Hi! I'm a new guy here and I've had this game idea rolling in my mind for a better part of a year now. I would appreciate any comments, impressions or suggestions you may have.

Project Night Z

Project Night Z is an AI team management game.

It's zombie apocalypse. A few survivors have banded together to fight the zombies. At day they build defenses and at night they fight hordes of zombies. The zombie horde keeps increasing every day they stay put and at some point they must abandon their base and start anew. All the while trying to reach a mythical safe haven far in the horizon.

Gameplay

You have a level of control akin to Dungeon Keeper. You give tasks for the survivors to do, like building a barricade, setting up a machine gun point, fixing the truck etc. and the AI team members will carry them out.

Survivors must gather supplies and building materials from the surrounding area. If you run out of supplies you must send a team to collect some farther away.

The AI team members have skills which determine their efficiency with given tasks. The more they use a skill, the better they become with it. They have an inventory and you decide who carries which weapon or item.

At day only a trickle of zombies wander around but at night there will be hordes of them. The more noise you make during your stay, the more zombies are attracted to your position. At some point you must abandon the camp site or be overrun. You can carry only so much and must decide what to take to your new camp site, as the game progresses you may find a vehicle and be able to carry more.

There are two screens in the game: camp site screen and map screen. When you move the camp you go into a map screen, where you move your caravan and you must decide a new camp site. Traveling on the map will consume supplies and eventually you must camp and restock. Where you decide to camp on the map will define your camp site area, like if you camp near a gas station your camp site will have a gas station next to it.

You start on one side of the map and your goal will be to travel to a specific place or places to win the game.

Other design thoughts (not fleshed out yet)

-Modable (including AI)

-Randomized events requiring users input

-Somewhat random overall map. So you won't have the same experience on every play-through

-Random(ish) starting group of survivors. You may gain or lose some along the way

-Character personality diagram. Defines how well survivors get along. Decisions concerning one character may trickle down to others as well

-Character back story. Tells who they were before the apocalypse. Defines starting skills.

-Likely to be made with Unity. Mainly because I'm more interested of making a game rather than an engine.

My next steps

-Write down more in-depth design document of the game.

-Make an AI demo. I'm thinking of using behavior trees and something to facilitate the moving of masses of characters at once (crowd fields or flow fields or whatever it's called).

A bit about me

I'm working in a small Finnish indie game team, making our first game on mobile devices. You can check us out at: http://hammerspace.eu/ . Right now this is a solo side project but hopefully I can sell this to the team and get the whole team working on it. Even if not, I will be pursuing this in my free time.

Full disclosure: I am former teacher of Jaerom (he was in a year long course about software and game development) and I am more than happy to help him and comment about this project.

My first thought when reading this was following: Zombies are fairly worn out and cliche subject. I also think that the main attraction in memorable survival-horror is that humans themselves are their own worst enemy.

I think that this kind of game would thus profit from having characters have different personalities that would force players to think who to sent out to do what with whom. For example old Jagged Alliance used this concept. Furthermore, I think that system where player can choose persona for "her own character" would increase player immersion and fit the genre.

You have a level of control akin to Dungeon Keeper.

I hope you just meant top-down view.

DK allowed the player to grab creatures and drop them anywhere in the dungeon.

There are two screens in the game: camp site screen and map screen. When you move the camp you go into a map screen, where you move your caravan and you must decide a new camp site. Traveling on the map will consume supplies and eventually you must camp and restock. Where you decide to camp on the map will define your camp site area, like if you camp near a gas station your camp site will have a gas station next to it.

I like this part, it's like level-select but full control to the player.

What kind of advantages/disadvantages can the player see on the map-screen ?

Agreed about the zombie trope. There are other themes that can encompass various aspects of the zombie vibe, for example:

• A plague (preferably one where the infected stay alive and infectious for a long time).
• Parasites (alien or otherwise).
• Humans in a hive mind or other technological controls (a la the Borg and various others).
• Demon possession.
• Non-sentient aliens (either that ended up on Earth by accident or as part of a terraforming attempt).

This has been very intriguing read and I agree with pretty much all here. That said...

About the Zombie. What I would like the enemies to be is slow moving and move to attack you as a swarm. This is mainly because your level of direct control is so limited and I want your survival to depend on your defensive planning. The zombie fits in those shoes so very nicely.

Another plus for the zombie is that you don't have to explain the term zombie to anybody. When you see a zombie in a game you immediately have an impression of it, you know what it does and you can plan your defenses accordingly. With a new creature you have to educate the player how the creature works and how the player should react to it.

I don't have any particular affinity to zombies and so far they are merely convenient. Hmmm...

There is potential in a new creature. You could really play with it, it's introduction, it's appearance and it could lead to all kinds interesting things. Hmmm. Hmm. I shall have to ponder on this.

Very cool idea about the players character being in the safe haven. However, that would indicate that the characters would be saved in the end. I was thinking of leaving it very obscure. If the player character was not in the safe haven, you would hear radio broadcasts urging you to come there and promising safety. So much so that the player would start to doubt the authenticity of the broadcasts. Really build up the safe haven and when you reach it...

And so I don't know where to place the players character or whether the player should have one. I don't like the idea of the player prioritizing his own character over others but I do want the player to feel connected. I will ponder on this as well.

Thanks for all the posts! It has been very fruitful.