I love writing game docs, and design ideas. While I realize that i will never be able to create or use every single idea I come up with, at least I can share them with everyone. Promoting the free trade of ideas and encouragement of innovation.
Let me just start by saying I know Squirrel Simulators do exist, I just had the idea before I knew any of them existed. Nothing agains those games, but a solo squirrel doesn't make sense in my mind. You always seem to see them in a scurry, rarely by themselves. You also see them being agile, playful and of course being massive PRICKS to each other, dogs and homeowners. Thats were the idea of PvPvE came from for me. Game sessions were players are competing with each other for a common goal while fighting AI who have a seperate yet conflicting goal to the players.
An example of this, lets take Halo. Your team and your opponents team are each trying to steal each others flags. Lots of mayhem, destruction and nail bitingly close calls as each team fights for dominance of Blood Gulch. Each player has 2 main goals, protect their flag, steal their opponents flag, fairly standard. Suddenly and with no warning several Covenant Phantoms crest the canyon walls and drop of a Wraith, several Ghosts, Elites, Sniper Jackals and maybe even a pair of Hunters. The Covenant doesn't much care about flags, they care about killing the players, as much and as indescriminatley as possible. So now we have PvP and PvE all going on at once, players short term goals and how they can achieve them have changed, but their long term goals have remained the same.
So why not design a game exactly like I described above? Well the idea is based around squirrels being jerks, and they don't need guns, wars or alien armies to have a good conflict. Well if were not killing each other, how do we win? Easy, the winner of a game session isn't the one killed the most enemies or the one who captured the flag, true to the theme its who acted the most like a squirrel.
First lets take the average squirrel, give it more agility, make it run faster and jump higher. Why you ask, easy, because the abilities and life of a squirrel are like the dreams of a parkour enthusiast so why not enhance that dream. Now to set up a point system that will reflect how we want the players to play the game. Lets see we already know the winner is going to be the person who acts the most like a squirrel so what are squirrels known to do;
- Finding and eat nuts
- Stealing food from other squirrels
- Stealing food from unaware people
- Scattering garbage
- Throwing acorns
- Burying nuts
- Digging up yards
- Scattering garbage
- Making nests in insolation
- Sweet tricks and jumps
- Teasing dogs
- Having sex
- Throwing birds eggs out of nests
- Taking over bird feeders
- Marking and defending territory
- Yelling at othe squirrels
So there are lots of ways for players to earn points, but doing the same things over and over are boring. So we introduce point multipliers, something to help scale a players score by having them perform a wider array of actions, rather then say having them dig up yards for the entire session. This also puts players into direct competition with one another for the same goals. While the game is primarily non violent, you still need to be able to interact with your opponents in some way. Throwing nuts could temporarily stun other squirrels, slowing them, making them drop any food items they were carrying and having them fall off a tree branch. So players can't kill other players, only be dicks to them, the environment is whats designed to kill players. While teasing dogs may be fun, being caught by the dog is not. The same way stealing food from park goers may make a happy squirrel, a plump squirrel may catch the eyes of a mischievious kid and his BB gun. Nesting birds don't like sharing the trees with you, pigeons don't like sharing the kind old ladies breadcrumbs, lady squirrels don't want to have anything to do with you. Of course lets not forget the nimals who ordinarily eat squirrels; Hawks, Owls, Cats, Raccoons and Foxes.
Now to make the competition a little less skill based and a little more random. Just as there are different kinds of squirrels, so to should we have playable squirrels. They can all do the same things, just some are a little more specialized. Of course to prevent players from always picking their favorite we will have to make it randomized at spawn. A few different types off the top of my head;
Grey Squirrel
No special, higher stats
Red Squirrel
Faster at anything destructive, average stats
Black Squirrel
Faster at eating and digging, average stats
Fat Squirrel
Food cannot be dropped or stolen, lowest stats in the game
Flying Squirrel
Can glide, average stats
Albino Squirrel
Constantly earns points by staying alive, higher chance to avoid predatory attention, highest stats in the game
Fox Squirrel
Bites and Throwing nuts stun longer, average stats
Albert's Squirrel
Higher chance of avoiding predatory attention, average stats
So get out there and piss everyone else off as you try and be the very best squirrel you can be!
I hope some of these ideas are helpful and that maybe they inspire you, I appreciate all feedback.
EDIT**
On a more serious note, I don't really believe this concept would really work in a mass shooter session. While each side may be striving to kill each other, introducing a common threat would temporarily unit the players until the threat was minimized. Possible regular intervals of spawning enemies or removing vehicles and more powerful weapon spawns when enemies were active. Sure there will be those players that ignore the AI threat and attempt to achieve the objective during the chaos. Players who will watch and wait to see the results of battles before moving in to pick off the injured victors.
It would be a nice mode or feature to switch on, just so the repetitive PvP doesn't get to repetitive, or have the enemy spawn closer to the winning team to give the losers a higher chance of fair play.
