Final Plan

Game Overview: Overall goal, storyline and genre

We are creating a decision-driven single player game. The player assumes the role of a mayor of a new town, where they start with a small plot of land. The overall goal of the game is to grow the population of the town while maintaining environmental sustainability. Within the game, the player has a health system in the form of metrics, including environmental health, population, money and population satisfaction. As the game progresses, the player is presented with different actions that they can carry out on the town, such as choosing which artefacts they want to build (factories, roads, etc.). The decision they make will impact their metrics differently and may positively or negatively affect the environment. Through their choices, players witness cause and effect in play as they become conscious of the different ways their actions can impact the environment’s health. Thus we believe we can establish a deep mapping between the game and climate change as each of their decisions is reflected in the state of their game world.

As a strategy game, players will have to learn the tradeoffs in each decision they make. For example, choosing to build new roads will temporarily boost their population satisfaction metric. However, it may potentially cause the player to lose in the future as their environmental health suffers in the long run due to more cars populating the roads. An alternative approach could be building more electric trains to keep the environmental health from deteriorating at a steeper cost to their wealth. This way, we believe that players can learn that combating climate change is not an easy journey, and will require serious efforts from everyone to make a difference.

Description of central character and core features

The player takes on the role of mayor of a developing town. As the mayor, they want to expand their city, so it becomes a bustling metropolis of the future. However, living with their son, they also know for that future to come to fruition, they have to build the town in an environmentally sustainable way. As the mayor, the player is equipped with the power to change the city as they see fit. The possible actions they may take include building new artefacts for the town, either from offers made by random encounters with NPCs, or small objects such as homes and rubbish bins. Alongside the construction of new buildings, the player also has to address the demands of his citizens who come to them with issues that they may choose to resolve.

Game World:

The game world is based closely on our current real-world situation. However, the mayor is given a small village in a fictional island country called (Climate Land). As reflected in the real world, our game world also faces an issue of rising climate change rates. The game begins with a small plot of land, at the centre of which is the mayor’s house. On one side, there is a forest and on the other side is the ocean. This starting location forms the heart of the town that the player will build onto.

Mechanics

As discussed above, the player receives a random offer from an NPC. Offers allow the player to introduce large artefacts into the town. Some examples of these offers include choosing a new energy source, deforestation to make room for new citizens, investing in a new tech startup or petroleum engineering firm. In making a decision for these offers, a screen will appear with the NPC offering various choices. In addition, the player will periodically be given the opportunity to build smaller artefacts. Some examples include more houses, more rubbish bins, planting more trees, etc. Building smaller artefacts requires the player to have enough money.

Dynamics

There exist three metrics that are influenced by the large and small artefacts introduced into the town. They are money, population happiness and environmental health. The objective is for the player to balance these metrics. If population happiness becomes too low, the mayor will be voted out. If funds are running low- in other words, the player has made the town bankrupt -again, the player will be removed as mayor.

Environmental health is the most important metric. If the player neglects environmental health, natural disasters, such as droughts and hurricanes, will occur more frequently, sea levels will rise and the environment will become polluted- all of which will negatively affect population happiness. Some events, such as excessive flooding, will end the game for the player.

Scoring and lives mechanisms

Initially, the player is given the objective to grow the town and maintain its sustainability for a certain number of months. The first scoring mechanism would be their total carbon footprint accumulated during their term as mayor.

Lives are abstracted into the three measures since it is through these measures the player can lose the game. For example, population happiness is a life mechanism because as it decreases, the player becomes more at risk of being voted out of power and losing the game. Another instance of the life mechanism is the rising sea level from declining environmental health because the town becomes closer to being washed out and destroyed. Level generation plan and elements of random generation. When starting a new game a town is generated for the player to rule over. ‘Levels’ are not generated, but rather, the player has turns. Each turn, the player is randomly presented with an NPC who has an offer to make to the player. The details of the offer (e.g. the cost of buildings) are randomly generated. The decisions made in the earlier turns may make the game increasingly difficult in later turns. For example, whilst introducing a coal factory may greatly improve the town's economy and employment in the short-term, it will have significantly worsening environmental impacts in the long-term.

List all Design Features options being attempted

• Player’s health/life system where lives/health can be lost/gained/maxed out [5%]
• Monetisation [2.5%]
• 2.5D [10%]

List the Advanced Feature being attempted.

• Fixed level design
• Additional design features being attempted include:
• Achievement system (e.g. rewards unlocked based on performance.) [5%]
• High score system [5%]