It's actually not as ambitious as it seems (I don't think). Most of what I've described is justification about how to plan for your holiday, or more realistically, how your annual budget affects your end-of-the-year spending. It's a layered system that affects the challenge so that there is a challenge from year to year. But the only thing the player is responsible for is handling choices that might pop up during the fast-forward section. The actual game is the yard decoration and subsequent comparison to the other neighbors' yard decorations, which might still be ambitious.
What was the game you worked together with Royal on?
It's called "Nativity" and it was the game that attempted item limits long before item limits were a plotscripted function on the OHR. I don't remember the details anymore, but the gist of it was that you played either a shepherd or a wise man and you were competing against the other shepherds or wise men to bring the best gifts to the newborn Jesus. I think you had to scour specific locations for items (as many as a hundred to choose from), and then trade them for better items elsewhere, until you had the best combination of gifts (like myrrh, frankincense, etc.) to present. The catch was that you could only carry up to eight items at a time, and you could only offer up to five of them once you got to the manger. The shepherds and wise men were going to have different quests, and I think their competitive natures were also going to be different. Again, I've forgotten my plans for the game, but I think they're written down somewhere. The game has an introduction, a location selection screen, and (I believe) a list of the planned items to find--if they're not in the game, they are in a document somewhere on my computer. Royal got his job with Core in the middle of its development, so production on the game ceased almost as quickly as it started.
I'm attaching the old game file to this post if you want to have a look. Actually, the document was sitting next to the other relevant files, so everything related to the game, as far as I know, is in the zip file.
EDIT: I'll attach to a PM. I can't do it here.
The plan was to have two parts to the game. Part 1, to be released Christmas 2002, was the version I described above. Part 2, to be released Christmas 2003, was to be the game I'm pitching you now.
So, segue...
I'll get more invested in the detail later if you're interested in choosing this. If you don't choose it, I may still make it for myself someday. But the gist for the gameplay is like this:
Basic Information:
You're competing against Garrison Hatte and nine other neighbors for the Christmas crown by designing the best Christmas scene in the neighborhood. The Christmas scene takes place primarily in your front yard, but you can also build on your front porch, your roof, your backyard, and your living room. You have between 6:00pm and 10:00pm every night between December 1st and December 15th to work on your scenes. Judging begins on the 16th.
The judges look for creativity, utilization, aesthetics, and freshness of technology, so you want to take into consideration what you display, where you display it, how nice it looks, and how new it is. Some items work well near counterparts, while others may ruin a scene. For example, it might be nice to put Santa in his sleigh behind his reindeer (three different set pieces), but not so great to put him next to Mary in the manger scene. You might get a creativity point for a move like that, but you'll also lose a few utilization points for it, since the judges might find it tacky or offensive. Another example might be placing a snowman in the living room looking through the window. Creative, yes. Well utilized, no. And if that snowman is drooping from age, his aesthetics score will tank. Part of the game might be to decide which points are more important. All four categories would get their own score, so even though the overall score will affect whether you get the crown, each individual category score will affect your end game rating (which you'll have because all of my games have some kind of rating at the end).
Choosing your items comes from two different sources: the stores and your basement.
Buying new items at the store will keep your technology score relatively high (if you buy among the hottest trends, which can get expensive), but utilizing last year's decorations (which you'll store in your basement) will keep your budget intact.
Whether you use items you buy that year or leftovers from years past, you still have to mind the value cap, which is separate from your surplus budget. The cap is an imaginary value that gets deductions for every item used in the display. The budget is the money you actually have to spend, which can be well over the cap, or well under if you planned your year badly.
All items have an attached value, but basement items depreciate over time, so, let's say that plastic yard candy cane you bought for $100 last year will be worth only $90 this year, so even though you're not spending any money on it, you still have $90 going toward your cap limit (as opposed to $100 a year ago). Using leftovers means the possibility of using more items, but it may not be enough to help your technology score overcome your competitors' technology scores.
The stores will sell both new and used items, so you're not stuck with only the latest and the greatest if you go shopping one night. But the basement will always have used items (unless your profession is an engineer or inventor and you win a random event where you build one of your decorations).
Basements have storage limits, so you may have to throw things out or sell them if you hoard too many different items over time.
Putting things too close to the basement heater or under leaky pipes could ruin their aesthetic value the following year.
Actual Gameplay:
You choose your items via menus or mouse/icons, and you place them with either the mouse or a cursor (whichever seems easier on the design).
Setting items will require both placement and rotation, so most items will use sprites or NPCs to represent them on the map.
Living rooms can be selected in the navigation menu (indoor, outdoor), to which the map will change.
Natural landscape can contribute to each scene for free, so having an elf hanging from the branch of a tree over a pool of dry ice will help your creativity without damaging your cap.
Backyard scenes are worth half the value of front yard scenes, and are better left unused unless the scene utilizes a walking path.
Sticking to themes will increase utilization scores. Arranging the themes in an interesting way (using elves instead of reindeer to power the sled) will increase creativity without damaging utilization. Mixing themes will increase creativity, but may damage utilization if the mixture is too off-the-wall or offensive.
Planning a scene requires getting the item (from the store or the basement), placing the item, or moving an item. Each action comes with action points. Only so many action points can be spent per hour of game time. So, if you choose a mode that allows for 40 action points per hour, you can plan for 160 action points a night. Each hour counts for a turn, so your neighbors will make their plans (using the same number of action points) after you make yours.
Shopping costs more action points than scouring the basement.
Placing larger items requires more action points than placing smaller items.
Some items or actions may have point values higher than 40 (or whatever we determine works best). Those actions will roll over into the next hour or hours, depending on how big of a job it is (setting lights, for example, may take all night).
You can check out your neighbors' progress after 10:00, but each neighbor you spy on will take 30 minutes of your time. If you try to spy on all ten, you'll use up five hours of your night, which means you'll get to bed at 3 am, which means you won't sleep well, which means your action point limit will severely decrease the following night. Every neighbor you visit after 11:00 will decrease your maximum action points per hour by a fifth of the limit the next night. On the hard difficulty, you'll only get a tenth of it back the following night if you go to sleep before 11:00, so it would take about four days to get your maximum back up if you don't spy on your neighbors any other night. Easy and normal difficulties would refresh the limit to its maximum any night following an early bedtime.
If you check out a neighbor's display during your design time (between 6:00 and 10:00), you'll use up half of that hour's action points, or more if you didn't get any sleep the night before, so do so sparingly.
So, that's the core gameplay.
I can break down the different items available, their costs, AP, etc. and how they would affect scoring in another post, as well as who your neighbors are and what their personalities are like. But this should give you a stronger idea what the actual game is.