I'm in!

I wanted to share whatever ideas pop into my head for today's themes. Ideas aren't precious, so hopefully these help inspire other people!

When I'm thinking of ideas I tend to try to think of obvious ideas and ideas that subvert the theme.

Ridiculously overpowered

The best way to feel overpowered is to fight huge swarms of enemies at once. Make a game with tons of enemies!

A game about finding ways to stack abilities to combine abilities to become overpowered.

A game about gamers complaining something is "OP".

* You're the final boss *

Defeating waves of super smug hero types.

What other sorts of "final bosses" are there? A final exam? Maybe you play as the exam trying to mess someone up?

* Everything is a weapon *

Taking this to the extreme, what if the user interface is a weapon?

* You are a side character *

What if you played as someone like Kazooie from Banjo and Kazooie? You'd have to trigger abilities at the right time to help the main character.

Games where you run an RPG style shop are also pretty fun. The world ending might be big business!

Or you could be some other profession like a dungeon janitor.

* Shelter *

Shelter implies sheltering from something. The cold, wind, rain, negative emotions?

You can build shelter, or seek it out. Shelter often feels important when it's for you and someone else. Maybe you're a family of animals? Maybe you create shelter for others?

* The more you die, the more the world dies *

Each time you die, part of the level goes away? Maybe you play as parts of the level, so you are the world?

Could you use the word "dye" instead and make things change colors?

* You can't save them all *

Escorting lots of small creatures Lemmings-style comes to mind.

What about "saving for later" style saving?

Or what about a game about the Trolley problem?

* You are the quest giver *

A "quest" is a search for something. What if you are a librarian of lost objects, and you ask adventurers to find lost objects?

What if you're just giving "quests" to your dog to go find a ball?

Maybe you run a quest giving business as an inkeeper, and you are paid to give quests to adventurers?

* Contagious *

Make a game about the Dancing Plague of 1518.

* You control the enemies *

Obvious: You play as an enemy stopping a hero. Like a Goomba instead of Mario.

Less obvious line of thinking, if something is an "enemy" to you and yet you still control it what does that mean? Maybe you can control the enemies but they still cause damage? Think moving a bunch of monsters around a city at once as you press the arrow keys, but because they all move at once some will bump into buildings while some run into range of your weapons.

Maybe it's a game about herding zombies?

* Alchemy *

What "matter" can you transform? The level itself? The rules of the game (like Baba is You)? Can you perform Alchemy on yourself to change yourself?

* Break the cycle *

You could be a malicious railroad designer, optimizing for maximum congestion (parody New York's MTA to get New Yorkers playing your game).

Perhaps some sort of automatic system tends to reform cycles and breaking them might be tricky?

* Underground *

Rabbits, moles, worms, and other animals live underground. What is their life like? How might they move and what struggles might they overcome?

Skeletons are underground, what if you're playing as a skeleton in the afterlife under a graveyard?

* Nontraditional boss battles *

There were old flash games about beating up your boss at work, but that seems unusually violent.

What if you have to talk things through with the boss. What if you were a negotiator sent to reason with the dragon?

Maybe the boss challenges you to a dance off?

Is it the boss that's non-traditional, or the battle?

* Two characters, one player *

There are lots of good platformers where you swap between characters to solve puzzles.

There are also good mechanics to be had by controlling characters at the same time and figuring out how to complete the level with both of them at once.

The theme doesn't specify you have to "control" the characters. It could be that you're one of "two characters" in this world. Is there some way you could disguise which player the character controls? So the player has to figure out which one they control?

* Tiny town *

How can you make a small space meet certain goals? (this Ludum Dare game was a brilliant implementation of this idea: Tiny Towns)

If a town were on the surface of a small object, like a cube, or a marble, what would that mean and how might that impact gameplay?

What if it's a game about "small town" rumors spreading. Maybe you try to spread rumors to get more popular, but other people are trying to spread rumors about you as well.