Winter

[JacobFischer]

Story

The apocalypse has happened, and humanity nuked itself into a nuclear winter. Now the weather is just getting worse. You have a ragtag group of survivors, and you must gather enough food to survive the winter. However another group of survivors has the same idea. You must gather more food than them so you can survive, while they get overrun. Winter is coming.

Oh yeah, and there are radioactive mindless people, aka zombies.

Overview

• Two player, turn based, tile based game.
• 40 x 20 map
• Only 2 unit types: survivors and zombies
• Units can have gear that gives them abilities (think guns, snow shoes, etc).
• Goal is to set up a base and collect food into it.
• Map is randomly generated with NPC zombies and resource rich buildings to raid
  • NPC zombies follow a super simple "AI", so they are 100% deterministic and easy to predict, to not feel random.

Survivors

Each player starts with 5 survivors. The survivors start with some random gear (mirrored for each player).

Survivors are always statically identical. The only thing that changes them is the gear they pick up.

Survivors have the following stats:

• Health: starts at 10, goes down to 0. When it reaches 0 they die and turn into an atomic zombie.
• Endurance: starts at 100, and goes down as they do things. If they return home it resets to 100, and if they stay idle for a turn they gain back 10.
• Carry: starts at 10. How much they can carry. Different items have different weights.
• Food: How much food they are carrying. Starts at 0, and can go up to their carry. 1 food = 1 weight.
• Junk: random junk used to do some actions, think scraps of metal and stuff.
• Noise: How much noise they made this turn. Starts at 0 and goes up as they do things. Resets at the beginning of the turn.

Survivors can do the following:

• Attack: Attacks a tile, if they have a gun equipped they can attack at a distance. Does 2 damage by default, and generates 1 noise and 10 endurance.
• Pick up: Picks up all item(s) on a tile. Players can specify items if they can't carry everything. Generates 2 noise per thing picked up
• Drop: Drops item(s) on the tile. Makes 1 noise per thing dropped
• Barricade: Use 5 junk to erect a Wall on a neighboring tile with 5 health. Can be used multiple times to add more health to the wall. Generates 2 noise.
• Move: Moves 1 tile. Takes 5 endurance and makes 1 noise.

Atomic Zombies

These are not regular zombies, they glow because of radiation and science.

Zombies are NPCs, and in between players turns execute the following "AI":

Move towards the unit with the largest player.noise^2/player.distance

Movement is done in a straight line, no A* or anything fancy.
Move vertically first, then horizontal. If stuck sit there.

Attack adjacent non-zombies after moving 1 tile.

Zombies also have 10 health, and can be killed. If they are killed they drop all gear. gear can affect zombies. Zombies don't know how to use guns though.

When a survivor dies a Zombie spawns on top of them with their gear equipped. (So they transform basically).

Gear

Gear are items around the map. They basically grant special abilities or stat bonuses to the Survivors that equip them. Some possible gear:

• Machete: Attacking adjacent units for 5 damage at the cost of 5 more endurance.
• Shotgun: Shoot and hits up to 2 tiles away (in a cone). Does 5 damage. Requires 3 junk to shoot. Generates 10 noise.
• Pistol: Can shoot 1 unit up to 4 tiles away to deal 5 damage them. Requires 2 junk to shoot. Generates 5 noise.
• Hunting Rifle: Shoots 1 unit up to 10 tiles away to deal 10 damage. Requires 5 junk to shoot. Generates 20 noise.
• Snowshoes: Talking over snow tiles takes half as much stamina to the unit with this
• Backpack: Double the inventory space of the owner
• Radiation Suit: The wearer does not turn into an atomic zombie upon death.
• First Aid Kit: Heals the user or an adjacent unit.
• Molotov: Throw to a tile up to 3 tiles away and turn it into a Fire tile. Any units that path through it take 4 damage.
• Ninja outfit: Generate half noise from actions
• Energy Drink: Fully restores stamina of the drinker
• Metal Detector: Doubles the amount of junk picked up, but halves the amount dropped (to prevent duping)
• Megaphone: Generates 100 noise, great for attracting zombies to your enemy if you flank their lines.

There is a special item, the Flag. When players drop it, it designates the 9 tiles around it to be their base, which sums up how much food they have to win. Flags can be picked up and moved if their base is determined to be worthless. You can't place flags on top of or adjacent to each other.

If the first flag placed is on a snow tile, it automatically creates Building tiles around it with barricades of 50 health

Tiles:

Tiles are generated at the start of the game. By default all tiles are Snow tiles. Some tiles are Building tiles and those may have items/gear on them to pick up.

Radios spawn around the map on some tiles. Trying to pick up a radio makes 50 noise but recruits a new survivor to that side's base (on their flag). Radios have a cool down.

Other tiles have barricades on them with health. Until their health reaches 0 they are impassible walls.

Winning

First player to get 200 food around their flag survives the winter. Failing that the player with the most food Failing that the player with the least survivors alive Failing that flip a coin

Possible additions

• After 10 survivors are on a team, recruiting more survivors increases the amount of food your team needs to win
• Zombies might only go after the winning side's survivors
• There are tons of gear you could add (grenades, adrenaline, etc)
• Possible game to add fog of war to if we can balance it fairly.

Possible strategies

• Rush food, let people die for food
• Find good weapons and hunt the enemy down
• Barricade the enemy from getting into the base
• Steal food from the enemy base
• Agro zombies to enemy's side
• Pre-raid their nearby buildings

[ZachWileman]

Sounds like a cool idea.

Questions/Concerns:

• Is the flag item something given to both teams at the start of the game or is it something they each have to get somehow before they can designate an area to be their base?
• Is the gear randomly generated around the map? Seems like it could pose an unfair advantage.
• Can competitors see what the gear is before they get to it?
• Why would you want one of the winning conditions to be "the player with the least survivors alive"? I would think you would want it to be the most; doesn't make sense that in some scenario, you would want to kill off your survivors. My only guess is you said that because you don't want the competitors to have their survivors camp out somewhere.

[JeffreyStrahm]

• Avoid NPCs like the plague, it has never ended well, even when we supplied them their pathing algorithm.
• What happens if the unit carrying the flag dies?
• shouldn't it be most survivors alive? I get the surviving the winter bit, but you shouldn't punish your players for doing well.
• Wouldn't you win if all the enemies die off?
• How much damage do zombies do?
• How is the map populated by zombies?

[JacobFischer]

Each player has 1 survivor that starts with their team's Flag as a gear item. That survivor must drop it to establish a base. Think of it like your initial Settler in Civilization.

Everything (zombies, buildings, gear) is randomly generated but mirrored initially. I'd never add an asymmetrical mechanic to a symmetrical game.

There is no hidden information, so all gear is known. Though most of the good stuff will be on initially spawned zombies so you'll have to fight for the loot.

I chose least because thematically you'd have less mouths to feed. However it's a third win condition and should be extremely rare so I don't really care either way.

If one teams survivors all die then yes the other team wins via extermination.

Zombies do 3 damage I guess. All numbers were just to give a "feel" for the game, I rarely care about the actual numbers.

[JacobFischer]

Avoid NPCs like the plague, it has never ended well, even when we supplied them their pathing algorithm.

So I'm the only one active on the game side that actually wrote that rule. I took that full into consideration. For reference this was MegaMinerAI 7: Piracy that has NPC Players.

NPC are discouraged, but you can pitch them for your game. Remember our "rules" are really just guidelines.

In this case think of the Zombies more as an element of the map that acts in a deterministic manner, similar to Bottles in Saloon and water in Stumped.

Most of the time when people think NPCs we are talking about complex 3rd parties that may be unpredictable. E.g. other civilizations in Civ games.

[JeffreyStrahm]

As I said, I understand surviving the winter, but you shouldn't reward players for bad gameplay. You are adding in a gambling of victory points as more survivors mean you can gather more stuff, but if you tie with food they can make you lose. Victory should determine who played better. With the current set up it is loyal to the theme, but it can make the worse AI win.

Also to be fair, there is no harm in trying it again since their actions are determined by a formula. However also keep in mind this gives a massive advantage to the player who act second. Assuming player 1 acts, then player two, then zombies. It would allow them to control the path of the zombies and essentially make anything player 1 does a gamble.

[JacobFischer]

Yo here's a recording of the game pitch to playback at the meeting tonight: https://youtu.be/UdHRNh_GrEk