitting dangers.

Are you going to have changing between carts ala DKC?

Never really thought about it... it could be done, but I probably wouldn't unless I could find a way to make that useful.

Avalanche

A little too problematic probably, plus you can only slow down in this game, not go faster, so it wouldn't really be too hard to outrun.

I was thinking mabey some Ice floors that are hard to slow down on and Mabey some Nipper plants to jump over.

Enemies that jump down and ride on your cart that you have to shake off?

Branching paths that are both negotiable but in different manners, so a person's playing style can jeapordize their cart

Enemies that blind you (create some sort of image on the scree that blocks vision)

I already have alternate routes, which are pretty much just choosing if you go up or down, plus areas which are harder to reach than others, which would have more chance of coinage, not sure if this is what you meant.