Please add more fish, islands with animals and structures
Hello, you should add: doors, fishing nets, spikes (or something to defend your raft), small islands (with trees and treasures), ladders.
and imrove: windows (they're too low and small), chairs (why chairs when I can't sit there? And If you are sitting near the table food will refill 20% more hunger)
That is my ideas for this game
Great game so far! There are just a few things I can suggest since there have been several creative suggestions before me:
- It'd be great to be able to make baits with which you can catch different fish species that recharge a bit more hunger
- Jumping into the water should affect the player somehow, maybe it should give the player temporary slowness because of the wet clothes
- Tracking the days/the time spent on the current map would be useful
- some kind of roofing made of thatch would look pretty good
- small and rare obtainable items that can be used for decoration, like a pufferfish that hangs on a tiny rope
This is pretty fun for about an hour, but I very quickly found myself with too many supplies and not much to build or craft. After I figured out how to start without dying instantly, I set myself up with a collection of item nets, purifier and cooker, and I was comfortable in no time. I could really use some goals. I like the island idea that's been suggested, but at the same time I wouldn't make much sense if the point is to live on a raft.
I think NPCs would be a good plan. Perhaps some other lost-at-sea characters could drift by, and you'd need to be able to provide for them as well. You could even assign a job to the NPC, so that while you focus on fishing and cooking, they repair damages, or fight off the shark. They should be rare, though. Even rarer could be a stranded animal, like a dog, which could help attack the shark, and randomly pick up items that pass beside or under the raft (probably mostly planks). Again, you'd have to feed it. The NPC/dog would also have thirst and hunger, as well as a health bar, so you'd have to make sure they didn't get pushed into the water, or could at least get out if they did. Dog would have to come with a bowl, which you could fill with clean water. Feeding could either also be done with a bowl, or just by selecting food and pressing E at the dog. The NPC could either get their own food and water, given it's available on the cooker, or you might have to hand it to them.
I feel like this would add a challenge, and in some cases force you to decide if you can afford to care for another life in exchange for a benefit or two.
Multiplayer also sounds like an interesting idea, as long as you don't add the option to fight other players.
More animals would also be a fantastic addition! Birds and other sealife that you could stab to eat would be really nice. Turtles, dolphins, even barracuda. Having dolphins could offer a sense of paradise or peace, but could also, if you're desperate, become food. The shark could also target them, giving you the chance to swim out for supplies, OR you could try to save the dolphin.
After some thought, and after looking at some other comments, I agree that more trees would be nice. Specifically fruit trees. Also, larger gardens would be a nice option, as well as a harpoon to stab into the shark and either pull it to you to kill it, or have it pull you across the ocean to new settings.
These new settings could have different kinds of fish, different amounts of different materials, or it could even be an island.
In regards to the island idea, after a night or two, a storm could happen, forcing the player to either return to the safety of their current raft, or risk being washed out to sea without it and having to start all over. If you implement all of these features, using the harpoon on the shark could also offer the slim chance of finding your old rafts, if you had lost them.
I think multiplayer would be really fun. ^-^ Also, being able to go underwater would be an interesting thing. Maybe have certain items or materials that can be found underwater. The islands concept that people are suggesting would be fun, but at the same time I feel like not having any actual land is something that makes the game more unique. So if islands are added, maybe they should be kinda sparse or rare?
There is plenty, hon, if you use strategy. Gather lots of scraps and thatch, turn the thatch into rope, and make a water cooker. Try to put that wherever you plan your middle to be. Then make a harpoon and some item nets. Put the item nets on the sides of your raft, whichever side you see more objects floating past. Only ever put nets beside each other, not in front of nor behind, there is no need for that. Make a hammer and build around the water cooker. Build more item nets, then a food cooker, and a fishing rod. Occassionally collect supplies from the nets, build more nets (best to put them along the front of your raft, facing the direction the items are coming from). If you're feeling good about yourself by this point, you could optionally make a second set of cookers, just to double your food and water.
I would like to start off that I really like the idea of the game but this game needs more obstacles to overcome and more core mechanics like over sun exposure, freezing winds, storms, protein and vitamin C deficiency. That's just a few things I thought of. The reason I said it needs mechanics like this is because you picked a survival situation that has bare minimum of game mechanics to work with. Such as you can never go exploring to see new things or find new items, or the will never be a need for a stamina bar, because you shouldn't have a need to run for more than a few seconds. Let's take the forest for an example why do you need to build a base? To defend yourself from bigger and stronger enemies that will eventually be coming. Why do you need to pick up/make different weapons? To defend yourself from a horde of mutants, kill the cannibals, and hunt the different wildlife on the island. I've only played this for about 15-20 minutes and I more or less did everything that could be done. There should be a reason to fish other than just getting it for food, like chumming the water to lore sharks to or away from you. Why should I build walls? or why should I build a roof/2nd floor why grow trees. There should be a reason to keep moving in the water instead of drifting through the ocean. Such as making a sail to stay ahead of a monster of a great white shark. I don't know but the game just needs more core mechanics to build off of and not adding in chairs and tables at this point in time. Maybe staying on your feet for days on end would start hurting and you would need to rest your feet. That could be a reason to have chairs. Make resting important and time management when you should and shouldn't rest your character's body. Resting too much would give you sores making you weaker. But going nonstop would have a negative effect of needing to eat and drink more frequently, and needing to eat and drink bigger portions just to get back to normal.
Well, I've played this game for a few hours and I think I have a good idea about some additions. I made this list with the idea in mind that these can probably pretty easily be implanted in the game's current state, unlike ideas about multiplayer and islands. Also I realized after the fact that this list focusing heavily on thirst and hunger.
1. Potatoes and Beetroots: Don't get me wrong, I love diversity, but as far as I can tell these two are almost exactly the same. The grow for the same amount of time, they provide the same hunger, they're equally rare, etc. So to separate their uses a bit, I was thinking that Potatoes could provide more hunger than Beetroots, but Beetroots provide more thirst. It would give players a reason to pick one over the other in certain situations. Speaking of thirst and vegetables...
2. Vegetables and Thirst: Why do cooked vegetables provide thirst while uncooked vegetables provide none (or close to it)? Shouldn't cooking them actually make them have less water, because of evaporation? At the least, I think uncooked vegetables should give at least some thirst.
3. Hunger and Thirst Death: This is sort of a big one; when your thirst or hunger goes down to zero, you immediately die. I actually had a really nice raft going but neglected my thirst for a while and just died out of nowhere. Thirst and hunger should start to lower your health instead, even in reality you would start to decline in health before death, not just drop dead (like suffocating in water would do).
EDIT: It seems like it does lower your health, except when it starts flashing red, not when its empty. The screen should start turning red or dark when you're close to death, its really easy to just let your health go down that way and not know it.
4. Coconut Seeds: Uh, do you know that coconuts are the seeds of palm trees (at least the coconut producing species, Cocos nucifera)? So really I think the "coconut seeds" should just be replaced with a plant-able coconut. In fact, coconuts should be found floating around. It makes sense, they do float and other parts of trees are in the water, plus this would provide the player with some food and water early on, and with lumber and thatch for later.
5. Coconut Food: Coconuts have an edible inside, usually called the "meat", so shouldn't they also provide some hunger? Granted, they probably should give a lot more thirst than hunger, but still.
EDIT: They do give hunger, I was wrong. Disregard 5.
6. Swimming: The ability to swim underwater would be nice, although I can't think of a particular use right now. It would just be a bit fun, maybe expand on it later with underwater things?
7. Fishing Time: For starters, I think fishing is way too quick. Mackerel is a really good food that can be caught very quickly in a short amount of time. It doesn't need to take a long time, but just a bit longer.
EDIT: Ok, really everything can take a bit longer to do, at least for growing vegetables and trees. The water purifier and cooking spit seem about fine.
8. More Fish: More fish would be great, like pufferfish that can be used to make poison to hurt the shark or rarer fish that give more food. Just some more diversity for fish. Also fish that swim around like the shark that can be caught would be awesome, but a bit harder to do I understand.
9. Shark Fighting: Fighting the shark right now basically consists of waiting for it to attack your raft, then shanking it 3-5 times with the spear, and then either harvesting the meat or watch it swim off. The shark attacking the part of your raft with your Water Purifier early in the game is basically a death sentence because you probably don't have a spear yet, which is terrible if you're unlucky enough. So, I think there needs to be more ways to not only fight off the shark, but also hunt them. First, I think the Axe and Hook should able to deal damage to the shark, but only a small amount, that way people can somewhat defend early in the game. Also, there should be a way to more easily attack the shark without having to wait for it to attack the raft, like throwing the spear or something. Otherwise its just a chore waiting around for it to attack and then shanking it and waiting and shanking and waiting and butchering and waiting all over again. Plus adding more sharks as the game progress would be great, which I don't think it does right now. Someone else suggested that possibly sharks grow in number the more of them there are, meaning you need to keep them in-check or else be swarmed, which is a great idea.
EDIT: Shark damage is low as hell right now, to the point they're not a threat. I can easily kill a shark by just shanking it while in the water while being attacked. Later into the game, I eat almost purely shark meat because its so easy. We really need more sharks and for them to do more damage. So what I said above doesn't fully apply anymore, but some still does. Also maybe the Axe should be used to harvest the shark instead of the Spear.
10. Throwing Coconuts: The ability to throw coconuts at the shark would also be fun and ties in to the above idea of early shark defense. Especially if coconuts are found floating around, as I suggested earlier.
11. Current: It would be nice if the current moved the floating items at a slight angle, not dead on like right now. It just feels artificial. I don't think it would really mess up the nets.
12. Corpses: Alright, this sort of breaks my rule about decently easy/quick things to implant (in this case, the model), but finding a floating corpse would be interesting, especially if you could choose to butcher him like the shark, plus maybe he/she has some rare items or something. An interesting moral decision, something real survivors have to cope with sometimes.
So yeah, my suggestion so far. This game has a lot of potential and I hope it isn't squandered like Stranded Deep's was. Keep those updates coming, cheers!