Your ideas for Doctor Who video games?

General / off topic
1

I love video games and I love Doctor Who. But I’ve found most Doctor Who video games to be very disappointing.

I thought it would be fun to think of ideas of Whoniverse-themed video games.

I think one of the problems with the ones we have had so far is they all try to be “Action adventure where you play The Doctor” which is actually kind of dull.

They should use other genres and even small indie games for inspiration, and just take fun parts of the Whoniverse into the story.

For example, I’ll go first:

Cloister Bell!

A turn-based strategy game where you control either the Time Lords or The Daleks during the Last Great Time War. Based on Red Alert or Starcraft or one of the many other games in this genre.

What would make it stand apart though is the nature of battle - not just tanks and ships but time vortexes, paradoxes, going back in time and changing history over and over. The Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-have-been King with his army of Meanwhiles and Never-weres.

Psychic Papers, Please!

A border inspector simulation game (based on the real game Papers, Please - I highly recommend you check it out if you haven’t) where you play as a worker at a busy spaceport, checking papers as different aliens enter.

You need to meet a quota so you have to work fast, but if you aren’t careful and you let in a hidden Slitheen, Auton duplicate, Android clone or The Master in disguise, you will be penalised!

Redecorating (I don’t like it!)

A chilled out, relaxing game based on House Flipper or Unpacking where you create new TARDIS interiors - design them, choose walls, furniture, fabric etc, and unpack boxes of goodies from past adventures which all have a little story to tell.

There could be different Doctors and companions who want you to design a room for them, and they all have certain requirements like Ben and Polly want a disco ball, The Thirteenth Doctor wants a biscuit dispenser, Fifteen wants a jukebox.

Return of the Harmony and Redemption

Based on Return of the Obra Dinn, you are a Time Agent tasked to use the tools at your disposal to uncover the mystery of the crashed starship (featured in The Husbands of River Song - ”History’s Finest Exploding Restaurants. The best food for free. Skip the coffee.”)

You can inspect the wreckage and rewind time to understand what people were saying and doing right before the explosion. As everyone on board is a murderer there are a lot of unsolved crimes to uncover!

———

Yes I’ve thought about this a lot :sweat_smile:

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2

I like the “Cloister Bell!” idea. Almost like a Star Wars: Empire at War, Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds or Battle for Middle Earth type of thing.

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3

Well, if we’re retheming existing games for the Doctor Who franchise, how about “Where in the Universe is River Song?”?

You play a detective going all around the galaxy trying to track down the notorious River Song and apprehend her for the murder of the Doctor! (or you could go with larceny, but we know she was actually convicted of his murder…)

(River Song as Carmen Sandiego seems like a good fit…)

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4

How a bout a version of MarioKart where you race competing tardises through the vortex as shown on the NuWho title sequence? With working chameleon circuits, the craft can look like anything!

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5

Fun topic. I think that the stories are the greatest part of Who. Maybe a Telltale-style game where you have to make hard moral choices.

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6

The best stuff I’ve seen tends to be mods for other games, often adding a complex TARDIS, so I think some form of RPG is doable but it probably needs to be a fresh time lord character rather than the Doctor themself.

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7

I was a big fan of the LEGO games years ago and used to dream about a proper LEGO game where you play through a selection of every Doctor’s most important adventures. It would have all the LEGO game features: co-op, free play where you can play through the levels with any character, collectables, a character/level creator, and so on. And different doctors, companions, and enemies would have different abilities that you need to find all the secrets.

I know LEGO Dimensions exists, but it’s not the same thing!

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8

They definitely need to do Mind Robber with Legos. The scene with Jamie would be perfect.

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9

There have been several Doctor Who -based tabletop roleplaying games. The best ones seem to be where either all the players are timelords or all the players are companions. Otherwise it’s “Everybody wants to be Mr. Black”

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I think Doctor Who would lend itself really well to a captcha game. So many character with so many outfits over so much time to collect! With a storyline about time and space fracturing or something to explain how they’re all there.

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And it just occurred to me that a DW-themed version of something like the Groo board game in which the players are the likes of Daleks, Sontarans, Cybers, Voord, etc. competing with each other to rule the galaxy but continually having to deal with random interference from that pesky Doctor.

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12

That is sort of the current mobile game, Lost in Time, calling it a game is a llittle bit generous unfortunately

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Yeah, I’m not a big fan of captcha games myself, but I have seen some that have been very well done with plots you can control the results of. I haven’t tried the Doctor Who one, so I have no idea how it compares.

14

I played that until the Doom’s Day tie in events played through and then I haven’t bothered since. Hugely boring and pointless!

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15

That’s when I tapped out as well.

The early beta for the “Worlds Apart” card game is not particularly promising either, it’s a game with a fine system. But it does get repetitive very quickly I found. But it’s still in beta so a lot can still happen.

I went to the webpage where you can buy additional online card packages and frankly the prices are egregious. There was a Time Lord Victorious package with 12-15 cards they had priced at 75 $ (US I assume). I hope it was some sort of pricing example and not a choice of a MTG “pay-to-win” model - in that case I kind of hope it tanks…

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16

Worlds Apart looks hugely expensive for something where you don’t end up actually owning anything tangible.

A definite pass from me (and I’m confused as that was announced AGES ago and yet I hardly see any buzz about it starting proper).

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17

I abanoded it after NFTs became a big thing and then it was obvious how bad they were, ironically I have a bunch of the first released cards but I won’t be playing, which is a shame because I was calling for this sort of game to exist for years.

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18

I still want a Lego Doctor Who where you play through each TV story.

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19

I think that there a Doctor Who/Daleks Invasion of Earth board game that worked along those lines.

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20

That one was basically just a re-theme of Risk. Lots of fun though.

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