This is a living, continually updated home for ideas, concepts, projects, possibilities and long-held creative ambitions across games and, eventually, many other forms. Games are simply where it begins. In time, individual ideas will branch out into their own dedicated articles, with new concepts added as they emerge and existing ones expanded as the thinking around them develops. For now, this page serves as the central index: a place to gather the ideas, preserve what makes each one distinctive and give each enough shape to stand on its own before its eventual deep dive.
1. A third-person Halo RPG
Confidence: creative fit 9/10 · production path 6/10
The strongest version is not simply a Master Chief campaign with the camera pulled back. It is a squad-and-faction RPG set on a contested ring after the Human–Covenant War, with a created Spartan, Sangheili or human specialist joining an uneasy multi-species expedition. Third person would finally make armour, species, melee styles and battlefield roles visually meaningful. A mobile hub—perhaps a damaged corvette—could hold companions, armouries, intelligence and disagreements, while planetside missions combine gunplay, vehicles, Forerunner archaeology and choices about who inherits dangerous technology. The RPG progression should favour training, equipment and relationships over turning an assault rifle into a level-47 loot drop.
The live evidence is unusually encouraging. Halo Studios has acknowledged that Halo explored third-person action during its early Macworld development, and Halo Infinite now officially supports third-person Firefight and Forge-authored third-person experiences. That proves the basic movement and combat language survives the perspective change; the untested part is sustained role-playing, not the camera. A spin-off also protects the mainline first-person identity. (Halo Waypoint)
2. An open-universe Star Trek RPG
Confidence: creative fit 10/10 · production path 5/10
The dream is Mass Effect rebuilt around Trek’s values: captain a single ship, recruit a crew and enter situations where negotiation, scientific interpretation and cultural humility are as mechanically rich as combat. Each major mission should begin as a mystery rather than a target. Scanning a phenomenon, convening senior staff, interpreting another culture’s law and choosing whether to violate the Prime Directive could all change the available solutions. The ship would be the true home base, altered by promotions, casualties, diplomatic visitors and the consequences of the captain’s decisions. Away teams should be deliberately composed; bringing a doctor, linguist and security officer ought to produce different possibilities.
Star Trek: Resurgence demonstrated that a third-person, choice-driven Trek story can work, but its focused, Telltale-like structure is not the explorable, systems-led captaincy simulator imagined here. Its very existence strengthens the design case: conversation and command decisions already carry a Trek game without constant phaser fire. The production challenge is enormous branching complexity and a licence with multiple active screen continuities. A new ship and crew in an underused era would provide the cleanest room to manoeuvre. (StarTrek.com)
3. Alien: Xenomorph — play the perfect organism
Confidence: creative fit 9/10 · production path 5/10
This inversion should be a third-person stealth ecology game, not a conventional power fantasy. Begin as a facehugger escaping containment, choose a host, survive the chestburster phase and gradually develop into a hunter whose body reflects its environment. Ceilings, vents, darkness, pheromones and sound become the real verbs. Humans are dangerous in groups, so every room is a behavioural puzzle: cut power, mimic a noise, isolate a guard, learn patrol routines and choose whether a corpse becomes food, bait or material for the hive. An adaptive survivor—an equivalent to Muldoon rather than a disposable boss—could study the player’s habits and force new tactics.
Current Alien games still leave this exact space open. Alien: Rogue Incursion – Evolved Edition is a first-person action-horror experience starring a human protagonist, while Isolation built fear around being prey. The franchise has allowed playable xenomorphs before, but not in a modern, cinematic, lifecycle-driven stealth campaign. The central risk is emotional monotony; giving the creature a hive to protect and instincts the player may resist would create stakes without sentimentalising it. (Official Rogue Incursion site)
4. MonsterVerse: Monarch Mayhem
Confidence: creative fit 9/10 · production path 6/10
A MonsterVerse fighting game should sell weight before speed. Godzilla does not jab like a human in a rubber suit; he commits thousands of tonnes to a turn, a tail sweep or a charge. Cities become tactical arenas whose bridges, towers, harbours and power infrastructure affect the battle. Monarch’s observation network can frame a campaign across historical incidents, while asymmetrical objectives prevent every match from becoming a simple health-bar duel: Kong may need to protect evacuees, a MUTO may be feeding, and Godzilla may be trying to restore an ecological balance no human understands. Mama MUTO absolutely belongs on the roster.
The current gap is clear. Kong: Survivor Instinct established an official MonsterVerse game story, but it is a 2.5D human-scale action adventure rather than the full-scale titan brawler proposed here. The most credible production model is a focused premium fighting game with destructible arenas—not a gigantic open world—and a roster that grows only when each titan has genuinely distinct movement and ecology. Cross-play, local versus and a strong solo Monarch archive would matter more than a service-game treadmill. (7Levels corporate update)
5. Wonderland: Veil of Reveries
Confidence: creative fit 10/10 · production path 8/10
The crucial decision is to return to Carroll and Tenniel rather than imitate American McGee or Disney. Wonderland becomes a melancholy action RPG in which each region obeys a different rule of language, scale or causality. A sentence spoken at a tea party might literally rearrange a forest; consuming an object may change the world’s proportions rather than merely buff a statistic. Combat should be strange and sparing, with the Gryphon, Mock Turtle, Bandersnatch and Jabberwock treated as beings with histories, not just boss silhouettes. Alice’s central ability is interpretation: learning a region’s impossible rule lets her traverse it, negotiate with it and eventually break it.
This is also one of the most achievable large ideas in the collection. The Library of Congress identifies the Carroll–Tenniel material as public domain, and Project Gutenberg specifically lists Tenniel’s illustrations as public domain in the United States. That permits a visual lineage genuinely rooted in the books, although later adaptation-specific designs and trademarks must be avoided. The right scope is several dense, interlocking dream regions, not a map filled with errands. (Library of Congress; Project Gutenberg)
6. The NeverEnding Story: Echoes of Phantasia
Confidence: creative fit 10/10 · production path 4/10
The dual-world structure is the game. In ordinary life, a lonely child forms relationships, reads, remembers and makes choices about what to preserve; in Phantasia, those choices reconfigure regions, companions and even the Nothing. Party members should embody threatened forms of imagination rather than RPG classes, and quests should ask what happens when a person outgrows, misremembers or commercialises a beloved story. Falcor arrives late because flight should transform the player’s understanding of a world first crossed slowly. The climax is not merely defeating a dark force but accepting authorship—and the responsibility that imagination creates.
The timing is culturally promising but commercially complicated. Michael Ende Productions and See-Saw Films secured rights for a new live-action film series, evidence that the estate is actively rebuilding the property and that any game would require close coordination with that programme. That lowers the independent production path while raising the possibility of a serious transmedia partner. The game should adapt Ende’s themes and Fantastica’s breadth, not copy the 1984 film’s surfaces; even the spelling of Falkor/Falcor signals which lineage is being used. (Variety Australia)
7. Oz: The Emerald Quest
Confidence: creative fit 10/10 · production path 8/10
Oz is already a party-based RPG disguised as children’s literature: a road, companions with complementary needs, strange nations, rival rulers, magical items and a distant city that may not provide the promised answer. A turn-based game should range beyond the familiar first book into Baum’s broader geography, letting a human, Munchkin, Winkie or Quadling protagonist recruit eccentric citizens and leave the Yellow Brick Road. Summons should be relationships—Flying Monkeys are bound by the Golden Cap, not a generic spell—and every region should look as though a different turn-of-the-century illustrator dreamt it. The tone can be vivid, funny and politically peculiar without borrowing the 1939 film’s iconography.
The practical advantage is substantial: the U.S. Copyright Office says all U.S. works published before 1931 are now public domain, which covers Baum’s original Oz novels, while the Library of Congress documents the books’ long adaptive life. The production must nevertheless avoid protected elements unique to later films, including their exact costumes, music and visual trade dress. This is the rare dream RPG that could begin as an original, licensable-independent work. (U.S. Copyright Office; Library of Congress)
8. Neverland: Flight of the Lost
Confidence: creative fit 9/10 · production path 7/10
Think of flight as a language, not a vehicle. A small, stylised adventure could let the player read wind, skim water, spiral through cloud tunnels and use momentum to reach secret parts of Neverland while searching for scattered Lost Boys. Combat should be minimal; Captain Hook works better as an intelligent pursuer who changes routes than as a health bar. Each rescued child adds a cooperative traversal ability, turning the hideout into a growing found family. The emotional core is the tension between the freedom of never growing up and the quiet cost of never moving forward.
The rights require care. J. M. Barrie’s works are public domain in most territories, but Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity retains a unique statutory right to royalties for many UK uses and owns the Neverland trademark. A responsible production should involve the charity even where not strictly required, both ethically and because a global release crosses jurisdictions. That makes the exact title provisional. Creatively, this can remain a compact movement game in the lineage of The Pathless, avoiding the budget and iconography of Disney’s version. (Official Peter Pan copyright guide)
9. Borrowers: The Quest of Pod Clock
Confidence: creative fit 9/10 · production path 4/10
This would turn one house and garden into a continent. Playing Pod makes the fantasy practical: plan expeditions by studying human routines, build a grappling line from thread and a hook, use matchboxes as shelters and decide what may be borrowed without attracting attention. The garden expands the scale further—rain is a weather disaster, a lawnmower is a moving catastrophe, and a bird can be predator, mount or uneasy ally. The story begins after the Clock family is scattered, giving every recovered relative both an emotional purpose and a new craft discipline. Unlike Grounded, the tone should favour warmth, stealth and domestic ingenuity over survival-game accumulation.
Research supports the miniature-world appeal but also shows the licensing complexity. Mary Norton’s books have generated multiple distinct screen versions, including Disney’s association with The Secret World of Arrietty in the United States; none of those adaptation-specific designs should be treated as interchangeable. The clean project is a new licence from the literary rights-holder with its own hand-built visual identity. The manageable scope—house, walls, garden, neighbouring shed—could produce apparent vastness without a truly vast map. (D23)
10. Jurassic Park: Breakout
Confidence: creative fit 9/10 · production path 4/10
Play the Big One before the 1993 incident. The campaign begins with social learning inside the raptor pack, then follows the animals through testing grounds and containment failures as they learn fences, doors, human scent and each other’s hierarchy. A third-person camera allows readable body language: feathers or scales lifting, weight shifting, a packmate signalling an ambush. The park staff are not disposable fodder; Muldoon becomes an adaptive rival whose traps improve as he studies the player. The predetermined ending—capture and transfer into the film’s paddock—creates tragedy rather than limiting choice, because the meaningful question is what kind of pack leader the raptor becomes on the way there.
Saber’s officially announced Jurassic Park: Survival already explores the human nightmare immediately after the film in first person. That makes Breakout a complementary predator story rather than a competing remake. Its largest obstacle is brand approval: Universal would need to accept intelligent animal play, child-safe boundaries and a protagonist whose actions cannot be conventionally heroic. A shorter prestige stealth game is more convincing than an open-world dinosaur sandbox. (Saber announcement)
11. A premium Game of Thrones house-building RPG
Confidence: creative fit 10/10 · production path 4/10
Create a minor House rather than playing a predestined hero. Choose its region, words, liabilities and founding scandal, then navigate a Westeros where hospitality, marriage, hostage exchange and debt can be as dangerous as battle. The player should travel with a small household whose loyalties are personal and political; sending one companion to negotiate may protect a border while destroying a friendship. Dragons remain distant, terrifying and exceptionally rare. The endgame is not necessarily the Iron Throne—it is whether the House survives with its identity intact.
Live research means the old “why has nobody made an open-world Thrones RPG?” framing is no longer accurate. Game of Thrones: Kingsroad is officially marketed as a story-driven open-world action-adventure RPG in which players rebuild their house. The proposal therefore needs to differentiate itself through premium single-player design, deep origins, systemic fealty and authored consequences rather than merely map scale. It is an argument for the Crusader Kings layer inside a Dragon Age-sized personal story. The existing game proves publisher interest; it also occupies the obvious marketing language. (Official Kingsroad site; Unreal Engine developer interview)
12. The Time Machine: Beneath the World
Confidence: creative fit 10/10 · production path 9/10
Play a Morlock whose evolution is shaped by behaviour. Hunt Eloi and the body becomes better adapted to darkness and predation; protect them and language, empathy and forbidden memory begin to return; investigate time fractures and the character may recover ancestral human skills that its caste considers contamination. The underground is not a generic dungeon but a society with labour, ritual, competing explanations of the past and a reason to fear the surface. Three endings emerge naturally: reconcile above and below, perfect the predator civilisation, or repair the Time Machine and erase the future that produced both species.
This is one of the collection’s strongest independent prospects. Wells’s 1895 novel falls safely within the U.S. public domain rule for works published before 1931, and Project Gutenberg distributes the text as a public-domain book. The concept is also meaningfully transformative: it shifts viewpoint, gives the Morlocks culture and turns evolution into an authored systemic choice. Avoiding visual references to later films would preserve that independence. The scope could be AA rather than blockbuster—one deep subterranean city, a haunting surface and several time wounds. (U.S. Copyright Office; Project Gutenberg)
13. Star Wars: The Quest of Maz Kanata
Confidence: creative fit 9/10 · production path 3/10
Maz supports a rare dual-timeline action RPG. In the High Republic she is an impulsive relic hunter learning that objects carry obligations; centuries later, between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, she is the keeper of a castle filled with everyone else’s unfinished histories. A decision in the past can alter a ruin, faction or friendship in the later era. Relics unlock playable memories rather than stat bonuses, and the central mystery follows Luke’s lightsaber from Cloud City to Takodana without reducing the galaxy to a delivery errand. The castle grows into a hub whose patrons, rooms and grudges embody Maz’s accumulated life.
Lucasfilm Games’ current catalogue proves the company is comfortable with original protagonists, open-world scoundrel stories and third-person Jedi adventures, but Maz remains supporting material rather than the centre of an announced game. That leaves creative space but no easy licence. The pitch succeeds because it is not another rise-of-the-Empire war story: it is about stewardship, memory and the moral cost of surviving everyone. Lupita Nyong’o’s performance would be essential to the elder timeline. (Lucasfilm Games)
14. Temeraire — a Napoleonic dragon RPG
Confidence: creative fit 10/10 · production path 5/10
The fantasy is not simply riding a dragon; it is maintaining a lifelong political and emotional partnership with an intelligent being large enough to change a war. The player alternates between William Laurence and Temeraire—or creates a captain-and-dragon pair—managing crew positions in aerial combat, supply, diplomacy and the dragon’s own evolving view of human institutions. Battles should be formation-based and physical: boarding actions between harness crews, altitude, weather, exhaustion and the risk of harming civilians below. Between campaigns, conversations with dragons expose the hypocrisy of treating sentient allies as military property.
The live landscape has moved: Naomi Novik has announced an officially licensed tabletop Temeraire role-playing game. That is evidence that the setting’s social systems translate naturally into play and that the author is actively involved with interactive adaptation, though it confers no video-game rights. A video game should learn from the tabletop project rather than race it, particularly on dragon personhood and alternate history. The budget challenge is credible aerial warfare across several nations; a campaign structured around selected theatres is wiser than an open globe. (Naomi Novik announcement)
15. A systemic Planet of the Apes RPG
Confidence: creative fit 10/10 · production path 5/10
Create an ape, choose a clan and explore a reclaimed landscape where language, tool use, climbing and social ritual matter more than loot rarity. Orangutan, chimpanzee, gorilla and other origins should change movement, status and problem-solving without becoming crude fantasy classes. The player’s clan may preserve forbidden human knowledge, reject it or weaponise it; encounters with humans should resist the assumption that either species is a single moral bloc. Ruined towers become vertical forests, while horses, bridges and improvised settlements make travel a cultural act.
The closest official precedent remains Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier, a choice-led narrative set between the modern films, plus the more limited VR experiment Crisis on the Planet of the Apes. Neither provides a broad, created-ape role-playing world. That is the opening. The safest canon position is a remote region and generation, allowing contact with film events without rewriting them. Combat should be dangerous and infrequent; the franchise’s real material is inherited violence, community and the stories civilisations tell to justify power. (Xbox on Last Frontier)
16. The Dark Crystal — an open-Thra RPG
Confidence: creative fit 10/10 · production path 5/10
Thra should be explored as an ecology of pilgrimage, clans and living materials—not as a standard fantasy map with Henson skins. A created Gelfling could begin in one clan, travel by landstrider, assemble companions with genuinely different cultural knowledge and learn to read the world’s creatures rather than harvest them. Practical-looking texture matters: cloth, carved wood, translucent wings and strange food should appear touched and inhabited even when realised digitally. Major conflicts can be solved through alliance, song, dreamfasting and creature knowledge as often as combat. The Crystal is a distant organising wound, not a quest marker visible from everywhere.
The Jim Henson Company still actively presents The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, MirrorMask and The Storyteller among its fantasy worlds, and the official Age of Resistance page frames Thra as available for continued rediscovery. A tactics game has already demonstrated one genre, leaving room for a more intimate third-person RPG. The production must involve Henson artists and creature designers from conception; “practical-looking fantasy” is a design process, not a post-processing filter. (Jim Henson fantasy catalogue; Age of Resistance)
17. Mouse Guard — small-scale survival RPG
Confidence: creative fit 10/10 · production path 7/10
A muddy path is an epic journey when you are six inches tall. The player leads a Guard patrol between settlements, choosing seasonal supplies, reading weather and negotiating obligations before setting out. A fox is not a routine enemy but a moving disaster; a flooded culvert can become an entire chapter. Swordplay should be brief and frightening, while tracking, shelter-building, escorting and moral authority define the Guard’s real work. Companions carry beliefs about duty, isolation and the cost of protecting communities that may not agree with one another.
This is a particularly well-supported adaptation idea because an official, award-winning Mouse Guard tabletop RPG already exists. Its focus on forming patrols and undertaking missions demonstrates that the comics’ social structure can sustain role-playing systems; a video game would translate that tested foundation into weather, traversal and spatial scale. The art direction should preserve David Petersen’s illustrative clarity rather than pursue photoreal fur. A carefully scoped route network connecting several settlements could feel enormous without requiring a blockbuster budget. (Official Mouse Guard RPG)
18. How to Train Your Dragon — one dragon, one bond
Confidence: creative fit 10/10 · production path 5/10
The player should raise a single dragon from frightened juvenile to trusted partner. Feeding, grooming, injury, temperament and shared flight build a relationship that cannot be replaced by collecting a rarer mount. The archipelago is dense rather than huge: weather corridors, sea caves, nesting grounds and rival communities give every island an identity. In combat, commands depend on trust and understanding; an exhausted or frightened dragon may refuse a reckless manoeuvre. The story can follow a new village at the edge of the known maps, preserving Hiccup and Toothless as distant legends rather than mandatory quest dispensers.
DreamWorks’ own franchise page lists several games, including Dawn of New Riders, Rise of Berk and Legends of the Nine Realms, but the portfolio still does not centre a deep, authored bond with one persistent dragon in an open archipelago. That distinction is the proposal’s value. The live-action revival keeps the brand prominent, but also makes approval and visual positioning more complex; a stylised continuation of the animated design language would age better than film imitation. (DreamWorks franchise page; Bandai Namco game catalogue)
19. His Dark Materials — a dæmon-led RPG
Confidence: creative fit 10/10 · production path 4/10
The dæmon must be a system, not a talking cosmetic. During childhood its shifting form responds to temperament, tactics and the player’s emerging identity; settling becomes a major narrative consequence rather than a character-creation menu. Separation distance creates both puzzle possibilities and genuine pain. Dust should connect moral attention, consciousness and the alethiometer, while travel between worlds changes what forms of authority and knowledge are possible. Combat remains secondary to infiltration, interpretation and protecting the bond between person and dæmon.
The practical challenge is narrative authorship: Pullman’s cosmology is precise enough that a generic “choose good or evil” structure would betray it. The best path is an original young protagonist in a parallel world adjacent to the books, developed with the literary rights-holder and cultural advisers for each analogue society. A companion-driven RPG is commercially legible, but the design must accept that maturation can close possibilities as well as unlock powers. That is exactly why the idea is strong: progression becomes the bittersweet fixing of the self.
20. The Matrix — rules, selves and social stealth
Confidence: creative fit 10/10 · production path 5/10
Build the game around two lives. Inside the Matrix, the player maintains work, relationships and a cover identity while learning to perceive and bend systemic rules; outside it, a small hovercraft crew argues about risk, belief and who deserves awakening. Social stealth matters because an Agent can inhabit authority anywhere. Abilities are not a conventional skill tree: they are propositions the character has learned to believe—gravity is negotiable, identity is data, a door can lead elsewhere. Every spectacular action increases systemic attention, making restraint as powerful as mastery.
Epic’s The Matrix Awakens proved that a dense, photoreal city and third-person action can evoke the films, but Epic explicitly described it as a technology demo rather than a full game. That leaves the deeper RPG unmade. The smartest production would use one richly simulated city and a small cast, not promise an infinite metaverse. It also needs Lana Wachowski-level thematic authorship; without ideas about embodiment, control and selfhood, the green code becomes mere décor. (Unreal Engine)
21. A Pirates of the Caribbean crew RPG
Confidence: creative fit 9/10 · production path 5/10
The ship is the party. Recruit sailors with debts, superstitions and incompatible loyalties; learn how each handles storms, boarding, cursed treasure and the captain’s increasingly dubious decisions. Islands should be compact mysteries rather than resource nodes, and sailing should produce story through weather, pursuit, mutiny and rumour. Swordplay needs dirty improvisation—ropes, tables, chandeliers and collapsing docks—while curses alter the rules of an entire chapter. Jack Sparrow works best as a dangerous guest star, not the player’s permanent avatar.
Rare and Disney already demonstrated the licence’s compatibility with interactive adventure in Sea of Thieves: A Pirate’s Life, a five-part original campaign featuring Jack Sparrow, Davy Jones, exploration, puzzles and shipboard action. The proposed RPG must therefore differentiate itself through a persistent authored crew, single-player consequences and a world built specifically around the film universe. That is a larger and riskier undertaking, but the crossover validates the core ingredients. (Official A Pirate’s Life page)
22. An Avatar: The Last Airbender open-world RPG
Confidence: creative fit 10/10 · production path 4/10, status uncertain
Bending must unify combat, movement and problem-solving. Water draws paths, redirects mechanisms and changes with the moon; earth reshapes cover and creates traversal; fire produces propulsion and danger; air turns space itself into a tool. A new Avatar in a distant era allows the player to learn all four disciplines without rewriting Aang or Korra. Companions should be masters, critics and political actors, while the Avatar’s decisions concern balance between communities rather than a coloured morality bar.
The live status needs careful wording. Paramount and Saber announced a AAA action RPG in 2024, set thousands of years in the past and starring a new Avatar, which closely overlaps this wish. Yet Paramount Games’ current official showcase foregrounds Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game and does not presently list that RPG, so it would be unsafe to describe the project as confidently active without a fresh official reaffirmation. The idea remains excellent; part of it may already be in development limbo. (2024 announcement coverage; current Paramount Games slate)
23. A third-person James Cameron’s Avatar RPG
Confidence: creative fit 9/10 · production path 2/10 · substantially fulfilled
The original wish—see one’s Na’vi body, equipment and movement while exploring Pandora—has now been substantially answered. Ubisoft released a free third-person mode for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora in December 2025 after reworking animation, controls and camera systems, and it allows seamless switching between first and third person. The existing game already provides an open world, clan relationships, ikran flight and a new Na’vi protagonist.
What remains distinct is a more role-playing-heavy sequel or spin-off. The player could choose a clan origin, negotiate between Na’vi communities with incompatible responses to the RDA, and build a lasting bond with wildlife rather than treating fauna principally as combat or traversal systems. Consequences should change access, ecology and the protagonist’s place in collective memory. Because the perspective request has been fulfilled, this concept should no longer be presented as “the Avatar game Ubisoft refuses to make.” It is now a refinement pitch: deepen the social, ecological and character systems of a game that finally offers the desired camera. (Ubisoft)
24. Lost — a first-person Island RPG
Confidence: creative fit 9/10 · production path 4/10
A new survivor wakes after a crash with skills, secrets and relationships chosen through fragments rather than a questionnaire. The Island is a compact, layered immersive-sim space: beach camp, jungle routes, stations and old structures overlap, while scarcity and trust determine who joins an expedition. Flashbacks are playable character creation. A choice made before the crash changes what the protagonist notices now, and mysteries matter because they reshape relationships—not because every answer becomes a collectible audio log. The hatch should be found through curiosity and social pressure, never announced by a map icon.
Lost: Via Domus previously placed a new character alongside the television story, proving the “unseen survivor” frame but also revealing the limits of retelling famous episodes. A modern game should use an adjacent crash, time period or part of the Island so discovery can be genuine. The licence is difficult and the canon famously intricate, yet the finite geography and ensemble structure make this more producible than a literal open world. The Island should feel authored, unknowable and reactive rather than large.
25. Ghostbusters — an interdimensional investigation RPG
Confidence: creative fit 9/10 · production path 5/10
Open a small franchise in a new city. The player recruits specialists, takes calls, interviews witnesses, researches folklore and chooses equipment before entering buildings whose hauntings have rules. Proton combat is the noisy last resort; good investigation identifies a ghost’s identity, attachment and escape pattern, changing how it can be contained or released. The firehouse evolves through earned fees, lawsuits, dangerous artefacts and staff relationships. An interdimensional endgame can then pay off small early cases as pieces of one impossible cosmology.
Current official games validate co-operative ghost-catching but leave room for this slower structure. Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord is a four-player VR adventure built around locating, blasting and trapping ghosts, with an original team and headquarters. The proposed RPG broadens that loop into casework, consequence and single-player ensemble management. The greatest risk is tonal: the writing must treat blue-collar procedure, supernatural wonder and comedy as equals. A city dense with repeat clients and changing haunted spaces is more valuable than a continent of paranormal icons. (PlayStation)
26. Doctor Who — an open-dimension RPG
Confidence: creative fit 10/10 · production path 5/10
The TARDIS is already the perfect RPG hub: infinite in implication, intimate in use and capable of placing one evolving relationship against any world. Play a new companion rather than the Doctor. The player’s background changes what they notice, while the Doctor supplies impossible knowledge and moral pressure without becoming an obedient combat unit. Each major destination is a dense, self-contained world with a social problem, a science-fiction rule and several nonviolent solutions. Choices follow the player back into the TARDIS, where rooms, objects and conversations preserve the emotional debris of travel. Regeneration can be acknowledged without tying the whole production to one performer.
BBC Studios has released smaller narrative and VR projects including The Edge of Time, The Edge of Reality and The Lonely Assassins, demonstrating an appetite for interactive stories but not this broad structure. The production answer is not a procedurally infinite universe; it is five or six authored dimensions whose rules radically differ. A season-shaped RPG also suits the programme’s episodic DNA and contains the budget. (BBC Studios Games & Interactive; BBC Studios)
27. A Black Books point-and-click adventure
Confidence: creative fit 10/10 · production path 6/10
Bernard discovers that a rare first edition has been sold, stolen or accidentally used to level a table; Manny attempts to repair the situation through escalating competence; Fran pursues a completely unrelated grievance that inevitably becomes essential. The shop is the central puzzle box, with every shelf, bottle, receipt and impossible back room available for misuse. Dialogue should be playable rhythm: choose not merely what Bernard says but how long he lets a customer speak before destroying the interaction. Inventory solutions must feel like sitcom causality—technically logical, socially disastrous and perfectly revealing of character.
Channel 4’s official archive continues to foreground Bernard, Manny and Fran, and identifies the programme as BAFTA-winning; the characters remain recognisable enough for a compact licensed game without requiring a giant media relaunch. Modern point-and-click design is also demonstrably alive: Lucasfilm describes Return to Monkey Island as exploration, conversation, collected objects and story-based puzzles driven at the player’s pace. That grammar suits Black Books almost suspiciously well. The hardest asset is not technology but voice and authorship: without Dylan Moran, Bill Bailey, Tamsin Greig and writing that understands their timing, it becomes an imitation. (Channel 4; Lucasfilm on adventure design)
28. A Blackadder point-and-click adventure
Confidence: creative fit 10/10 · production path 5/10
Use four linked historical chapters, each following a different Blackadder trying to escape an appointment, war, marriage or execution through elaborate manipulation. The player controls Blackadder’s plan but never quite his universe: Baldrick misinterprets inventory instructions, Percy contaminates evidence and authority figures reward the least convenient lie. Objects recur across centuries in altered forms, allowing a family relic ruined in Elizabethan England to become a vital prop in the Regency chapter. The final Great War section must respect the emotional weight of Goes Forth; comedy can expose hierarchy without trivialising the trenches.
The BBC currently presents Blackadder as a cult historical comedy starring Rowan Atkinson and Hugh Laurie, while the established series structure already supplies four periods, recurring archetypes and six-episode arcs. That makes anthology design more faithful than inventing one enormous timeline. Point-and-click puzzles are essentially Blackadder schemes made interactive: identify what everyone wants, acquire the wrong objects and redirect blame. Production depends on likeness, voice and writing approvals, but its environments are contained enough for a high-quality AA project. (BBC Player; British Comedy Guide episode archive)
29. A Fawlty Towers point-and-click adventure
Confidence: creative fit 9/10 · production path 5/10
Set the entire game during one disastrous weekend. The hotel is fully explorable and every guest carries a need Basil regards as a personal attack. Instead of a health bar, track concealment: lies accumulate, contradictory explanations spread among rooms and Sybil’s suspicion closes escape routes. Manuel can perform actions Basil cannot, but instructions pass through a deliberate misunderstanding system; Polly can rescue a plan at the cost of creating another obligation. Puzzles should support several solutions, all of which become new comic problems rather than clean victories.
The series’ small number of locations is an advantage. A detailed hotel, street and nearby shop can sustain a whole adventure through schedules and character state, recalling clockwork games more than a static sequence of screens. BBC Studios continues to circulate official Fawlty Towers material through its comedy channels, and the property remains culturally visible, but the licence and cast likenesses would demand close approval. The project works only if it avoids treating Manuel’s accent or nationality as the puzzle; the comedy must rest on Basil’s status anxiety, dishonesty and self-created catastrophe. (BBC Comedy Greats)
30. A Red Dwarf point-and-click adventure
Confidence: creative fit 10/10 · production path 7/10
The crew discovers a derelict whose reality engine grants each person the life they claim to deserve. Switch between Lister, Rimmer, Cat and Kryten, each with different abilities and completely incompatible goals. Rimmer can access holographic systems but cannot touch ordinary objects; Cat reads scent and aesthetics others miss; Kryten interfaces with machines while struggling to disobey; Lister solves problems through improbable practical improvisation. The best puzzles require moving information between their personalised realities while their conversations steadily reveal why none of the fantasies is sustainable.
The official Red Dwarf site maintains a detailed episode and character archive, describing the core ensemble and their three-million-year predicament. That continuity is unusually game-friendly: derelicts, simulants, GELFs, time anomalies and alternate selves already justify puzzle worlds without breaking tone. A point-and-click project can also embrace the series’ production-scale charm rather than chasing expensive spectacle. Cast participation is central, but the official site’s continued stewardship suggests a clearer licensing route than many dormant comedies. (Official story guide; official episode guide)
31. A Mighty Boosh adventure game
Confidence: creative fit 10/10 · production path 6/10
Howard and Vince are separated across musical pocket dimensions after an argument about which of them is the protagonist. Howard’s worlds are over-explained genre exercises; Vince’s are beautiful, shallow and governed by fashion. Switching between them changes the art style, soundtrack and valid puzzle logic. Naboo supplies suspiciously convenient magic, Bollo provides literal interpretations, and the Moon offers hints that are emotionally sincere but mechanically useless. Musical confrontations replace boss fights: prepare props, lyrics and stage entrances, then perform a sequence whose failure can be funnier than success.
Disney+ currently describes The Mighty Boosh as a bizarre comic fantasy using music, animation, puppets and special effects—the exact ingredients an adventure game can make interactive. The property’s twenty televised episodes also mean density, not exhaustive lore, should be the goal. A hand-made 2D/3D collage would preserve its theatrical invention better than photorealism. As with the sitcom pitches, creator involvement is not optional: Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding’s voices, music and visual instincts are the actual intellectual engine. (Disney+)
32. A Monty Python RPG
Confidence: creative fit 9/10 · production path 5/10
Build an RPG that distrusts RPGs. Character creation is interrupted by bureaucrats; the map argues with the narrator; a heroic class can be revoked for failing to carry the correct form. Rather than stringing famous sketches together, invent a new Britain whose institutions operate by Python logic, using Terry Gilliam-inspired collage for travel and interruption. Party members should be aggressively unsuitable: a knight who refuses peril, a civil servant who can alter quest wording, a historian whose exposition summons lethal budget cuts. Combat can often be avoided by challenging the premise of the encounter.
Monty Python maintains an official catalogue of its work, so this is an actively managed licence rather than an open comedy commons. Previous Python CD-ROMs prove the troupe has an interactive history, but a modern RPG should not become a museum of catchphrases. The viable scope is a sharp eight-to-twelve-hour game with dense authored jokes; procedural comedy would flatten the timing. The pitch is strongest when it attacks progression, heroism and player entitlement with the same affection the troupe once applied to Arthurian legend. (Monty Python official site)
33. A Charlie Chaplin silent-film game
Confidence: creative fit 9/10 · production path 8/10 with rights review
The player controls physical intention rather than dialogue. A small set of verbs—balance, conceal, offer, kick, tip—combines with crowds, props and moving machinery to generate escalating silent comedy. Intertitles appear only when the joke needs language. Each chapter adopts a film form: factory, street, theatre, train and grand hotel. Chaplin’s Tramp could be joined by legally and creatively distinct Buster Keaton and Laurel-and-Hardy-inspired challenge modes, but only after a careful jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction rights and likeness review.
The public-domain landscape is increasingly favourable: the U.S. Copyright Office confirms all American works published before 1931 are now public domain. That does not automatically free later films, trademarks, restorations, music, performer publicity rights or every international territory. The safest creative route uses specific verified public-domain works as research while building original environments and a new score. Mechanically, the project is timely because physics games already generate slapstick; the breakthrough is authoring them with the framing, pathos and social observation of silent cinema rather than treating collision as the whole joke. (U.S. Copyright Office)
34. A family of band-led rhythm RPGs and art games
Confidence: creative fit 9/10 · production path varies from 3/10 to 7/10
The archive contains a whole label’s worth of ideas: rhythm RPGs for Mastodon, Ghost and Fleet Foxes; interactive art worlds for Tool, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Mario Duplantier; and surreal games for Primus, Rush, Rammstein, Tame Impala, Sleep, Enya, Aesop Rock, Nile, King Diamond, Ashnikko and Wes Borland. They should share no generic template. Ghost wants theatrical horror and ritual performance; Fleet Foxes wants a gentle folklore pilgrimage built around harmony; Mastodon wants a mythic campaign whose combat signatures change with the drummer; Aesop Rock wants dense environmental language and unreliable urban fables; Enya wants navigation through layered voice and weather.
The market case is real. Hi-Fi RUSH synchronises world, enemy and combat motion to music; Metal: Hellsingerintensifies its metal soundtrack when the player acts on beat; The Artful Escape turns musical performance into multidimensional traversal. These are precedents, not moulds. The practical obstacle is music, likeness and publishing rights, which differ for every artist. The best first project is one artist, one album-scale journey and direct creative participation. (Hi-Fi RUSH; Metal: Hellsinger; The Artful Escape)
35. An A24 multiverse game
Confidence: creative fit 8/10 · production path 2/10
Do not force A24 films into a combat crossover. Make an anthology about crossing thresholds between incompatible tones. A player might carry grief from A Ghost Story-like time into a bureaucratic nightmare, then find an object whose meaning changes inside a maximalist family universe. Directors contribute self-contained chapters connected by one liminal space—a cinema, archive or house—while choices determine which emotional rules migrate between them. The attraction is not recognising costumes; it is feeling radically different authorship without leaving one interactive work.
Live research shows A24’s official ecosystem currently centres film, television, documentaries, an app and physical “toys & games,” not a unified video-game portfolio. That makes this genuinely speculative and structurally hard: underlying films may involve different production partners, creators and rights. “A24 style” is also too broad to be a mechanic. The credible version is a curated original anthology commissioned from filmmakers and game designers, not a literal shared canon. It should feel like a playable festival programme whose chapters argue with one another. (A24 films; A24 app)
36. A Don Bluth multiverse RPG
Confidence: creative fit 9/10 · production path 3/10
A hand-drawn hero falls through damaged reels into worlds inspired by Bluth’s fantasy, science-fiction and animal adventures. Every realm uses expressive 2D animation but changes its rules: comic timing and lethal improvisation in a Dragon’s Lair-like castle; cosmic transformation in a Space Ace-like future; intimate survival in a painted wilderness. Companions cross between films and discover that their archetypes no longer protect them outside their home genre. The player repairs transitions rather than assembling brand cameos.
The concept has authentic interactive ancestry. Dragon’s Lair was already a celebrated animated game, and its manuals continue to foreground Bluth’s animation as the central attraction. A modern project must move beyond memorised quick-time inputs while keeping hand-authored pose, failure and comic anticipation. Rights are the severe obstacle: Bluth’s filmography is distributed across different owners, while Dragon’s Lair is its own licensed franchise. A spiritual “Bluth school” original, made with participating artists, may be more feasible than a legal multiverse. (Dragon’s Lair manual archive)
37. A LAIKA open-world RPG
Confidence: creative fit 9/10 · production path 4/10
Create one new stop-motion world rather than linking existing films. A child enters a forbidden district of a rain-soaked handmade city where every object shows fingerprints, seams and replacement faces. Exploration is tactile: fold paper creatures, rethread mechanisms, rotate miniature sets and descend through trapdoors whose reverse sides reveal the animators’ apparent construction. Combat is unnecessary; courage is expressed through attention, negotiation and the willingness to enter spaces adults have agreed not to see.
LAIKA remains an active stop-motion studio, with Wildwood joining the lineage of Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings and Missing Link. That continuity makes a studio-authored game more coherent than a rights-heavy crossover. The technical challenge is not simply making 3D look “clay-like”; it is preserving deliberate frame cadence, material variation and handmade lighting while controls remain responsive. A hub-and-regions structure can feel open without dissolving the miniature composition that makes LAIKA distinctive. (LAIKA/Wildwooddistribution announcement)
38. An Aardman open-world comedy RPG
Confidence: creative fit 9/10 · production path 8/10
A small English town suffers a chain of well-meaning inventions, escaped animals and local rivalries. The player is a new apprentice who solves problems through contraptions assembled from household parts; every efficient machine contains the seed of a more elaborate comic failure. Neighbours remember inconvenience, favours and embarrassment, turning reputation into a gentle social system. Clay textures, readable silhouettes and silent reaction shots should carry as much story as dialogue.
Unlike most creator-led dreams, Aardman already has a substantial interactive practice. Its official interactive catalogue includes games, apps, AR and VR projects and describes the studio’s work as character- and story-focused. That gives the idea a credible internal development path and a proven understanding of how its visual language behaves outside film. The question is scale: an “open world” should mean one densely reactive town and countryside, not a continent. An original setting also avoids forcing Wallace & Gromit, Shaun and Morph into a crossover they do not need. (Aardman Interactive)
39. A David Attenborough-narrated nature game
Confidence: creative fit 10/10 · production path 6/10
The player inhabits several real animals across one connected ecosystem, not as mascots but as bodies with sensory worlds. A bee reads ultraviolet patterns; a whale experiences distance through sound; a fox maps a city by scent. There are no upgrades, only knowledge and seasonal change. Narration responds to observed behaviour rather than dictating goals, allowing failure, predation and death to remain part of ecology without becoming punitive. Completing a life opens another species whose existence intersects with the first, gradually revealing the system from within.
BBC Earth has already extended Attenborough-led natural history into interactive form: The Green Planet included an AR experience developed with scientific partners including Kew, using verified botanical imagery to teach interconnection. That offers a responsible model—natural-history producers and scientists are co-authors, not fact-checkers added at the end. Any new narration must be recorded with explicit participation; synthetic imitation would violate the project’s entire ethic. The design remains valuable with another naturalist in future, because its true premise is playable ecology rather than celebrity voice. (BBC Earth; BBC Studios interactive project)
40. A First Peoples of Africa RPG
Confidence: creative potential 10/10 · acceptable outsider-led path 1/10
This cannot responsibly remain one pan-African fantasy pitch. Africa contains thousands of living peoples, languages and distinct historical relationships; “First Peoples of Africa” is too broad to function as a setting or creative mandate. The idea becomes viable only after a specific community, place and First Nations-led creative team defines what the game is for. That team might choose historical, contemporary, speculative or entirely non-sacred material. Systems should grow from their own questions—kinship, land, trade, language, migration or stewardship—not from importing a European open-world template and replacing its monsters.
The research-led confidence therefore splits sharply: the potential for major interactive work authored by African creators is immense, but confidence in a generic external adaptation is near zero. A publisher’s first task is not “lore research”; it is long-term partnership, funding, ownership, consent and a structure in which originating creators retain authority. The most useful form of this idea is a development fund or anthology supporting several locally led games, not one title claiming to represent a continent.
41. An Indigenous Australian Country-led game
Confidence: creative potential 10/10 · acceptable path only if First Nations-led
The archived phrase “Alcheringa RPG” should be retired at concept stage unless a relevant community specifically chooses and authorises it. It risks flattening living, diverse Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures into a universal fantasy realm. A responsible project begins with Country and cultural authority: a particular Nation, language group and First Nations-led team decide the story, what knowledge may be shared, how players move through Country and whether “RPG” is even the right form. Ownership, attribution, access to materials and the right to withhold sacred or restricted knowledge must be designed into production.
This is not merely a sensitivity recommendation. Screen Australia requires evidence of community willingness, consent for culturally specific material and a concrete consultation plan; AIATSIS centres meaningful engagement, reciprocity and Indigenous control over knowledge and data; Creative Australia’s ICIP protocols emphasise self-determination. The confidence is therefore conditional but strong: a Country-led game could be profound, while an outsider’s pan-Indigenous mythology game should not proceed. (Screen Australia; AIATSIS; Creative Australia)
42. Three focused Warhammer RPGs: Bretonnia, Lizardmen and T’au
Confidence: creative fit 9/10 · production path 6/10
These should be three games, not factions in one buffet. Bretonnia follows a questing knight whose vows collide with peasant reality; chivalry becomes a reputation and self-deception system, while the Lady’s visions remain interpretable. Lizardmen centres a Skink priest or scout deciphering an incomplete Great Plan, turning jungle navigation, astronomy and rival interpretations into the role-playing core. T’au begins with caste and assignment, then tests the player’s relationship to the Greater Good through diplomacy, combined-arms command and contact with societies the empire cannot neatly absorb.
Games Workshop’s licensed video-game history spans strategy, tactics, co-op action and third-person spectacle; its own current retrospective highlights Dawn of War, Vermintide, Battlesector, Realms of Ruin and Space Marine II. That variety supports focused role-playing experiments, but the crowded catalogue makes differentiation essential. Each pitch works because it privileges a culture rarely granted the protagonist’s interiority. A single “Warhammer open world” would erase precisely that advantage. (Official Warhammer merchandise retrospective)
43. A Labyrinth RPG
Confidence: creative fit 9/10 · production path 6/10
The Labyrinth is a social machine that rearranges itself according to what the traveller refuses to admit. A new protagonist enters seeking a stolen person or relinquished memory and meets companions whose help always has a cost. Routes change through promises, riddles, songs and perspective tricks; a room solved through force may become inaccessible later, while kindness can create shortcuts no map records. The Goblin City is a late hub, not simply a final dungeon, full of citizens negotiating life under inherited rules.
The Jim Henson Company continues to feature Labyrinth among its active fantasy properties and current “Now Showing” catalogue, alongside licensed concerts, books, board games and merchandise. That suggests durable audience and licensing activity, though any game must coordinate with Sony and Henson interests around the film. The visual goal is not generic dark fantasy: creature performance, cloth, painted skies and Escher-like set logic must remain visible in the digital world. A contained shifting maze is also technically wiser than a conventional open map. (Jim Henson fantasy catalogue; Henson current projects)
44. Jim Henson’s The Storyteller anthology game
Confidence: creative fit 10/10 · production path 7/10
The Storyteller and his dog sit by the fire while the player chooses objects that open into tales. Each story is a two-to-three-hour game in a different mechanical tradition: a folktale of bargains as a dialogue puzzle, a transformation myth as a traversal game, a death story as a quiet investigation. Choices do not rewrite the old tales into modern empowerment fantasies; they reveal different meanings, costs and points of view before returning the player to the fire. The dog’s sceptical interruptions keep the framing intimate and funny.
Henson’s official catalogue still lists The Storyteller among its fantasy properties, making the anthology more than an exercise in nostalgia. Its production structure is unusually practical: independent teams or directors can author episodes under a shared creature, music and framing bible. The essential research is folkloric and cultural. Tales must be sourced, credited and adapted with advisers connected to their traditions rather than treated as anonymous “world mythology.” An expandable anthology is possible, but the first release should be complete and curated. (Jim Henson Company)
45. A Twin Peaks mystery game
Confidence: creative fit 10/10 · production path 2/10
Do not solve Laura Palmer again. Follow a new investigator, resident or missing-person case in the Pacific Northwest, where schedules, dreams and social observation matter more than evidence highlighting. The player keeps two notebooks: facts and intuitions. Facts establish ordinary culpability; intuitions create symbolic connections that may open dream spaces but can also mislead. Every resident should have banal needs alongside terrifying secrets, preserving the series’ refusal to separate soap opera, comedy, grief and cosmic horror. Coffee and pie are social verbs, not collectibles.
The rights remain actively administered through CBS/Showtime, which distributed the 2017 limited series created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. That makes an unofficial spiritual approximation more feasible than a licensed canonical sequel, especially after Lynch’s death; authorship is the central obstacle, not genre fit. A respectful game would require Mark Frost, the estate and the property’s custodians to define what continuation means. Without that, the better route is an original small-town mystery influenced by Lynchian and Frostian methods without copying the Red Room. (Paramount/Showtime press archive)
46. A Daria life sim
Confidence: creative fit 9/10 · production path 6/10
One semester at Lawndale High becomes a choice-driven social simulation in which the goal is not popularity but maintaining a tolerable self. Daria balances school, family, Jane, writing and unwanted participation in institutions designed by adults with slogans. The dialogue system should track sincerity, evasion and weaponised observation; the funniest response may protect Daria in the moment while quietly hurting someone she cares about. Jane’s friendship is not a romance meter or quest dispenser but a relationship with independent projects and limits. Fashion club, school paper, television and suburban errands create intersecting weekly routines.
Paramount+ currently streams the series and foregrounds episode premises such as Daria submitting a short story, evidence that the property remains in active catalogue circulation. A compact narrative sim is a better fit than an expensive revival because animation can preserve the original graphic economy and writing can centre interiority. Music clearances are a historical complication for the series, so an original period-aware soundtrack would need early planning. (Paramount+)
47. A Pacific Rim co-pilot action RPG
Confidence: creative fit 9/10 · production path 5/10
The real mechanic is the Drift. Two pilots enter combat carrying memories, trauma and concealed information; synchronisation changes not only attack timing but which flashbacks and dialogue options become available. Outside battle, the player walks a crowded Shatterdome, maintains a specific Jaeger with engineers and decides whether to confront or suppress incompatibilities with a co-pilot. Kaiju encounters are rare operations with evacuation, terrain and damage consequences, not a daily loot loop. A damaged limb remains damaged until the team finds resources and time to rebuild it.
The franchise has had a conventional fighting game and more recent mobile or pinball appearances, but no released project has made co-pilot psychology the centre of a substantial action RPG. The setting can plainly support systems beyond a film tie-in. The production needs a small theatre of war, one or two deeply simulated Jaegers and destructible set-piece cities; trying to offer every machine would reproduce the shallow roster problem this pitch is meant to solve.
48. A Man-Bat RPG
Confidence: creative fit 8/10 · production path 3/10
Kirk Langstrom is both scientist and creature. By day, investigate a spreading mutation, maintain relationships and decide how much evidence to hide; by night, navigate Gotham through echolocation, scent and unstable flight while the serum changes perception. Feeding, restraint and fear become interacting systems. The player can pursue a cure, controlled coexistence or full transformation, but each path changes what Kirk is capable of understanding. Batman is an intelligent pursuer and moral mirror, not the playable centre.
DC’s official Man-Bat collection defines the durable core: a scientist develops a bat-derived serum to restore his hearing and transforms into a half-human beast. That origin already contains body horror, disability ethics, scientific obsession and tragic dual identity—far more material than a novelty villain fight suggests. The commercial problem is obvious: a major Batman licence for a niche protagonist. The strongest form is a short horror RPG or downloadable stand-alone, closer to a prestige comic miniseries than an open-world Gotham epic. (DC)
49. A third-person Metroid RPG inspired by Kilian Eng
Confidence: creative fit 8/10 · production path 2/10
Keep Samus isolated but let the camera reveal the suit as a body moving through monumental alien space. The RPG layer should be archaeological rather than conversational: recovered Chozo practices, suit configurations and ecological decisions change how Samus inhabits a world, while sparse contacts force choices about quarantine and extraction. Kilian Eng-inspired art direction suggests vast geometric horizons, colour fields and machines that appear older than explanation. Third person would make traversal, armour damage and physical transformation newly legible without turning Samus into a chatterbox.
Nintendo officially describes Metroid Prime as a first-person adventure and treats seeing through Samus’s eyes as foundational to that branch. The pitch therefore should be a new side series, not a replacement for Prime or the 2D games. Its greatest design risk is genericisation: party banter, loot scores and busy settlements would erase Metroid’s identity. A compact, solitary action RPG in which the environment carries the role-playing is the viable interpretation. (Nintendo)
50. An open-world Oddworld RPG
Confidence: creative fit 9/10 · production path 6/10
Let the player create a low-status inhabitant—Mudokon labourer, runaway Slig, Grubb or another marginal creature—and move through a region where species, employment and speech determine access. GameSpeak evolves into a social system: commands, chants, mimicry and solidarity can organise groups without reducing them to units. Industrial facilities, sacred lands and black markets overlap, and liberation creates logistical responsibilities rather than instantly clearing a map. The player chooses whether to escape, organise, profit or build a coalition that no faction fully trusts.
Oddworld Inhabitants’ official catalogue shows a world already capable of multiple protagonists and genres, from Abe and Munch to Stranger’s Wrath. Its FAQ also says the studio hopes to revisit unreleased projects including SligStorm, The Brutal Ballad of Fangus Klot, Squeek’s Oddysee and the RTS concept Hand of Odd. That living backlog makes a fan-prescribed “next game” inappropriate, but it strengthens the case that Oddworld is larger than one side-scrolling format. An open-region RPG should be made only under Lorne Lanning and the studio’s authorship, with satire of labour, extraction and consumerism intact. (Official games catalogue; official FAQ)
Master inventory of the other extracted ideas
The fifty entries above prioritise the concepts with the clearest authored hook or strongest request history. The source archive also contains the following distinct ideas. They are preserved here so the column can grow without having to reconstruct the list again. Ordinary predictions about already-announced games are excluded; direct revival wishes are retained.
Further adaptation and original-world pitches
A Ghibli-inspired RPG
Dinotopia RPG
Gargoyles RPG
Hellboy RPG
Open-world Vampire Hunter D
Carnival Row RPG
Photoreal Eragon dragon RPG
Dragonriders of Pern RPG
Saga of Pliocene Exile game
Pan’s Labyrinth game
Eternia / Masters of the Universe RPG
Third-person Warcraft RPG
Evangelion RPG
John Carter of Mars RPG
Third-person StarCraft RPG
Third-person Overwatch RPG
Logan’s Run immersive sim
Tremors survival horror
Reign of Fire sequel game
Sword: Warp Riders RPG
The Fifth Element RPG
SCP RPG
Third-person Destiny RPG
Mecha Samurai Empire RPG
Jumanji RPG
Nightcrawler RPG
Open-world Zorro
Moebius / Arzach RPG
MirrorMask RPG
Brotherhood of the Wolf RPG
Dracula RPG
Frankenstein RPG
The Odyssey RPG
Underworld RPG
Treasure Planet RPG
Rango RPG
The Sopranos RPG
Live-action/animation Who Framed Roger Rabbit RPG
3D Castlevania action RPG with beast transformations
Mortal Kombat adventure RPG
Marvel’s Toad RPG
A Jordan Peele-verse game
Guillermo del Toro RPG
Jodorowsky RPG
Where the Wild Things Are RPG
Milo and Otis open-world adventure
Shrek RPG
Smiling Friends RPG
Space Jam sports game
The Mummy action-adventure
V for Vendetta open-London action RPG
Shanghai Noon action game
Rush Hour co-op action game
Predator RPG
Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes game starring Thade
Goosebumps: Escape from Horrorland remake or sequel
Further comedy, animation and television pitches
Fraggle Rock platformer
Gremlins platformer
Freakazoid! RPG
Invader Zim RPG
Animorphs RPG
Biker Mice from Mars RPG
Street Sharks RPG
Blinky Bill platformer
FernGully open-forest RPG
Cow and Chicken platformer
Surreal Space Ghost platformer
Ren & Stimpy platformer
Rocko’s Modern Life platformer
Stig of the Dump platformer
Wind in the Willows cosy game
Flying Purple People Eater game
Cirque du Soleil game
Spinal Tap game
Ninja Sex Party side-scroller
Abbath side-scroller
Johnny the Homicidal Maniac game
Gorburger game
Star Wars shelf
Darth Maul action RPG
Boba Fett bounty-hunting RPG
Luke Skywalker RPG
Rey RPG
Enfys Nest RPG
Creature-raising exploration game featuring tauntauns, fathiers, varactyls, spamels, kaadu and eopies
Fathier racer
Modern podracing sequel
Large-scale real-time strategy game
Modern Shadows of the Empire
Remakes of the Super Star Wars trilogy
Revived Star Wars: 1313
Revived Project Ragtag concepts
Star Wars: Racer remake or third game
Star Wars: Jedi Power Battles remake
Revival shelf
Tomba! sequel
Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear remake
Altered Beast reboot
Looney Tunes: Taz remaster
Open-world Wile E. Coyote game
Giants: Citizen Kabuto remake
The old Pumpkin game, remade
The Last Guardian remaster
The Unholy War remake
Akuji the Heartless remake or sequel
C-12: Final Resistance remake or sequel
Parasite Eve remake
Kingsley’s Adventure remake
Alter Echo remake or sequel
Ecco the Dolphin 3
Photoreal Wipeout
Yoshimitsu RPG
Wolfenstein 3
Red Dead Redemption III
Destiny 3
Far Cry 7
Majora’s Mask remake
Project Awakening
Tangiers
Revived Michel Ancel’s Wild
Revived Scalebound
Everwild
Stubbs the Zombie 2
Voodoo Vince 2
Sneak King remaster
Music and visual-art shelf
Tool interactive art game
Pink Floyd interactive art game
Led Zeppelin interactive art game
Black Sabbath interactive art game
Mario Duplantier art game
Primus surreal game
Rush surreal game
Rammstein art game
Tame Impala RPG
Sleep psychedelic RPG
Enya exploration game
Aesop Rock narrative RPG
Nile game
King Diamond game
Ashnikko RPG
Wes Borland pixel side-scroller
