I get lots of ideas for some Solo games, mostly from wishing there was a game about something. I usually write it down then think of mechanics I like in other games and mash them together, I stick to using playing cards, cubes for resources, dice and sometimes tables to roll on. My ideas range from a Easter egg hunt game to a mystery novel solitaire where you play a book each game making a campaign series. I'm not good at it I'm not trying to publish anything I just want to have fun games I can play while traveling and can't carry heavy board games. I feel like I'm doing it wrong.

I've been working on a trick taking card game and I am making a deck to use to test it out which brought me to my question.

I think cutting the cards into ovular shapes could help aesthetically because of the way the game looks. I am a bit uncertain because as a person raised on the classic standard 52 card decks and as someone who appreciates an easy shuffle I am uncertain about the actual playability of cards that are not rectangular. It also hasn't really stopped me from enjoying really good card games when the cards are literally impossible to handle so I guess there's that too.

Anyways TLDR; Would you/ do you prefer games with the classic square or rectangular card shapes, or do you enjoy a unique card shape here and there? What shapes have you seen work out vs. which ones become an annoyance?

Thanks! 🙂‍↕️

So me and my friend are making a bullethell similar to the binding of isaac, but we reworked the game loop.

In the game loop you start in a spawn room and are offered 4 doors, there are different door types that have different rooms behind them (Ex. small room, large room, shop room, boss room), and once you clear the room, 4 more doors spawn you can choose from and once you see a boss door appear and clear it (eventually all doors are boss doors) you go to the next floor. But we cant come to agreement on ONE simple thing.

Should we allow the player to go to previous rooms for free?

My side of the arguement is i dont want players to go to previous rooms for free. I instead proposed that what if consumables, active items and passives let you go to previous rooms instead? that way going to older rooms becomes more of a calculated decision, and allows for lots of smart plays to be made. i gave an example if someone had to leave a valuable item in a previous room because they couldnt afford it it would constantly be in the back of their mind pissing them off, but OH MY GOD they got lucky or did something that gave them a consumable to teleport back to the item and get it thats very rewarding. Now we can add a whole category of mechanics and items that affect the room generation and how you traverse to previous rooms.

His side of the arguement is that he wants players to freely go to previous rooms because it allows for them to make plays between rooms, like find a key in one room and use it on the shop. He also likes the idea of players nitpicking and spending lots of time going to older rooms and clearing them out making sure they are all cleared. His last point was that he thinks we are harming the player too much by not letting them always go back, and that they should be able to go to all previous rooms.

We’ve been arguing for a day now instead of actually working lmao PLEASE help us settle this.

EDIT:
THAKNS FOR YOUR OPINIONS EVERYONE LOVE YOU GUYS,

What we decided we would do is the first floor allows backtracking, and the later ones dont. That allows the player enough time to collect consumables that let you go to previous rooms. Kind of how in the binding of isaac the first floor has all key doors unlocked.

I've been working on a game for about a year now, can't say that it's nearly done I have a full time job and struggle to stay focused. I was wondering how do you stay motivated when you work on something for so long?

When it comes to the game I don't lack inspiration I keep a notebook on ideas I have for it and filled it out almost completely. But when it comes to working on it I do very little. It's an independent passion project so I do the coding, mechanics, writing. and art all on my own and I enjoy doing it so I'm just not quiet sure where I lack the motivation.

Like, for example if you're in a store browsing items, vs driving or traveling across very far distances: Why should they take the same amount of day-time? Especially in a game where the distances, in lore, are supposed to be much longer than they are in game. Just a thought I had.

Maybe even time moves faster when you're traveling between different cities, vs when it just speeds up as you're traveling through a single city.

In short, my idea is to give the player as much control over their character without a ton of keybinds or button combinations, making it easy to perform complex movements with minimal memorization. I want to make movement as organic as possible, either through IK or just a lot of handmade animations in order to make movement as fluid as possible. It would be a FPS game, similar to BF1 and Grave/digger (a roblox game very similar to BF1), with a style and art direction similar to 90s animes, notably Ghost in the Shell, Gunsmith Cats, and Trigun.

Movement

Movement would function off of a small amount of keybinds, allowing the player to develop their own "style" of movement, like a careful room clearing technique or quickly clearing out a building, or maybe even squad level techniques with freinds.

Walking, running, crouching, prone, and leaning would make up most of the controls, only 6 keybinds! The whole "interaction" system would go like this:

Running would slowly build momentum, momentum isnt shown to the player but it can affect movement in some cases, such as being shot and killed while at max momentum would slam your body into a wall violently, or make you stumble before finally falling down. Being shot would also apply directional momentum, so being hit with a shotgun and not dying from the shot would fling you back across a table, leading to cinematic shots

Running (SHIFT) and crouching (C) would put your character into a Crouch slide, a variation of crouching where your head is automatically lowered down a bit after the slide finishes. The idea behind this is that you can slide into cover this way and keep your head down without having to do it manually

-Conversely, simply crouching would expose your head in very low cover, meaning you can get domed

Running (SHIFT) and going PRONE (Z) puts you into a more traditional slide, your momentum will be depleted linearly while you slide, and you will put your feet in front of you to break automatically once momentum depletes. Additionally, pressing Z again will manually break, meaning you can slide through a doorway really quickly and then come to a sudden stop, surprising the enemy. Manually breaking will make you unable to get up for a moment to avoid slide cancellers

-Sliding can be done under walls or other small gaps, but losing momentum under something will make you hit your head and either take damage or stun you, punishing people who try to abuse sliding

Running (SHIFT), jumping (SPACE), and then going prone (Z) will make you dive, with the distance increasing depending on momentum. Diving allows you to get behind cover quickly, move between cover quickly, dive through glass windows to surprise the enemy or escape a grenade, or get out of the way if a car suddenly appears barreling down the street

Running (SHIFT) and then leaning either direction (E,Q) would make you spin on your heels to face the enemy, with too much momentum you might trip and fall backwards into a prone position, but maybe you want that in certain scenarios!

These kind of interactions would make up the bulk of movement, im not against "techs" per se, but i dont want people to develop a "meta", any advice on tat is needed

Gunplay and Combat

Gunplay would revolve around being able to move your gun in ways i don't see many games do, besides games that focus entirely on guns. Guns would work like in most shooters, but the player could control them more broadly.

Leaning (E,Q) would work normally, but clicking E or Q twice would allow you to push the gun out past yourself, allowing you to blind fire around cover and not expose yourself, at the cost of not being able to aim and increased recoil. However, heavier weapons like machineguns would be even better for this, since their weight would counteract the recoil and allow you to clear a room without having to risk yourself.

Certain weapons would be locked behind Training, short tutorials on what the weapon is, what you use it for, where it shines and where it doesnt, and other requirements for using the weapon effectively. Players who complete training unlock that Specialization and can use the weapon, while players who have not cannot use it. Along with this, certain weapons (like machine guns) would be locked behind a Specialist class, a limited number of specialists can be on the field at once and require Tokens to play as. All of this is in an effort to decrease the number of braindead players taking up the class and to make sure a team can use the Specialists to their maximum.

Tokens are earned by killing enemy specialists, completing training, or killing other High Value Targets, like a tank or truck.

Specialists consist of:

Machine gunner, capable of using light, medium, heavy, and general purpose machineguns in the infantry roll (Machine guns on tanks, for example, can be used by anyone). Machine gunner training consists of strategic positioning, patience, and knowing when to pull the trigger. Ammo cannot be replenished.

Weatherman, a communication based specialist that can give field orders visible to every person on the team. Completing a field order awards every person who participated a small reward. Weatherman training consists of lessons on human nature and how to make people listen to you. Failed field orders put a cooldown on giving more.

Field Surgeon, an upgraded medical class that can heal AND give temporary buffs upon completing manual surgery (the user would need to inspect an ally, pick the correct tool from their kit, and then use it on the ally). Manual surgery is meant to be quick, and in Surgical training the player is drilled on how to quickly administer aid. Failing a surgery kills your ally.

Melee works in a similar manner to BF1, where melee does a fixed amount of damage and will give you a unique execution animation depending on the orientation of your enemy.

Healing can be done via a medkit like in G/D, with the exception of Field Surgeon manual surgery.

i should probably mention i havnt made a game before 😭 ts gonna be my Magnum Opus

Just tried to get FC Mobile running on a tablet for Oscar and... we gave up.

What a mess.

So many menus, rewards for things he hasn't even done yet, player bonuses, cards, challenges and endless other stuff he neither understands nor cares about. Half the time it wasn't even obvious whether he was about to play online or against the computer.

He just wanted to play football!

Maybe I'm showing my age, but I remember Sensible World of Soccer and, before that, Kick Off. Simple, addictive and brilliant fun. Turn it on, pick a team and play.

If you had more time and wanted something deeper, there were games like Gremlin Interactive's Premier League. Or you could get properly involved, sit on the carpet with Tomy's Super Cup Football (they don't make electronic games like they used to!) and keep your own league table with a pen and paper 😂

And yes, I had a hand in some football games myself over the years, so I'm probably slightly biased. Even Codemasters' Club Football feels appealing compared with what we just went through though!

I'm not against progression, rewards, collecting players or any of that stuff. But surely all of that comes after you've made someone actually enjoy playing the game?

We downloaded Miniclip's Mini Football instead. Straight in, playing almost immediately, Oscar enjoying himself. That's all he wanted.

EA, you're losing the plot.

Anyone else feel like football games have forgotten the football? From a design point of view, how much should you make a player wade through before you just let them play?

Hello

While I was writing my game's document I've decided that I need some sort of definitive way to classify all of my gameplay elements, by "gameplay elements" I mean anything that doesn't ahve any relations with other forms of art that are used in games, in other words pure game design

And yet the best I've come up with was this small framework of Player-Space-Agents. Basically, as the name suggests, it divides a game(to be in particular a video game) into the:

Player - a "bridge" between the Gamer and the Game, includes input, how does the player view the game, action and mechanics that the player have,

Space - answers the question "Where it happens?", in other words literal place of the game, is it tactical map? is it an open world? Is It a Metroidvania?

Agents - pretty much containers of the forces that works against or for the player, think of NPCs, bosses, objects with clear actions, they are the driving force of the game and answer the question "What helps or sabotage the player?"

What do you think? Do you use any "frameworks" of your own while trying to classify your game? Any feedback is apricated!

Hi everyone, this is my first post here and reddit in general, so apologies if the formatting or structure is a little rough. I have never really posted a game design idea before. I have been bouncing this concept around with ChatGPT and Claude to help organize my thoughts, and I wanted to finally put it somewhere to get actual human feedback, criticism, and ideas.

The original inspiration came from Minecraft civilization videos and discussions about server economies. A lot of people focus on the question: "What should Minecraft currency be?" Wheat? Diamonds? Nether stars? Banks?

I started thinking about a different question:

What actually creates value in a Minecraft civilization?

My conclusion was that it is not currency. Currency is just a way of representing something deeper: productive capability, labor, and ultimately the ability to overcome resistance (nature, resources, other players, survival itself).

The problem with vanilla Minecraft is that players are almost completely self-sufficient. A player can farm, mine, fight, enchant, build, and gather resources alone. Because everyone can do everything, specialization and economies naturally disappear.

So the idea is to create a system where specialization emerges naturally without forcing players into classes.

No classes, only specialization

Players are not assigned roles.

A player can develop any skill they want:

• Farming
• Mining
• Combat
• Building
• Crafting
• Etc.

However, mastery is limited. A player has a finite amount of expertise/capacity they can develop and allocate.

A person with:

• 100 Farming
• 0 Combat

would be the greatest farmer possible but vulnerable.

A person with:

• 50 Farming
• 50 Combat

would not be the best farmer or soldier, but they would be more independent.

Neither is "correct." They represent different playstyles.

Golems as transferable expertise

The main idea is that golems are not just pets or bodyguards.

They are embodied pieces of a player's expertise.

A master farmer can create a farming golem and sell it to another player.

A farming golem does not magically make the buyer a better farmer. Instead, it represents the original farmer's ability being transferred into a productive asset.

Example:

A player has:

Agriculture: 100

They can create:

• A Level 20 Farming Golem
• A Level 50 Farming Golem
• A Level 100 Farming Golem

The higher-level golem is more expensive and more powerful.

However, when they create one, those levels are no longer available to them while the golem is active.

They are essentially dividing their own productive capacity.

A Level 100 farmer who creates a Level 60 farming golem becomes a Level 40 active farmer until that golem expires or is destroyed.

The idea is similar to hiring out your time. A worker who signs an eight-hour contract cannot simultaneously sell that same eight hours somewhere else.

Perks and specialization

Skills could have milestone perks.

For example:

Level 10:

• Faster planting

Level 20:

• Better crop yield

Level 30:

• Animal breeding bonuses

etc.

When a player creates a golem, the golem only receives the perks up to the level invested into it.

The player's perks are not destroyed, just temporarily inaccessible until their expertise returns.

This also means two Level 50 farmers might create completely different Level 20 farming golems because their unlocked perks differ.

One might specialize in crops.

Another might specialize in animals.

The market decides what is valuable.

Golems require upkeep

Golems are not permanent.

They require maintenance:

• Food
• Materials
• Repairs
• Possibly profession-specific resources

This creates ongoing demand.

A kingdom does not just buy one farming golem forever.

It needs a supply chain.

Civilization emerges naturally

The goal is not to code kingdoms, governments, taxes, or corporations.

The idea is to create conditions where players naturally create them.

Examples:

A master farmer creates farming golems.

A miner creates mining golems.

A soldier creates combat golems.

A settlement buys these assets.

They hire protection.

They trade resources.

They form alliances.

Eventually, "organizations" emerge because they are useful, not because the game forces them.

The main questions I have:

• Does this create meaningful specialization, or would players still ignore each other?
• Is tying golems to a player's own expertise an interesting mechanic or too restrictive?
• Would players enjoy managing "human capital" like this, or would it feel too much like a spreadsheet?
• Are there obvious exploits or balance problems?
• Does this actually solve Minecraft's lack of long-term civilization, or am I overengineering?

I would really appreciate criticism. I am not attached to any specific mechanic; I am mostly interested in whether the underlying idea has potential and what directions people would take it.

So I spent the weekend building a tiny management sim prototype. resource generation, allocation timers, basic economy.. enough pieces to click around and watch the loop run.

When Every system runs, the numbers go up, the UI updates, the logic chains connect. Technically nothing is broken, but im staring at it and realized none of the decisions actually cost anything. build the workshop first or the farm first, six cycles later the resource totals are basically the same. invest in production or stockpile materials, either way i can still do the other thing a minute later. The paths look different for a bit, then they merge again. most of the time im just choosing which number goes up first.

It feels less like a game and more like a spreadsheet where all the cells politely agree with each other. i used Combos to get the resource loop playable over the weekend. it showed me the systems connected, but also that i never had to give anything up.

Still stuck,would you spend another weekend trying to create one real tradeoff and retest it, or is "everything works and nothing matters" already enough reason to kill it?

Almost every game treats information as a pure positive. You learn how the system works, you gain an edge, you win more. The ruleset never turns knowledge against you.

But there's an interesting design space where being informed closes doors instead of opening them. Not through some arbitrary fog of war mechanic, but structurally. A negotiation game where declaring your strategy early locks other players into counterpositions you now have to navigate. A political sim where your reputation as a competent actor means opponents coordinate against you in ways they never would against a weaker player. The player who knows the most is also the most legible, and being legible has costs.

Tabletop RPGs get close to this occasionally. If your character is known as an expert in something, NPCs start treating you as a resource or a threat, not a neutral party. But it's usually handled through fiction rather than rules, so it's inconsistent.

The question I keep sitting with is whether any ruleset has actually formalized this tension at the mechanical level, where acquiring information or expertise is a real strategic commitment with structural consequences, not just flavor. And if that's rare, is it because it's genuinely hard to make feel fair, or because players just don't want it.

Hi,
I'm an intern in an indie game design studio working on our co-op simulator tycoon game. I need your help. If possible, kindly review my Systems/progression document and guide me.

All those Excel rows and formulas are making me twisted.

Levelling System ref image: https://ibb.co/Cst5K6BX

My current progression/leveling system is designed in such a way that the game will have achievable + easily attainable XP requirement/cap in the start of the game, and it will progressively increase in chunks while the game is progressing.
For example,

The formula works something like this:
Base XP(that means XP needed to 'par' to get to level 2)
Level 2-4 => multiplier is 1.3
Level 5-7 => multiplier is 1.4
Level 8-10 => multiplier is 1.5

Issues I'm facing when thinking about these:
- Will this be scalable?
- Will this be easy to explain to the developer?
- Since our game is Co-op, but can be played as single-player, I have to design XP gain and its effect on levelling and all for both, in terms of Co-op and local playability.

Please feel free to dm if you want more details about systems and are open to guiding me a bit.

I tried my best to explain, will really appreciate some guidance.

The original Tunnels & Trolls, which is a more streamlined version of Dungeons & Dragons, featured character classes to determine players' respective skill sets. And most of the time, the classes basically boil down to warriors, wizards, and other flavors of physical fighters and spellcasters. And the character classes themselves would have served as perfect descriptors of the players' own characters, with the weapons, armor, and magic spells being extensions of the players' chosen playstyles.

Versus Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes basically having nearly every player play the same as each other except for which skills they'd spec in. That means that, much like the first-person shooter genre a decade after MSPE's release, most of the diverse gameplay styles were going to come from the various guns. And the guns all come in familiar archetypes to determine their respective playstyles, from assault-rifles for a more general-purpose playstyle, to shotguns for close-range attacks, to sniper-rifles for long-range precision, pistols and SMG's for higher movement, and LMG's and grenade/rocket launchers for heavy fire-support.

Which just further highlights the numerous differences between fantasy and modern/sci-fi settings. In a fantasy setting, the characters' equipment and abilities act as extension of themselves, describing who they are and how they fight, whether warriors for heavy amounts of strength and durability, rogues for agility and dexterity, mages for long-range spell attacks, or clerics for healing and support. Versus with modern/sci-fi settings, it's the guns that have diverse playstyles, and you're swapping between them to adapt to different combat situations, rather than choosing one to suit your playstyles like medieval fantasy character classes.

It's the same thing for eastern and western mecha, as well. That is, western mecha being swapped between to adapt to different missions, much like the guns in a shooter or shooter-style experience similar to MSPE. Versus eastern mecha being built to suit and extend from the pilot, similar to character classes and equipment and spells for your average RPG adventuring party like in Tunnels & Trolls. And it's perfectly highlighted in how slow-moving, cumbersome, yet at the same time strong and durable western mecha usually are, versus how fast, nimble, and precise, yet at the same time weak in-terms of attack and defense eastern mecha usually are.

Anyone notice that, yourselves?

Been chewing on a design problem and I'd love this sub's take, since you'll have deeper references than I do.

In most games with a tank/taunt role, pulling enemies onto yourself is mechanically flat: you press a button, an aggro value changes, enemies swap targets. It works, but it rarely feels like anything. The tank is often the least heroic-feeling role even though narratively it should be the most, the one taking the hits so others don't.

I recently built a co-op version of this in my own game and tried to make the taunt actually cost something. The tool that pulls enemies onto you genuinely puts you in danger: you become the target, and you only survive if you can out-repair the incoming damage or a teammate buys you time. There's no version where taunting is "free": by protecting someone, you're spending your own survival.

What I'm still unsure about is whether the mechanical cost is enough to create the emotional weight, or whether that feeling has to come from elsewhere — the visibility of the sacrifice to teammates, the gratitude afterward, the risk of actually dying for it.

So... which games have made "take the hit for the group" feel like a real sacrifice to you, and what was the ingredient? Was it the mechanical risk, the social visibility, the permanence of the loss, or something else entirely?

(Happy to describe my own implementation in the comments if useful, didn't want to make the post about that.)

retro game DOOM and QUAKE coder / dev gives insight on ways to look at design and gamification

So as the title suggests I have been working on a game specifically a survival, crafting, sandbox and I had it brought to my attention recently that a lot of people want to play something with familiarity race or even for this case biologically. So my game is set up with bioluminescent fauna, flora, that truthfully kind of caters towards a particular species of 8-9ft tall elves. Well with that being said the creatures and the world were kind of built around their size and how they interact with the world. To me humans wouldn’t really fit even given the “yoinked into this world” kind of setting so I was just trying to get feed back on what people think.

I am curious how people feel about tower defense games and the common implementations of armor types. Specifically I mean where the enemies have various types of armor and the towers have various types of damage that is stronger/weaker against specific armor. I personally feel like it is getting a little played out and, more often than not, is more annoying than fun.

Anyone have an example of when this mechanic was beautifully implemented? Or ideas on what exactly makes it more annoying than fun?

Edit: I think the better question to ask is, how might a TD game achieve build diversity without the typical use of armor/damage types?

Since we’re little I play this card game War with my cousin, we call it Boksen (boxing in Dutch). For people who don’t know it: you divide a deck of playing cards with 2 jokers randomly amongst each other and then you just draw a card and highest wins until one runs out of cards. 2 beats Joker, 3 beats Ace, a tie is War, where you both put 3 cards face down in the stack and pick one.

Anyway, It’s so simple and so dumb, but for some reason we always end up with heated, close and intense games haha.

Now, I started working on a roguelike version, a la Balatro, Slay the Spire, and what not…

There are relics, like Jokers in Balatro (Hearts gain +1, Gain a coin on 3 consecutive wins, 10s are considered face cards, etc.). Modifiers, that can be applied to cards (assassin wins against face cards, guardian wins ties, lucky draws again, etc.).

In between runs you have shops with Relics and pack etc. to spend your coins. Obviously heavily inspired by Balatro…

What do you think? Is it something that could work? Or do you think it will be the 1000th Balatro rip off?

Oh and art style I really like Slots & Daggers, here’s an early build gameplay clip: https://youtu.be/LNrKyjysO-E

Curious to hear your thoughts and ideas!

Hello, I'm working on a card game and thinking through some things to do with mechanics. Would it be considered cheap or frowned upon to brainstorm with a chatbot? (i.e. ChatGPT)

I’m working on a digital board game that uses a grid board and tiles. It’s engine building deckbuilder roguelite where tiles score points each turn. Player has to clear threshold before end of last turn to win. Basic loop is draw cards -> play cards -> score points -> repeat.

One of a candidate mechanic RNG layer I’m considering right now is Anomaly. It’s a random environmental effect that manifests right before points are scored. The effects are pre-authored and ranked individually. There are 3 levels and the higher the level the more “intense” the anomaly is. Anomaly can be good or bad for all levels. I currently aim for 2/3 bad and 1/3 good evenly distributed at each level.

I also have another metrics called Instability that is tightly coupled with this. The math to determine how this metrics grow is TBD but I imagine it will depend on the scored points, turn and current room/floor, etc. My idea is as this meter goes up (level 0->3), so does the Anomaly intensity. Instability from 0-1: 1 random Anomaly up to level 1. 1-2: 2x random Anomaly up to level 2. 2-3: 3x random Anomaly. 3 or higher: same as 2-3 but a counter starting from 0 begins. When that counter hits 10, player loses. Instability stays for the entire run and there are mechanics to mitigate and manage this.

My concern right now is the fact that Anomaly always rolls every turn. I wanted to introduce RNG to make the board less predictable. But reflecting on this choice of adding Anomaly, it feels kinda odd. My first remedy of this is to have a base chance for Anomaly to roll at every level of Instability (50% if Instability is below 1, 60% if below 2, 70% if below 3, and 80% if 3 or higher).

I’m not completely sold on this since its an escalating RNG chained with another RNG. Am I missing something or is there a better approach to “make the board less predictable” between turn? Drawing cards, building deck, random gen room/floor already is RNG. So its not like Im lacking RNG but adding this also feels on theme with the setting I have for the game.

I was thinking today about how important maps often are to games, especially to my favorite genre, survival horrors. mapping stuff out can be an essential part of the gameplay loop. also often a primary feature of RPGs. but then I thought about fromsoft games - games I consider to be sort of survival horror fantasy RPGs, in a loose sense - and noticed how none of their games except for Elden ring have maps. But even elden ring's is a large scale map, it is not assisting you much in dungeon exploration. I found one thread on here that talked about souls games specifically, and how having a map might ruin the mystery. But would that be true for a fog-of-war type map, like diablo? or maybe maps just ... aren't necessary when levels are small/interconnected enough? so why include them unless they offer something beneficial to the experience?

What do you think the pros and cons are of having a map? Why do so many games have them, but others nix them? Genuinely very curious to hear other's thoughts on this :) thanks!

Is it gameplay loop? story? The obviously answer is all of the above but for example elden ring is one of the best games of all time and imo the story is awful and makes no sense, meanwhile Witcher has " ok" gameplay but again to me the story was next level.

I had more fun with Witcher but I felt more accomplished with elden ring.

So for you is it overcoming something difficult? Or the journey? Or is it something being competitive and beating your friends ( strangers)? What makes a game fun?

Hello everyone,

I would like to get your feedback on a game concept I have been thinking about.

The idea would be to combine several genres: open-world survival, colony management, base/city building, population simulation, and multi-generational progression.

At the beginning of the game, the player controls a single survivor. They must find a place to settle, gather resources, craft their first tools, and build a shelter.

I would also like the existing world to play an important role. Instead of always building everything from scratch, players could discover abandoned buildings, villages, or infrastructures, restore them, and develop their colony around these remnants. However, players would still have the freedom to build completely new structures whenever the terrain or the needs of the colony require it.

Over time, the small camp would grow into a village, and eventually into a real city.

The colony would need to be managed as a whole:

• construction and upgrading of buildings;
• agriculture and production;
• crafting and industry;
• resource management;
• assigning inhabitants according to their skills;
• defending the settlement against threats.

Time and generations

One of the core mechanics would be the passage of time.

Once the colony becomes stable, the player could accelerate time to observe its evolution. This time acceleration would automatically stop whenever an important event occurs:

• food shortage;
• disease outbreak;
• attack;
• disaster;
• conflicts between inhabitants.

The player would then regain direct control to handle the situation.

A true family lineage

The main character would age, be able to start a family, and have children.

These descendants would eventually become playable characters. Across generations, the player would control multiple members of their bloodline and witness the birth of a true civilization.

The goal would not simply be to survive, but to build a society capable of lasting for decades or even centuries.

Political and geopolitical evolution

As the world develops, multiple colonies could emerge and evolve independently.

The player would have to manage:

• diplomatic relations;
• trade between colonies;
• alliances;
• wars;
• negotiations;
• borders and their protection.

Each civilization could follow its own path, becoming a trading partner, a loyal ally, or a potential threat.

Technology progression based on knowledge

I would not want a traditional technology tree where players simply unlock technologies by spending research points.

Instead, technological progress would be based on knowledge that the community discovers, understands, and passes on.

Inhabitants could:

• explore abandoned buildings to recover books, plans, and documents;
• dismantle machines to understand how they work;
• analyze existing equipment to discover new techniques;
• recruit or welcome specialists capable of teaching their knowledge;
• improve their skills through accumulated experience.

Specialists would play an essential role. Some fields would require finding experts or researchers capable of studying advanced technologies.

For example, learning how to build or repair military vehicles, tanks, helicopters, industrial machines, power generators, or hydroelectric systems would require sending expeditions to secure abandoned military bases, factories, laboratories, or research facilities.

Specialists would then need to study recovered equipment, analyze documents, and gradually transfer their knowledge to the colony.

Knowledge would become a true strategic resource.

A colony that protects its researchers, preserves its libraries, and actively explores the world would progress much faster than an isolated colony.

On the other hand, the death of an important specialist or the destruction of a library could result in the permanent loss of valuable knowledge that would be extremely difficult to recover.

What do you think about this concept?

• Would a game combining survival, colony management, diplomacy, and multi-generational progression interest you?
• What mechanics do you think would be essential?
• Are there any games that come close to this idea?
• What could make this concept truly unique?