Chapter 205 - Don’t Starve and Sandbox Games (1/2)

In this world, most sandbox games are done by overseas developers. Take Earth Online for example, allowing players to work, buy cards and houses, and experience different careers in game. This was one of the games that provided players with a high degree of freedom.

However, it wasn’t truly a sandbox game.

Sandbox games had two main features, rich content, and allowing players to create freely. Although Earth Online was a content rich game, the game still operated under the restrictions of the designer as they weren’t allowed to make much if at all.

It should be emphasised that the ability to create is a core factor in sandbox games, meaning the players could create whatever they want through resources provided by the game.

Games that didn’t fulfil this aspect couldn’t be considered a true sandbox game.

Of course, there were a few products experimenting with this aspect done by overseas developers, such as allowing players to choose whichever characters they want to play, or what whichever car or house they wanted. But these were all part of the original game and were added to give the players a choice and wasn’t a core aspect of the game.

Therefore, Chen Mo wanted to use Don’t Starve to test the reactions of players to a game like this. It if turned out to be successful, the way to his first VR game would be decided.

Of course, another key factor was that Don’t Starve was relatively easier to make compared to other sandbox games.

In Chen Mo’s previous world, the first version of Don’t Starve was completed by three developers in eight hours. Obviously this was a primitive demo version.

The complete version took over a year, but most of this time was spent on testing and figuring things out as well as finding the identity of the game.

For example, Don’t Starve’s team had gone through intense discussions, some thought that because it was a survival game, allowing the players to become stronger and stronger as they progressed through the game while others thought that because it was a survival game, the players should lose everything upon death.

After the intense discussion, they decided on the latter.

This game also had a simple yet unique art style. Players and monsters only had four directions with simple animations.

The only thing that Chen Mo found troublesome was the difficulty settings of the game. However, with the help of Memory Playback Potions and the collective brain of his staff, it wasn’t hard to make a game similar to the level of the original after ensuring that they were heading in the correct direction.

Chen Mo planned to make three modes: Survival, Adventure and Co-op. The first two shouldn’t need any introductions, whereas co-op would allow players to play and experience the game together.

To be frank, co-op also happened to be the most popular mode.

The core of the game was clear, allowing players to explore and gather resources, craft various items, and try their hardest to survive as long as possible.

The basics of the game included but are not limited to: Terrain generation, attributes and usage of different items, differences in attributes for different characters, monster respawn rates, as well seasons and environment.

The map was also incredibly rich in content as there were various different biomes including plains, swamp, meadows, mines, forest, caves… different biomes had different features as well as different mobs.

At the start of the game, the system will generate maps according to a seed. The maps could greatly differ from one run to the next to ensure that the player experiences something different every time.

Moreover, the game also had seasons as a core part of the game.