Hey everyone,
I was hoping to get some feedback for a game idea I am prototyping. It's one of those things were you come up with an idea that is fun to you, but may not be fun to everybody in general. Sometimes you become so in love with an idea you have trouble putting it aside if it doesn't pan out. Can anybody relate?
Anyway, I thought it would be a fun experience to develop sort of an animal simulator. Of course I don’t mean to make it too realistic, it should be somewhat exaggerated otherwise it may not be any fun. There are a lot of directions you can go with this depending on the animal you choose. My thoughts were to create a game where you play as an exotic cat in the African Safari. You could choose from a Lion, Leopard, Cheetah etc. (maybe even a crocodile!). You could create some hunting systems/gameplay where you hunt all of kinds of animals, and each one can present it’s own challenges. The economy of the game could be based on the animals stamina and life. The amount of hunting you do affects your stamina intake and outtake, and your stamina affects your life. You could also fight to establish your dominance or domain in any area. I though it would a good opportunity to create some fun mechanics as well, like tree climbing and fighting. The idea is still in it’s infancy, as these are just some generalities, but I hope to develop it more into what could be a fun gameplay experience. As for the overall goal of the game, I haven’t gotten quite that far. It is hard to develop any kind of preliminary story or goal for an animal, except to simply survive. That is what I am struggling with. I think the idea has potential to be fun, but I don’t know what the overall goal should be that the player will work towards. I haven’t abandoned the idea because I am having a lot of fun developing the animals and some of the basic mechanics so far. However, without a clear goal ahead I am not sure what to do with the project. Any ideas on how to improve this?