Those Left Behind is a game where the player needs to do only one thing – choose. The game is based on making choices, either by clicking the button that sums what the player wants to do about a certain issue or by dragging and dropping the elements to a proper box – assigning survivor to a certain task.
Design choices for the Vertical Slice
Each resource has its own production camp (Herbalist, Technician, Security and Scavenger). Resources can also be gained or lost from the results of narrative events.
Herbalist
Produces the resource that keeps the survivors alive: Food. Every week a portion of it is deducted, based on the amount of people the player has in their camp. If there is too little food, survivors will be lost. Family members never abandon the camp but if they can’t be fed the game ends.
Technician
Tech is used as a required resource to push forward the narrative and is mainly used in the OffWorld end goal.
Security
The security site produces Arms, the quantity of arms inform the security value of the weeek. This value is important for deciding how the camp defends itself in attacks, if it is too low suffer losses or the end of the game could be triggered.
Scavenger
Conducts daily scavenges only if survivors are assigned, this site will gather Scraps that are then used in other sites and to drive narrative. If no one is assigned, there will be no scraps gathered and thus no other resources can be made that week.
Bio is a unique resource that can only be made in the later game after a narrative event with Patty who asks the player to invest in the Adapt goal by building a new production site.
Survivors
The goal of the game is to survive, but you cannot survive if no one is alive. Survivors have needs such as Food. Every in-game “week” the player will take every survivor they have and assign them to one of the four camps. There is no longer a a fifth camp as this has been replaced with a resource requirement to advance narrative progression. When the week is summarised, the remaining survivors will be gathered again to be redistributed.
The Family – Special group of survivors that cannot die (can only leave in late-game narrative events).
All survivors have a name, a characterisation description of things that they are good at and what they are bad at, and their skills that are a numbered from 1 to 4 including scavenger, technician, security and herbalist. It is encouraged to have all kinds of people and lean on their strength while avoiding their drawbacks. These skills match the type of resources that are in the game. Having a survivor with a higher level skill in its designated camp will produce more resources than someone with a lower skill in that camp.
Events
The GDD discusses the use of random and narrative events, for simplicity of the vertical slice it makes sense to merge these two different event types and rather create a linear series of set structured events the player must go through until they have to make the decision of the ultimate goal (offworld, purge or adapt). Events cannot be post-poned/skipped as this ensures that the narrative pushes forwards.
The events are the core of the gameplay. They are presented to the player as a dilemma with two resolutions (choices). Once a player has made a decision through dialogue, there will be a consequence to this decision (an event will occur) they must collect X amount of resources to continue to the next narrative event, this new progression system removes the need for a fifth “special narrative” survivor team that was mentioned in the GDD and instead puts focus on the management of the main resources.
Lose state – The player can lose the game in two ways – when the food runs out and is insufficient to sustain the player and their family. The other way of losing is having too small security to withstand an attack. If a hostile group decides to attack the camp, its security will be tested against the difficulty set by the event. In the case of insufficient security, the game will end with the player being captured and/or killed by the attackers.
Win state – The player is going to lead a group of survivors to a certain goal. The end goal is chosen at the end of the demo. The player can choose to escape the Earth via building a rocket (OffWorld), purging the land to recover the old Earth’s ecosystem (Purge) or adapting to the new ecosystem with research and experimentation (Adapt).
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