Species Hunt Minigame
Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 4:20 pm
So guys, I was thinking that we could add a lot of playing time to our Age by putting a little minigame in it.
In this case, it would be a sort of treasure hunt, where the objective is to find all of the plants and animals in the Age. The player could keep track of his progress with a checklist (similar to the ones that birdwatchers use to list all of the different species they've seen).
The main motivation for the player to participate in this game would be the fact that there is something compulsively satisfying in filling in all of the blank little "check here" boxes on a list...In fact, on that basis alone I believe a player could feel a real sense of satisfaction at having located and identified all twenty (or whatever) species of plants and animals in the Age, especially the rare and hard-to-find ones. (The "gotta catch 'em all" Pokemon mentality) However, I'm sure that even the players who wouldn't be motivated just by filling in the checkboxes would do so anyway, simply because they would be unsatisfied until they knew for certain that they had seen all of the new content that the Age had to offer.
An interesting twist on this might be to add puzzles or challenges that must be solved in order to locate certain species...for example, the nest of the long-beaked bird might only be visible if you can figure out how to climb into the upper limbs of a tall tree.
Well, what say? If you guys are interested in putting this in the Age, we have a good start on it already, with the species we already have:
Animals:
1. Medusa tree
2. Fish (unnamed)
3. lizard 1
4. lizard 2
Plants:
1. Quiver tree
2. 20 gallon tree
3. Glowing carnivorous plant
In this case, it would be a sort of treasure hunt, where the objective is to find all of the plants and animals in the Age. The player could keep track of his progress with a checklist (similar to the ones that birdwatchers use to list all of the different species they've seen).
The main motivation for the player to participate in this game would be the fact that there is something compulsively satisfying in filling in all of the blank little "check here" boxes on a list...In fact, on that basis alone I believe a player could feel a real sense of satisfaction at having located and identified all twenty (or whatever) species of plants and animals in the Age, especially the rare and hard-to-find ones. (The "gotta catch 'em all" Pokemon mentality) However, I'm sure that even the players who wouldn't be motivated just by filling in the checkboxes would do so anyway, simply because they would be unsatisfied until they knew for certain that they had seen all of the new content that the Age had to offer.
An interesting twist on this might be to add puzzles or challenges that must be solved in order to locate certain species...for example, the nest of the long-beaked bird might only be visible if you can figure out how to climb into the upper limbs of a tall tree.
Well, what say? If you guys are interested in putting this in the Age, we have a good start on it already, with the species we already have:
Animals:
1. Medusa tree
2. Fish (unnamed)
3. lizard 1
4. lizard 2
Plants:
1. Quiver tree
2. 20 gallon tree
3. Glowing carnivorous plant