Barn Buddy, Tower Defense, and Shooters Mashup.

Barn Buddy on facebook is a very addictive game spreading among friends very fast. People spend hours and hours on it (including my wife) and some even set reminders for harvesting. Ability to interact with friends is the core attraction point of the game.

However there are some people who think the game is too silly or not challenging enough or not their preferred genre of play. That includes me. I'm a strategy game fan and like tower defense games and chess etc. Then there are people who like shooters like Counter Strike and Unreal Tournament (again including me). These different groups are currently isolated from each other and shares nothing across the game genres.

What if we could have all these different types of games to interact with each other? For example, someone playing barn buddy could define a defended path to his barn to protect it from others stealing. He could invite a friend (hire, in terms of the game) who likes tower defense games to protect the path by building towers. Someone who wants to steal from that barn could invite (hire) one of his friends to infiltrate the barn by playing the defended path.

One important point here is that the two game screens (barn and the defended path) will be completely different. They in fact could be two completely separate games developed by different people. The games will be played independently, but will interact when someone crosses the defended path and enters the barn etc.

Another example would be for the barn owner to hire security guards, and the one who wants to steal, to hire mercenaries. The guards and the mercenaries can battle it out on a shooter style game. If the guards win there'll be no entry to the barn or vice versa.

This game play might also be attractive in ways such as for example a guy could fight to defend a girls barn and try to be her hero etc.

Practically implementing this is not that difficult either. Since these games can be developed independently and interacts only through strictly defined interfaces, the additional complexity involved would be low. Even existing games could be made to interact this way. The best place to try this would be on facebook, and probably with barn buddy.