Chapter 204 - Brainstorm (1/2)

Su Jinyu and a few other staff members were brainstorming in the meeting room, trying to figure out a way to make Don’t Starve fun.

“According to the manager’s hint, it’s a survival game right? So we should build the game around surviving.

“There should be two main factors in play: things that help with survival and things that harm the players.

“What kind of resources would there be and what kind of negative factors are there? Thinking back to the real worlds, weather, temperature, monsters, food… These could all be included in the game.

“That means the source of enjoyment for this game is to have the players control a character to survive in a completely foreign world. They’ll need to explore the map for resources and use them to help them ward off the negative factors.

“We have the outlines of this game at this point. The game seems quite fun judging by the core gameplay.

“Next will be the overall design of the game. The players will need a few statistics to judge how well they are surviving. A simple example would be health.

“The players’ health would decrease when they are attacked, get frozen or burned for example, and the game will end when their health reaches zero.

“What else? The game is called Don’t Starve, so obviously the manager wants us to integrate a food value into the game. The players must search for food and would be worse off if they don’t take care of it. It could even decrease move speed or something.

“From the looks of it, our target is in sight.

“But there are still flaws. There feels to be something missing outside of these two factors.

“Yeah, these two factors feel a bit lack-lustre. For example, rain, snow, hail, or drought, affects humans in real life, but how do we do that in game? Do the players take damage when it rains? Or do we reduce their food bar when it rains? That doesn’t really make sense.

“Moreover, if there only two factors, the players would feel like they are playing a videogame character instead of a person which ruins the immersion.”

“Yeah, it feels like there’s a missing factor…”

Chen Mo walked in as they were thinking.

“The other attribute should be sanity,” said Chen Mo.

This caught Su Jinyu’s attention, “Sanity? To represent how the players are doing mentally?”

Chen Mo nodded, “Bad weather or other terrible events will decrease the players’ sanity. Similarly, they can increase it with certain items.

“When their sanity reaches zero, the character becomes insane. They’ll experience hallucinations and the world world would look different, and shadow creatures will start attacking the player.

“The players will recover a certain amount of sanity after killing the shadow creatures. On the other hand, the game ends if the players are killed by them.”

Su Jinyu gave it some thought, “That’s a great idea. Hunger, health, and sanity combined would be a great way to describe the state of the character. You sure are good, manager.”

Chen Mo laughed, “It’s nothing, you guys will figure it out eventually. This is more or less a must in a game like this.”