RMMV Need Tips - Single Player Survival / Exploration Game

[Black Pagan]

I'm making a a Single Character Game - Exploration / Survival themed, where the Player, A Female Archaeologist is visiting a Forest and is camping there surviving the weather and wild animals in the forest.

As the story unfolds, She explores and discovers clues and solves a Mystery in the Forest which ends up with her discovering an ancient artifact near some ruins. I'm not worried about content, Got plenty of maps and planned plenty of Database items and Story elements.

I never made any Towns or NPC, Because I want it to have the "Survival" feeling.

The eerie silence and lack of dialogue other than the Player herself, in the whole game makes it very weird for me. I feel like i'm doing something wrong. I mean, The whole game feels out of place, slightly. I have weather events done, Enemy encounters done, Story Events planned out. I even planned a Cabin system where Player upgrades items in the Cabin to give her benefits.

It just doesn't feel fun and exciting for some reason. Any suggestions to fix this and make it more exciting ?

 

[NeptuneTron]

Any chance of seeing it in action? It's kind of hard to tell what's "boring" about something I've never seen, but if I had the opportunity to try it out, I might be able to give a little more feedback.

Do you have some kind of artifact collection system, as well? If she is an archaeologist, it makes sense that you might want to reward the player for looking around ruins and such for various artifacts or monuments and such.

 

[pasunna]

sound like lara croft
you don't need to have real npc
maybe other thing like note that someone left behind

but actually I don't support the way with no other npc
it feel too lonely and hard to keep player playing it
even if in dark souls there are npc to lit the mood
and you can let them die later

maybe add another survivor to be trader or rival
that you can't find them in place but randomly find on story going

 

[Black Pagan]

@NeptuneTron The Game is still in early development, So not much to show around. That's a brilliant idea though, to make her collect Various artifacts or such. Thank you very much for the idea. Probably gives her a Purpose now and make it more exciting.

@pasunna I don't plan to add any more party members, Want to keep it simple. And yes, you summed up how i feel - A Lack of NPCs and Towns really does make the game feel dull and boring. That's the apparent problem i'm facing. The "Rival" idea sounds interesting, I'll think about it.

 

[Finnuval]

I'm with @NeptuneTron in that it is really hard to judge what is potentially wrong or off without sort of firsthand knowledge.

A lets play video of part of it would be sufficient to go into it more

Edit : perhaps having her find pieces of a journal from a previous Explorer or something to that nature would Also eliviate some of the issues you are facing

 

[MagicPizzaGuy]

Tbh a game doesnt need dialogue to be good or dont feel boring, Journey (18 guys team) and Limbo (6 guys team) prove that, but thse games are uh... hard to make to say the least

Maybe this feeling you have can easily disappear if the explorer talked to herself more often, but It's hard to know without seeing your game in action. Anyway if it feels empty it may be lacking in music, scenery, ambience, sound effects, it may be much more than npcs or dialogues

 

[NeptuneTron]

It might also be nice to have another person come around every once in a while, or have a town she needs to visit once a week or something, so that she can restock on whatever supplies she needs. That way you can have that desolate sort of feel for most of the game, but also have some periods of interaction to mix things up

 

[Dororo]

Some sudden idea to have dialogues without having actual characters there.

RADIO: she find a radio and "someone" that's "somehwere" reply. She can debate with that individual in cutscenes (I'm figuring out the explorer locked in a cave, despair mount, the "other" help her find motivation). They could debate about their lives giving us glimpse of the main character past. This thing could also end positively or negatively.

INNER DIALOGUE: the explorer is commenting the whole adventure like figuring out herself into a doc movie. "...and with a great deed of wits, she solved the Banana Peel mistery!"

FLASHBACKS:when facing something, the cutscenes could skip back in time when the explorer got some clue or lecture on the topic in her early scholar days.

"FINDING NIM": the explorer have an imaginary friend/mentor/alter ego that she use to find motivation (or, maybe, DEmotivation!). It could be a fictional character that drag her into adventure or another version of herself.