I had a games Idea

I have this idea for a computer game, at the moment I see it as a first person or third person shooter, probably first person with the 3rd person view for running/hiding, like Gears of War and Rainbow Six.

The basic idea is pretty simple, you don't have a main character that you play; you are a ghost/spectre/soul whatever you want to call it and however I decide to work it. On your own you can't actually effect anything, you can't attack, be attacked or really do anything, but what you can do is possess other people in the game and take them over. So you can be anyone, you have the skills, weapons and abilities of that person.

So if you take over someone in a park playing baseball, you have a baseball bat, decent speed and strength as they're probably going to be in good shape. Take over a jogger and you'll have a high level of running speed and stamina, a police officer you'll have weapons and armour, a thief and you'll have lock picking skills and so on. c

The game itself would combine standard shooter, just taking out the bad guys, with some puzzles and strategy elements, possess someone to scan their fingerprint to open a door then possess someone with a weapon to take out someone in the next room and so on.

You don't have to change a lot, if you take over say a mob thug, or a member of SWAT you can continue with that person for most of the game if you wish, armour and weapons will be realistic, so if you're a 20 yr old blonde chick you won't be able to take a shotgun blast to the gut, but a police officer will usually have body army and some decent weapons, the 20 yr old blonde chick may have a taser and/or pepper spray.

The main thing is you don't know what abilities, armour and weapons they'll have unless you see them use it before you take them over, so if you quickly take over someone you'll have to test out the buttons to see what they can do. A little like Left 4 Dead 2 online multiplayer where you can be the undead, each character can do something different.

I haven't worked much on the plot and game play yet but I wanted to know what you guys thought of the basic idea of it before I put more time and effort into it.

It's been done.

In clive barkers jericho, you are a ghost that posses other teamates and take control over them.

Well Jericho let's you control certain people on your team, "At any point, you can take control of any of the remaining six members of the squad" the point of my game would be to be able to take over a tonne of people, general people wondering the street.

However I hadn't heard of Geist before and since reading about it, it does seem pretty simular at least with the concept, although Geist looks like an extremely basic version of my idea, this would be like Geist 6

Pretty cool that you can come up with and expand on an idea like that, keep working on it and maybe you'll strike gold.

Thanks for the advice, I'm working the multiplayer which is where I want to put a lot of focuss as it makes a big difference these days

are you actually programming this game yourself or are you just saying i have a game idea and just writing it down on paper because chances are its not going to go anywhere. Also don't post your idea where everyone can read it, especially over the Internet, good luck though

Oh I'm not making the game and I'm aware of the risks of the internet, this is just something for me to put on paper to entertain myself and just to get the creativity out. I know it wont go anywhere but I'm the kind of person who when they have an idea they have to get it out, I've written 3 songs, 2 films and a few other game ideas, just need to get it out to stop it flying around the brain