Why bother creating a campaign mode in a genre that thrives off exploration and discovery? I am building a game off of what effectively is a procedural sandbox framework, so it would be quite easy to just focus on the sandbox and simulation aspects of the environment and leave the story telling solely to the player.
I see lots of survival games that do this, but for me I feel like games that don’t focus enough on the story leave a bit of a hole in the survival experience. What are you surviving for? If I don’t meet the current criteria for action (logging in when a server is busy; engaging in PvP combat; investigating a particular area for more advanced loot), what is drawing me on to the next player progression?
I think the trend has been bucked more recently, but when I started development in Unity, I hadn’t come across many story-driven survival games. The worst survival sandbox games make it entirely up to the player to do the “right” experiment, craft the next upgrade or choose the most trodden path in order to feel like they have accomplished something.
Valheim is worth a mention, as although it doesn’t include much in the way of cutscenes or dialogue, it uses a simple combination of tutorial NPC, PvE boss completion and biome drops as a way to push the player through a great progression system that feels casual and engages you like you are part of something larger than just another survival looter.
I love historical fiction1, so it felt like a natural fit to concoct a game that included a story mode based on a period of history that I feel is quite under-represented in mainstream gaming – the fall of Rome in the UK and the early invasion of the Saxons. Basing the game in history will allow me to easily steer clear of some of the usual RPG tropes of Magic and Goblins and hopefully put a bit of a unique spin on things. I just pray that I have enough spare time to make a decent go of it!
- Reading novels by authors like Bernard Cornwell, Patrick O’Brian, Simon Scarrow is a great form of escapism for me. ↩︎
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