Well, definitely not the one that I was hoping for. Which would have been “The End of the World” for which I had what I thought of as a fairly sad tale to tell through a puzzle/exploration platformer.

So I’m left with “You are the Villain”, which always makes me want to go a different direction. When you’re playing the Villian, it’s typically because you want to have fun being bad. You want to wreck stuff and feel a sense of domination over the weak. You want to be in control.

So, my idea is:

“Ransom from Space”: You are the leader of a interstellar crime syndicate, who use extortion, smuggling and other tactics, to make money from the various planets in your part of the arm. While smuggling and the other tactics are good for business, you’re a right bastard and prefer to use extortion.

So, you do things like:

Position meteorites into orbit around the planet, with the threat that you might bring them raining down upon the planet.

Threaten to release a plague upon a world.

Send out propaganda that you have a planet buster that you’ll use.

Of course, it’s a balance issue. If you follow through with a threat, planets will fear you more, but they’ll also be more willing to send their military after you. If you don’t follow through, people won’t fear you as much because you’ve got no spine.