Card Survival: A detailed review (long)

[Psyringe]

Hi :) After playing this game for 100+ hours, I wrote a review about it, which I posted here: https://steamcommunity.com/id/MyPublicProfile/recommended/1694420/

However, I found that there's a lot to say about this game, which caused the review to grow beyond the character limit. So I'm posting the full review here - hope that's okay. (I try to avoid posting reviews in the discussion forum, since they already have a dedicated place elsewhere, but then I would have needed to cut several paragraphs.)

Comments are of course welcome. :)

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"Card Survival: Tropical Island" is a nicely done card-based survival game with an engaging setting, a lot of content, and intuitive, well-designed mechanics. The turn-based gameplay and the clean UI allow for a more relaxed playstyle compared to action-based survival titles, though fighting for survival against the island's many hazards can still feel properly dramatic sometimes.

1. Story & Setting

You are alone on a remote tropical island. You can play as someone who turned their back on civilization (but brought some starting supplies), or a hardy islander with no possessions, or a stranded tourist, or even a mermaid (who can drink salt water but can't stay on land for long). Optionally you can also create your own character from more than 50 perks and handicaps.

Your task is to survive, and eventually build a raft and leave, though you can stay on the island indefinitely if you want to. That's practically all the story there is, the game doesn't have much of a narration and the sparse in-game texts are mostly just matter-of-factly explanations. For example, item descriptions rarely tell you how something looks, smells, or feels, and thus don't contribute much to the player's immersion - instead, they provide hints like "Could use this together with mud to make a mud brick."

That said, the game's mechanics provide a lot of hooks to spin your own stories in your head. So while I was technically just moving cards around, in my mind I was living through a vivid story where I suffered a broken leg from a boar attack, made a makeshift splint, crawled back to some water puddles to stay hydrated, prayed for rain because I had developed a fever and needed more water than the puddles provided, tried to subsist on coconut water (but it gave me diarrhea and I also couldn't climb trees to get more coconuts due to my broken leg), eventually succumbed to sleep on the grass bed in my small cave, and then died from dehydration while the rain started pouring down, because I was too weak to wake up.

My impression is: With a fair amount of imagination and some knowledge of how a survival situation may feel like, you will probably find a multitude of interesting emergent stories here even though the game does not tell them explicitly. Otherwise, the game may feel more like a complex optimization puzzle, which can also feel very engaging, but perhaps not quite as immersive.

2. Gameplay & Mechanics

All gameplay is done through cards. For example, the location "beach" always has a "sea" card present. Clicking on the "sea" card gives you the option to either dive for conches, or wash yourself. Dragging a "stone" card on top of another "stone" card creates a "sharpened stone" card, which you can then drag on a "long stick" to create a "rustic spear". Dragging that spear to the "sea" card then lets you hunt fish, which will also be represented as cards. All gameplay is turn-based, with each turn advancing daytime by multiples of 15 minutes. Advancing time will increase your thirst and hunger, so you'll have to find efficient actions to satisfy those basic needs.

One of the game's most striking features is the extreme detail and completeness of the simulation. Obviously you'll not only have to find water, food, and shelter, you'll also have to deal with wounds, infections, wild animals, rain storms, and many other hazards. But even your mental state is tracked through several parameters including happiness, loneliness, and stress. In total, the game tracks about 100 different stats right down to details like blisters on your feet, back pain, stool consistency, or (say) overindulgence in crustacean food.

All these parameters are interconnected in intricate ways. As an example (minor spoiler ahead): You may encounter a cobra which, if you're careless, can spit poison at your eyes. That can cause permanent eye damage, which means that you may no longer be able to move around during dusk or dawn, because you can't see your environment clearly enough. You can prevent that effect by washing your eyes quickly. But if you only carry salt water with you, then - depending on your mental state - you may not have the courage to pour that into your eyes.

Problems usually have several viable solutions. For example, you can build a shelter out of sticks and palm leaves, but you can also make base in a cave - or build a mud hut. You can hunt animals with a spear, build simple traps, develop more elaborate traps, fish with a rod, or try to grow crops instead. Water can be obtained and treated in a few different ways as well - and so on.

Gameplay has a strong focus on exploration and discovery. When you start the game, you'll have to explore your surroundings, which will yield some resources and (over time) unlock paths to other areas. where the process then repeats. There are currently about a dozen areas in the game, with differing resources, hazards, animals, and points of interest. Once an area is unlocked, it will remain accessible for that playthrough, and you'll eventually be able to roam the entire island. Another exploration element lies in the resources themselves, e.g. plants may have effects (beneficial or detrimental) that you can discover by preparing them in various ways.

Crafting is another major gameplay element. Obtaining new resources gives you hints about building new tools or structures. Some items need blueprints before they can be built, which will unlock either by building certain base items, or by reaching a certain level of skill - e.g. if you keep building and using traps, then your trapping skill will gradually increase, and eventually you'll unlock blueprints for more complex trap designs.

One potential issue with the current game design, is that starting several playthroughs with the same character felt a bit repetitive. You always start at the same location, your options are limited since you need to explore for a while to find other areas, and it also takes a while to develop the same skills that each character will need. While the resources that you find from exploring are randomized, you'll quickly know what can be expected from any area you've spent time in during a previous playthrough, so there isn't much opportunity for surprises. The problem got exacerbated by the fact that the game seemed to deliberately kill me several hours into my first two playthroughs - once by entering the dry season after 30 days with no warning (so I died of dehydration), and once by a fever that I also got no warning about (since the area where I found water also has a high infection risk).

To proceed beyond this point, I had to first focus strictly on water preservation while it was still raining, and then focus strictly on stocking up the means of treating the fever that I now knew would be coming. There was no way for me to overcome either issue without meta-knowledge from my first two playthroughs. While that's basically just "learning to play the game", I feel that there's an imbalance between the inevitability of those deaths, the loss of playthroughs with many hours invested in them, and the repetitiveness of starting again. That said, the game is still in early access, and the developers are still tweaking those elements, so things are likely to change before release. The repetitiveness of subsequent playthroughs can already be diminished by creating characters with different perks, which can be unlocked with a "meta-currency" that you'll collect while playing.

3. Graphics & Presentation

The game uses clean, stylized graphics which make every card easily recognizable. While the display generally favors functionality over beauty, I nevertheless found it very pleasant to look at. I think it strikes an excellent balance here: For a game that creates immersion through intricate and complex mechanics rather than realistic visuals, a clear presentation is more important than lush graphics.

The game does make good use of ambient sound, as well as sound effects for most actions, to help creating the immersion that the graphics don't provide. There is no music in the game, which I find fitting for a "sole survival" experience. Voice-acting is not present either, nor would it need to for such a game.

4. Usability & Accessibility

As described above, the interface is excellently designed and very clean, but unnecessarily big on a large monitor. I would have prefered fitting more (and smaller) elements on the real estate of my screen, as scrolling through long lists of items can get tedious. However, the developers already plan to add more UI customization options, so there's a good chance that this will be addressed.

The game does an exceptionally good job communicating all the relevant states and parameters to the player. States that have become dangerous and/or may require attention, are always shown in an automatically adapting list at the lower left of the screen, with the most severe ones on top. Hovering the mouse over one of these states gives you a short descroption, and clicking on one tells you which other parameters are influenced by it. You can also access a list of all states if you're looking for something that's currently not concerning, and you can pin any parameter to the list that you want to keep an eye on. Two thumbs up for efficient UI design!

Also of note is the in-game help, which proved to be quite useful in my playthroughs, though it should perhaps stress the importance of certain dangers more.

Display options consist of a resolution selector as well as toggles for fullscreen and visual effects (like overlaying a rain pattern on the entire screen). There are no other settings that affect visual quality, but for a 2D game with stylized graphics, I think that's fine. The game also provides two separate volume sliders (for effects and ambience) as well as a scroll sensitivity slider.

Controls seem to be mouse-exclusive for the moment. While the mouse definitely makes the most sense for gameplay that consists exclusively of dragging cards around and navigating a few menus, there are certainly players who would appreciate alternative options such as (rebindable) keyboard shortcuts and/or controller support - not only out of preference, but also due to some disabilities that make mouse controls difficult.

The game provides save slots for up to 4 characters, but only one save can be kept per playthrough. Save-scumming is possible though, in case you want to keep backups.

5. State of Development

So far, this has been one of the best Early Access experiences I've ever had, and given how many games I play, that probably means something. ;) The game already has a lot of content, definitely enough to be provide a "complete" survival experience, regardless of whether the developers keep adding to it.

Updates are frequent and steady. In the rare cases when a developer didn't have time due to severe real-life events, they announced it, told us how long the delay would last, and - most impressively, since that's the hurdle that many other developers have the most problems with - actually managed to continue development on point after the announced delay. The developers are also very responsive on the Steam forum and frequently help customers and/or explain things that may not be obvious in the current version of the game.

The product is also remarkably bug-free for a game in development. The parts that could use another touch are the descriptions (some could be more immersive, and some things aren't mentioned that should be), as well as some balancing and tweaking (e.g. to the weather system). And of course more content would always be welcome, but at this point, the game is already well worth the money and there's really nothing that sticks out to me as "lacking".

6. Conclusion

I wholeheartedly recommend this game to anyone interested in a survival simulation that features a huge amount of details, provided that they don't need 3D graphics to feel immersed. Be aware though that there's a bit of a challenge and a learning curve to it, and that you'll probably lose some early playthroughs that you've invested many hours in.

[Psyringe]

Addendum in case a developer reads this: My two first playthroughs were done on update 28. Most of the issues that contributed to my two early deaths (lack of rain, and camp fever) seemed less severe in my third one (which started after update 29). I believe that the underlying issue that I described (deaths that are inevitable without foreknowledge, occuring after having invested many hours in a playthrough, which requires a restart with a lot of repetition) still exists, though.

Losing a playthrough, even one I invested many hours in, in itself isn't a problem for me - I've been playing roguelikes like NetHack since the 80s. But traditional roguelikes fight the repetition with either lots of randomization (so that each playthrough provides a new experience), while modern ones also tend to add a meta-progression system (so that the player will get something out of the lost playthrough, and have a slightly easier time on the next one). I don't think that Card Survival currently provides much of either. The randomization of the "loot" is fairly inconsequential because the only thing that effectively varies, is how many "explore" actions the player will need before finding what they require. And the unlockable perks are more of a "new game plus" element for additional challenge rather than a progression that makes us stronger (partly because two of the pre-defined starting characters are already very strong).

Food for thought. perhaps? ;) I think that this will be tricky to get right.

[Neomare]

Messaggio originale di Psyringe:

Addendum in case a developer reads this: My two first playthroughs were done on update 28. Most of the issues that contributed to my two early deaths (lack of rain, and camp fever) seemed less severe in my third one (which started after update 29). I believe that the underlying issue that I described (deaths that are inevitable without foreknowledge, occuring after having invested many hours in a playthrough, which requires a restart with a lot of repetition) still exists, though.

Losing a playthrough, even one I invested many hours in, in itself isn't a problem for me - I've been playing roguelikes like NetHack since the 80s. But traditional roguelikes fight the repetition with either lots of randomization (so that each playthrough provides a new experience), while modern ones also tend to add a meta-progression system (so that the player will get something out of the lost playthrough, and have a slightly easier time on the next one). I don't think that Card Survival currently provides much of either. The randomization of the "loot" is fairly inconsequential because the only thing that effectively varies, is how many "explore" actions the player will need before finding what they require. And the unlockable perks are more of a "new game plus" element for additional challenge rather than a progression that makes us stronger (partly because two of the pre-defined starting characters are already very strong).

Food for thought. perhaps? ;) I think that this will be tricky to get right.

That is one fine review :). I love the game as well and I did a review of my own back then but mine sounds more like pure fanboyism.. yours covers all the things really really well though :).

In any case I think developers will be happy to read the whole review once they catch some time.

I was one of the lucky few that started playing this game when updates still came in single digits, it was a way simpler game back then and i was able to drag my first character trough the updates and win on my first try. Mostly because i learned about mechanics one update at the time and had a good foundation to fight whatever else got introduced into the game.

In the meantime game became harder or easier or both on each update but some of the mechanics such a mental system or storms or Camp Fever that came in the meantime are definatly something that can easily end the run.


I actually wish people could have the experience i have. Experience the game in a simple form and then do a game+ and game++ each one adding more and more.

Not sure if developers would have time or even be willing to pull of such a feat though because all the features are such an integral part of the game right now i cant even imagine how they would do something like that.


That being said. Game is pretty amazing. The bigest downsides like you say are the dreadfull fealing of loosing a run after investing a lot into it and repetetivnes that comes out of the next run you do straight after that.

Everything else like the graphics.. sounds.. no music.. control scheme really comes down to personal preference i think.

Maybe something can be done about that.


Developers are pretty great I know they want to make this game to the best possible that it can be.


Do you have perhaps any ideas how to tackle the 2 things you think are problematic:

a) not enough variety when starting a new run ( or randomness )
b) getting sucker punched by the game mechanic and having to start over.


Developers read pretty much anything so any suggestion is welcome. You can bounce of ideas of me as well I am following the development of this game very closely talking with people and suggesting a lot of ideas to the developers how to keep the game great.


However I can never have a vanilla experience again. I am 500 hours and 2 dozen or so updates into it and the input from somebody who just started an udpate or 2 ago is very very valuable :).

So thnx for the review regardless if you have time to toss out some ideas and suggestions.


Cheers!

[Neomare]

Anyhow here is how i see the 2 issues right now and what i think could help:

a) not enough variety when starting a new run
- I feel most variety right now can be gained by playing as a Tourist or a Mermaid. It is unfortunate however that both of these are very hard so if you just lost your first run is probably not a good idea to jump on one of those. So i guess most people really are doomed to do the beach over and over again if they do not have the experience to overcome the challenges. and well yea.. beach is always the same.. that is true.

There are however many perks that change things up quite a lot and i feel like if developers add enough new perks and characters over time this problem will be way less.


Personaly i think the bigest thing this game would benefit from if Island was bigger, had more areas and there was some randomness to how they are connected or at least what they contained.

I think even changing the puddle locations ( wetlands right now ) and the Cave in which the water thing spawns would add a lot to the variety. Problem is that could generate some very frustrating Island to play in on top of being relativly hard to implement and harder to make it bug free.


b) getting sucker punched by the game mechanic and having to start over.

Or as you say meta knowledge is needed to win. I agree on this but not because I feel like it but because many said so already. I still think that a certain type of player can win a game on the first run if they are carefull, not taking risks and having resources around stored somewhere safelly to lean back on when things go bad.

For me that is already good enough.

it would be amazing however that those who are not so versed in the survival genre can also do well on the first couple of runs and I think the bigest problem here is that the game lacks a bit by providing necesary information to the game.

There are 2 reasons for this.

1. Game is still in development and the survival guide in the game was not updated in ages + the descriptions of things are not clear enough.

This will be solved before the game is released because survival guide is getting updated for sure and with enough people asking for it the descriptions could become better as well.


2. Some things in game just come to fast and hurt to bad and do not give the player enough time to react to it.

Storms can come after day 20 and they will obliterate your midle row and some of the top row in any coastal area. Player gets like no information that this is coming. I think it would be better if storms come more gradually, giving the information to the player that winds are getting stroger and starting to destroy 1 item at the time before the big wind outbursts come and start doing what they do now.

At least the first storm. after that storms could come faster stronger and deadlier.


Camp Fever can come after day 30 and it will straight up kill a player which does not now how to handle it. Bigest problem is after it comes if you do not have enough spider lily is a bit to late to actually grow some.

Personally i think Camp Fever could be even more deadlier and harder to cure.. but give it some time to develop. 5 days? 10 days? have it be anoying for first 5 or 10 days before it starts to kill the player so we can plant some spider lily and start treating it.

To balance it out it could last longer if it is not tended right away.


And then there are animals.. i think the easiest way to fix the animals, especially boars is to give the player information what are the chances to get hurt when fighting it. The number right now just gives the chance of killing the boar.. it says 0 about the chance to get wounded. That makes peoplle way overconfident when fighting boars i think.




Anyhow this are just some of my opinions, feel free to pitch in :). While developers do not just grab any idea that players say they will take it into consideration, process it and try to implement it into the game if it is a right thing to do.


Many features happened that way already it works quite well.


Cheers!

[Psyringe]

Many thanks for the kind words and the detailed replies!

Messaggio originale di TheNeomare Youtube:

Do you have perhaps any ideas how to tackle the 2 things you think are problematic:

a) not enough variety when starting a new run ( or randomness )
b) getting sucker punched by the game mechanic and having to start over.

I thought about possible solutions while I was playing, but I believe that this is a tricky design problem for a survival game that aims to be fairly realistic. I suppose if it were easy to solve, the developers would have already done so. ;) But while I may not have a great solution, I can share some thoughts about how I tried to approach it. None of these ideas are revolutionary and I would expect the devs to already have had most of them (and in fact you mentioned most of them already in your second post), but you're right, discussing them from a fresh angle might trigger new ones. :)

I should add that I definitely haven't seen everything that the game has to offer so far, so it's possible that I'm missing something, or complain about the lack of something that's already there. If so, please correct me. :)


A) Repetitiveness when starting over

The main reason why this is difficult to change (imho) is that the setting, while definitely interesting and engaging, limits what makes sense in the game. You're trying to survive on a tropical island, and in a realistic survival situation, the first step is always to find a water source. There are only a couple plausible sources where e.g. water could come from, and there are only a few survival strategies for obtaining it and making it drinkable. So unless the developers want to turn this into a fantasy game (which they probably wouldn't want to and honestly shouldn't), some repetitiveness is inevitable, it lies in the nature of the design.


A1) Let players keep multiple save states per playthrough

If repetitiveness is inevitable, then one solution might be to reduce the need for repeated playthroughs. Obviously, by giving players the option to fall back to an earlier save state, they would not need to repeatedly start from scratch. You could also autosave the game, for example at the middle of each season, which would give players 15 days of preparation for the hazards in the next season that may have killed them.

This would require next to no changes to the current game mechanics, but it would change the "feeling" of playing the game, by reducing the intensity and the sense of urgency that it currently has.

It's also worth noting that losing e.g. 15 days of in-game progress can still be a very substantial setback, and some players would drop the game in frustration even if they could go back to such an earlier save. I don't see a good way of reducing the lost time though, as the things that can kill you will often take preparation to prevent.


A2) Introduce perks that skip repetitive content

Alternatively, the devs could introduce perks that make the beginning of the game faster. For example: After you fully explored an area like the beach, subsequent characters can take (or receive automatically) a "beach explorer" perk, which gives them more resources from beach explorations and advances the "fully explored" marker faster.

Likewise, after reaching 50% in a skill like "cooking", subsequent characters could take (or automatically receive) a "hobby cook" perk that lets them start with a skill level of 25%, thereby reducing the time that it takes to get to the level the previous character had.

Several levels of such perks are conceivable, such as hobby/assistant/professional/master cook/explorer.


A3) More features and stronger randomization

The game could randomize the areas more. For example, the shipwreck could appear on any coast (or not at all), and there could be several different options (yacht, military vessel, science vessel, etc.) with different types of loot. Some islands could have a river or a small lake. The starting season could change. Animal population sizes could vary, or some could be missing and/or get replaced by variations that yield more or less meat, be easier or harder to fight. Player perks, starting location, and available locations on the island could also be randomized.

The main problem with this (apart from the fact that someone would obviously have to _create_ all that content, which is far from trivial) is that it's much harder to balance. That could, however, be mitigated by letting players choose a difficulty level for their playthrough, and limit the out-of-whack randomization to higher difficulty levels. But the more you limit the randomization, the more you're likely to reintroduce the repetitiveness issue.


B) Getting killed by game mechanics that are hard to foresee

I think this issue is a bit easier to address, as it's mostly a problem of how the game communicates these dangers to the player - see the examples below:


B1) Signal to the player when camp fever becomes a possibility

On my second playthrough, I died from camp fever. I already did have the information that bugs could spread diseases, and I had been very careful in the wetlands in my first playthrough. But nothing bad seemed to materialize (because unbeknownst to me, the game protects the player from camp fever for the first 30 days). This means that for the first 30 days of each playthrough, the game was effectively teaching me that bugs aren't anything to worry about, because nothing bad will happen even if you keep getting bitten. But when you apply this "knowledge" after day 30, you will almost certainly get killed, because you have "learned" to be careless.

I believe that it should be communicated to the player if something that wasn't much of an issue before, suddenly becomes very dangerous. In case of camp fever, this could be done with a popup telling the player: "Upon re-entering the wetlands, you notice a new variety of bugs that was not here before. They remind you of a species of dangerous bugs that you've heard about, bugs that spread dangerous infections."


B2) Water issues

For me personally, there were five reasons why I didn't prepare well enough for the dry season in my first playthrough. One, I expected - based on the experience from other survival games - to either find a lake or a river somewhere. Two, I expected to be able to desalinate seawater - either by boiling it and catching the steam, or by letting it evaporate in a closed system and catching the condensed water. Three, I never entered the cave (and thus never found its renewable water source) because I didn't have a light source and was afraid of scorpions. Four, I never explored the rocks far enough to find the shipwreck, so I had no access to the plastic sheet. Five, I misunderstood that banana tree stumps can be used to catch evaporating water - I though they'd just catch _rain_ water and deemed them not useful, as I could just put coconut bowls on the ground.

The first issue was probably a player mistake that I'll write off as "learning the game". Perhaps I shouldn't have expected a body of fresh water, perhaps the island is too small to support one. But still - the island can support entire populations of boars, macaques, and other animals. They can't drink seawater, so how do they survive the dry season? And if there's enough fresh water for them, shouldn't I be able to find more than two shallow puddles and a trickle on cave walls?

The second issue looks to me like an omission from the game. Granted, desalinating seawater isn't trivial as you'll need to find something airtight to catch the steam or vapor. But with the resources available on the island, shouldn't it be possible? I mean, you can even find a plastic tarp, which should be pretty good for catching vapors as long as you can keep it from melting. Alternatively, clay could be shaped into a small desalination vessel. Or am I missing something?

The third issue might just be my own fault, I put too much weight on the fact that the location was described as a "dark" cave. But considering how important the water source in the cave can be, it might be useful to add something like "the entrance seems to receive enough light for a bit of exploration" to the description. (I'm not sure if that's still relevant though, as I've read that the location of that water source has changed.)

The fourth issue was mostly bad luck, though from a storytelling perspective, I don't really like that a random remnant of civilization is so important in a wilderness survival game. In a realistic survival situation, the chance of finding a plastic sheet on a remote tropical island is negligibly small, therefore depending on it doesn't feel like "mastering the wilderness" to me, which is the feeling that I'm mostly after in such a game. That may be just a personal preference, though.

The fifth issue was, again, me being stupid. Though it wouldn't hurt to make clear in the description of the banana tree stump that they can be used to collect _evaporated_ water, not just "water".


B3) Generally warn the player about dangerous developments while there is still time to prepare

Going back to the warning popup that I suggested for the "new dangerous bugs", a similar approach could be taken to other dangers in the game, like the dry season or rainstorms - though these are easier foresee as they don't "trap" the player in dangerous behavior like the bugs do. For example, a popup on day 15 saying "You now that in the tropic climate, the rain season is followed by a dry season with almost no rain at all. You wonder if you have access to enough fresh water to withstand a change in the weather." might help.

It's not easy to get this right, though. You want the game to provide a challenge so that players will get a sense of accomplishment from completing it, so you can't be too obvious with telling players what they should or shouldn't do. On the other hand, you don't want to give players the impression that they had no chance to see the danger coming either, as that will usually be perceived as "unfair".


B4) Introduce dangerous elements gradually

A less intrusive way of helping players to recognize certain dangers, might be to introduce them gradually. Bugs could transmit increasingly dangerous (but easier to cure) diseases before they finally transmit camp fever. Dry spells could slowly increase in duration to make the player realize that they need to store water.

The problem here is, again, to find the right balance. While the new hazards would need to be less severe than the current ones that kill unprepared players easily, they would also need to be dangerous enough to make the players realize that they need to take precautions in case things get worse.


B5) Update the in-game help with more information about the most common causes of death

As you mentioned in your own post, the in-game survival guide could use a few updates. That said, many players will consider the guide "too much text" and never read it, so we should be aware that any information provided there will only reach a subset of the player base.

[Neomare]

You are welcome, thank you for giving feedback :) it is very important because between me and developers and some other passionate players it is like we sit in this dark room having our own opinions but not sure how they would bounce back to the rest of the community. This write up will be very usefull and I see many ideas here that i agree with.

So thnx for sharing your tghouts.

Here are also my comments.

To start with off the development team is 2 people + a bunch of enthusiasts on the forums giving feedback. So while one might expect that the devs already tghout about all possible solutions to the problems there is also quite a high posibility some obvious solution might have sliped under the radar. In any case if everyone was just auto-piloting on the idea of the developers surely tghout of that already there would be no feedback and game would be totally different today. For the better or the worse who knows :D.

I do enoy the idea that the community helped them shape it though.

Altough I will say they stayed true to their vision trough the whole way and did not just blindly accept ideas quite the contrary many good ideas did came from players because 100 heads is smarter than 2 even if those 2 are way more experienced.


You definatly did not see everything that game has to offer but you have seen a lot.

Anyhow here we go :).


A) Repetitiveness when starting over

This is a hard one. More randomness and variety they introduce harder it is to balance the game and have it have just the right amount of survivability and challenge.


A1) Let players keep multiple save states per playthrough

So like a checkpoint yea? so not a save scum but more like a partial restart. I like it.

I actually had similar idea today after posting my last post here. I suggested to the developers to let the player restart the game 10 days before he died. That way there would be a consequence to dying but they would not have to start from stratch. This would solve the Camp Fever killed me because i had no idea that is a thing issue.

I guess 15 days could work as well. Much better than 30 in any case. It would require the game to keep way more saves around to be able to do that but should be doable.

Alternativly the game could rollback the player and just do a litle bit of renovating on his items deleting some changing some numbers.. changing some locations.. basically randomizing the current situtation for the worse resources wise but giving the player 10 days back to prepare for whatever just happened.

This idea is still work in progress but i think it has potential. however the first part of it should be way easier to implement the 2nd part is a bit.. hmmm.. optimistic :D.




A2) Introduce perks that skip repetitive content

I think this is a viable solution. Somebody suggested a Perk where a player would start with a MudHut build and some otehr stuff and developers did not say no. It is definatly a posibility.

This would be great feature for those who want a more casual experience and a faster start if something bad happens.


A3) More features and stronger randomization

I also suggested this to developers as well today after your post. Namely i think the shipwreck location can be randomized for sure so can the ponds and the dark cave water source.

I think this has strong potential but should probably be a Perk because this might be very unbalanced in both directions.

I think if this is introduced trough the Perk the Perkless game can still be nice and balanced for those who do not mind the repetativnes and could give a nice random start for those who really do not like it.

I think also semi random starts with predetermined but easier locations of resources could also be introduced trough the Perks.

Of course the time needed to develop something like this will always be an issue.


B) Getting killed by game mechanics that are hard to foresee

I agree the game should tell you more about and solving this would help a lot. If the player plays well they will not be killed by a sudden deadly thing that came out of nowhere so it will solve the repetetivnes issue as well.


B1) Signal to the player when camp fever becomes a possibility

This is actually a really good point. I knew exactly when Camp Fever will come and what it will do and how to tackle it before I even went to the game because i read the update.

For a new player going in blind though it is quit a sucker punch.. probably one of the bigger ones.

I think it is fine that Camp Fever is not there from the start of the game so the player has the chance to prepare.

My solution for this would be that when the player gets it it takes a while to develop like 5-10 days first causing just rash, then headaches, than the diarhea with proper messages warning hte player that things will not become any better.

To balance this i would say it is fine that it takes longer to fix the longer you ignore it.

In any case i agree 100% player should get more timely info. my aproach would be a different but the end results should be the same.

Player should get a bigger heads up and more time to deal with Camp Fever.
how exactly? well its for the developers to decide but they have at least 2 very good options now.


B2) Water issues

One: This is still work in progress because game is in early access. Your instincts are correct though there was indeed a lake added to the game in the update but it is hard to reach. The rains are also being rebalanced each update. So update 29 has way more rain than 28 and it lasts shorter. From my experience the variation is way better now.

i assume the Island has way more Ponds and maybe even lakes that the animals know about but they are in fairly inaccesible places for the player to reach. For me it is not immersion breaking.

Anyhow developers are working hard for the available water to be fair while staying challenging. It is a hard balance to hit right.

Oh Btw you can survive of the coconuts and the trickle of Cave water with no rain at all but you have to stay chilled by washing in salt water often. It is tedius but doable. For normal player that is just an emergency situation between 2 rains.. for somebody playing on extreme draught perk it is an every day reality :D.


Two:
There is a way to desalinate the water. Let me know if you want a spoiler or are you fine looking for it yourself. So no ommision on this one :D. So there is a tool for it. Btw it is not a Plastic sheet. Plastic sheet can be used for similar purpose as well though. Just not from salt water but from palm fronds instead.

Three:
You can use the Campfire as the light source to explore the dark cave. just build it inside :).
I respect the fear of scorpions though. I agree however that it would be nice to tell the player that the cave feels damp and that you hear some water droping inside.. Altough that might be a bit to obvious. The game does want to stay a bit wonderous and mystical where it can. The water source did not change. It is still inside the Dark Cave.

Fuor:
I have many wins where I never used shipwreck at all. It is a nice steping stone but also requires time investement. Stuff you find there are great but you can do without.
So your instinct is right here. I agree with you a random remnant of civilization is not important at all. Before Update 28 ( i think ) the shipwreck was giving heavy lacerations and i was avoiding it like a plague. There is plenty other ways to get what you need and is totally skipable. YOu can master the wilderness without it but you will have to play like a master.. and that will require some learning still :). I agree with your personal preference.

Five:
Same as four banana trees are fine in emergency but they are not required to survive.
I think it is quite cool thing though :D. I think it is better you learn to play the game well than to spend 100 hours thiking you have to do banana trees. The game opens up way more if you are not the slave to the shipwreck, banana trees, solar stills the desalinizator and the such :).


B3) Generally warn the player about dangerous developments while there is still time to prepare

I agree 100%. The player should get timely information about the seasons changing and the results of them. Yes it breaks the immersion a litle bit.. but i am sure most peoople would thade litle imersion for not having to start over from day 0.

I think the best solution here would to have a "tutorial messages" option which would give the players more information about the game but greatly reduce the rate at which they acumulate meta currency.


B4) Introduce dangerous elements gradually

I agree with this one as well. I already mentioned how i would make the Camp Fever develop slower. This would be very cool actually.

I actually have a good idea for the storm as well. First storm should be a big lighter.. only take 1 or 2 items at the time and strongly getting stronger over time so the player gets a chance to be like.. ok this thing i need to care about. Right now is like.. day 22.. storm comes you go to sleep.. you ake up and most your items are gone if you are in a coastal area. It sucks.


B5) Update the in-game help with more information about the most common causes of death

This will be done. While some players will not read some will.

The player could have a traveling guide to the area of the world.. he could know that in 30 days a very dry season will come. The information could be feed to the player in immersive way. There is a lot of things that can be done here.

But I agree reading is not fun that is why i think for new players kind of "tutorial" messages with more description would be good.


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So anyway yea.. it is hard to find a good balance but there are many good ideas here and like you see i have some of my own that are similar and some that go in a bit of diferent direction.


In any case a lot of material for the developers. the only question is if they have time to check them out and implement them and how well they fit their vision.


Thnx again for sharing the ideas i think there is a lot of potential here it was a while since we had a fresh player giving real quality feedback so much appreciated :D.


It will help me a lot to try to point out to the developers some of the things that might be missing still. It is really hard for them though. They work a lot to finish the game and there is only 2 of them but surely some of the stuff here an be fixed.



I also believe while some of this things seam very non ideal i think they possibly like you said already have the solutions in mind they just did not have their turn to be implemented yet.

basically polishing the game goes before release. I think they are still in the phase where they add content. So not much reasons to balance something if they will add something that will totally make that outdated anyway.


Anyhow thnx!

Cheers!

have a nice day :)

[Taklu]

Messaggio originale di Psyringe:

A1) Let players keep multiple save states per playthrough

If repetitiveness is inevitable, then one solution might be to reduce the need for repeated playthroughs. Obviously, by giving players the option to fall back to an earlier save state, they would not need to repeatedly start from scratch. You could also autosave the game, for example at the middle of each season, which would give players 15 days of preparation for the hazards in the next season that may have killed them.

This would require next to no changes to the current game mechanics, but it would change the "feeling" of playing the game, by reducing the intensity and the sense of urgency that it currently has.

It's also worth noting that losing e.g. 15 days of in-game progress can still be a very substantial setback, and some players would drop the game in frustration even if they could go back to such an earlier save. I don't see a good way of reducing the lost time though, as the things that can kill you will often take preparation to prevent.

I do like this idea as some people might not want to have multiple characters going at the same time. I wouldn't want to ask the dev to expand upon their current save slots. If I threw this addition how would this sound to you.

Have the capability to choose the save slot to save your current save to when saving the game?

I do think certain additions to the game should come in perk form as making the game easier or harder is complicated to player experience. It's the best option that can cater to every individual.

Messaggio originale di Psyringe:

Going back to the warning popup that I suggested for the "new dangerous bugs", a similar approach could be taken to other dangers in the game, like the dry season or rainstorms - though these are easier foresee as they don't "trap" the player in dangerous behavior like the bugs do. For example, a popup on day 15 saying "You now that in the tropic climate, the rain season is followed by a dry season with almost no rain at all. You wonder if you have access to enough fresh water to withstand a change in the weather." might help.

I think this should come from a reward source. I don't think that is something that will just be generally known unless you lived in that area before. Each region in the world is different and slightly different. Perhaps this can come from living on the Island for a year. OR I personally think something like a journal can be created and you can create your own calendar. You gather the data that you will know by default one season comes after another and by observation you could tell a season ended around this period of time and seasons last 120 days.

[Taklu]

Messaggio originale di TheNeomare Youtube:

I actually have a good idea for the storm as well. First storm should be a big lighter.. only take 1 or 2 items at the time and strongly getting stronger over time so the player gets a chance to be like.. ok this thing i need to care about. Right now is like.. day 22.. storm comes you go to sleep.. you ake up and most your items are gone if you are in a coastal area. It sucks.

As someone that lives in florida I could comment on this. I think the Weather system is still missing the biggest season experienced by Coastal Regions. Monsoon Season or Hurricane Season. These will include Thunderstorms and Hurricane force winds. This is the period that would have rain for 3-7 days easily straight. Right now it's condensed into the rainy season and simplified.

An incredible 331 consecutive days of measurable rainfall were recorded at Manuawili Ranch, Maui, in 1939-40. If you include a trace of rain, the record is 881 consecutive days, or nearly three straight years, at Honomu Maki, Oahu, from 1913 to 1916.

Both those are Islands. I really do hope Hurricane force winds do get added to the game in the future. You can predict when a Hurricane is developing nearby https://www.sevencorners.com/blog/weather/do-you-know-the-signs-of-an-incoming-hurricane