I’ve been creating my Survival game for a while now, like Booga Booga and Survival 303. My concern is my game is becoming too similar to theirs in terms of mechanics. I want to have something that makes my game more original and standout while also being fun.
I’m out of ideas as to what to do. I was thinking some sort of Magic mechanic, but I feel this will subtract from the ‘survival’ aspect of the game too much.
I’ve only just started work on the actual game (been mainly doing planning).
Can anyone suggest some ideas or mechanics that they think would be a good idea?
Mechanics I already have:
Crafting
Tribes
Combat (I have decided to make this a bigger focus)
Building (I also have decided to let people build castles as opposed to small villages)
Random events are something that you should add to stir the game a little around, instead of just stale combat and survival. Such random event could be a natural disaster.
I’d like to suggest the feature to declare war on opposing tribes. Maybe these wars can be declared by comparing Means between the members of a tribe and their level? I feel like it would be uneven to match two level 10’s against two level 2’s. For further elaboration)
Let’s say Tribe 1 has the following members:
Level 10
Level 4
Level 8
The mean level of Tribe 1 is approximately 7.
But let’s say Tribe 2 has the following:
Level 5
Level 7
Level 4
Level 8
The mean level of Tribe 2 is 6.
You can maybe create a system that allows a tribe to send a declaration of war to another tribe only if the means of both tribes are in a certain range to each other, and the other tribe must accept? So, that would mean that Tribe 1 CAN declare war against Tribe 2.
Sorry if this was confusing. I just felt I should explain in more context of what I was talking about. Please excuse any grammar mistakes.
Oooh yes that is a good idea.
Booga Booga also has this, so I still think it is a good idea, I just don’t think it’s enough to make my game different from theirs.
It will depend how I do it. But natural disasters, or NPCs that turn up (like raiders) is a good idea.
I think it will get people working together more and certainly add more interest to the game. By default, people can attack anyone not in their tribe.
Certainly an idea I will look into, it’s just a matter of figuring out how to make it work effectively when players can already kill who they want. Perhaps some sort of special “tribal war currency” would work well for this.
I’ve always thought a more PvE-focused survival game would be fun. I like building my home & such, and I don’t even mind getting thumped bad by the computer (see: terraria), but I don’t like the social dynamic that games such as Apocalypse Rising or Booga Booga have. I don’t want the sight of another human to make me think: “oh god, they’re gonna try to kill me and burn my house down”. I want the sight of a human to usually mean good things.
For me, this would make the game stand out.
Edit: I’ll also say, if you’re gonna do PvE, make the enemies a real threat. In apocalypse rising, the zombies may as well not even be there. They aren’t a threat. Your only threat is other people. Tribe Sim is another good example of enemies which are not really a factor in the game.
While I definitely could see value in making the starting area pretty safe, there should be places where the difficulty scales. ARK does this really well. The beach is quite safe, but the game compels you to go into the jungle/swamp/whatever and explore, so you can eventually ramp up your difficulty when you’re ready.
Maybe you can make opposing tribe members in war drop more items then usual. Maybe 2x as much? This will most likely get people declaring war often so that they can progress faster in the game. I also like the idea of War Currency. I would love to see how this game turns out.
I guess to do this, your tribe would have to save and be permanent. Though this might be getting too ambitious at this point, as it would require more dedication from players but it means tribal wars would be a lot more fun.