Yeah, here's a tip:
ALWAYS caulk the wagon.
More seriously, while I have only a small amount of experience with goal-oriented survival games like
Oregon Trail, I think that if you are serious about making a good game
for gamers then one of the most important things you can do is to make the game something that will allow for (and ideally necessitate) different strategies in each playthrough. It's okay for the RNG to have a say in things, but the game should never come down to "well the optimal amount of food to buy now is X and I should always buy most of it at this stop because I know what stop is coming up and it will be more expensive there". The more the player is able to strategically
react to what they find in a given playthrough, the better.
Additionally, don't neglect the possibility of making
relationships, emotions, or human drama into a central player in your survival game. Not only does this create an emotional connection between the player and the game that would be absent if people were merely a "resource", but it also can create wonderfully interesting situations for the gameplay. How will the player navigate a situation where, for example, two people need each others' skills to survive, but don't trust each other or have some kind of intense personal grudge? How does a third person who has fewer survival skills, but might be the key to getting them to work together, play into things? How can the player's choices influence it all? I've heard that the most dangerous enemies in the apocalyptic landscapes of shows like
The Walking Dead and
Zoo aren't the zombies but rather the other humans still in control of their own actions when the niceties of civilization break down - and I think this idea is very compelling (and probably why the genre is amassing such popularity).
With all that said, if you're going for more of a straight-up survival/travel/resource simulator like the very old
Oregon Trail, a few other resources you could include might be Money/Gold, Medicine, Tools (of all sorts), Clothing, Feed (for horses)/Fuel (for vehicles), Fresh Water, Morale (of your people), Experience, and Reputation (which would influence how outsiders would react to you). If you want to dive deep into details because you think that will be a primary part of players' enjoyment of your game, then you could spend a lot of effort creating different types of food, different types of tools, different types of clothing, etc. - a party that could obtain a balanced diet of fruit, fish, meat and grains would be healthier than a party that overloaded on grains, for instance, and a party that had lots of pieces of fabric clothing but no furs would have a hard time venturing into very cold areas.
