Game Idea: Procedural Dragon Ball adventure

[KBABZ]

I've had this idea floating around in my head for a while and I wanted to share it with you guys. The crux of the game is that you play as a character in the Dragon World who sets out on a quest to gather the seven Dragon Balls to grant their wish. As the title suggests however their locations will be quite random, with a Dragon Ball located in one of the 43 sectors. Using the Dragon Radar you set out to gather all of them. At each location you are presented with the challenge of actually earning it, in ways similar to the manga; you may need to sort out a village's problem, you may have to fight off bats in a dark cave, you might have to battle a pirate robot and survive deadly puzzles. New locations would also be added to inject some variety and surprises to those familiar with the source material. After gathering the Dragon Balls and having that character's wish granted, the story is reset and you go on a new quest with the balls in new locations, with your save remembering to not use places the balls have been scattered to before.

Thoughts? Good idea? Boring and repetitive one? Tell me!

[DragonBallLove]

Is perfect for a mobile (android/ios) game.
Make a rpg-like character progression and each reset letting you keep something of your previous run and it would go far!!!

[KBABZ]

Is perfect for a mobile (android/ios) game.
Make a rpg-like character progression and each reset letting you keep something of your previous run and it would go far!!!

I actually imagined that it would be more of a console game (a Switch of course would be the perfect middle-ground). Keeping your RPG stats would be a good idea, that way each playthrough would have tougher enemies; in one playthrough it's Bear Thieves, and on the next it's RAA battle jackets! However I still think that something like the Flying Nimus or a Capsule vehicle would have to be earned each time just to keep that sense of progression that makes video games so rewarding, like unlocking new abilities in Crash 3 or Spyro 2.

Each Ball would take a variable amount of time to find (sometimes it can literally just be lying around on the side of the road), but the typical length to get one would be about an hour, depending on how far away it is and how long the quest to get it would take. The randomization is also "smart"; once you complete a Dragon Ball quest, all the locations the Balls were found in are "checked off", and you won't be able to find a Ball in those locations with those quests until you've done all the others. This should help stave off repetition of "oh there's a Ball in West City, again".

If you couldn't guess, the idea was inspired by the procedural nature of No Man's Sky, only relating to where each Dragon Ball is and how to get them. It's also a fantastic reason to finally give us a fully open Dragon World planet that we get to explore, accurate to the Daizenshuu map. It would also be cool to have the first two Dragon Ball quests in there (Pilaf and Red Ribbon), although exactly HOW to include them I'm not sure, outside of "oh hey this Dragon Ball is in the pirate cave just like the show!").

I also think a procedural origin story for the character would be neat too; each would be about Goku's age in the OG show, and you'd get a quick explainer telling you who they are and why they're wanting to gather the Dragon Balls (do well in school, resurrect a loved one, etc). As for how they get the Dragon Radar, maybe Bulma sends out her Dragon Radar to anyone she feels deserves such a wish, and your character wakes up, Pokémon-style, to receiving the Radar in the mailbox!

[emperior]

This would be cool as hell. But the way you put it seem way too random, in the sense that it seems like the goal of the game would just be to collect Dragon Balls and then repeat, which could get boring if the challenges are always the same ones. Instead, what if it was online? It would be a massacre between people to get the Dragon Balls. Let's say a sort of Hunger Games with the goal of getting the 7 DBs. It could make some fun gameplay, the killing mechanics could be like in shooter games, but in this case instead of shooting with weapons characters would use ki blasts and the map would be the entire world. And by exploring the world (aka scavenging) people could get some new useful tools like a Nimbus cloud (which would go faster than flying), a Dragon Radar or new moves/capsules to get the upper hand over other people.

[KBABZ]

I'm not a fan of multiplayer so it never really occurred to me to have this idea be an Online one. My inspiration is the Red Ribbon Army arc of Dragon Ball with the procedural nature of No Man's Sky. Therefore, you're totally right, the goal of the game is to collect the Dragon Balls, but through opposition it would get more difficult and then ultimately about defeating your opposition as well (which is what happened with the three Dragon Ball hunts we see in the show, with Pilaf, the RRA and Frieza). It's very much meant to be like the Dragon Ball era, not Dragon Ball Z.

As I explained earlier, the game would have algorithms to make sure that you're never doing the same things or going to the same locations as the last playthroughs you did, and the game would take about five to six hours per playthrough because you kinda have the entire Earth to explore and you'll probably do a couple of sidequests along the way. Based on your suggestion though, your opposition for a playthrough can be random as well; sometimes you would face a direct rival character, sometimes it's the Red Ribbon Army, stuff like that.