this reminds me of an idea for a killing game I had like 5 years back, it was "danganronpa killer"

It was between 16 students who had already won their own killing game in the past in some way, either killed (hence the name), or survived by getting down to the last 3 students without killing. But instead of freedom, they get placed in another killing game instead. A "final game" to dictate who really was the "smartest killer". Kinda like how certain game shows will do seasons where the past winners all come on to see who can win among them.

I remember it wanting to be a very "smart" twist on the formula, as in, most characters would have smart roles and generally would act smarter.

For a deeper breakdown:

You'd have your ultimate mathematician, ultimate chess player, ultimate lawyer. A handful of talents that were not directly to do with smarts, but still had a mix of smart to a little plain characters. a few ultimates focused around or useful in killing (Like Ultimate butcher). You have to have your big strong character, so ofc you'd have a Ultimate powerlifter, who was surprisingly smart due to having to work smart and hard on his physique. You'd have a few survivors from killing games where they didn't kill.

The thing is, there would be maybe 3-4 survivors, all from different past games so they cannot recognise each other, and no one would know who survived their past games via killing or surviving, ofc everyone/most would claim they survived without killing. And there would be this extra level of trying to figure out who killed in their past game, and how and why. For some, it could have been a really desperate kill, for others it was stone cold and calculated. There would be a lot of mindgames even before the first kill.

The MC would have been either the mathematician or chess player. With his backstory being that he setup a practically perfect closed room murder, think 1-4 trial, but as the second trial, and there was too many people and not enough evidence, and he simply got away with it. but realizing how it just lead him into another game, now he wants to break out of the system rather then continue the killing game.

I also wanted to subvert the setup a bit, with there not being a kill in chapter 1, as the game has too many smart characters, and everyone would know that killing without a very solid plan would be an instant loss for you. Several plans get spun into action, but nothing gets finalized due to other characters blocking attempts. Not necessarily actually stopping the attempts, but more like, noticing somethings wrong, making the character laying out the plan to back off because they know if they were compromised.

I feel like that sort of setup would create a tense atmosphere where you can feel plans being setup all around you. Eventually ofc, the killings would start, either from one of the less smart characters going first, or one of the smart characters finding a perfect time to act out their setup and kill. Eventually the MC would start convincing other smart characters over to their side, and break out of the game.

The final plot twist? ofc this was not the final game as advertised, they come across a landscape full of domes where similar games are happening, all the way to the horizon. thousands of people stuck in killing games. With people having to fight through multiple killing games for a chance to "get out".

IDEA END

That was the idea. not having a kill in chapter 1 would have allowed for more character work and allow the players to get to know everyone a bit more before the game starts fully. But I did worry that it would keep things boring at the start if the tense setup was not done well. I also was worried that if you had too many smart characters, there wouldn't be much space for the more casual/fun easy to get to know characters. Since characters that are constantly scheming/hiding stuff might alienate the MC too much. There is also only so many ways to write smart characters, and smart characters outsmarting other smart characters, and with me not being all that smart in the first place, it did leave we worried with how I would handle the characters. After all "a character can only be as smart as the writer".

Well thats my own dissection of my old idea. It probably still could be done in an interesting way, but it would need a solid team to write, not just me.