LD#15: Ideas Based on Caverns

I came up with a few ideas for this theme:

• Spelunker clone
• Dig Dug clone
• Explore randomized caves
• Dig out your own cavernous bunker
• Use regular flooding in the cave in some way
• Alien cave explorer
• Gold/Tin/Mineral miner
• Hide from killers who are chasing you
• Cube farm caverns

I vaguely remembering a cave level from the NES game Thunderbirds, but I don’t want to fire it up and play through it to completion to find out if I am remembering it correctly. Maybe what I think I remember about it is better anyway. B-)

I have spent some time thinking about these ideas, and what got me most excited was one involving the driver of a tank in a cavern. Think of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES, when you could drive around in the van, and imagine that you’re underground, searching for important items. The tank will protect you and can destroy things, but you need to get out of the tank every so often, leaving you vulnerable yet more maneuverable.

I’ll be prototyping some of these ideas on paper to see what is the most interesting.