November 15th, 2006
Game Idea #46: Cave In
High Concept:
You’ve worked in the coal mine your entire life. You know these tunnels, caves and caverns like the back of your hand. But one day a freak accident causes a cave in, leaving you and three other miners trapped deep underground. Stay calm, and you’ll survive. Work together, and you’ll escape!
Platform:
Home Console / PC
Why it needs to be made:
I love cooperative games. I find coop games to be some of the most rewarding and most memorable because I’m sharing the experience with a friend. Cave In is an asymetrical coop game, in that it forces each player into a very different role. I think you could really have some fun not only giving the players different roles, but entirely different types of play within the same game.
Description:
Cave In is played as a four-player cooperative game. Each player takes on the role of one of the four miners, and each miner has a unique tool with unique abilities. One miner has a shovel, used for digging up loose dirt. One has a bundle of dynamite, used for blowing up rocks. One has a hammer, used to build and repair things. And the final miner has a lamp, which he uses to illuminate otherwise dark areas of the mine. Call it fate… but each miner is stuck with just his one tool and can’t switch with the other miners.
The goal for the four players is to make their way out of the caves. Each section of the cave is a single level of gameplay, and each level will require all four miners to work together. For example, the miner with the lamp might scout ahead and find a canyon in the cave with a broken bridge. He tells the hammer-guy to get to fixing it. Meanwhile he jumps over the canyon (he can do this since he’s not carrying any heavy gear) to scout ahead. Next he finds a fork in the road… to the left there’s a big pile of dirt blocking he way, so he let’s the shovel-guy know where it is and proceeds to the right…
Down the path to the right he comes across a large stone that looks like it could be blown up. He runs back to tell the dynamite-miner, but finds out that he’s fresh out of matches. By now the shovel guy has crossed the bridge that hammer-guy finished building… and is hard at work moving the dirt pile out of the way. He finishes shoveling and the lamp-guy looks in… It’s a dead end! But there’s a fresh pack of matches. Time to blow up that rock!
Why it will be fun:
It’s fun to run around and jump over pits. It’s fun to solve puzzles by moving things around in the world. It’s fun to build stuff. It’s fun to blow stuff up! The catch is that in Cave In each player does just one of these things, and all the players have to work together to get through the environment alive. And of course… we all know the cause of the cave in has to be something awesome like zombie miners. 
Final Thoughts:
I usually force myself to pick a specific platform for my game ideas, but I really could see Cave In working equally well on the consoles or the PC. Heck, it’d be cool to let players collaborate across the platforms. Thanks to Ryan for the help on this idea, and for the genius suggestion that this could be a Wii game with “real life shoveling action!”