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Offline AlexCalvo

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Let's get this out of the way first, if you just want to comment that there is no way to make it work, or that platforming games can't work on touch screens don't bother posting here.  The idea is for those who see a glimmer of hope to elaborate on ways it could be done well.

I would go with something along the lines of a Harmony of Despair 2.0, with much more polish and content.  You could start out with one to three free characters, each of them bringing levels related to their past games, probably built with those same pre-existing resources.  Basically how Harmony of Despair was, but with more specific character levels.  So if your free characters are Alucard, Simon, and Shanoa, you would get mini versions of the SoTN Castle, the Cv1 castle (possibly in its full glory a la HoD), and maybe a few OoE levels, possibly including its castle.  Keep all the characters unique, like in HoD but expand on their abilities where you can.  Much more customization and leveling though, supweapon and spell evolutions that go way past one or two small changes, make playing with a character for a while, grinding and collecting actually worth it.

Now, where the necessary evil of micro transactions come in...  It's easy.  Charge a small fee for new characters, I mean if they start off with 3, charging for the others couldn't really be complained about too much.  But stuff this thing with bonus characters, there's no reason they couldn't include virtually every protagonist and bonus character in the series, 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit... whatever.  Each of them accompanied by their own slew of game specific levels and playstyles.  Make more bonus levels that can be bought, maybe specific powerful weapons, character skins, spells, items, etc...  Maybe make most of them possible to attain without paying, but very difficult.  And then bonus modes like the tons we're getting in bloodstained could bring in even more money.

This could even have a very interesting story, again an evolution of an idea fro HoD, you are reading through a book about the legend of Castlevania, somewhat similar to the idea in Eternal Darkness, each character and their levels just represents a different chapter in the Castlevania history.  Or you could make it a time traveling kind of thing including St. Germaine and/or Aeon.

And the biggest deviation from HoD, for god's sake a dedicated single player mode.  Something like a mini version of each players original game, with no time limit, and a save feature.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13104670/1/Castlevania-Birth-of-the-Dragon

Dracula was not always a monster. He was once a man named Mathias Cronqvist. A flawed, conflicted, genius of a man. How did the educated, aristocratic, crusader who piously served the church become a vampire, and eventually the Dark Lord himself, the opposing force to God? From a very young age terrors and tragedy shaped the man into the king of all evil. This is his story.

Offline Belmontoya

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I would prefer to see Konami release a new action platformer game with 1 free character and a few others available for purchase.

The game would have online leaderboards for the campaign. Players would be given rank by their skill in completing levels.

It would also have a purchasable level editor mode. For 99cents players could upload their custom level onto the games servers where other players could download the levels for another 99cents per level. Or free I guess. Heh

Players could make entire custom games by uploading multiple levels and naming them in order.

I think classic NES graphics and controls would work best. Simple controls like jump, attack and walk are best.

And oh yeah, the game would be playable on Apple TV and Bluetooth controller compatible.

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Offline LuxKiller65

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For a change, I think a card-based game could work and be interesting for both the company and the players.

Take the idea of Konami's "Star Wars: Force Collection". Like it or not, it's a more-than-one-year-old game with several millions active players and a few social features which make it very fun to play with other players in real time (battles, events, trades, gifts...). Developers constantly add new cards, features and social events which make you want to come back regularly for more. The mechanics are pretty well-thought and the balance between free and paid is something other f2p games could learn from (not that I like it, but it's better than many other f2p games). This just to say that the concept of this game seems viable (for Konami) and easily accepted (by players).

Anyway, the idea is to have cards for each character, enemy and boss in the Castlevania universe, and pull cards from decks using virtual credits in hope of getting good cards (rated 1 to 5 stars). You may think there is not enough material to make several hundred cards out of Castlevania (Force Collection has around 1,500, plus vehicles, vehicle accessories and cheap "disposable" cards), but what they did is reuse the same character several times for different rarity cards.

For example, a close-up of the face is a basic 1 or 2 star card, a full view of the body in a normal pose is a 3 star card, and special moves/attacks/variants are 4 and 5 star cards. The same character can have multiple 5 star cards, it's kind of cheap but you need many cards to keep people interested and add new features.

Of course, some cards have special abilities which affect the card itself, cards in your deck or cards in the enemy deck, so you can imagine the possibilities are almost infinite.

Not only this, but since Castlevania has tons of items, they could totally fit in the idea of the game and be used to heal injured cards or enhance them with special powers/abilities/immunities. I think the concept of Force Collection matches the universe of Castlevania very well.

And you know what, if Castlevania alone isn't enough, make it multi-licence with Castlevania, Contra, Metal Gear, Goemon, Suikoden, Snatcher, Parodius - you end up with the ultimate card game with characters that millions of people around the world recognise and enjoy.

« Last Edit: October 24, 2015, 10:04:55 PM by LuxKiller65 »

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