preface
With more and more indie game teams, what type of game is fun and fun for players while also being gripped by limited development teams? As far as the current market situation is concerned, meat pigeons and business simulation are probably the two most suitable tracks for independent game teams.
Meat pigeon games, whether turn-based or action, because of the existence of meat pigeon mechanics, only developers need to formulate reasonable and interesting game rules and mechanisms, which can bring players a random and varied and content-rich game experience; Similarly, the development of simulation management games also focuses on the construction of game mechanisms (such as the design of technology trees), which can form a very deep gameplay without relying on "stacking", and also gives hardcore players a lot of room to play, which further extends the life of the game.
Timberborn is one such game with town building as its core. The game has been polished for a year and a half from its launch to the present, and it is already particularly well received on Steam.
After the apocalypse, "Rat and Mouse" appeared
Beaver Floating is a game about humans burping themselves after they blasted the earth into a desert, but the tenacious and intelligent beavers survived. This group of beaver rats relies on their own population and technology (where do beaver rats get their technology?). Probably learned from humans who have already burped, probably), while multiplying, while developing productivity. As for whether you can survive on this post-apocalyptic earth, it depends on how the players operate.
There are currently two races of beavers that can be played in the game, namely "Divine Tail" and "Iron Fang", the latter of which requires players to use "Divine Tail" to unlock after the average level of well-being in the game reaches 15, both of which have different characteristics in survival, reproduction and production construction.
As with most games of this type, players will need to choose the difficulty and map that suits them first. My personal advice is that whether you are a novice player in this type of game or not, it is definitely right to choose the easiest difficulty to familiarize yourself with the mechanics for the first time you play. In the game, players need to solve the survival problem of the beaver rat population first - fill their stomachs.
Farming is not a simple matter. In a short beginner's lesson, players can only learn to grow the most basic crop, carrots. But in the actual development process, we need to grow a variety of crops to meet the needs of the beaver rat population. Because there is a setting of happiness, which can be said to be the core setting of this work, it is simply an indicator of whether the entire group lives happily. After the degree of well-being is high, the work efficiency of the rats and mice will be improved, which is the most direct benefit. Some bigwigs are very good at playing, and the rats and mice in the group live particularly moisturized because of their highly developed productivity, and even live to be more than 100 years old (such as the picture below, the picture is seen on the Internet), which I can only look up to.
To improve well-being, we need to do a lot to improve living conditions, one of which is a rich diet, so that we can ensure complete nutrition. Carrots are the most basic ration, in addition to wheat, potatoes, chestnuts, etc., and as the town grows, we have new crops to unlock. And in this world where beavers dominate the earth, these "rats" have become more demanding for quality of life, potatoes and chestnuts can be baked to eat, and even developed flavored snacks such as maple sugar cakes. Growing a variety of crops to supply a wide variety of food requires us to arrange the planting area and planting quantity, because different crops have different ripening cycles, and we need to arrange the harvest time to ensure that there is always food to eat.
In addition to eating, nature is to live, which includes not only housing, but also various functional buildings and facilities. It should be noted that all buildings need to be connected to the road to function, we should pay attention to where the door of this building is when placing the building, there is a green arrow where the door is located, we must connect this green arrow with the road, otherwise it is not possible to just place the building on the side of the road. There are many similar small details, such as logging, it is not enough for us to build a collection point on the edge of these woods, but also to mark the area of felling, so that rats and rats will actively harvest trees. Wood is the most important resource, without which buildings cannot be built and towns cannot develop and expand. After the trees in nature are cut down, we can plant the types of trees we have unlocked, and like crops, different varieties will have different ripening times, and it is necessary to arrange the maturity period of different varieties reasonably to ensure that the supply of wood is always sufficient. Some trees can not only obtain wood after cutting, but also keep it to continue to produce resources, such as maple trees produce maple sugar, chestnut trees produce chestnuts. The collected wood resources, water resources, and food need to build warehouses for storage, pay attention to set up their storage items after building the storage building, otherwise it is impossible to store resources normally.
Beavers live near the water, water power is naturally the most important energy source, such as the plate factory that automatically processes logs Buildings, which need the power of water wheels to drive. However, it should be noted that this game has a very important setting - the dry season, which is also the most important test that players need to face. During the dry season, the water sources near the town will dry up and the water wheels will not be able to operate, so we can only rely on "rat power" to drive those facilities that need power to operate; At the same time, since there is no water source, domestic water and irrigation water must also be solved using pre-stored water resources. The different difficulties of the game are largely distinguished by the length of the dry season, and the test of the dry season for the entire beaver rat population is the difficulty and focus of the game, and players can find a solution after developing technology.
It's not hard to get a glimpse of the door, but it's not easy to really understand it
The game "Beaver Floating Life", if you want to get started with basic operations, many are difficult; But it's not easy to really understand it. Some players in the Steam comment area bluntly said: "Seeing the god playing this game, I feel like a Neanderthal" (to the effect) vividly illustrates this problem.
In this work, it is not difficult to survive in simple difficulty, barely fill your stomach, do not pursue quality of life, rely on carrots to survive, and can also let the group live a lot of time, but if you want to further develop, unlock more technology, and even achieve sustainable development through the ingenious cooperation of various facilities, even fully automatic production, it takes a lot of time to ponder. This game will have a very powerful technology in the future - gunpowder. Because of the existence of the dry season, we need to ensure that there is enough water supply during the dry season to not die of water shortage, in the early stage when the rat population is not much can be used to cope with the storage of water, in the later stage we will expand the living space of the group, there will be more than one town center, after the rat population is more, we will have to find a way to build a reservoir to store water, and gunpowder can help us deepen the depth of water storage, so that our reservoir can hold more water. In fact, this is not high-tech, and a lot of content can only be mastered through long-term learning.
If you want to enter the pit city construction simulation game, this game is a very good choice. Because the tech tree of this game is not complicated, the names of crops, buildings, and facilities are common in reality and easy to understand. Although the rats and mice are the protagonists, it can actually be seen as "skinning" human beings, and the lifestyle and survival logic of the group are relatively easy to understand, so the understanding of this game is not very difficult, unlike those sci-fi/space-themed urban construction simulation games to contact some unfamiliar terms.
However, this does not mean that the game is simple. In fact, although the mastery of this work is relatively friendly in similar games, its newbie guidance teaching is still too simple, which is equivalent to teaching players to make black powder, and there is atomic bomb manufacturing technology waiting for players to unlock in the game, and the process can only be studied by themselves. When I play, I also gnawed slowly according to the strategy on the Internet, and I haven't studied so seriously for a long time. Of course, the fun of this type of game is actually like this, the learning process is also part of the game experience, and when you eat thoroughly and become a big guy, then the fun you can create will be even higher.
epilogue
If you ask me if the game "Beaver Floating Life" is liver or not, I will tell you: "Physical strength is not liver, mental power is very liver." "This game may make you spend a lot of time in the process of learning, "can play" and "play understand" are two completely different experiences. The easy-to-understand technology tree and the setting close to reality and common sense give this game an advantage in terms of entry, and the cute and interesting beaver rat is even more interesting, so this game is very suitable for those who want to enter the pit city construction simulation game and are willing to spend time learning. Of course, the biggest guys in this genre can also use their creativity in this game and its map editor.