Patrick Curry's Snow Day

Patrick Curry, currently working on the next-gen John Woo title Stranglehold has a blog where he posts short, interesting idea kernels for games. His most recent post, entitled Snow Day, really grabbed my attention. From the post: "Snow Day is an open-world game where you play as a kid in a small town that's been completely snowed in. The schools and businesses are all closed, so for this one day the kids can do whatever they want! You can have a snowball fight, make a snowman, make snow-angels, or build a fort. As you explore the town you find items that unlock new activities, like sledding, skiing, snowboarding, and ice-skating ... Snow Day gets really interesting when you start thinking of it as a multiplayer game. Suddenly the casual activities turn into a tournament, a sort of Winter Olympics for kids. Snow Day has most of the classic gameplay archetypes... exploring, racing, and some very light combat. But it also has creative gameplay, in building forts, snowmen, and all of the other ways you could manipulate the environment." Some of his other game idea posts include Oval Office, a president sim, and Freelance Foto, an on-the-run photojournalist game.