Thoughts on current game plan

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I just started coding this game. It’s my first game. I planned out the game and wanted to know if this sounds fun or if I should rethink it. It’s a meerkat colony survival. The player maintains a territory, grows the mob, and fends off rival meerkat mobs, eagles, and snakes. My inspiration is the WolfQuest game and the animal planet Meerkat Manor show. Map tiles will lose fertility as they are harvested for food and gain it from rain. A game year is 52 days and split up between dry and wet season. Meerkats will age and grow weaker with age and die at some point.

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Nice wordplay on the title. Is it purely a sandbox simulator or do you plan to include some scenarios?

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The mechanics could work well, but it’ll come down to the balancing whether it’s a fun challenge. Since you’re drawing inspiration from a game already, you have a good guide for what you can expect :slight_smile:

There’s a lot of room for interpretation in your description - what’s involved in maintaining a territory for instance? In terms of interaction, it could be anything from walking the 3D space in meerkat form for hours, to pushing a few buttons… not to say one is better than the other.

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The premise sounds a bit like the simant from back in the day. Definitely can be fun, I feel like seeing the networks of tunnels would be pretty cool

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Looks cute! But… I think you need a catch beyond the animal choice

This game is probably the closest thing that came to my mind when reading your project description. Beyond being a colony sim, this game stood out because of its unique water control system.

I’m not sure, maybe you already have the catch, but in my humble personal opinion, I would highly suggest defining that catch first before going too deep into development.

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I’m thinking it will just be a simulator. Although maybe some basic tutorial levels like in Ant Queen? For a territory I’m thinking the player will mark a tree within a territory area, it ill change the tree to have the mob’s symbol which will have different opacity to show how long before it should be marked again. Currently a territory area is 9x9 tiles with random amount of burrows, plants to mark, and fertile tiles which can be used for food. A rival group can try to claim the territory if their territory areas don’t have enough food to support them and no unclaimed land is available nearby. The claiming system has the rival group mark a player tile and will have to hold it for three minutes to claim it unless the player mob can fight them off. The gam will be 2D top down view and have a game year of 52 days with a dry and wet system to affect tile fertility. Not sure on a tunnel system but the player can make new burrows with two different sizes using them to hide from predators and producing pups. What’s a catch? Is is something WolfQuest had? Example please. :slight_smile:

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