How many people would acually pay for a 2.5D game nowadays?

Obviously, not for $50 US (or $110 AUS :( ) but say something on steam or Xbox live or the like for $5 maybe $10 for a completely new game built from the ground up that just happened to use spites for most of the objects in it's world.

I'm talking a new IP, built from the ground up by professional artists and game designers. What are the chances of something like this achieving more then cult appeal?

If people are willing to pay a few bucks for i-phone games, I can't see why the same wouldn't apply to PC games.

I don't care how many dimensions the game has as long as the gameplay is good.

Ask all the people that bought Braid or World of goo.

We still have cell phone games, Xbox Live games, and the Nintendo DS, all of which have a market for games with graphic technology over 10 years old. Just a couple days ago my friend bought Worms: Armageddon over his PS3 for $15.

ducon said:

Ask all the people that bought Braid or World of goo.

Ask all the people who bought Big Rigs: over the road racing, and which used the latest (or at least was not significantly behind) in 3D Technology at the time of release.

Jodwin said:

I don't care how many dimensions the game has as long as the gameplay is good.

I think if the gameplay were somewhat updated. Keep the classic run and gun but maybe make it a bit more dynamic. Alien Hominid took the classic Contra formula and just updated it. I think if the same approach were applied to a Doomish game it would do well.

Sometimes indiscriminately "3D-fying" everything isn't as good as it sounds: take a look at the horrendous "Bubble Bobble 3D":

Even if it's freeware, it doesn't have 1% of the fun of the original because it's so complex and difficult to control that it's practically unplayable due to the complete 3D freedom of movement. If it was 2D gameplay with 3D graphics, it would be much, much better.

Street Fighter 4 had the right idea. They gave it shiny new 3d graphics, but kept the exact same interface as the original.

Danarchy said:

Just a couple days ago my friend bought Worms: Armageddon over his PS3 for $15.

Just a few weeks ago I bought Doom over Xbox Live for £3 something.

A good idea will always potentially sell. I'm simply giving myself some breathing room for those external factors that sometimes unjustly undermine the effectiveness of a product in a market. But what I'm getting at, in this age of digital delivery, retro gaming revival and smaller set pieces, you could realistically make a profit.

Of course, we're not talking about a game developed by 50 guys with millions in initial investment backing it up. Not even in the heyday of these games you actually needed that much of a team or financial support.

I've toyed with the idea of making something like what you described, but I always end up wanting some full 3D features or freedoms. I think you could make a killer game by, for example, using 3D, normal mapped enemies that are selectively rendered with no perspective and only facing certain orientations, high res decals with layered blending modes for the weapons, etc.

Jodwin said:

I don't care how many dimensions the game has as long as the gameplay is good.

Exactly.

I frequently buy games like World Of Goo - simply because the gameplay is great.

Zaldron said:

I've toyed with the idea of making something like what you described, but I always end up wanting some full 3D features or freedoms.

Seems to me that you prefer the challenge of implementing 3D. The key for me is whether you can implement that with the gameplay still up there.

The challenge, at least programatically, is the same these days. Using a hardware accelerated API and today's rendering methods to draw a 2.5d game differs very little to what happens in a 3d pipeline. Even certain sorting, storage, drawing, pathfinding and culling algorithms and structures are generic enough in the sense they can be applied for n dimensions.

I just miss crap like crouching under a table. Things that are so basically un-2.5d it doesn't really seem the right way to go.

But i'd kill for a Blood multiplayer clone that takes advantage of today's computers.

I don't care how many dimensions the game has as long as the gameplay is good.