/game-idea-machine

Game Idea Machine

Primary LanguageJavaScriptMIT LicenseMIT

Game Idea Machine

A twitter bot which tweets randomly generated ideas for games.

Occasionally funny, often bizarre, hopefully useful.

Will reply with an idea if you tweet "@gameideamachine [command]", where [command] is one of:

  • idea - a totally random idea from any category
  • sim - a sim/tycoon/board game
  • action - an action/shooter type game
  • adventure - an RPG/adventure game
  • indie - an arty/indie game
  • racing - a racing game
  • mashup - a suggestion referencing existing games
  • weapon - an idea centered around a weapon of some sort
  • setting - an idea focused on the setting
  • character - a game based on a particular character
  • boss - an idea for a boss encounter

Comments and suggestions should be tweeted to @beeglebug

How it works

  1. It picks a random idea type, such as "weapon", or "setting" (it skips this step if a type is explicitly passed).
  2. It picks a random template of that type, such as "You play a {{hero}} who kills {{enemies}}".
  3. It uses Handlebars to compile the template, and pulls in random words and phrases to replace the template tags.
  4. It then does a few sanity checks and cleanup operations, before tweeting it (either to it's own feed, or as a reply).

Contributing

The best way to contribute is to add more words and phrases to the data set, which will allow the bot to generate a wider variety of ideas.

Thanks

  • Thanks to @xanderlewis for adding more data
  • Thanks to @agjmills for fixing the code indentation
  • Thanks to @lordy81 for adding support for multiple tweets in a row
  • Thanks to @aschearer for fixing a typo