Story concept for a breeder/eater/sim game

Mare Kuntz · 2011-05-31T23:46:44

Here's the story concept for my latest game design idea, any comments/suggestions welcome. You are an alien, of a species of alien which has insect-like social structure. Except the important one is not a queen that hides in the nest producing eggs, it's an explorer/builder who creates a nest, explores to find resources and bring them home, battles enemies, and creates more aliens of assorted specialized types (well, that's sort of like laying the eggs). Let's call this special type of alien a Founder. You happen to be a young Founder who has just gotten kicked out of his birth nest (you were only supposed to be a worker but accidentally hatched as a Founder, and your Founder parent isn't ready to retire yet and won't/can't allow a competing founder to share the nest. So, alone and empty-handed you head off into the wilderness looking for a place to make your own nest. Along the way you encounter enemies and you battle them, kill them, and of course eat them. You're going to need to stock up all the energy you can get to start building up your own colony. At the end of the first level you get to the colony site. This is where the breeding and sim elements enter in. You can go out whenever you want to to fight and gather more energy and resources. Inside the nest you're safe, instead you spend your resources to build up your facilities, and you experimentally breed the few types of alien you initially know how to create in order to discover more and more specialized types. Specialized aliens open up new resource-processing capabilities, and processed resources can in turn used to be able to create new specialized types of alien. (Perhaps you need higher-quality nests to hatch higher-quality eggs). It might also be necessary to play a minigame to train your newly-created minions. The ultimate goal of the game is to have fully upgraded your nest and discovered all possible types of alien; basically, you would have mastered being a Founder. Perhaps the last type of alien you discover how to create is your own type, allowing you to create an heir (possible new game plus playing as the heir). So, does this sound fun? What would you add to the story to make it more immersive and emotionally involving? Anyone want to suggest a name for this game?