GameIdeas.org

Yesterday I talked about the high level concept behind this exploration game. It’s an ambitious and interesting concept, but it has to be supported by good low-level gameplay to be fun. That’s what I want to cover today: how the game is controlled, what differentiate one character from another, how technology development works, how the game eventually finishes — that kind of stuff.

The Main Tasks

There are four main things you have to do in this game:

• Exploration: To discover the island and find everything you need.
• Building: To create the structures where the people stranded on this island will sleep, cook their food, work, etc.
• Collecting Resources: Everybody needs to eat and drink, but wood and metal are also needed to build everything else.
• Fighting: Wild animals and hostile natives sometimes need to be pushed back or killed if the group is to survive.

Each of those corresponds to a skill every character in your “tribe” has. If a character does a lot of a particular action, he’ll become stronger in one skill but not in the others. That way, as time goes on characters become specialized. Losing a highly skilled character could be a serious hit to your tribe, so you have to protect them.

Raising a skill will have multiple effects. Raising Exploration, for example, would make the character faster and give him a larger range of sight, while raising Fighting would make the character hit stronger and give him more hit points.

Controls

The point of view of the camera in the game and the controls are similar to those in a RTS. You can select one or more characters and assign them to a task by clicking an object (the trees to collect wood, an animal to attack, etc.).

Left to their own, the characters will act in a sensible way according to their highest skill: an explorer will explore the surrounding area while a resource collector will go collect missing resources. At the start of the game, characters won’t have any skills and will require closer management. As they gain skills, they will become more and more independent.

At the same time characters become more independent, managing the tribe becomes more complex because there are more individuals and more buildings to take care of. That way the complexity of playing the game doesn’t become too high, you just shift from controlling individual characters to caring about the tribe and island as a whole.

If left alone, skilled characters will be able to keep the status quo but won’t make any breakthrough. A builder may repair the existing buildings or even create a needed hut to sleep in, but creating a new type of building will require your specific order. Likewise an explorer would explore the surrounding area but wouldn’t go deep into the jungle without your instructions.

Technology

As characters get better at their skills, they gain new insights and ideas. These ideas are reflected in the discovery of new technology. That’s how the tribe improves: when a character reaches a threshold level in a skill, he invents a new device. If he comes back to the city to tell everyone, then everybody will be able to use that new technology.

Here are some examples of technologies for each skill. The full game would feature more.

• Exploration
• Backpack: It allows the explorer to carry food with him, so he can venture further before having to return to the camp.
• Aboriginal Language: Allows the explorer to communicate with the natives of the island for diplomacy
• Machete: Makes the explorer walk faster and makes him better able to defend himself
• Building
• Tools: Increases construction speed
• Building Types: Each building type is a new technology to develop
• Better Planning: Reduces the amount of resources needed for construction
• Collecting Resources
• Mining: Allows collection of metal (outside of from the remains of the wreckage)
• Tools: Increases collecting speed
• Plantation: Increases food production
• Fighting
• Weapons: Increases damage dealt
• Armor: Increases resistance to damage
• Bow and Arrow: Allows to attack from a distance

The End of the Game

So how does this game finishes anyway? There are four paths to victory, one for each skill. Finishing the game will thus require thorough mastery of at least one skill — although they’ll all be needed to some extent during the game.

• Exploration: Make peace will all the tribes on all the islands of archipelago and become influential enough to become the ruler of all the islands.
• Building: Create a boat that’s sturdy enough to travel on the high seas, back to civilization.
• Collecting Resources: Become self-sustaining enough that the tribe could live comfortably on the island indefinitely.
• Fighting: Exterminate everybody else in the archipelago.

Even when one of these goals is reached, the game will still let you keep playing for as long as you want. Some players like a directed experience with a specific goal, others like a more sandbox-like game — this way we please both types.

The End of Day 3

I hope you get a better understanding of how this would play. There still plenty of questions unanswered however — but that’s why we still have 2 days left to this exercise.

I’m pretty happy with the direction this game is going in. I got a few positive comments from friends — including some pressure to get today’s post done quicker — so I’m guessing it could make a pretty popular game.

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