Playing a game with the prospect of getting less and less powerful?
I think the idea in itself is enough - do we really need to PLAY it?
If this is what passes for originality - then I have quite a few brilliant ideas of my own.
How about instead of figthing monsters, we make love to them?
Nah, what about instead of acquiring increasingly cool looking weapons, we go from the +5 Vorpal Sliceblade right to the rusty Spoon at the very end - where we don't fight a huge dragon demon, but a really angry animated grape?
YES!
On the other hand, sometimes there is a reason for the way things are - and sometimes it is enough to question something, without actually DOING it in reverse.
Here's a secret for that once-amusing mouthpiece:
Game mechanics and game design in general act as the UNDERPINNING to the experience, or the story.
So, if you're tired of WoW or you're tired of the traditional level to max paradigm - you don't necessarily reverse the mechanics. What you do, is you tell a good story - or you make a strong experience on the whole. Mechanics can always be improved and they can be taken to new levels.
But these magical reverses never work, because they ignore the entire foundation of why the core paradigm was established in the first place.
So, while you might very well tell a brilliant tale with reverse levelling - it would not be BECAUSE of the reverse levelling, but because you told a brilliant tale.
It might work ONCE for the novelty - and the amusing part. But then it would never work again.
Sort of what happens when you've seen Memento for the first time. It was neat, it was new, and oh-la-la…. But then… You try again, and it's boring as hell. Why? Because stories don't actually improve by being told in reverse.
(I know it's probably all a big joke - but just in case...)