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As said before the full scope of the game is not done.
The ideas might change or i might stop working on it.
So don't focus on what is written here too much.
The idea is to have multiple phases where one gameplay mechanic is more dominant.
The same gameplay mechanic might be important in one phase and useless later.
Here is a list of the intended phases:
intro
initial introduction
first challenges
introducing more mechanics
competition
endless mode
summary
The very first contact with the game should be some intro movie or cutscene.
The player should have to basically do nothing in that phase.
I just consider it part of a proper game and needed to set the mood.
Experienced players should be able to skip all of that by pressing ESC.
There are 2 intro movies at the moment.
One for the game itself and one for the start of the scenario.
While i'd be happy to have more, it is a lot of work to create these movies.
So don't expect more in the near or later future.
== initial introduction == back to top
The first phase should be something simple. Just teaching the very basics.
Movement and the most important menus should be tought here.
Experienced players should be able to skip this phase effectively or prepare for later phases.
In current implementation, this is the chase phase.
The player needs to run from the initial spawn location to a base.
Enemies need to avoided, but that should be easy with some training.
I'd like to have multiple variants of this.
Ideally every run would have a different entry point with a different story set up.
But for now and the foreseeable future that is unlikely to happen
== first challenges == back to top
After learning the basic controls the player should be presented one aspect of the game.
There should be some challenges to complete and some guidance on how to do it.
Other aspects of the game should be available, but the player should not be directed to them.
In the current iteration of the game this means the player is sent out to kill some monsters.
In the current version the player is joining a base to get those quests.
By default the player will be assigned the job of killing some monsters,
Strictly speaking this phase is only one fight long in the current implementation of the game.
Ideally that phase should be long enough for the player to get comfortable.
Skilled players should be able to move on to the next phase fast.
This would be nice to extend when i have the time.
Currently the first mechanic introduced is fighting and that is introduced by joining the base.
Introducing non combat sections first would be nice, too.
Base management could be put first and combat introduced later.
That wont happen anytime soon, though
== introducing more mechanics == back to top
After learning a mechanic and practising enough, the player should be ready to learn more.
The player should be able and pointed towards learning new game mechanics and skills.
The relative difficulty of the challenges decreases, when the player learns.
So challenges would not really balanced to the players stats, but difficulty would depend on player knowledge.
So the player would learn and observe rather than grind levels to obstacles.
Knowledge about some things could be hidden or game mechanics could be locked at first.
This is pretty far from the games reality, though.
In the current game there is a phase where the player should learn more game mechanics.
This is currently the focus of development and there is not much learning happenning yet.
There are thing to learn, but those need to be integrated, polished etc.
The challenges should not directly come to the player, to allow picking a challenge and learning.
For the future i'd like to generate the challenges from the game world.
This means i'd search for something in the world and present it to the player as challenge vs. creating a problem.
Ideally the challenge would be to solve a problem, that is actually hurting the base or player.
I hope that will give the player the feeling of doing actual valuable work with impact.
Player vs. AI was a theme that existed in my game from the beginning and i'm very fond of it.
The idea is to put the player in direct competition with AI.
If the player outperforms AI rewards are given, if the AI outperforms the player punishment is given.
This is not really visible in the current game, but there are 2 ways this is prepared in the backend.
The first way is that each NPC can complete all quests the player can complete and the other way around.
That allows to give the same job to several NPCs and the player and see who performs best.
There are some NPCs set to do the player main quest and they could steal it from the player.
This is not really used yet, since it is no fun so far.
The second way is a game mode that is currently inactive.
There the player was made leader over a base, but there were enemy bases, too.
Every bases leaders job was to steal special items from the other bases.
Reward were given for controling many of those items.
This was a bit of a base management capture the flag.
I'd really like to slowly add competition of the first type to the game and treat it as just another game mechanic.
Since i can't prevent the player from just killing competitors, it wont be too influential.
I do plan on having a capture the flag as final game challenge.
The idea is that the player should get a base and enter "the game".
The goal of "the game" is to collect all special items and become leader of the world.
This should be a true test of competetiveness, the challenges should seek out the player and be non optional.
That should end the normal game.
It would be nice to add stuff like hunting for hints about some locations, but that would be a side challenge.
Including alternative less brute force heavy ways to gain those items would be great.
The game has ended at this point, but that is always a sad point. So i want a endless play phase at the end.
The idea is that the game at that point should get harder and harder until everything burns.
Staying alive as long as possible would be a true test of skill for any level of skill.
Nothing exists for that phase yet and probably wont for a while.
The basic idea is to make the automation less and less reliable.
NPCs would becaome useless and all automation would need to start to include error management.
This should increase difficulty until the game get unbeatable.
I have no idea yet on how to actually kill the player, but i'll think of something.
There is an idea to not just increase the difficutly until the player dies, but to allow for a good ending.
Both would be nice, but i'm unsure what way, i'm going to go.
The summarised scope for the game is:
build a game with many different game mechanics and try not have a single game mechanic dominate the whole game.
Ideally the player explores the game world and discovers new game mechanics and learns how to use them.
When the player feels strong enough "the game" can be entered and the game can be won.
In case the player wants to keep playing, there should be an endless mode that runs until the game gets too difficult to handle.
Only a few phases of the game are ready to be played, but a lot of backend is there.
So i hope we can look at a fully completed and fun game in a few decades!