indie game mechanic concept.
save slots are floppy disks, been done before but more interestingly:
they are inventory items, they are reusable. your character either goes to a computer to use them or uses a pip-boy like wrist computer. when loading a save you see the world change around you as it happens and your character is aware of this. possible use as a time travel mechanic.
alternate direction to take things:
do disks youve picked up after a save stay with you during a load? might make things more interesting.
actually lets continue down that route, using it as a time travel mechanic.
lets say you keep your inventory, health, etc as you use the disks. of course, this means an in-game "Save" isnt really a complete save, so we will have to also just have an "adventure" file for each character which is the actual save that gets saved to your actual hard drive.
this effectively turns save-scumming, or as i like to call it, "being smart while playing a video game", into a mechanic all its own. you could, say, drop down a save in a store, and one in a boss battle, and just swap back and forth between one to get more shit as needed, hell, a whole ass quest could technically be occurring during a boss battle, so you can go run off and get whatever macguffin you only find out you need half way through or something
a second interesting layer you can put on this, what happens with item duping? should there be only one master copy, say, you have to give someone a thing and then need it back, so you go back to when you first get the thing, and bring it forward with you to when you now need it? should it get duped? should the other one fizzle? should this cause some kind of instability effect?
theres a hell of a lot you could do with this, unfortunately i just lack the 3d modelling ability, energy, and patience to make such a game on my own.
