The first game we're looking into doing for senior team is a game called Magnetix. In this game you play as an electromagnet in a puzzle platform environment. We have ideas of exploring magnets and different things that magnets can do too add to the fun of this puzzle game.
For this first week though I created a prototype that shows off the base mechanic. This prototype has attracting and repulsing abilities for the player. In order to do this I first had arms that rotate around a single axis. From here the player could left/right click and shoot out attraction/repulsion lines in the direction the arms are facing. This was done by simply adding force relative to the direction the arms are facing.
As you can see in the image above the attraction lines can be used to move the player towards objects. This can be useful to get to higher platforms.
The other option is to use repulsion. In the image above it is used on an object directly below the player to shoot him strait up. This could be used to get over areas that maybe have traps in a pit but there is a magnetized area to push off of.
Overall this prototype was successful in showing that these sort of physics can be fun. As soon as you jump in and play around it is kinda fun, even though there isn't much of a game yet. Based on that reaction alone it seams this game could have some good potential.
