Let me tell you about my dream
Wednesday, March 3, 2010One night I went to bed, I had a good night sleep and during my sleepytime a dream popped into my head. The dream showed me how it would like to be stranded alone on a tropical island, the dream showed me how I would have to survive by keeping notes and map my surroundings, after a couple of hours exploring I also realized that I was not alone.
Lost Island is an adventure / action / survival game (hardcore) played in first-person-perspective with rpg-elements. The game is quite simple, It’s up to you to survive a certain number of days on a deserted island waiting for rescue. The island is rich in plants and nutrition. It is a tropical island and much like the island found in Crysis. Graphically I’m thinking a dense jungle mixed with some savanna and old warehouses as evidence that people has been there before.
Intro:
Your eyes opens slowly, you hear a strong wind blowing . You see the railing you are leaning over, when you look up you see the ocean, it’s a really beautiful. The sun is slowly sinking into the sea at the horizon, making the ship you’re standing on colored in a warm orange color.
You say:
* Relaxed sigh* it was a long time since I felt this relaxed.
* You get the opportunity to turn his head and look more at the surroundings.
* You turn your head to look at the surroundings.
- That’s a nice view, this sure beats staying at home.
* Someone knocks you on the shoulder and your controller rumbles
* You turn around, and see a man standing there, he is nicely dressed in a suit and in his hands he’s holding a cellphone.
- Excuse me, you’ve got a call.
* You take the phone and put it against your ear.
- Thank you.
* You watch as the well-dressed man walks away and put the cellphone to your ear.
* It is your best friend, he is a technical genius and seems to miss you
-Damn! I can not get it through my head that you went on that luxurious cruise! You should have taken me with you!
*Just when your friend completes his sentence the ship staggers and you accidentally drop your cellphone over the railing, the throw out your arms in hope of catching it again but the cellphone falls to the walkway on the lower deck.
- Shit!
* Now you get full control of steering and you can try to walk around and explore the ship you are on. You are on the upper “deck” and will try to retrieve cell phone at “lower deck”
*After exploring you make your way to the lower deck and find the cellphone. You put your mobile phone to the ear again and notices that he is no longer there.
*You sigh. You take a couple steps towards the ship’s front gazing out at the stillness, all of a sudden something big flashes past your eyes and brakes the ships’ front 20 meters ahead of you. Water splashes into your eyes and you have a hard time to perceive what’s happening. The screen slowly becomes a blur and debris is flying all around you and there are rubble everywhere. The ship is slowly starting to sink.
* You have 1 minutes playing time left before the next chapter, you are now aware of it however, during this time, you will probably try to get as far from the accident as possible, it might be that you run into the ship again and into different cabins.
Depending on which cabin you ran into in the corridors, you’ll see various objects / items. These items you see will be the things you’ll have available on the island at the beginning of the game, these items are however randomized and it’s rare that you’ll start out with the same items as any other player.
On the island:
*Everything is black, the only thing you hear is the waves and the wind gently breezing. Slowly your eyes open. You find yourself on a beach, you try to stand but your legs tremble and your body feels weak, so it takes a while before you get your feet. *control shakes a bit slowly as you stand up*
You turn around and look out over the sea, it is quite empty, you see a lot of garbage lying around, you see an axe laying there beneath all the debris. Ahh, It’s the axe you saw in the cabin before everything went black. You go and pick up the ax, the sand shows your footprints and it’s wet and messy. Since you have nothing other to do you start to explore the beach for more useful objects. You’ll find some food and a first aid kit. You also find an old backpack that you store your newfound items in. There is not much left to do on the beach, you do not know where you are and you do not know if there are any other survivors, you look up from the beach and you are greeted by a wall of tropical trees, it’s dense jungle indeed.
You make your way up the beach, and into the jungle. You walk for a while in the dense jungle, you see rays from the sun penetrate the top of the trees. You hear yourself walk through the bushes as well as bird and insects, as you move foliage out of your way.
You approach a clearing and you see a rusty old shack, you walk up to it out of curiosity and find that it’s empty and has some equipment inside. There is a radio and other smaller things scattered about. It seems like there hasn’t been anyone there for a long time. On the wall you find a map, a very old map. The map is colored yellow and has lost some of it’s color. The map shows an image of a big island, you keep the map since it might be of use to you so you keep it.
** Here the adventure begins for the player.
Is the map you have a map of the island? It could be a map of another island, you will need to go to higher altitudes to be able to identify landmarks on the map to confirm it.
Features
Since the game is a survival game, I would place great emphasis on the “survival” part. I would prefer that the game should be entirely without HUD in addition to a compass and maybe a 90 ^-degree field of view instead of the usual 75th That it is hungry, tired, and so on marked by subtle changes in your vision, colors and motionblur.
One thing I think would be interesting is that your character needs to sleep. This also means that you will either have to find a shed or a cave or build up some kind of shack up in a tree. Every choice has its’ pros and cons, though some are clearly better than others.
A big thing about the game is to explore, you go the whole island to explore and when you find new places and landmarks you can mark them or you map or let the game do it for you. You’ll be able to chop down bushes and trees, create tools and traps. You will also eventually try to create a fire, either by finding petrol or something similar. You could do it by hand but this will take some time though. One important thing is to find out what you can eat on the island, where the safe bets are usually fish or other animals such as rabbits and more risky things such as berries, plants and insects.
There are skills to learn as you play the game, some might come to you if you try certain things and some might be learned from journals/diaries/notes scattered about. In the end you can learn a lot of skills by trusting your wit.
Exploring the Jungle
When exploring a bit and you’ll soon notice that there are traces of other, larger animals on the island. These are dinosaurs. There must be dozens of varieties the races, ranging from T-Rex and Velociraptor to smaller and larger herbivores. All these leave footprints behind, but also other traces such as poop and markings on trees and trampled grass.
Being chased
Being chased is a main factor in the game, basically you have no chance against a T-rex or Velociraptor, not without weapons anyway. And that is why you often will have to flee. The best way to survive is to stick to places where you know they do not go as often and stick to environments you know. Eventually you’ll have to move out of the area, you know to take some risks and gather equipment or find other places that might serve better as a camp.
When you do go out of your safe-zone, the game will become harder since you don’t know any landmarks or the best routes to escape if something were to happen. When you happen upon a dinosaur that is dangerous and has discovered you, you’ll be affected by the adrenaline mechanic. The adrenaline mechanic enhances your vision when you are being chased, you see things more clearly, trees you can run and jump up on, you see branches that you can use to swing over rock formations. This mechanic helps you escape, it’s the fear that makes you stronger and faster. To explore new places means that you must be prepared, scouting the area beforehand and have food, tools and other things that might help you ready.
Hunting
During the game you will probably be able to create some basic tools and weapons such as bows and spears. These can help you hunt smaller animals as well as dinosaurs, combined with traps you might even lure the bigger dinosaurs. Hunting is beneficial for food and skinning. Skinning will help you create some basic stuff to wear that affects your camouflage, it might also hide your smell. A big part of hunting is the direction of the wind, tailwind can be very disadvantageous to you since most dinosaurs will pick up on your scent. Gathering dinosaur urine and poop might help as well to keep some dinosaurs away.
During your exploring you’ll happen upon books/notes/dairies that will help you, these will tell the story of the island and help you with tips and information about different parts of the island and it’s inhabitants. During your travels you will find notes and pieces of other peoples journals. There are two different type of journals the ones that give you information about what is and has happened to the island and the ones that give you information about certain dinosaurs and areas. The latter version of journals is actually connected to a multiplayer-functionality. When a player dies in your friend-list they will leave a part (like a page) of their journal at the place that they died. This page will be available for others on your friend-list to find for information. The information on that page will be added to the finder’s journal, if the player already “knows” the information he found then tough luck. The information on these pages can give information from specific areas, dinosaurs, plants or good hunting spots.
To save and to die
Saving can be made to do almost anytime, as long as everything is quiet and safe. Saving at your safehouse has it’s rewards though, if you make it to your safehouse and save you’ll start up the next time fully relaxed and energized. Your safehouse is your current home, in time you will learn how to protect it from intruders by using traps and other tactics to keep intruders away.
Dying is a part of the game, chances are that no player will finish the game without dying once. Dying in the game has a serious penalty, you lose a page of your journal. This might be a page of a new skill you’ve just learned or a page of good information about dinosaurs, geography or how to prepare a certain meal for food or plant for medical salves. These pages will ultimately end up in your own hands or in the hands of your friends. The pages you lose when you die will stay on the same spot until you find them or your friends does.
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That is all I have of my design document so far, of course the real design document will have to be more specific, lining up every game-mechanic in the game and it’s importance and so on. But right now it’s only a concept, I hope I can create this game some time.
