Game Idea #35: Museum Madness « Patrick Curry’s Thoughts on Game Design

August 27th, 2006

Game Idea #35: Museum Madness

Back from Europe… had an amazing time, but whew am I tired. Here’s this week’s game idea!

High Concept:

In Museum Madness you are an up-and-coming museum curator. Your job is to collect, preserve, and present the world’s greatest collection of art. Start with a small gallery, and build your way up to a Mecca of fine art showing off real-life masterpieces.

Platform:

Why it needs to be made:

There have been lots of games that teach something… math, science, history, and so on. But I’ve never played a game that sneakily taught art history before, and that’s a subject worth putting in a game.

Description:

On the surface Museum Madness is a simulation/tycoon game set in a museum. You control all aspects of your museum: the layout and architecture, the collection of art, and even the restrooms and gift shop. As the quality of your collection grows you have more donations and grant money to spend, which allows you to expand your museum, purchase additional works of art, and hire additional staff and security.

But you can’t just randomly mishmash all of the art together. The game features real-life masterpieces, so it’s important to understand the styles and schools of art, who the artists are/were, and the periods in which they worked. Group like pieces of art together in rooms and galleries to create points of interest in your museum, and arrange these rooms to have good flow without being too open and overwhelming.

Inside the game will be a full-on art encyclopedia, such that as new pieces of art come up for auction you can read all about them to see if they fit into your galleries or not. And of course you can take a walk through your own museum to enjoy the art and artifacts you’ve collected.

Why it will be fun:

Museum Madness combines the building and creation fun of a tycoon game with some serious collecting gameplay. Since every piece of art in the game is a real-life masterpiece, it will be fun to recognize pieces of art you’ll familiar with, but also to learn about new ones you might not have been exposed to before. And imagine how fun it would be to finally score Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, or Michelangelo’s David.

Final thoughts:

As you might have guessed, I really like museums. And with all the hype surrounding Leonardo these days, this kind of game just might take off!

Patrick Curry’s Thoughts on Game Design

August 27th, 2006