I'm currently designing a video game which is meant to be both playable by bots and humans.1
Here are the high level ideas:
1. The game is a game of incomplete information, they are on a map (2d array) where they only have a certain vision radius. However, the random function that is used to generate the game map is known, only the seed of the function is not known.
2. The game is an MMO, where users search around the map to find their friends/enemies. PVP is always on.
3. The game rewards smart play over heavy grinding.
4. Players have to search for save points. A save point is consumed once it is found. Save points have a maximum level threshold, so if you are a high level it is harder to "save." When you die you go back to your save point and you lose everything you gained between the time you last saved and the time you died.
5. The game is rate limited by something around 200ms. Each 200ms can be considered a "round." To be playing optimally a player must then be able to send a response to the server every 200ms. Players have ids that determine their move order (lowest id goes first).
6. Potentially we could raise the game rate to something like 10s. And then each player effectively batches up a series of moves that looks like "UUURRDDL" for "up up up right right down down left" The game then runs its code on the server, and sends backa reply to the user informing them of what happened.
To be continued.