I don’t like the idea that classic resource gathering in games leaves the world in a less pretty state than it was found.
Instead of taking things, it would be nice if the player’s goal was to add to the world.
I like the idea of each level starting off in a broken state and the player is fixing it.
For things to be broken, and then fixed, implies functionality. While broken, the system is dysfunctional.
I had this idea a while back but wasn’t sure how to explore it, but I like the idea of several level elements designed to work together, but initially they aren’t.
<aside> 💡 Some puzzle and management games use similar paradigms.
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One of the best forms of functionality in a game like this is pipelines, where actors boil down to three main functions:
This aligns with how I wanted to leverage resources in gameplay.
Instead of directly taking things, maybe the player indirectly gains from each improvement to the world.
Maybe once the player leaves a level, an abstract equation tallies up earned resources based on the state of the world. The player is a sort of King who taxes all of the profit.
In a way, that is an odd profession, but it does give a healthy incentive: the King player has incentive to make everything more profitable.
And maybe there would be incidental branches the player would need to choose in the way a level is randomly generated. Maybe sometimes they have to choose whether to make an increase in one kind of resource or another but not both.
The simplest system I can think of is a variety of actors that perform certain actions with certain resources, but they only work with those single resources. Perhaps there are actors that generate a type of resource, and actors that gather that type of resource, but the level currently only has one or the other.