I've been brainstorming the themes for a few days, have come up with a few ideas related to the themes as well as things I've wanted to flesh out / experiment with a bit more from the tech stack / implementation side as well.

What I've come up with so far:

Tech Stack

- client will be Unity3d with NGUI & other related assets that I have licensed from the store

- Have been playing around with Photon a bit recently, it's pretty easy to get some basic networked gameplay working, think I'd like to see where I can take this in the time allotted.

- I've also been playing around with Azure quite a bit lately, might try and hook in a simple API server for storing player stats / details if I get that far.

- GameAnalytics - definitely want to incorporate some basic analytics so I can see if anyone's playing / how they're playing etc.

Themes

Emptiness

could relate to the game environment (empty space ship?), the player (empty object that needs to be filled to unlock powers / abilities?), or maybe it's more of a good / bad 'soul' meter? My youngest son has been reading a great book called 'how full is your bucket', this idea of a bunch of characters with buckets that you can drain or fill is intriguing…

Possession

you could possess other characters? be posssessed by a force that gives you powers? need to possess some kind of artifact to complete the objective? dungeon master style (god game where you don't actually have a physical presence, just command characters around to do your work?)

Shadows

- could be simply related to the environment - spooky dark environment? Or could be more sublte, where the player must accomplish their tasks without attracting the attention of the muggles? I love the 'God of Light' game for android (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.playmous.godoflight&hl=en) where the whole point of the game is to bring 'light' to the world through puzzles. something similar would be interesting to play around with…

Genre

- I'm always partial to something sci fi, so the abandoned space station concept is appealing, or something in the dead of space, etc…

- one of my favorite movies of all time is Pitch Black, having something set on a planet with a very long day / night cycle, etc…

Hmmm…