Claynators

Claynators would be a game for PC, Nintendo 3DS, and Wii U. I've always been a huge fan of modeling clay, and recently I thought how funny it would be, expecially for the DS consoles, to be able to take a clay simulation and make it a character for a game.

This is the simple story behind how Claynators was born. As far as customization goes, it doesn't stop. You can pattern it in any way, any how. If you're not sure about the color you want to make your Claynator, you can pick two colors you like, combine them, and then if you're happy with the result, you have your color. You can make it big, tiny, medium, long, short, tall, or wide. If you make your Claynator a sphere, it can roll along the ground. If it's a cube, you can make it a platform in multiplayer. My rationale for this game is to take the classic art of clay sculpture and turn it into something people take seriously as a game mechanic and grow to enjoy.

Plot
The concept of Claynators has a similarity to that of de Blob, except you can make your own character instead of playing as different forms of a single one. The reason the Claynators come to be is because their world is under attack by a black highlighter drawing who moves along the ground and other flat surfaces like a shadow. Its purpose is to make the entire galaxy empty except for the surfaces, and consume everything three-dimensional in the process to grow big enough to cover an entire planet, thereby permanently ruling his kingdom.

The only things that stand in its way and in the way of its minions are the Claynators, who can use their malleability and uniqueness to destroy the army of drawings, one at a time, and liberate the planets which have fallen to the Shadow Mark.

I also thought it might be a fun feature if you could upgrade your characters over time, so I think that the way to do that is to make it possible to collect money made of clay, and if you get up enough, you can mold around your guy to make him bigger, or stronger, or taller so that he can reach things high up more easily.

Gameplay
When I was writing up this idea, I found it difficult to imagine how one would find and destroy the enemies, given that they're 2D drawings. I finally decided to make these minions endowed with the power to cast their own 2D shadow into empty space, so that if you're scrolling along Super Mario style through a level, you can still detect and destroy the threat.

Logically, this game would implement some kind of puzzle solving to progress through the level. This would require claynators of different shapes, but thankfully, multiple claynators could be made and brought into the level at any time. This way, if you need a particular shape of claynator to progress, you can create and use one.

The final battle would be different, because I thought that it would be climactic if the drawing attacked from the paper. One thing I immediately thought of was something I saw in a video of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, where Usurper King Zant would come up like a shark and attack from below the ground, catching Link if he was not careful enough to sufficiently dodge. For the rest of the battle, the player and boss could be seen with an overhead view, the boss being like a moving drawing that could affect anything dwelling on the surface where it lived. All in all, I think this could be a very good addition to the DS market, because it tends to specialize in artistically-based games.