13. Fables

The license: Snow White. The Big Bad Wolf. Little Red Riding Hood. The characters from the stories you heard growing up are real, and they're living in a part of New York known clandestinely as Fabletown.

Or, at least, they are now, since they were pushed out of their mystical home worlds by a shadowy Adversary (later revealed to be a well-known fable himself).

While the bulk of the story focuses on the relationships and day-to-day lives of the Fables, a brewing battle between the Fables and the forces of The Adversary would provide a good groundwork for a game.

The game: Take one part SimCity, on part Warcraft III and a healthy helping of traditional storytelling and you've got the basis for a Fables game.

The SimCity portion would involve maintaining the needs of the various citizens of Fabletown, keeping them all happy while building up defenses against the Adversary.

When the inevitable attack comes, a Warcraft-style real time strategy battle would ensue, putting the player's previously-built defenses to the test. The supernatural powers of the fables themselves provide the extra juice to keep thing interesting.

The developer: The mix of real-time stagy and world-building would seem ideal for Level 5, which had a similar mix with their Dark Cloud series. Blizzard or Firaxis would also be good candidates, for obvious reasons.