I thought I'd dive right in with this game idea I've been tinkering with in my head for the last few months. Essentially, the game would be a 2D platformer with a WW2 European-setting, based largely upon the life of a British soldier called Jack Churchill.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill
The entire page is worth reading but I'll summarise some of the more colourful passages about his life:
"Nicknamed "Fighting Jack Churchill" and "Mad Jack", [he] was an English soldier who fought throughout World War II armed with a bow, arrows and a claymore. He once said "any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed.""
This is a claymore:
"...he led 2 Commando from their landing site at Catania in Sicily with his trademark claymore slung around his waist and a longbow and arrows around his neck and his bagpipes under his arm"
"Volunteered for the Commandos after fighting at Dunkirk. Churchill was not sure what Commando Duty entailed, but he signed up because it sounded dangerous."
"...near l'Epinette, France....Churchill gave the signal to attack by cutting down the enemy Feldwebel (sergeant) with his barbed arrows, becoming the only known British soldier to have felled an enemy with a longbow in the course of the war..."
"Churchill was second in command of No. 3 Commando in Operation Archery, a raid on the German garrison at Vågsøy, Norway on December 27, 1941.[2] As the ramps fell on the first landing craft, Churchill leapt forward from his position playing The March of the Cameron Men on bagpipes, threw a grenade, and began running towards the bay."
*
Now, I know WW2 games have been done to death, but I think this idea represents an attractive niche. It has a real-life basis with a large amount of vividly detailed background information, suggestions for different scenarios just waiting to be used, and a central character is charismatic [demented?] enough to attract players and developers. Plus, everyone loves blowing shit up.
The image I have in my head for Jack's look is of a slightly-cartoonish but fairly realistic-looking British soldier, madly bouncing around a 2D level obliterating the enemy and leading his troops. I've got a basic idea for where the bagpipes could come in, such as giving temporary invincibility/making the enemy panic or such. At the moment I just want to get the idea as a whole out there and see what interest there is to it..
So what interest is there?
(btw I'm a coder + musician with absolutely zero drawing/painting skills
)edit: I should add that I spent a couple of weeks over the summer trying to get a very basic pygame prototype working firing arrows, without much success (largely because pygame is quite badly designed and results in you dumping most stuff in main() ) so I'm on the lookout for a decent, cross-platform engine to use. Preferably with python and/or java bindings.
