For my second post in my Game Design series, I am going to jump from the more hardcore gaming genre of RPG to a more casual gaming genre... "Tribe" games. There may be a better word for these kind of games, but this sums them up well enough. These are games like Virtual Villagers... games where you take care of a tribe and help them to grow. There really aren't that many games like this available right now, but they it's still a popular kind of game and would do well with more titles to choose from.
Tribe games all have the basic idea of a few people stuck on some island or other location, where they have to survive. Your goal is to build up the tribe and either escape the location or just survive it, depending on the game. So what is required for these games and what makes them better?
These games do best when you have the option of letting the game continue running while you aren't playing it. This lets you complete "tedious" and time consuming tasks without sitting around twiddling your thumbs. Having this option is really important or people quickly lose interest in the game. There may be exceptions where the game has no time consuming tasks and everything happens quickly, but I don't really see that as being a good tactic when designing this kind of game. These are meant to be casual games and not fast-paced games. The best way to handle letting the game run while not playing is to have at least a few speed settings - paused, normal, and fast. Having a couple more speeds to offer variety while playing doesn't hurt, but isn't really necessary. When paused, the game will not do anything while you have it running or while it's not running. All other speeds have the game progressing whether you have it running or not.
Next, you need tasks to do. These can be small things like building various kinds of buildings, or collecting food. Tasks can also include more advanced things like researching things. A variety of tasks is important or players will tire of the game. The more tasks available, the more likely the game will succeed. As far as researching goes, this can include gaining new skills to build new things or creating potions and spells or something like that. Creating potions or spells using a variety of collected items without knowing for sure what does what can really make the game interesting. The one thing that seems to be missing from these games that add that ability is a way to record what you've learned. It's one thing to have to try different combinations in order to find out what the result will be, but it becomes annoying when you have to either write it all down on paper or else try to remember it yourself in order to do the same thing again in the future. If the player combines items and learns what it does, it should be stored in the game so the player can easily do that again.
Similar to tasks, another common element that makes the game more interesting is having puzzles to solve. The puzzles don't have to be really hard to solve... these aren't Adventure games. That's something that developers of these games don't really seem to think about. I'm not saying that the puzzles should be really simple, either. They should be challenging without requiring players to look up the answers online. Remember that these games are for the casual player and not really meant to challenge the hardcore gamer. The more puzzles available, the more interesting the game will be for gamers. Just remember to offer a variety of puzzles and try to steer clear of the overused types of puzzles like match 3 or seek and find.
Another element that helps to make the games interesting for players is the ability to find or catch certain things. In the games out there now, these include things like butterflies, shells, birds, fish, and more. Having a collection of items adds another goal in the game that many players enjoy. It's something that is easy and done while working on other things or waiting for some task to complete. It isn't necessary to have many different kinds of items to collect in the game, but the items that are used should have a large variety to collect. It isn't as much fun to collect 5 of 5 shells as it is to collect 20 of 20 shells. It's also a good idea to offer a way to view your collection. It's also nice to have an interesting way to view the collection. You can have a display of the items flat on some "wall" or "table," but that's not really very interesting. Instead, fish can be seen swimming in an aquarium like you can see in Escape from Paradise 2. Or, you might see birds or butterflies flying and perching in an aviary. It's also nice to have the different items look different from each other. It's not very interesting if they all look almost exactly the same.
An overall goal in the game is also important. What are you doing and why? As mentioned, this can include escaping the place you are at or becoming a large city or some other overall goal.
That is all that you really need in this kind of game, but you can add additional things to make it more interesting and fun for players. I'll mention some items that have been used and some that I think would be interesting to include that have not been used yet.
One thing you can include is having babies look something like their parents. It can be more fun trying to get a kid that looks a certain way be combining different parents than if all kids are completely random. This idea has been seen in different games, where the hair color or style, skin tone, or clothing is a combination of the parents'. A variation of this is having a character editor that lets you choose the characteristics of the babies (hair color/style, clothing, skin tone, etc) when the baby is born or even allow the editor to be used on any person at any time in the game. This hasn't been seen in any Tribe game that I've seen, but offers another option to customize your tribe. Naming the people in the tribe should also be an option.
Having different locations to play the game when starting a new game is also a nice way to add replayability. This was seen in My Tribe, where you could choose from a huge number of islands when starting the game or moving to another island after finishing the one you were on. The variety makes it more interesting than having the exact same location every time you play a new game. The downside of how My Tribe handled it was that there were still only half a dozen main tasks or accomplishments and each island had 3 of those. The limited number meant that you were still pretty limited on replayability. If there were 15-20 different main tasks/accomplishments and a large number of islands or other locations to choose from, it would offer a lot more replayability than any current Tribe game out there.
Accomplishments, achievements, awards, medals, etc. Regardless what is used, some way of recognizing main things done in the game is also useful in making players feel like they are doing something useful. Although not required for these games, it's still a very useful element that can make the game that much more fun for players.
One issue I've had with many of these games is how easy it can be to lose the entire tribe and have to start over just because you forgot to pause it before going to sleep. It isn't so bad when you lose your entire tribe to starvation the first day you play (if you haven't played it for hours that day anyhow), but when you're close to completing the game and you lose them overnight due to starvation, disease, old age, etc... that can make you not want to ever play the game again. For example, I played Wild Tribe and had all four parts of the Arc completed and just had to put them together. I had made a working community that had all the food and water it needed without me watching it every second to keep it alive, so I left it alone overnight. Unfortunately, because I had the number of "people" that I wanted and that was working well, I hadn't made any new "people" since near the beginning of the game. The result was that they all reached old age the same night while I was sleeping and when I woke up, everyone was dead. I never played it again. I think having an option letting you choose between having this kind of thing happen or not would be useful. When disabled (so you can't lose your tribe to these events), the people in the tribe can just stop doing anything when they are out of food or water or too old. If they are too old, they only thing they might be allowed to do is have kids. Then, if the game designers want, they can make it so that the people who would normally have died because of whatever reason would live for something like 15 minutes after the player starts the game. That allows the player time enough (with a warning of some sort) to fix the problem. You could also avoid the option altogether and just have that warning and 15 minutes time frame to fix the problem before the people die. This is meant as a casual game and not one where you should have game ending events.
Another element that can make the game more interesting is adding random events. The events can be both good and bad and might let the player choose whether or not to take part in the event, depending on what the event is. For example, finding a crate, the player could be given the choice of opening it or not. If opened, something good or bad might happen and it's up to the player whether or not to take the chance. On the other hand, if the random event was a storm, the player would have no choice and would have to live with whatever good or bad thing happened. Note that there should be a variety of possible outcomes, both good and bad, for each event so that the events don't get repetitive. When including random events in any game, it is also nice to have an option for the player to choose the event frequency (how often it happens). This lets players who want a more "stable" game to have it and players who want a more "random" game to have it. I personally don't think games with random events need a setting for "no random events," though that does offer more choice to players and choices are always good in a game.
One thing some of these games include are likes and dislikes of the people in the tribe. Unfortunately, I've yet to see those play any part in the game at all. If you want to include likes and dislikes in the game, it would be better to have them actually mean something. If a character doesn't like rain, maybe they refuse to work outside in it. If a character doesn't like the ocean, maybe they won't go near it. If the person doesn't like butterflies, maybe they won't agree to have kids with someone who does. Whatever choice is made for how the likes and dislikes affect the game, having an effect would give them a purpose rather than something players completely ignore.
Finally, something that I haven't seen in a Tribe game is real conversation between people in the game. Some of them let the people talk, but there aren't words... it's just a "gimmick" to make it look realistic. Instead, it would be nice to have characters actually talk to each other. Obviously, the conversations need to be rather limited instead of having a hundred things each person can say, but having at least something said would make it more realistic. The conversations can be in thought bubbles, spoken aloud if you have voice actors to work with, shown on a character tab/display similar to the thoughts shown in Virtual Villagers, or in some other method. I recommend only showing the conversations (or hearing them) when clicking on someone talking. You might still have a background sound for talking when near people who are talking (similar to entering a crowded room where you can't hear exactly what is being said, but you know that people are talking).
All in all, Tribe games can be fun games when taking a break from the fast paced games or if you just prefer casual games. Each game currently available is similar and some things are basically the same in each, but they are all unique in some way. Unfortunately, the newer games aren't taking the best parts of earlier games and using them in some way to make their games better. The result is that each game is better than the rest for certain reasons and worse than the rest for other reasons. If a game were to look at the best things each game previously made did and find a way to incorporate those things in a unique way and add additional elements to help make the game more unique, it could easily be a favorite. And, remember... Tribe games don't have to be on an island or near the shore. You might have a tribe game located in the middle of a jungle, for example. Or even on another planet with unique plants and trees, different colored water maybe, weird looking people in the tribe, and so on. Make it unique, but keep the best things from other games.
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