Tradewinds - Time to get working

**Tradewinds** -

How is the game going to work?

Ah, we meet once again. Hello, I’m Joshie (softdevv) and I’ve been doing some interesting things recently. Anyways, that’s not the point. In this post, I want to discuss what I’ll be doing for the game. The systems, the different mechanics, all that good stuff. Alright, let’s get started.

Well, you’ve already heard of these lines, haven’t you?

Tradewinds is an open-world trading and exploration game where you can trade, battle, craft, mine, farm, and much more!

Yes. Yes, you have.

You already know that the game will be an open-world and exploration game, where trading is most emphasized. I’ve decided that if I want this game to be the best it can be, I need to follow these five pillar-type rules.

Everything I will be working on, for example, farming, will:

  1. Be engaging
    I want the player to feel like they’re doing something which makes them feel accomplished or at least help them in reaching success in the game. So, farming should be satisfying (to an extent) and give the player back what effort they put in.

  2. Serve a purpose
    This ties in with the first point. Why would you do something that won’t change anything? Something that you’re doing for the sake of doing it? Of course, you wouldn’t do that. In this example, farming should provide you wth resources, make you a better player or help you in your quest to be whatever you want to be.

  3. Be consistent
    The game shouldn’t suddenly change the mechanics of a certain thing, like farming. Imagine a game where the way you plant wheat seeds would always keep changing? It wouldn’t be a fun game, because the player would always have to learn the new changing mechanics, and the game would feel like a chore. Instead, keeping the mechanics familiar, similar, and consistent will keep the game like a game and not a chore.

  4. Tie in with the core game
    Basically, if the core game is a trading game where you trade. Farming should be at least a little involved with that. Players will trade farmed resources for new resources.

  5. Be somewhat original and unique
    Although I won’t be extremely good at this, I’ll always try to add new and interesting mechanics to the game to keep it somewhat original. For example, I might add a new way to cultivate farmed resources, maybe a way for an NPC to do it for you. There’s always something to add to make it original and unique.

You’re free to replicate (plagiarise jk) the techniques I’m using here to build my game. But these pillars should (hopefully) be able to guide Tradewinds in the right direction.

Now I want to discuss the entire reason the game is about trading in the first place. One factor is because I like the idea of it, but the second is because there’s another thing I will be adding to the game to make it super interesting (hopefully) is…

A sword arena

Yeah, original huh? Well… It’s not exactly the most interesting or original but it could work. You trade or make your own resources to get ready for the arena. Where you will be able to get more resources if you win. I’m not going to discuss the entirety of it (because there are a lot of game idea stealers around) but in my opinion and a lot of others, it makes the game a little more interesting.

I was originally going to put a whole list of the different things I will be doing but I think there’s too many game idea stealers and also I think I’m going to let you wait until the game releases so then the game isn’t just spoilt in its entirety.

Well, I’m going to leave now. Thank you for reading and I’ll see you later!