I think (?) it was Zaratustra who pointed out
the Loom game engine, which is a currently-free set of developer tools designed for creating iOS/Android/Windows/Mac games.
I believe we're all familiar with my history of loudly committing to projects before slinking into the night, never to be heard from again, but that's kind of an obligatory tradition around here. Perhaps we should reminisce about Exquisite Knorpse 3 and The Mayor and various other half-started gestures toward game creation and consider some pitfalls that this project would need to avoid if it's to have any success?
It seems like the major fuel that these projects run on is the interest of the community—peoples' confidence in your concept, their emotional engagement, personal goodwill, excitement, lack of distractions, and willingness to volunteer their time and energy. This resource is easy to squander and hard to regain once lost.
To keep interest high, give people simple, concrete goals that are easy to achieve in a relatively short period of time. While people like to be involved in planning and they want a creative stake in what they're working on, there's a real danger of wasting time, energy, and interest in nebulous, high-level discussions that lack structure, goals, or any way to demonstrate that the attention being spent is actually furthering the project. Feel free to take peoples' advice and recommendations. Do not succumb to design (or worse,
management) by committee.
I'm glad you're doing this, Kazz. I want to help, but I'm the last person who should make any sort of public commitment to that end: I'm a flaky motherfucker with terrible time-management and way too much going on in my personal life. Give me tasks, though—a big list of tasks that people are racing to finish, while interest is high and progress is tangible—give me tasks like that, and I'll probably
still flake out at the last minute, but not before announcing my intention to finish more tasks than any other single contributor.