Instead of doing the rogue-like just do the dungeon master style first person turn based crawl. Basically the same game, but UI more conducive to mobile devices.
Also Baldur's Gate manages to have a serviceable enough UI, so I can't imagine it would be much more difficult to make something like Crawl playable via touch. It actually does have an Android version, anyone played it?
It's really just a matter of a UI that won't be so bad it gets the player killed. If it slows down gameplay a bit, cause you have to open more menus to get shit done (vs. shortcut keys), then it's worth it IMO. Still, it will make no money FTL would probably make some damn cash, tho.
There is only one game concept I have I'd ever do mobile. The idea is a game where you play kind of an ace mechanic on a big Star Wars-like spaceship which gets in lots of fights, and you have to scamper over to damaged areas to fix them, keeping the ship afloat. You'd have to manage your inventory because you'd need different things to navigate the ship, like climbing gear to go up and down elevator shafts when the power is out, breathing masks for when the oxygen cuts out, a flashlight for dark areas, etc, and you can only carry a limited number, forcing you to use the ship's internal transport system and replicators to change your gear up. Sometimes the ship would get boarded and you'd need to run and hide, lock the attackers out of areas and maybe space them.
If we did that mobile, we could use a multi-touch screen to do little repair mini-games, and it'd look great top-down. It was in contention to be the game me and my buddies made, but Bloodcrusher won out because the concept was much more straightforward and we already knew it'd be fun. It's risky to make your first game so experimental that you don't know if you'd actually enjoy it until it was mostly feature complete.
So, uh, people who make games, that one's free I guess?
I just came back to say that I still intend to follow up on this project here. Getting all the elements to work in-engine is a pain, and having multiplayer function is daunting, but I haven't given up on the project. I want the game to work, before I share a lot about the aesthetics, though. It mostly amounts to a SDK mod with custom load outs and a unique visual theme, so it isn't as hard as I make it out to be. I'm just working on a plethora of other things at the same time, a god awful programmer, and a career procrastinator.
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It's really just a matter of a UI that won't be so bad it gets the player killed. If it slows down gameplay a bit, cause you have to open more menus to get shit done (vs. shortcut keys), then it's worth it IMO. Still, it will make no money
If we did that mobile, we could use a multi-touch screen to do little repair mini-games, and it'd look great top-down. It was in contention to be the game me and my buddies made, but Bloodcrusher won out because the concept was much more straightforward and we already knew it'd be fun. It's risky to make your first game so experimental that you don't know if you'd actually enjoy it until it was mostly feature complete.
So, uh, people who make games, that one's free I guess?