I'm not asking as a question for legal advice for my own situation, I'm just curious.
One of my favorite puzzle games is Devil Dice, an old PS1 title that had one sequel and then I believe the concept has been unused for 20 years. If an independent developer made a game that has identical gameplay, but didn't use any iconography like textures, logos, characters, etc from the "source material", can they legally publish that for money?
I think on games like Tetris, it would be impossible to release a Tetris clone without approval, and TTC is known to be litigous about it. But what if you made a block stacking game but didn't use the same shapes, or the matrix was wider/thinner, change it enough mechanically but the concept is the same. What would the ramifications be?
There's a lot of older games, especially puzzle games, that never really left the console it was on. Some of which even have cult followings. I always wondered why no indie games ever came out to replicate their mechanics, so I wonder if it's a legal difficulty.
