My New Game Idea

[puffin]

Working Title: Exodus

The world is dying. War, famine, and climate change have killed billions of people. The rich and powerful have fled Earth to start a new civilization on Mars. You and your family are refugees in a UN camp on the western coast of a fictional continent. This continent is very sparsely populated and has very little infrastructure, but people have flocked to it because it did not see any action in the war and therefore has no nuclear radiation, which plagues the rest of the world. One day, the UN commander in charge of the camp that they need doctors, engineers, etc. to assist their forces in a fight against a looter gang/militia group that is centered around a town a few miles south of the camp. This is where the player chooses their past occupation, which affects what skills they get bonuses for later in the game. In exchange for you volunteering, your family is safely flown to a much bigger and better camp on the opposite side of the continent.

You get into a Jeep-like vehicle with a couple UN soldiers and another volunteer and as you drive away you see the plane with your family on it take off from the runway. Later, the UN convoy you are in is ambushed while going over a bridge that is over a ravine. Your vehicle has already made it to the other side, but many of the other vehicles including the main large truck falls down into the ravine. Looters hiding in the hills above the road start opening fire on the convoy, and while attempting to run away you fall down, and lose consciousness.

Once you wake up, you go back to the vehicle and find it completely empty, stripped of its electronics, weapons, and other supplies, but still working. Your only reasonable short term objective is to continue to the town to look for help.




The overall goal of the game is getting to your family on the other side of the continent. There are very few towns and settlements between you and your destination, its mostly empty terrain and shitty roads. To get there you will have to navigate dense rainforests, vast deserts, narrow mountain roads, and deep snow. You will need to build makeshift bridges over gaps in the road, clear fallen trees and other debris off of roads, and defend yourself from looters and wild animals. You need to manage food, water, medical supplies, weapons and ammunition, and especially your vehicle.

To start out, your vehicle is slow, unreliable, unarmored, and does not even have a full tank of fuel. Its an old car, and the harsh terrain will not be kind to it. It will constantly break down, and every time you must diagnose the issue and figure out how to fix it. This could include hiking for days to find replacement parts, or even a new vehicle entirely if the there is too much damage.

All you know is that the camp is on the eastern coast of the continent, but no idea exactly how to get there. You have no in game minimap, and must find paper maps to look at and draw on to plan your own route through the land. As you go on, you will find more and better vehicles and vehicle parts. You may start out with a shitbox but by the end of the game, you very well may have a full custom, fast, reliable, and armored vehicle with plenty of storage for fuel, weapons, and food. One interesting thing is you could make your vehicle perfect for a desert area, but once you reach a mountain, a different car setup could be way better.

I thought this was a cool idea, if only I was smart/talented enough to make a game like this lol.