This is just asking for feedback for another game concept I had.
Players spawn in an enclosed city area, just think anywhere in a semi-urban or urban city and players’ exploration is limited by barriers like walls, fences, vehicles, buildings, anything that keeps players inside the area while also feeling natural to the environment.
Their current goal at the start is to explore, collect food, find tools and weapons, and build bases; all to survive the passing days and the zombie apocalypse.
Players cannot harm each other, I want to encourage working together. But players can die from zombie attacks, starvation, falling, fires, etc. Additionally, being attacked by a zombie and escaping will give players a new stat: Infection. As the Infection progresses players will show more symptoms and eventually become zombies.
After a few days of surviving the area, a new area will be unlocked whether by opening an obvious new path or by allowing players to unlock previously inaccessible doors and gates. Players will be notified of the new area.
At this point players can choose to move to the new area or stay in their current area. Moving to the new area means players can loot more food and weapons. Obviously players can bring all this back to their bases in the old area. However, every time a new area is unlocked all previous areas will increase in difficulty–more and scarier zombies will spawn in those areas. Inevitably old areas will become so dangerous it’d be impossible to survive there.
There is an incentive to staying in old areas though: Air Drops will occur in them. Air Drops give players more advanced weapons than they could ever find normally in areas and players can get Anti-Infections.
Anti-Infections will reduce players’ Infection stat, allowing them to play as survivors for longer.
After the game progresses for long enough all areas will be unlocked and an Escape option will be presented. Players are prompted to construct or reach an escape vehicle or path; successfully doing so is the end of the game. This Escape option will appear in a random area.
Notes
I imagine the game places less focus on fighting zombie hordes and more on surviving a city full of zombies, so likely not intriguing to those who want intense action
Zombies spawn infinitely from certain points, an area cannot be entirely and permanently cleared of zombies
Base-building is more just fortifying a currently existing structure, and not building an entire fort from scratch
After players die they will become spectators, losing all their accumulated equipment. A timer is started and when it reaches zero a limited number of players are selected to join a separate human team, the rest are returned as survivors.
The selected players on the other human team are given the best equipment and spawned onto the map; their objective is to fight zombies and deliver supplies to survivor bases. Eventually they are removed and respawned as normal survivors, the equipment they spawn with is based on how successful they were in their previous mission.
Players who join the server will be teleported to the newest unlocked area and given a little bit of food.
The game will restart when no survivors are left, all survivors have escaped, or the Escape objective has been fulfilled and a timer has reached zero.
Players have an inventory limit, to encourage repeated trips throughout the map and prevent hoarding all resources from other players.
Possibly it’d be interesting to implement Skills, which affect how well players do something and what players can do at all.
Dude this is a really nice concept, and I could see myself playing this for hours and even having something like voice chat enabled in a game like this would be super fun
When I read the title I thought it would just be one of the zombie survival type of deal games but this concept its super nice and if executed correctly could actually yield some good returns in terms of players and popularity
So are players going to start in a lobby or are they going to start in like that enclosed city area, so like I think once players join they should start at the servers most recent unlocked area so there is no lobbies and players get straight into the action!
Like I said before I would love to try out this game if you can get a prototype out, you should create a devlog on youtube cause this is really nice concept man, good luck developing!
Great concept, I have to say, as @astraIboy said above me, the title made me think it was just going to be another generic zombie survival. Boy was I wrong!
Suggestions:(Just my ideas you don’t have to carry out any of them)
When I envision this concept I think of a more realistic game with futuristic lighting while still keeping the player’s original avatar.
Zombies still spawn during the day, but fewer and are confined to structures. When night falls it becomes a sort of raid on the players and players have to hunker down to survive.
Maybe a short mode and a long mode for those who like extended gameplay but also allows for those who don’t have as much time on their hands to play.
I was thinking of not doing lobbies and just putting players right into the game, because I think it’d be a lot more fun if players can start playing as soon as possible. Like I stated in the notes I’d spawn players into the newest area with some food to give them a boost, though the problem after that is whether a player with only food is competitive enough against a player who’s been looting since the start of the game.
A while back I actually was working on a round-based game and the problem I encountered was it was boring to wait, especially since rounds can go on indefinitely without a timer. So I want players to be able to start the game at any time and point.
However what can probably also happen is to make new players spectators and start the respawn timer and new players have a much higher chance of being selected. Therefore they’ll have a much easier join experience, being outfitted with the best weapons and all, and they’ll directly influence their beginning equipment.
I do like games that allow players to keep their avatar, it lets players enjoy their appearance and makes them easier to identify. For this concept I’m not leaning one way or the other, I imagine it’d depend on what is added and how visual appearance affects the game.
I did plan for zombies to spawn constantly regardless of the time of day and wander around everywhere.
But your idea here could definitely be beneficial. Clearing up streets during the day allows players to easily traverse the map and control their dangerous encounters and looting spots. And at night the hordes would bring more action into the game, allowing players to test everything they’ve built up to that point. I think this does put more incentive to gathering equipment and supplies, because with my original idea players can probably survive by only collecting food, hiding on rooftops, and running past zombies until enough days pass to unlock new areas.
The difficulty of night attacks can definitely be scaled based on older and newer areas, so players can move to what difficulty they prefer.
I understand that some people are short on time, or patience, or only play casually and don’t want long-game commitments. But I think shortening the time span of a game takes away from the feel I was aiming for. Possibly I can have more Escape options that occur throughout the game, but only a limited number of people can escape. Or I can allow players to save their progress so that they can pick up the game again when they have time.