I'm putting together an idea for a survival game.

Essentially, the game revolves around you being dumped in a world that consists of a variety of different environments (jungle, dessert, arctic). The world will be inhabited by:

A) Non-player animals, a varied ecosystem ranging from tiny ants to big dangerous things.
B) Other players who have also been dumped in a wilderness, motivated by survival, probably friendly, probably after your gear. Who knows.

Your entire goal is to survive, decide whether to set up a camp/shelter or just to go nomad. If you bite the dust, I think the game will give you a simple permadeath end message along the lines of "You survived for 4 Months - 2 Days - 10:12:32".

The question is, what should the players start with?

I want the game to be extremely harsh, so survival carries a sense of satisfaction, but also risk. I am thinking that the players should just have the set of overalls on their back and their wits.

What do you think, would it be fairer to go down the DayZ route and give them a pistol and a tin of beans? Maybe a knife or even a survival kit?

I don't want to doom the players (I secretly do), nor do I want an over abundance of pistols with empty magazines kicking around on the jungle floor.

Your thoughts.

Actually, I think I would have each one start with radomized gear. That way each time you play it's a unique experience right from the beginning.

Sure they will also be players that will restart until they get the item they want, but I believe if you limit the possible starting gear and if each item on it's own is just a small step to survival then it will work.

Offtopic:

Also I would consider having only very few actual weapons and mostly just stuff you can find in a normal household, maybe shops, hardware stores.

For example if you take a look at the walking dead, all characters in the series are armed to the teeth. If you take a look at your own environment, would you really have easy access to such an arsenal in case a zombie outbreak happens? If you live in a country with reasonable gun controls, it's very unlikely that you can come up with a way to get your hands one some. E.g. in Germany the only places I would expect weapons are:

a) the police stations

b) military stations

c) shooting ranges

d) ambassies

e) maybe a few selected security services

f) some hunters home or maybe from one of the selected few that did actually do the paperwork to get a permit

Though even if you know that there might be guns, they are all locked up, the only way to get to them is crack the safe or get them from someone who has access to the gun. (There is always the black market, but let's assume the normal citizen doesn't shop there regularly.)

In any case, I think it's not only more reasonable, but it can also be used to make the game much harder.

Yes, for the few that do find a gun, it would be a huge advantage, people could rob you at gun point, hold you hostage and whatever they might come up with and they are more inclined to try, since the probability that the other person has a gun and shoots first are tiny. If you do combine this with a very limited ammunition supply guns could make players kings, but only as long as they can convince people that they will actually use them.

I think you should start with 4 random things from this list;

1 matchbox

1 utility knife

2 days rations of food

10' of rope

1 8x8' tarp

1 flashlight with 3 nights worth of battery life

3 16oz full water bottles

all of these things you should be able to make/find throughout the world. If my list is is missing something, feel free to add to it.

Hi,

I think you should do what shadowomf said, giving randomised gear. But I think you should make it so the player get given a flashlight, 999 guns, 999999999999 ammo...

Also, I like the ide of following the lines of DayZ, but I would suggest something a bit more like The War Z.

Lastly, don't make it too violent or scary, so you could $ cash $ in on a younger audience.

Cheers,

duckwolrd.

I dont like the idea of guns being main tools in this game. They seem both hard to find and too easy to use. It throws off the balance of scavenging difficulty and alternative building that are the main strategies that I see in it.

The action in the game is going to be tick-based and text-based, but there will be a graphical representation of the sector of map that you are in showing the basic positions of you, other entities, items etc...

I want the game to look like you are in a control room, looking at a radar representation of what is going on.

I want the items to be attribute based, so for example, you might have a collection of sticks that you have pulled off a tree. One might have a sharpness of 87% another might have a sharpness of only 4%. You wouldn't be able to use sticks with a sharpness of less than, say, 30% as tent pegs, but you would need sticks of a sharpness of at least 70% to use them as eating utensils.

This way, the crafting will hopefully have a lot of depth. Using a rock to bang a stake in the ground might reduce the weight or strength attribute of the rock etc...

It would be interesting to see how players would use this from an emergent gameplay point of view. One famous example is Minecraft, YouTube is choc-full of videos showing how to make different player-designed mob traps - so hopefully, by giving the players some sandbox elements, and a robust crafting system, the game items will design and evolve themselves in some way.

To this end, short of basic elements like trees and leaves, I want to keep the number of non-player-made items to a minimum. The whole architecture of the game is up to the gamers, if this happened, the players might even form an online civil society (they won't).

Good suggestions everyone.