Here’s a few other game ideas that I have been thinking about and running technical tests on Shiva/iPhone:
An Ant Attack / Zombie survival game where you live in a ‘block city’, with moveable blocks and maybe some limited crafting. You need to eat to survive, esccape the zombies etc. Early tests indicate that the iPhone is incapable of maintaining a reasonable framerate with a realistic number of separate blocks in-game. Although Shiva does have a nice mesh-merge feature, it is limited to static objects (for obvious reasons). I experimented with the idea of having the separate blocks stored offscreen and then merged to create a new single onscreen mesh every time a change happens, but you’re looking at a substantial processing hit each time. So.. non runner, for now.
A solar system ‘Gravity Game’ – you have some kind of target that you need to try to hit. There are planets in the game, which influence your projectile via gravity. You place additional planets of varying mass in order to get your projectile’s trajectory correct in as few moves as possible.
A 3D/pseudo-3D space flight game where you fly around the solar system, perhaps doing freeform activities such as defending yourself against pirates/asteroids, mining, trading, perhaps doing some scripted missions. The planets and moons could move in their orbits, so to get fuel- and time- efficient travel you need to time your flights well and your trajectories correctly.