Core mechanics
The gameplay offers a small range of actions that are frequently repeated to create an emergent narrative supported by the written narrative throughline. The player will be tasked with delegating survivors to differnt tasks – creating teams. The teams will then in turn generate resources and possible a random event. The player will need to resolve an event by deciding the outcome and face the consequences that will further add or take resources from them. Then the game sums up: what has been added, from what soruce was it added and what has been deducted. After that, the player may proceed to close the loop – repeat the process again.
Core loop
The one loop of the game is called a “week”. The events taking place in one loop should be roughly translated to events that might happen in a week’s time.
- Delegate survivors to mundane teams and to the narrative team
- Evaluate the teams
- Resolve random events/Resolve narrative event
Every event promts the event screen to pop up – after the event ends the screen goes back down but pop’s up again if any other event needs to be resolved. The random events are generated based on how many teams have been created and there is no set amount of them. They might be two, three or four per “week”. Narrative event is a special type of event that will happen only if the right amount of survivor will be delegated to it and the player will have the correct amount of resources.
- Evaluate the results
The player will have a moment of rest – a screen that sums up the “weeks” events and flactuations in the player’s resources. AFter that the player may proceed to the next “week” (loop). A narrative snippet might be added to smoothe the transition between the weeks and to sum up the progression in the storyline or lack thereof.
Random Events
Delegating the survivors will happen from the general pool into the differnt teams: four mundane teams and one narrative team. The mundane teams will generate resources and possibly a random event. Random event is a narrative dilemma that happens to the survivors on their mission to secure said resoruces or is tied to their specific team designation. It is the core of the game and serves as the basis of the experience. The dilemmas cannot be obvious, broing or repetetive. The writer shoud come up with various situations that challange our perception of good and bad. The events can be trivial for us, but cannot be for the survivors. The events, even if mundane are about sacrificing something to gain something else.
Possible topics can include:
- decision to either dive in a contaminated pool to try to rescue some remains of technological device of unknown purpose while risking the life of a survivor or just gather the water to try to filter it. Removing the device will make the water flow down through the cracks and taking the water will cause the device to overheat;
- search the top floors or the cellar of a abandoned, dangerously leaning science centre. The top should hold some valuables but the cellar is safer to explore;
- using a newfound flora sample for extended testing or using it to fertalise the soil to grow food;
- deciding whether to train poeple extensively in using weapons or deploy them as guards after a quick tutorial;
- two scientists ask for help. Their child is sick and needs a lot of meds and food but they can aid you with their knowladge;
- a soldier asks to join your camp. He is in a horrible state. For now he cannot work but with time he can recover. Will you agree to take him in?
- there is an old abandoned shopping mall where you can scavange a lot of goods but there is someone else there too, a hostile group of scavengers. How will you proceed? Leave them be, fight them or try to scavenge at night not to alert them?
Narrative Events
While delegating the survivors, the player may delegate them to the narrative team, a special team that does not generate resources but pushes the main storyline forward. The narrative events will require a set amount of people to be delegeted to them and a lot of resources to be spend on them. The narrative event does not need to be resolved for every week, sometimes they will not appear. When they do, the player can choose not to delegate survivors to them and wait, to gather resources or people.
Narrative events are special events. Their narration is tied to the main goal, that the player has chosen to persue: leaving the Earth, purging it or adapting to its new enviroment. They are the core of the experience.
In here I am explaining how to create a captivating choice for a choice-based narrative and how it does not need to neccessairly create a branch in storyline:
Here you can read about the games’ structures that has led me t creation of the gameplay: