5 game ideas that revolve around the theme of empathy. Wrinkle: Take one of the five ideas and make it an alternate reality game.
- Recently I’ve been thinking of the childhood movie The Fox and the Hound. I’d like to make a game built on this concept. Early in the game, players work together with shared abilities. Eventually, there is forced separation via different objectives/ rewards for betrayal. The player’s loyalty, and empathy for others, is tested.
- A memory game that explores the life of a dementia patient. Players go through an older woman’s last memories of home. Different objects bring up memories, but how they are remembered changes over the course of the game. Players begin to understand the person’s life empathetically via storytelling and exploration. What starts as a problem solving game becomes potentially unsolvable due to the patient’s mental deterioration.
- A game that makes you question empathy within a romantic relationship. Players switch perspectives between two characters in conflict and play strategically while having to understand the other person’s reasoning and emotions. The game encourages players to think about how to deal with misunderstanding.
- (Alternate Reality Game: In an AR version, the game records your chosen responses to the other character and mirrors the projected arguments back onto you. The other character turns out to be you at a different time. )
- An empathetic game that revolves around the theme of hunting. One player plays on the side of a family of deer, and the other side is the hunter. Again, thinking of empathetic movies like Bambi.
- I was considering a building game last semester that would utilize card towers. It would be interesting to circle back to this concept and explore fragility to push an empathetic message. I believe this could go in a lot of different directions.
I really like how all of these ideas approach empathy from different angles instead of treating it as one fixed concept. The dementia game especially stands out; the way memories shift and eventually become unreliable feels like a strong mechanic for building empathy through experience rather than just storytelling. It’s interesting that it moves from solvable to unsolvable, which mirrors the actual condition in a way that could be pretty impactful.
The relationship concept is also really compelling, especially with the perspective-switching mechanic. The ARG twist where the “other person” is actually you is a really smart layer, as it reframes the entire interaction in a way that feels personal without being overly complicated mechanically. I think across all of these, the strongest moments are where the mechanics directly reinforce the emotional experience, and you’ve got a few ideas here that do that really naturally.