Rations

Overview

Rations is a 5 player co-op game where a group of shipwrecked players are challenged to search for enough food to feed the group. With scarce resources available, they must strategize about how to find enough food in time. Should they not have enough food to feed everyone, players must fight over the food they have collected to ensure they are fed for the night. Players who go hungry are at risk of starvation. To win, players must survive long enough to be rescued.

Project Goals

  • Explore ways to allow a character's personality to drive important events in gameplay.

    • Rations has asymmetric characters where each character has their own unique personality traits such as anger, sadness, or anxiety. Each character has a set of personality traits that grants them an ability. When players use these abilities it reinforces their personality traits, allowing them to level it up and buff it. In addition, players can experience gameplay events that amplify their personality traits. This may include events such as getting attacked or not getting enough food to eat in a round. If a player has maxed out the level of a personality trait when an event happens, they can have an immediate reaction to the event. This reaction is meant to be an explosion of the personality trait’s emotional fantasy and may allow them to have a significant impact on the game. For example, if a player did not get enough to eat, this would affect their ‘Fear’ personality trait, which lets them move faster around the map. With a maxed out ‘Fear’, the player can unlock a reaction that allows them to automatically move to a food resource and take multiple attempts at searching for food.

    • I have always been interested in the intersectionality between gameplay and narrative. This project started as a way for me to explore some of the ideas I had around how I could use gameplay to output a character-driven story.

  • Gain more reps at Systemic Design

    • It can be easy to make a game fun with a complex rule set that allows for each mechanic to live on its own accord. It is much harder to try and adhere to a more simplistic set of rules that produce the same amount of expressiveness and engagement. This game is an exercise in systemic design where I am challenging myself to build the a lean set of mechanics that can still be expressive of personality driven gameplay.

Mode Goals

  • Drive conflict between players and the mode goal.

    • These points of conflict will provide the hooks I need to craft relatable emotional reactions to gameplay events and allow a character's personality traits to drive resolution.

  • Create a dramatic backdrop that will narratively frame the players personality traits in a relatable way.

Sandbox Vectors

  • To create a sandbox my characters can function in, I needed to identify the necessary skills for achieving the mode’s goal. The mode calls for players to efficiently scavenge for resources around the map. In order to achieve victory as a team, each character specializes in one of the mechanics necessary for success.

    • Knowledge as to what resources are located where.

    • Efficiency at extracting resources quickly.

    • Player health maintenance.

    • Player movement and getting to resources quickly.

    • Eliminating obstacles that are slowing down the player’s ability to find food.

Characters

  • In order to preserve the ability for character to betray each other, they needed to have abilities that could be used to help their team or themselves.

    • Strategist

      • Has the ability to know what resources are located where. Can use this knowledge to lead players away from valuables to they can obtain them or can coordinate with players to efficiently gather items.

    • Tinkerer

      • Specialized in getting rid of resources that stand in the way of players getting food. Can use these resources to strengthen themselves in combat or they can try to use it to generate food.

    • Hoarder

      • Can gather resources very quickly. The hoarder can choose to share the food they find or keep it for themselves.

    • Doctor

      • Maintains player health by giving them medication. The doctor can choose to give them a medication that will either damage or heal players. Players receiving the medication will not know which it is before they take it.

    • Bodyguard

      • Specializes in moving players quickly around the map. Can pick them up and carry them to a new location. Can help take people to resources or they can keep them separated so the bodyguard can claim it as their own.