Original Post
I've had this game idea in my head for the past few days. Sorry, long brain-dump here. 2D (conceptually; if you have the artists and team to support it then it could be 3D third-person with a fairly restricted camera). It's a last-as-long-as-you-can game. The screen scrolls vertically at a fairly fixed rate. Possibly the rate varies depending on the difficulty of the section you're climbing through, but basic version has a fixed scroll rate. If you can't keep up with the scrolling (i.e., if the character scrolls off the bottom of the screen) you lose. You get more points the higher you can go. You're on a climbing wall (or cliff face). Use the mouse to aim in a particular direction (cursor is a little target or whatever; the characters head turns as you aim, always looking towards the cursor). There are controls to reach with the left or right hand, to push up with the leg(s) (probably not push up separately with left/right leg; it just pushes up with whichever legs are properly supported; possible extension here is that you can push further/faster if both legs are supported than if you're only pushing with one leg, e.g., you might be able to do a jump/grab if you push with both legs, but only do a push/reach if only one leg is supported). You can also do a reach with the left or right foot I guess (this doesn't push, just lets you shift your foot to a different support). There might be the option of pulling yourself up with the arms as well as pushing yourself up with the feet, but if so there should probably be some restriction/drawback to that (maybe something based on a stamina bar). Aiming controls which direction you reach or push in. You don't have to aim exactly at a support, the aim just gives the direction. Possibly if you aim within the character's reach circle then you'll just reach to the cursor and aiming outside the circle reaches as far towards the cursor as possible, but really I doubt the benefit of even that. Not all supports can be used for all things — supports can cope with some combination of hands (one or both) and a foot (probably no support can be used for both feet at once, but that's a tuning detail). Supports can also be strong or weak — strong supports can be used for pushing/pulling yourself up, and a single strong support is enough to support your whole weight; weak supports can't be used for a foot push on their own, they're just temporary rest/anchor points (the strong/weak thing is more a measure of how strong your grip on that support will be, not the strength of the support itself). For harder difficulty, some supports may be physically fragile and break away after a little time. How difficulty is adjusted
- For beginners, there are visual indications of what supports are reachable, and supports may be colour-coded (or indicated in some other way) to make it clearer which supports can be used for what, and how strong they are.
- For a tutorial mode, probably a plausible route can be highlighted, and the player can just follow it to get the feel for the game.
- Clearly, the density of supports affects difficulty.
- Some moves (e.g., a jump-push) will be harder to pull off than others — different routes will require different combinations of moves and therefore have different difficulty.
- For advanced players, the graphics may be even more like a cliff (I'm imagining mostly it'll look like a climbing wall, with quite well defined supports), with more subtle graphics for supports (note: not 'hidden' supports or other tricks like that, which are just frustrating — the point is that an advanced player should be able to learn to recognise fairly subtle clues, not that they should be able to somehow magically guess where to reach for).
- The rate at which the screen scrolls up (very easy one to change).
- Change the control system complexity: Simple version (for beginners) just has aim plus move-arm/move-leg/push; or even just aim+move-limb/push. More advanced players can use the more advanced controls which give them more explicit control and let them perform more moves.
- Sandbox mode — don't scroll the screen except to keep the character visible, just let them climb wherever they want.
- Races — side-by-side split-screen; let two or three players climb, scroll with the player (instead of constant scrolling) and whoever reaches the top (some arbitrary height line) first wins.
- Different characters — possibly provide a small set of characters with different attributes (leg/arm strength/power, leg/arm reach, one or two special moves maybe)
- Stamina bar — simple moves don't use stamina, more advanced moves (and special character moves if you have those) use stamina, if your stamina runs out you can't use those moves until it recharges.
- Momentum — if you're already moving in a particular direction you can reach/jump futher in that direction.
- Items (coins, postcards, whatever) — items are dispersed with fairly low density throughout the level; collect them as you climb past to get extra points.
- Partially physics-based character animation (maybe movement, but I'm generally wary of physics-based movement — it tends to lead to poor controlability, which is always frustrating) — just a nice squishy feedback feature really; jump to the side and you'll swing a little, etc.
- Particularly spectacular moves.
- High-scores, obviously.
- Using restricted routes (e.g., on a climbing wall with coloured supports you might try to climb the wall using only one colour or a subset of colours)
- Special items, if you have items.