After an epic battle, I finally defeated the dragon. While leaving the cavern, I fell and smacked my head on a rock. I have become Earth.

"this is Tim", switching it up I see

I once inherited a kingdom in Crusader Kings II as my previous character's toddler-aged son. Immediately my scheming uncle took over as regent and it wasn't long before I got an event about being pushed out a window by him. A moment later I was playing the next heir to the title- the very same uncle who had just murdered me. It definitely added an emotional connection to the character that hadn't been there before.

I had a similar idea to this. The difference is you play a character in the world until you decide that you're done with it. Either it's a fitting death, or the completion of a story arc you defined for that character. Once that character is retired, they now exist in the world as an NPC with the traits and vocation you had when playing them. You can then start a new character in that same world from level 1. This allows you to build a world full of your own characters, and even role play interactions between them.

Concerning the trap-- you become the one who set the trap.

Here's a tiny variation that I think would remedy a few of the cons: if something kills you *and it's a creature and you brought its HP low enough* then you can choose to switch into it. Otherwise you just die. Some pros off the bat: 1) Gives you a more reasonable progression curve. You don't just run up to the baddest monster and get it to kill you - you only switch into something slightly stronger each time. 2) You now need to fight or otherwise weaken your opponent, not just run up and die. So gameplay is more interesting. 3) Handles non-living-things killing you in a natural way (you just die). Of course a big con is that you introduce a game over state in a game without saving - but I actually think that this idea would work with just regular save games... I think that another big con is that you can play a potentially *huge* variety of creatures and they all need to be good to play... that sounds like a considerable challenge.

There is something very similar to this in STALKER Anomaly (and its sequal/variant/repack GAMMA). It's called Azazel mode. Rather than outright becoming your killer, you become a random individual in the zone. Which incidentally, can be your killer, although the odds of that happening are very low. This solves the question of what happens when you die to a trap (or anomaly in this case), what if you die to a dog or monster or fall damage or what have you and many other problems. It does not solve the quest problem though, if you die your quests are all deleted and all that's left of you is the corpse for your new self to loot. Your killer might loot your corpse first, so maybe you won't get the best stuff though.

Now I am become gravity, killer of players.

Final boss: "You lose" Crushes player. Player (in Final Boss body): "I win!"

I remember an old game that is somewhat similar: Messiah You are a baby angel that can possess people. With that, you can access certain areas or fight. If the body dies, you are expel and have to escape in the baby angel form and try to possess another person (in hard dificult, if the body dies, you dies). Is more like a puzzle than a RPG, but I remember that I liked that game, something like 20 years ago.

So basically suicide kirby

7:54 To me, this is by far the biggest challenge with this idea. Because you're essentially rewarding players for being bad at the game, and some people would feel no incentive to learn the mechanics. This is why I think it would be best for this to be a puzzle game with light RPG mechanics. Add in a fun story and characters, and I think this could be a really fun game!

The fact the LOTR:Shadow of Mordor/War’s nemesis system is only in those games 10 years after invention is honestly mind blowing. WB may own the copyright for the “nemesis system” but they don’t own the entire concept of being able to create an interactive history with all dynamic NPCs, all with their own personalites. It’s the one mechanic everyone remembers from those games, and it feels as though the industry has completely sat on their hands innovating it further.

The savegame thing is not a problem at all. There are tons of games that already operate on single save that you can't manually save or reload. The entire Souls genre is basically built around it. The biggest problem with this idea however is that the way to progress in the game offers little to no challenge. The player is incentivized to just find the biggest baddest opponent around and suicide to it. Rinse repeat if they wanna become even stronger. There is pretty much no reason to engage in an encounter that you want to win unless the game specifically demands it. At best you could make it similar to Super Mario Odyssey (which sorta kinda has the same mechanic), where the game is all about finding the right enemies to take over to solve puzzles.

It sort of reminds me of Omikron, in which you would switch bodies with a bunch of NPCs who had various abilities. One of the characters was (voiced by) David Bowie, if memory serves me right?? That game was quite strange and fun, especially the martial arts underground tournament. Its FPS portions could have been seriously improved, though.

A very interesting concept, and I appreciate the lengths you went to as far as approaching the cons of such an idea. While I think an RPG is a totally reasonable application for the idea, I feel like it would need to be a much tighter, cohesive world wrapping the experience (rather than a large, expansive open world). Perhaps limiting the scope of the game to a singular city or dungeon, with an emphasis on emergent quests based on the knowledge you obtain when assuming different forms. One example of that could be trying to unravel a plot surrounding a thieves guild; you as the player intentionally track down a member and goad them into murdering you. Then, using your new form as a member of the guild, infiltrate the guild and understand their goals. With the knowledge now attained, you could opt to go along with their plans if they sound interesting, or approach the law of that city and pick a fight that you know you'll lose, assume the form of a law enforcer, and with the knowledge you have, convince the sheriff of the ins and outs of the organization and help take them down. Lots of interesting avenues to take things.

One thing I can foresee is that players will not have an investment in their characters. It is hard to be invested in your progress when the premise is to lose your character. Also, they may just run right for the strongest thing they can find and then die to it to become instantly powerful. I think this would work well as a secondary mechanic though, like you can die to something and be transported into their body to experience things from their perspective for a while(use their skills to get through something challenging), and then you are pulled back into your own body through necromancy. Also, this might work well if the gameplay is meant to be very fast and rouge like. Something that lets you see how far you can make it, and how strong you can become as quickly as possible.

My solution to the problem of becoming random creatures or monsters is that at the start of the game during character creation you choose a "Soul type" like humanoid, beastial, undead, spectral and you can only become an enemy that's compatible with that type on this character.

Feels like a mechanic that would fit in one of those game with huge procedurally generated world with many types of factions, npcs, events going all over the world and limited visuals, where what really matters is progression of this instance of a world and it's history rather than personal progression. Since genre is based on replayability, game overs after unfortunate accidents would be much more acceptable than in classic RPGs, and not having cinematic story campaign would allow for some considerable freedom of action.

I've also thought a lot about a body switching game ever since Dishonored let you possess people. These are some good ideas Tim, but have you considered making the body switching an active mechanic? Something that doesn't only trigger on death? Players usually consider death to be failure so it's a little odd to "advance" by dying to someone. What if they're an NPC that doesn't want to fight you? Do you think you'd include ways players can instigate or antagonize someone? I think making it an active mechanic solves a lot of your cons, but that may also be missing the point. It would also be fun and create more opportunities for chaos if people didn't necessarily die when you possess them or leave their body. Or if you possess someone important you get occasionally stopped and asked a deeply personal question by someone who knows the body you're in, and you have to make something up. Imagine if you put someone in hot water through social interaction, and then became that person.

That idea sounds great for a sandbox game like Kenshi How to solve the problem of falling and traps: The lore would be that the soul goes to the next living creature. In the case of a monster/person, it would be your killer, and when you fall etc it would be an NPC in the area. The soul would choose an enemy or NPC roughly your level

Sounds a bit like The Green Pearl by Jack Vance. Maybe instead of the death, an item would be picked up by whoever is around or whoever gets whatever “green pearl” you were carrying.

You may or may not believe this, but I thought about this same concept (about becoming your killer) a while ago while brainstorming. My idea involved you carrying an item or entity like a "soul" (i.e. representing the player) that would possess the wilder without him realizing it (i.e. shared conscience). If you die somewhere random, you could make it so that time fast forwards and an NPC adventurer would eventually find your body and you become him (this could allow a new character creation). This would allow some other traits to be shared as well (e.g. some powers, character points, etc) and thus you can avoid "de-leveling". However, I currently lack the time or resources to make an RPG.

I`ve been thinking about having death not being the failure state of a game for some time, and this idea is awesome! And I got some ideas for some of the problems you presented. The lost of inventory: every city has an "auction shop" for unclaimed dead adventurers gear where you can find your items if you go into a body without inventory for too long. You have to buy it back/steal it back, though. Why go into weaker bodies? To access places only they can, such as a wolf cave to retrieve a missing amulet or something like that. In this case, I would make a lot of the gameplay revolve around this mechanic: a dragon can reach high mountains and communicate with other dragons, but is attacked in any city, for example, and this is how you solve most of the quests. Maybe your main objective is getting access to a god with whom you can request a wish, the end possibly being to become this god or being granted the wish of finally being able to have a real death. Ok Tim, now you got me on a train of thought that will be going for quite some time. Again. Thanks a lot by the way, love your videos!

Damn, that's a really fun mechanic. Would be interesting to use it to 'progress' into a position of power to change events that were supposed to happen for whatever reason. For the wolf example, maybe you become the leader of the pack and now have a bunch of minions to zerg enemies.

Just wanna say i thoroughly enjoy your videos Tim. I tend to do a lot of driving in my line of work so i love just being able to connect my phone to radio Bluetooth and listen to your videos like a podcast. Your content is very entertaining so please keep it coming.

Could use the GURPS-like point system, and when you possess a new NPC, you still get the same points you had before. If the new body had more points, you scale down your abilities until you get the total points that you had (e.g. get a bunch of disadvantages or decrese ability scores). Also, if you die in a random place, fast forward time and get an adventurer find your body and you become him (this could be a way to enable a custom character creation).

I think a lot of cons can be fixed by having “wounded” mechanics (like falling or the wizard kills you and then ALMOST kills himself with the fireball). And you may fall unconcious because of this and wake up at the same place, or something took you while you were unconcios (like taken to a safe tavern, captured by bandits or taken by a troll to its lair so it can eat you later but you just wake up in time). As for weak enemies, maybe you play a weak character that commands more weak characters and thus have power in numbers (like a pack of wolves). And non humanoids that kill the player could have the corpse at their lair wich later could be attacked by humanoids. Which you have to defend yourself from but if they kill you, you continue as a humanoid once more and have your old stuff again.

I like the idea of this scaling up like Katamari Dynasty. You start off small, planc length, as some sort of string of pure energy, get consumed by a proton, which gets obliterated by a gamma ray, which is absorbed by a Helium atom, etc. You die your way up the food chain till you're a lifeform billions of light years across, as large as a galactic filament. Eventually you're everything, and you implode, waking up as an energy string.

Maybe if you die by fall damage or a trap, you come back as a zombie form of your last character, since your soul can't go anywhere.

So will the player avoid getting killed or jump to be killed? Wouldn't the very idea alone confuse the players reflexes during the entire game?

Man someone give Tim a blank check please. This man is so full of knowledge and ideas.

This is awesome. One way to make it work is you consider the player a spirit after the first death. From there you're basically treating your future bodies as equipment. What dealt the most damage to you at the time of your next death is the most likely candidate to be your next body. All of your actual abilities are different ways to let you influence what you end up next. For example: Bandit+Dog combo deal the damage that kills you but the dog does more damage. You would rather play the Bandit in this example so whatever skills you retain as the Spirit can give you the ability to influence the dice roll in the direction of whatever killed you. Maybe its not guaranteed group kills go to the death blow but instead the one with the highest damage is given a modifier. Your skills would be like... have an extra dice to reroll the decision roll. Or exclude one option. Where it gets amusing? Not having a qualifying person due to dying to a trap. You end up wandering as a ghost. Maybe you can have a few things you can do to mess with people like a poltergeist but you're essentially floating around trying to find a corpse or someone sick/weak enough to hijack their body. Where the "Progression" comes in beyond the roguelike feel of bodyjumping to random things, is fulfilling quests and conditions a number of times as that Body in order to "take" some kind of Perk or something with you. Like with the Magic user scenario you proposed. If this were in D&D terms, you doing whatever that Wolf/Wolf Pack's quest/condition was might give you "Pack Tactics" perk. That "Slime" that killed you, maybe eating enough people lets you bring along some kind of "Corrosive damage" bonus or damage replacement in your next body. The tricky part is figuring out how you advance the story. Maybe as a secondary layer to, say, "Play as this Raider, now you have all this gear, go do quests from the nearby town, etc" you have Spirit NPCs. Maybe that's how you get more abilities to influence things. Spirit NPCs give it to you as your real currency/skill points/equipment or something. Go do Murder Mystery quests for that Cat Spirit to get spirit currency and/or abilities. Etc. I think the idea is you treat the game as two layers on top of each other. You design something small to medium sized but with a lot of depth between two layers as opposed to some sprawling map.

The thing I love about this idea is there's such rich storytelling that you can then create. What's it like to go from a little mouse, to a primordial god. just some recommendations: 1. A good way around the "becoming a weak creature" thing is - still allow the player to switch which the weak creature but the player should be able to carry over relevant skills/traits from past lives. Example: Wolf kills you, you are now wolf and have to move up the ladder again but you have an increase stealth skill bc of a past life as a thief, or increase strength from being a barbarian etc. etc. 2. If you die from fall damage: I think it would be really fun for one of two things to happen: A) your soul is now trapped within the nearest creature - on average this might be something like a slime, undine, or a common animal. The catch with that kind of death is that you share the body with the other soul, so while you can move around freely, you can't control what abilities the creature does. The answer to this from a player end is to get this creature kill by something ASAP so you can take over that other things soul. B) Your soul is free to wander and you can choose what creature to take over HOWEVER it must be a creature which you were stronger than in your past life. Same answer as A in terms of how to then move on from that creature but this gives the player a bit more choice in terms of what they become. 3. Inventory: One of the things i find MOST unfun about video games are an overcomplicated/overthought/overdone inventory system. We are talking about a game where your soul can transfer bodies so lets do away with realism for a bit and do one of thwo things: A) magical item should come with you as you transfer souls. Inventory for magical items (defined as any item that has magical properties) is handled though essentially a pocket dimension, there's a myriad of ways to establish this in the game lore-wise but the experience is - magical items are fully transferrable to your next body. For physical items they would drop with your previous body and whether or not you can use those items dependso on the creature AND your previous live's traits - so for example a wolf might still be able to use a sword if your previous lives gave you traits of dexterity so the wolf can use the sword in its mouth. This is both fucking badass, and "makes sense" in a way. B) If we REALLY have to be realistic. All inventory should drop and based on the creature you take over and whether or not they have storage room (like if they can carry bags/backpacks) then you can take only what that creature can carry. I can already see game devs drooling over a realistic inventory system like this and I would much prefer A instead of making those types of game devs happy. 4. "What if players figure out the progression and allow a god to kill them" - I think the beauty of this mechanic is that whatever you become you now take on their own woes. So for example yes, you're now a god, well now you have to deal with god level problems. Lets say gods in this realm are constantly under threats to their own existence by similarly powerful beings, you are now becoming the wall between keeping all the creatures in your world safe against these primordial gods. Lets say you become one of those primordial gods, now you have to deal with trying to survive, maybe a meter pops up that you must consume a certain galaxy, or you'll die, so now you're seeing things from that being's perspective.

I think this would be really cool as a roguelike, where progression is attached to something outside of your inventory. You could get points that you can use to give you perks based on how long your survived or how many souls you transferred from. The only way I can see this working is if the fantasy environment had a very funny and satirical environment, that way you could get away with some leaps in logic for the sake of the mechanic or special events happening like the demon visiting you as a wizard and saying that your soul isn’t the soul he bestowed power upon.

I actually love the idea of getting swapped into things that may not be able to pick up loot or access certain places, especially if your body/loot stays where it dropped. Then you have the potential to return there to gather your items.

This sort of mechanic is one we've seen here and there, and it's a cool one. One example that your talk reminded me of was of Survival Crisis Z, an old freeware (now) game. On the harder difficulty if you died, you would become a floating spirit and instead of losing your save file, you had one last chance to snatch the body of whoever else you could find. You lost your equipment, but kept your abilities and statistics and such and could continue on playing. You could effectively do this infinitely. Was always cool becoming "someone else" even if it was only surface deep. Sort of harkens back to body possession stuff like in Messiah. Or more recent examples like Running with Rifles, switching you to another soldier when your current one dies.

More IP ideas!!! These are so good!

Hmm.. ways of encouraging roleplay as the new person. Maybe you could find yourself in the middle of different quests, and reading your new quest history could be interesting. The Sims game has some relevant mechanics.

I have similar ideas, but I think in the specific case you're talking about the best way to do it would probably be turning it into a turn-based RPG to limit some of the most difficult problems dealing with the mechanics. Then you also can ensure every character, no matter how powerful, has specific strengths and weaknesses. Like you said, for something open world the mechanic would create tons of issues, since most players would presumably just run to and be killed by the strongest enemy to progress further. It almost gives the idea a speedrun quality to it, though.

The first thing that this made me think of was the 90s movie with Denzel Washington, "The Fallen." So a modification on the idea: your first player character is important. There's some set up at the beginning that instills this character with some purpose, some mission or goal that is esoteric but sticky. And the first time you die, you "become" your killer, but there's a residual you; most of what existed about you is gone, but the purpose you were instilled with remains. Call it your soul. When the body you inhabit dies, your soul goes into the entity that kills your body, destroying its soul to make room for "you." But you're not "you," you're the entity you took over; so if a wizard or a knight kills you now you have that wizard or knight's inventory, skillset, knowledge base, etc. But you on some ephemeral level is still you. You build mechanics around ever-changing skills (a knight, a monster, a wizard, each has its own skill tree), but you just have the skills you have; you can't really acquire (at least not many) skills related to the character you are inhabiting. They (you) have what they (you) have. But you have a second skill tree that is more ephemeral, and you spend your points there. So this skill tree would be things related to you as a soul that are sticky as you jump from one character to the next. These could be kinda subtle, but powerful. You'll remember everything about the people you've inhabited before, so knowledge (passwords, secret locations, map markers, whatever) known to the people you inhabit are things that come with you, but the ability so swing a sword or cast a spell is more related to the body you inhabit, so those don't pass on. So the game in some ways can become about finding the entity you need to get to the next part of the world or uncover the next part of the mystery or progress the story. Maybe you're a powerful knight and that's awesome but unless you are small enough to fit through this crack, you won't be able to progress in that direction, you're going to have to become a mouse. And that sucks for a couple of reasons: now you're not a knight anymore, you lose access to all your cool knight stuff, but also, how do you get a mouse to kill a knight? So maybe you give up trying to get a mouse to kill you but you'll need to find a mosquito to kill you with malaria or something, because you absolutely need to get through this small crack in the wall. You could have a story where there are people with lives and stories and secrets that you can uncover, but you're constantly struggling with who you are. The purpose you're given at the beginning of the game isn't known to other people in the world, so you're lonely and isolated as this soul that becomes different things. And maybe for a while as a person you can find some brief connection with people, but it can't last because you'll be a snake soon, and that person and all those that know them won't be available to you once you're a snake. And if you become another human you can go back to talk to those people you've met before, but they won't know you, becuase the you that you were when you talked to them last is dead. You may have to become many different things/people just to get social knowledge out of NPCs, who won't trust certain things, but may specifically know a knight you can become and would tell that person anything. So you live a very fractured, unstable life; but the purpose you're given at the beginning is so important and matters to existence itself (or whatever) so much you accept being burdned with this terrible purpose. On some level, you're still you, but that you is getting crowded out by all the other people and creatures you have become, until the original you has nothing left of it but the sad, lonely need to accomplish this important goal. In a way you'd have simulated dissosiative identity disorder, so there'd have to be a madness mechanic you're fighting against trying to tear you apart fully. But the skills that are more soul-based and sticky through transfers can help with that. It's a game where you'd have to continuously sacrifice yourself, over and over; you'd remember dying, remember being torn limb from limb, and accepting it as an outcome to transmorph into what you need to complete the terrifying quest placed upon you at the beginning of the game. As you progress, your knowledge and soul-stuff and understanding (expressed both mechanically and just what you as the player know of the world) grow and grow, but you have to constantly sacrifice your in-game strength, power, ability, to keep going. So it's a game about sacrifice and constantly shedding your identity. You could keep it an RPG but in order to learn things from NPCs, gain knowledge and secrets, you have to die to become something else in order to keep going. If you made a game that was mechanically and puzzle-wise very interesting but also really stayed grounded in the emotion and impact of what you're being asked to do, you could get a (fairly fun and rewarding but more importantly) unique style of game that sits a little to the left of where most games live.

As you hinted at, I can see the optimal way to progress being to purposefully seek out and get killed by all the powerful characters. Why participate in a difficult fight when dying gives the same, or even better results? A very interesting design problem! I like these kinds of radical ideas, they have a lot of potential for storytelling and creating very unique player experiences.

Does sound like it would be a bit of a speed run to get the big bad to kill you. At the same time, I can imagine funny scenarios where you are trying to get a powerful pacifist with an item you want to fight you, or like you possess a falling rock that randomly kills you and you have to make your way around as that. You might need some sort of progression mechanic that resets if you die that makes it less desirable, but not too undesirable. Like, maybe in order to progress the story you have to be a hero that gets through certain trials, but if you die too much then you won't be able to do it, and those trails may not measure strength alone or something and you may actually depend on some of the barriers like certain characters being too big or too slow, and that way you can even have the story progression pace in such a way where there are periods where dying to whatever is fun and desirable, but at other points you want to hold on to your character.

This I such a cool, wild and ambitious concept! I can definitely see why noone has done it yet, but I'd be super interested in trying something like this out!

I dig the idea of shelf life to who and what you're possessing. An intuitive time limit you might be able to prolong. But you'll want to get jumping sooner than later. Inverse, a vessel you're underpowered for, now you're drawing bad attention. Discourages staying in... a dragon body, demon... high powered magic user.

A separate "Soul Level" could be an interesting fix for the "Killed by something way more powerful". If you posses something far too powerful for you, you'd then get only partial control or need to navigate a sort of internal power struggle as you go? Maybe something as simple as an internal dialogue for closely matched levels, but maybe the character outright disobeys input around certain events(other soul taking temporary control?) or abilities being compromised or outright unusable. Would provide a risk/reward for those wanting to push the system, and for those advancing normally would be an interesting way to provide exposition or context for what a specific character's world or outlook is. Even just describing this my brain is spinning out of control with the implications of how this would be implemented, but the idea is intriguing to me.

"It's not like wolves have little backpacks on." But now that's all I want to see.

This could be an interesting way to tell a story from many different perspectives, maybe more of a linear storytelling device than an open world mechanic. Caves of Qud has a feature that's a bit like this, and it's overpowered. The skill is called Domination, it lets you take control of an NPC for a duration. The exploity thing about this ability is that if your original body dies, then you become the dominated NPC - with all of their skills and none of yours. You could do this to a boss NPC and jump from a squishy mutated human to a godly being pretty easily. It's pretty fun.

I was thinking of a kinda similar idea, when considering different ways to handle player death for my future game project idea; when the player character dies, you become a random character nearby. Possibly becoming your killer, or someone in the same faction, so you can potentially "revenge" your previous death, but also getting around some problems with always becoming your killer.

I had a similar idea where you were playing a cursed sword. You control the character who owns you and you get yourself taken by your killer that you then control. Of course, you might get abandoned on a battlefield...

This sounds like an amazingly fun demo with fun puzzles and secrets. Get killed by a snake and unlock new gameplay with ability to sneak into castles, under doors etc

This sounds like an awesome idea! I'd say instead of just a save when quitting, you could also have it save at the start of every switch, or if that's too frequent, have a place you can travel back to in order to save. That would at least protect against crashes or power outages. I think if you got attacked by multiple weak things, it would be awesome if you took the role of "the leader" and the rest would follow you as NPC companions. Then you could be a pack of wolves and that would be epic! I think you'd ultimately have to limit the type of creatures/enemies that spawn depending on your level so that they're relatively similar in strength. That would solve the purposely dying to become super powerful, and the jumping or falling levels. Also, if you make it so you're tied to some sort of energy or magical spell which is transferring your soul into the thing that kills you, then maybe your inventory could be tied to that as well so it sort of becomes coporeal like it's in an infinite bag of holding. Then if you're a creature that can't use the items you have, you simply can't use them until you get back to one that can, but you don't lose them.

I'm thinking a modification to your idea: instead of you becoming the person that killed you: you are reborn randomly into a new body (e.g. reincarnation) - you get essentially a 'reset' because you can adjust your character's parameters just like starting a new character, but the game world carries on from the point at which you died, so knowing where you died, you could travel to and collect your gear from your previous corpse, or if it was looted, search for your killer, and try to get revenge for your killing and recover your gear. I think this would make it more interesting, and you could include lore generated by your previous character as you encounter NPCs you previously knew/met.

Thats an awesome idea, Tim!! Thanks for sharing! :D

This is sort of the premise of the experimental Adventure Time episode Food Chain. The characters cycle through the food chain, each time transforming into the creature that is about to eat them.

my mind immediately went to being killed by a summon and then being unsummoned when the caster dies lol

Interesting idea Tim. I´m no game developer, but this concept kinda snowballed in my mind. But bear with me, if you´d be so kind. To me it would make more sense to play a lost spirit of sorts, looking for a very specific body to posess. Might be your own, or maybe it´s just the body of someone all powerfull! Kind of like Planescape Torment, but in reverse. At the start of the game you would only pick out mental/psychological stats and powers. These would be bound to your spirits core. The fysiological stats would then depend on what vessel you happen to posess. Some skills (weapon skills for instance) could depend on both the motoric skills of the vessel and your spirits memories. As a spirit you can choose to posess weaker bodies, and that body being killed by a rockslide would just throw you back into spirit form. The main idea though is still that you automatically posess the body of whatever creature kills your physical form. Their spirit never leaves the body though. Less powerful creatures just go dormant, but some will try to fight back. This could also open up for some interesting inner dialogue. Eventually you´ll might have to jump out of the body you posessed, which in turn might make the once posessed character hellbent on crushing your spiritform once and for all.

Maybe a plausible spin on this is that you could merge with the creature when you die and take on its traits like kirby but in a humanoid form. That way you can control becoming OP by dying to a dragon or something similar, and it's an interesting way to do races. The downside of allowing something powerful to kill you is that you entirely miss out on some important monster crafting parts and you could make the respawn time for those powerful creatures quite a long time.

"i thought id give it to you and see if you make something i can play" was said with such genuine positivity... it might be the most adorbale thing i've heard all day "D you are so wholesome. i fuckin love you Tim

A mechanic that could fix some of the cons could be something like a "soul ward". high level demons or paladins, after realizing who you are, may cast a ward that protects their body when they die, so you have to use your own spells or skills during the battle to either get them to lower their ward temporarily, or remove it yourself. If you get killed by an enemy with a ward on their soul, you just die and reload. Some would also just avoid killing you or would try to incapacitate you and run away if they realized your health was low, so now you have to cast a frenzy spell that drives them into a rage and forces them to finish you off, etc. Some might knock you unconscious and lock you in a cell somewhere, so now you have to escape, without accidentally dying to something weaker than you before trying again. Battles would be like puzzles where you're trying to weaken your enemy without accidentally killing them, and also trying to stay alive until that brief window of time opens where they can kill you while their soul ward is down. A turn-based game like this could be wild

"Now you're a level 1 Wolf" An exciting Roleplaying opportunity. Assemble the pack.

Tim, I think your channel is what inspired me to start learning Unity. I never had an interest in game development because it seemed like something that was way above my possible skill sets, I'm a photographer/graphic designer. Hopefully I can make some cool digital toys soon!

I really love the D&D spell Magic Jar. Necromancy spell that lets you swap your soul w/ another and take their body. Never thought about it jumping to what ever killed me though. Could be a fun game. I think trap death and other "faceless" ways to die could be an actual game end. Give each of them a silly little line related to your death. IDK, the idea of a demon giving your soul magic powers could really add to the depth of gameplay. Just make it so most of them can be done in any form. Some you would need hands for, others a tail or wings or some other non-human appendage. An action adventure RPG, why not.

The way I'd approach this mechanic is by making the main gameplay loop centered around territory control and faction warfare, with the goal of the players being something that you can accomplish with almost any creature in differing ways. Either by convincing governing bodies or tacticians to aid in your quest (honestly or by conniving means) or simply becoming the pack leader of a set of creatures and eliminating targets or at the very least messing with a faction that would get in the way later. This is *way* too complicated for a reasonable development cycle so I'll just go off the idea deep end for fun. I think a band-aid fix for the tactical suicide problem would be to encourage players to build up reputation within their current Entity's environment and culture, maybe through diplomacy you can join 2 factions to reap the benefits of aligning yourself with both and later asking both of their collective help in tackling an obstacle you can't solo. What this would also come with is, if you can accurately infiltrate a faction or learn what creature is a pack leader and such, you can also commit tactical suicide even better to skip the grind for reputation. To keep the gameplay engaging despite this, imo the game world would need new or at least better fleshed out (the further from common tropes the better) creatures and factions so that the tactical suicides would still be earned by observant players.

It's so cool to see an industry veteran who contributed so much to some of my favourite ever games still coming up with new ideas all the time. You're an inspiring guy, Tim, thanks for all the videos :)

Probably not in the spirit of your question, but my solution would be to make this into a story or comic instead. Having full narrative control pretty much wipes out all of the playability cons, and this does sound like an intriguing story! Pretty dark for a superhero... but a superhero that possesses the supervillain that killed him. . . ? Then becomes a superhero in that body until it happens again.

Thinking about it now, this bodysnatching idea reminds me of time travel and how there are so many possibilities and choices that any effect could greatly change the outcome leading to even more possibilities, making it endless unless we put up restrictions. Like imagine becoming a bandit and now you open up all these quests within this faction and bam an enemy faction kills you now you have their quests, but you'll be dealing with the consequences of your actions while you were with the other faction. Also, what if when you do get killed by a pack of wolves now you become apart of the pack working your way up the ranks of the wolves, while also opening up a whole new world by being able to communicate between animals. Now you lead wolves creating an unstoppable army, but is there a faction system between the animals and creatures? Maybe when becoming the ghost you have the ability to possess people making it so now you can get your belongings, but now your dealing with this person that your in constant battle with over said body. Tim you got to make this game! The replay value on this game would be insane! There's just so many branching paths as well as narratives that you could pursue and the outcomes and effects on each could be crazy.

I feel like a few of those problems are actually opportunities for the player to solve problems, weigh risk and reward and seek character progression. Examples: - Yes, it _is_ a problem that some forms don't have hands, isn't it? Maybe you had better make a point of stashing backup equipment and money in hidden locations around the world (are people like you the reason why there are hidden treasure chests scattered around the game world?) Maybe you can try to remember where you died, and come back for your things as soon as you're able. And I once heard of a magic ritual that bonds a pocket plane to your immortal soul - that sounds _crazy dangerous_ to be mucking with, but maybe it's worth if if you're collecting the -plot coupons- _Seven Sacred Treasures_ that alone can slay the Demon Lord. - Yes, traps _are_ a problem, aren't they? You'd better put points into mundane survival- and outdoorsmanship skills, and definitely Detect Traps. Or maybe another magic ritual, that changes what happens when you die and gives you a chance to "jump" to a nearby creature. But, really, you shouldn't be cutting and stitching your soul like this, who knows what that will do to you? - It's no fun being stuck as a level 1 wolf. Your ability scores are so much lower now, and most of your skills will have huge penalties until you've familiarized yourself with being a quadruped. You might try to stay out of the way until you've learned your new body, or for some forms it might just be best to get it over with quickly and move on to something else. Or, you could try to augment yourself with some power that sticks with your soul even when you change bodies. You're practically a lich now anyway, so what does it matter if you make just one more little change?

I think its a fantastic idea! I definitely would put some kind of limitation, though, sich as a level restriction or maybe a tiered system, like greater beasts and gods require a special quest to be able to possess. As for gravity and environmental damage (and maybe aforementioned higher enemies), perhaps you remain an unbound spirit and must claim a body or corpse in order to return to the physical world, or else risk losing your physical inventory. I think "downgrading" probably wouldnt be too much of an issue; it provides incentive for the player to still fear certain enemies. You could even provide unique perks like being able to control your comrades like a horde of rats or ants or whatever. Just the idea of being a powerful rat mage is neat in itself!

One idea to solve being killed by a trap or explosive damage would be that some peasant or rat would come to loot and eat bodies and then soul would jump! That would be scripted event If you die in some location. Being a being of pure magic would solve the problem of jumping into zombies/undead/souls/demons but maybe you would need to do some game progressions to unlock such feature for your character. I think do a save game each time you jump to another body but maybe you lose something when you jump, maybe energy or some experience? This idea reminds me somewhat of the game Enemy Mind, retro 2D shooter where we jump between ships and each of the had different shooting mechanic. I will be honest, this idea sounds much better than post apo kid simulator :P

It sounds like a really interesting concept, a lot depends on what enemies you have access to. My first thought was to let myself die to a henchman of the big bad and then get close to them and hit them. I definitely think the concept would work but there are a lot of variables to tune.

Immediately I thought of making a mod for Warlords Battlecry III. The storytelling would be difficult, though you'd have quite a roster of creatures and humans alike to get an idea of the combat. Regardless of how, I'd like to see this idea come to fruition in some form. Thanks for the video Tim!

First thing that came to mind are those parasyte that makes the host act more erratic, so the host get eaten and the parasyte gets to keep spreading. The second thing that came to my mind, in Noita you can morph into a random creature for a small period of time and, depending what creature you have, you are able to fight back or make time till the effect ware off. So keeping the mechanics and the goal simple you could be able to get into almost anything and keep progressing without needing to implement complex mechanics for every possibility. Like you say in another video, you need time and money to implement things, trying to get into town being a dragon sounds both interesting and a bad idea to implement as a dev if it's just one of many many possibilities. Or you simplify it too much and all the creatures end up feeling same-y, an easy example solution that would probably suck is that you become a Werekind or a mix of human and that creature. Then, what's the point?

Love your idea, though that would require a thorough balancing and you pointed out major possible cons. I thought about a possession mechanic as well, but in a slightly different way. Say, you play as a form of sentient plague (or mold, or whatever). And your goal is to conquer the realm. At the start of the game some poor peasant with lowest stats possible finds you and you take control of the poor soul. Now you have to spread yourself to others, but to do so, you have to defeat the candidates you desire. Say, there's a pool of 'energy' you can waste on possession and the better the stats of the potential pawn, the more 'energy' it requires. So you have to choose wisely. Do you spread yourself over the weaker masses and use your numbers in the conquest, or do you aim for the stronger characters with unique perks/skills/magic for a less 'dumb' approach? Additionally, I imagine it as an immersive sim, so you would need different skills from different possessed, for example: possessing some skilled thief will give you an opportunity to sneak into well-guarded buildings; or maybe it is the guard captain, so he already has access to restricted areas; possessing a druid will allow you to control animals etc. The amount of mechanics to implements scares me though :D

I have an idea for the solution to dying to the world (like falling or dying from a trap). After you die, you become a ghost and can possess any dead character, being your character you just played or any thing else which is dead nearby.

Super neat! I'm imagining a player character that has their impact on the world and then, when playing as their killer, you witness the world in the absence of the player character killed. Exploring the consequences of the former character's death.

That is such a cool idea, thanks for sharing. Hope someone makes a cool game with it or some variation of it!

I could also see this being implemented as an "alternative gameplay state" similar to vampirism or lycanthropy in an otherwise traditional RPG.

Great idea, but here’s a better conceptual lens to understand its potential: you’re a *shapeshifter.* Sure, that’s not what it’s called, and you do it by dying, but that’s fundamentally the dynamic and it’s where all of the interesting gameplay is. Sometimes you shapeshift to become more physically powerful, other times to become more magically powerful. Sometimes you “shapeshift” to infiltrate a faction, or possess an antagonist. Sometimes you die to solve environmental puzzles: e.g., you can cross a chasm by letting an archer shoot you from the other side, or by letting a giant bird kill you. You lose gear & wealth all the time, and that’s part of the fun: you’re constantly making tradeoffs/sacrifices to better adapt to the current conditions. You need to throw out the concept of traditional advancement/grinding, because material stuff is really nearly worthless to you. The bodies themselves are the loot, and it’s temporary loot. But you still might gain powers: the ability to temporarily possess someone who hasn’t killed you, or temporarily eject your spirit from your body to scout through walls. Maybe you need to learn to control different body types: the game’s controls are totally crazy as a wolf, but become more intuitive & accurate the more time you’ve spent in wolves; same with birds, octopi, blobs, etc. If you must have a grind mechanic, maybe creatures have some kind of power rating (tied to DPS/armor) and you can only possess creatures up to a certain power level. Or maybe a possessed creature’s level is the average of its original level and your innate level, pulling more powerful creatures down, but also pulling weaker creatures up. This means trash mobs are still scary but less disastrous, and you have a reason to delay letting much more powerful enemies kill you. If you’re super concerned about wealth, maybe there’s some kind of banking guild, but you have to figure out how to actually access it in your various forms. As far as ghosts: that’s what you are, buddy! You’re only special because you can possess the living. They aren’t a physical threat, but ghost combat is scary because it damages your innate stats/power level… but it’s also the fastest way to increase it. Ghosts also make interesting NPCs, because they’re among the very few who know who & what you are, so you can build long-term relationships with them. Another interesting dimension is time. Maybe the game plays out over millennia. When you fall off a cliff & die, your spirit lingers maybe for centuries until a random traveler passes by. Maybe you can persuade them to do some act (desecrate your corpse?) that will allow you to possess them, and there are telepathy & illusion powers you can gain to facilitate that. Maybe you want to strategically remain dead for a century so that an especially powerful enemy weakens with age. And ofc all sorts of storytelling potential with that as entire cities rise & fall between your incarnations. Tons of potential. Tons.

when I was a kid I had an idea about a zombie game (yeah I grew up during that era) where if you died you would become a random other survivor. your idea is way more interesting

Being able to possess another body permanently by some means would be interesting but doing it constantly or on death would be overkill.

Cool idea, thanks for sharing. Level scaling can help if killed by a too strong or too weak enemy (after you become the enemy, they scale to your former level). The biggest issue I see is that players may decide to deliberately die to become another character, but this would undermine the fun of trying to win in combat, so we don't want getting killed to be too attractive. What if there were certain factions (or races) in the game with their own game objectives? Maybe 4-10 factions depending on how complex the game is. So, you can only be killed by rival factions, your own factions can't kill you. This means, when you become the character that killed you, you now have very different gameplay objectives, so if you were invested in your character and trying to win the game, you now have some progress in that you keep some items and you keep your level, but your progression towards gameplay objectives has completely turned on its head. Now, to get killed by the faction that you were just killed as will be difficult, because the enemy that killed you, which you have now become, assuming mid to late game, was probably located far away from your original starting point. So you would need to progress with your new character to reach the early game area that you started from, which is now a late game area. All this means that getting killed by certain enemies isn't exploitable to rapidly progress through the game because the goal posts shift when you become your killer and change factions. Oh, and if you are killed by a trap then you would probably become the trap maker (or one of the trap maker's faction).

This made me think of how cool it would be to have some kind of movement mechanic centered around “soul hopping” among characters to travel great distances

It's an interesting idea. I'd change the scenario to this: The player character has the ability to switch souls upon death. Which generally means the creature that killed him, is necessarily in close proximity, is often more lucrative, and therefore primarily swapped with. Otherwise, in the case there is no creature around (like death by fall damage), he resorts to one of the last alive creatures he came in contact with - or he can move around as a bodyless soul and occupy weaker creatures. For greater creatures (anything greater than a regular human, aka not wizard) it is required that there was a combat and the creatures was injured enough - meaning there is a requirement to actually fight in order to occupy better creatures. If the power gap is too big, it won't work. As progression the ability to occupy souls improves permanently. As of the wizard and demons with contract, that interaction starts after dying as the wizard. You carry over the magical skills, and a demon shows up and talks with you. You agree to sign the contract. When you die next (and swap to a new host), the demons decide you broke the contract and that it's silly that they can't get your soul when you die, so they send demons after you to kill you and capture your soul once and for all. They had to deal with various supernatural phenomena over the course of their existence, so it's basically just a case of a human not wanting to hand over his soul as agreed upon. If they succeed to kill you (sooner or later they will), you may occupy one of their demonic creatures. And either you have a little excursion to hell and have to fight yourself up to the demon that first appeared and take possession of him (to stop them bothering you), OR (no hell content) they notice it's pointless to go after you, and you not worth the trouble. Remember, the magical powers stay with you, you refused to hand them back, and they become something like a skill progression system. So even if you possess weaker creatures, you still have special skills (not necessarily "regular" magic). Combining both, your soul swap ability and baseline power improves. Later you realize that the thing that allows you to swap bodies is actually meant to be a curse. It has the purpose to alter reality around you to kill you, like "bad luck." But instead of causing your soul to be sent to hell upon death, it caused you to eternally swap bodies upon death. Maybe because you (the original character who received the curse) are special, maybe because something (a lucky charm?) you wore altered it, maybe it was divine intervention. Also later you may encounter family members, like your sister. Something drew you to her. She doesn't recognize you, and if you were silly enough you don't even appear to her as a human. This funnels you into being *some* human again, resetting your progression to some degree, in an attempt to talk to her. This could be an opportunity in which the one who laid the curse upon you caught you. Because you are necessarily a human, your power isn't high enough to beat that person AND protect your sister, so either you get captured or are forced to forfeit. That person knows how to handle you... so you are in a dungeon jail system. But you succeed to suicide anyway and swap into a rat's body. The person and his minions will hunt you, and if they catch you, it's game over. Because then you are put into a jar with no chance to suicide. After several days of work the person lifts the curse and just kills you. Not sure about the no-saving thing though. I'd compromise with having some save points, time based auto-save or "safe areas to save."

Outward's solution to the save game issue works pretty well. Although the player only sees one save, the game stores several so that if a file gets corrupted, an older save can be used. Just in case, the player can also enable debug mode to access those earlier saves. This does allow the player to cheat, but it is a solution that works. I was also thinking about the player becoming a large creature that can't enter towns. Maybe a limited use (once per day or something like that) shape shift ability that lets the player take a previous form. The player could maybe have two or three options stored up, or just allow shape shifting to the first body they possessed. The big downside being that if you die while shapeshifted you still have to follow the normal rules, thus a big risk of losing progress. Speaking of losing progress, shape shifting could also help address the problem of being killed by a very weak creature, if the player is allowed to temporarily take a previous (stronger) form so they can get to an area filled with stronger opponents.

Hi Tim, thanks for sharing your idea, I really enjoyed this kind of video where you challenge us to something. I'd think that having an advancement system for individual characters would be great in order to prevent people from wanting to be killed, so they wouldn't want to lose the progress they made with that character but simultaneously be challenged to adapt to their new situation when killed. Regarding animals, I think they should play with the expected skills from the animal but there should be ways for animals to become sentient and/or humanoid via magic items or spells. So I could become a dragon and kill people in a village, then a Wizard comes after me and cast a spell for me to talk, then it'd be possible to beg him to turn you into human or bring to you an item that allows you to become human.

My first thought on that idea of yours was that you are some kind of possessor spirit. A type of death wraith of sorts that simply comes back to life by taking over whatever being killed it. Sounds like it would make for a very fun world to explore with all kinds of magical creatures inhabiting it! Maybe it is a curse the protagonist got at the beginning of the game in one way or another and this is now a quest to lift said curse. Wolf only challenge speedrun. Travel everywhere fast. But everything attacks you

A VERY old game that worked with a somewhat similar concept was RELICS, in which you play as a disembodied shade and possess the inhabitants of the game's setting. It would be cool to see a sort of modernized version of that ocncept.

It kinda reminds of the mechanic they used in the "ultimate death" mode of watch_dogs 3. When the character you play as dies in the operations in London you cant play as this exactly again. Its not that big of a problem here because the most actions can be done by most characters you play with. But it is wild how different you play the game. Your not the mastermind that has all skills eventually like in Watchdogs 1 and 2. You really want to find a sneaky way around the restricted areas so your not loosing a character with strong and maybe rare skills. Plus you can recruit nearly every NPC... thats what reminded me of your IP idea.

Really cool idea. It reminds me somewhat of Space Station Silicon Valley (1998), where you played as a microchip that could jump between and "possess" different robotic creatures to progress through the levels. Each creature had unique abilities that were useful for different challenges. Also reminds me a little bit of Kirby :)

I know 2 games that played with somewhat similar idea - Omnikron The Nomad Soul and Messiah. Both are rather old exapmples, from 1999 and 2000 respectivly, and use more like a body jumping mechanic, where you can possed others and use their strenghts and abilities to acces new areas and progress the story

Late to the party, but this is my solution to the dying mechanic: When you die in any of the ways you mentioned, you enter ghost walker mode. While in this mode you can roam around for a short period and do one of the following : temporarily possess a any creature (living or undead) or inanimate object (like a piece of armor, etc) and then get yourself killed so you can properly become that creature. Also, to insentivize players to use "weak" creatures like a wolf, they could have unique abilities, like scent, which could let you track with ease or they run super fast. Need ro get into that castle? Just rush past the guards as a wolf, find someone in there in a position of power (like the captain of the king's guard) and let them kill you so you can roam the castle without suspicion.

What if it was the inverse where what you kill, you can claim its soul and then that creates a repertoire of various things you can shift into? Like maybe you're a skinwalker so you have this very default, bland form which is rather weak. The more things you kill, the more you can observe and consume, either soul or physical attribute which then allows you to turn into said creature. That opens up a lot of choices, quests, etc. You could assassinate a king and take his position, doing kingly things like ruling a kingdom. Or you kill a dragon which gives you all of its horde. Either way, I love the idea Tim! I hope you get the chance to see a bunch of your ideas come to fruition!

Tim, I had watched the Fallout show by myself once and I enjoyed it so much I was willing to watch it again with my mom to watch the show with me, (I as a 22 year old felt embarrassed at certain parts) but over all we had a fun time watching it. I think my mom (56) liked the show and I think she might want me to play one of the games and have her watch the cutscenes/dialogues. Unfortunately I don’t have a PC right now, but I’ll figure out something. Love the videos though.

This is fun, here is my take: Very hard to design progression probably, would be potentially easy to speedrun? (But this could be a challenge in a fun way) Very hard to write dialogues/game mechanics. If you can be a wolf you need hunt mechanics and smell maybe, if you can be a bandit you can join raids, if you can be a bailiff/king you need diplomacy/speech. Merchant, barkeeper, farmer, blacksmith, thief, goblin, orc, rat (sneak into places), all would potentially need unique game mechanics / dialog options. Might not be that fun, or even frustrating when you are trying to get killed by a specific enemy to be able to do a specific thing. (And if the whole game is about this... meh. But this is also just a game designer challenge) Expanding on the fireball problem mentioned at the end: environmental damage, damage over time, any other delayed damage will be problematic. Arrows have to be instant damage too (which may be fine)? The way I think of it, maybe it would be best to strip everything down to something very simple, and build the whole game based around this idea. Maybe you dont need strong economy, complex inventory, skill system, too many speech options, very complicated AI. But you need to find a fun gameplay where maybe the player can think outside the box and solve interesting puzzles in a fun way, to get into places / achieve random goals. Maybe the story could play an important role, and it would be a well constructed linear gameplay where you get to live through multiple fun lifes to achieve your ultimate goal, and you wouldn't have to do anything boring for too long.

One big flaw I see is the so often quoted 'Ludonarrative Dissonanze' the dude who just stabbed me for being a criminal will basicly turn into a murderhobo because I control him now, and no matter what his ambitions or lore was before, now he does what I, the person infront of the screen, want. Unless each character comes with heavy restrictions like 'Im a guard I dont kill anybody in this town unprovoced' , which can be interesting but also has a huge potential for a softlock. And yeah , not to mention Inventory and literally physical size restrictions. I have the feeling tho, YOU could pull it off with your extensive experience in Game design, but I believe the 'average' designer is not able to fully flesh out everything without making to many compromises that ruin the mechanic.

A slightly different take would be that when you die you jump to the nearest "suitable", corporeal body. This fixes issues with ghosts and such. If you keep your skills and mental attributes, you still have a "character" to be attached to. You'd be limited by the physical abilities of the host body, so jumping into powerful body wouldn't necessarily be that useful if it doesn't match your skills. I'd also consider a stat that tracks your ability to overpower the original hosts mind. You'd either have to level up your skill, or there could be a limit on the power level difference between your current host and your new host. It could be something along the lines of the old Paradroid game.

About the issues that might come with no manual saving - Soulslikes seem to have figured out how to make a save system that is reasonably stable even if the game closes unexpectedly. Maybe layered saving or something? But it's pretty much the save system you're talking about!

It's definitely a fun idea to just think about, even if it never becomes a game. Off the top of my head, I feel like you can just have a Game Over whenever the player dies in a situation where body swapping isn't an option. Or a bad option, such as the wolves. That's what the saves are for, presumably. Maybe there's a power threshold that you need to meet before jumping into your killer. So your level one cheeser can't just speedrun into the dragon cave and become dragon. If you have a fixed idea of progression, that is.

I would do this similarly to that Denzel Washington movie Fallen, when you die you have a short time frame to enter the body of another person or creature and then you’re in there until you die again, you’d be “Azazel” I think it’s name was. You’re already an otherworldly ethereal being who hops from creature to creature throughout your existence.