A while back, a friend of mine had an idea for making a roguelike that played through, in the mathematical sense, multiple dimensions. He asked me to help him make it. For a while, we've been thinking of making something like a 3x3x3x3 grid of rooms, with the ability for you to move between rooms in two dimensions and having you solve puzzles to have the world rotate around you in all dimensions. Last night, however, I had an idea with a rather simpler implementation: have parts of the world rotating through the fourth dimension - that is, have certain things be there or not there depending upon the time of day you're playing the game (with cycles for at least most things being less or more than a day). To me, it seems that the advantage to the original idea is that the game would be more accessible to those who might have a relatively busy schedule, whereas I can actually visualize and relatively easily implement my newer idea.

My question for you is which you think would be a better concept overall for a game. I don't think any game to this point has used either idea (though it really wouldn't surprise me if something did); it's just a matter of which to do. If the original idea sounds better, I'm sure I'll be able to figure out all the necessary stuff; and if you think the newer plan could be better, then I guess I can just go with what I have in my head. Either way, I want to apply all my perfectionism and skills to this game to make it the best it can possibly be.

Thanks for your time!

As a final note, I don't use GM, so I'd prefer it if you were to not yell that stuff at me. :)

In the end, both ideas sound confusing (or at least, poorly explained here).  I would suggest that they avoid any game mechanic that requires a user to be playing at a specific time of day (this doesn't mean the 2nd option isn't usable, but another way to go about the 'time' system should be considered).  As a whole, I can't comment much further, because the specific details of both ideas aren't really given, so I don't know which sounds like a better/easier option.

~Brandon

Experimentation is never a bad idea but it be careful not to take it to extremes.  Most people who play games hate having control taken away from them.  By having them play only at certain times of the day may be taking too much control from them.  Then again, it does sounds like a novel idea which I wouldn't mind seeing implemented.  Is there a common ground between the two wherein real time does apply, but not too specific?  Without knowing the actual game mechanics I couldn't give specifics but there might be away.

By the way, your idea of rotating puzzle rooms immediately brought to mind the Canadian movie, Cube.  In it people are abducted and placed inside a grid of cubes that change depending on the way the puzzles inside are solved.  Most of the puzzles were lethal.  I'm not sure if it's a comparable idea as they don't incorporate time into the puzzles.