Devlog #1

My project "Cargo" is a 3D survival-trading game with heavy narrative elements.

The idea for combining "survival" and "trading" came when I watched the movie "Waterworld" (which is, ahem, not the best movie in the world ), but I thought it would be really interesting to play Kevin Costners character in a game: you drive around with your boat between settlements, buy and sell your goods and get involved in local stories and conflicts. You need to be smart and turn a profit to survive in a harsh world, but other peoples' survival also depends on you, so you will face some tough moral choices: do you sell something for a high price, keep it for yourself or give it away for free?

I also remember playing "This War of Mine" and thinking about the merchant that shows up at your door. You can trade things with him and then he leaves, but I tried to imagine a game where you play that guy (instead of the people inside the building).

Those ideas somehow morphed into a gameplay loop of trading, traveling and surviving.

Setup

I toyed around with different settings, but the common thread was always that things in the game world should be really scarce and difficult to get, otherwise the survival aspect would not make sense.

Because survival games in the arctic are somewhat rare, and I thought this can be visually really cool looking, I settled on an arctic setting.

So my game is set in an alternative version of the 19th century. The 'Anglian Empire' is trying to conquer the Arctic and needs all the help it can get, because lately things have not been going so well. Supply lines have been cut due to the harsh weather and suplies in many settlements and outposts are dwindeling. The conncetion to London has long broken off. There are reports of disease outbreaks, starvation ...

That's where you come in: You play a merchant, one of the few who are brave (or crazy) enough to transport important supplies between settlements, outposts, mining stations. You need to figure out where to buy what (and for how much) and where to sell it (for how much). With the profit you buy food, water and fuel for yourself, you need to heat your boat, and buy upgrades to travel further north. That is the game's core (more on that later...).

Goals

Nr. 1 goal: Finish my prototype in UE 5. The prototype let's you play the core gameplay loop (trade, survive, upgrade) and that should be fun and engaging. If it is, then I can expand to more features. If it's not fun, I need to figure out why :D

Devlog

I want to focus on challenges and how I am tackling them. My challenges are:

- Ambitious project: the scope might be too big for a solo-dev. Reducing scope, preventing feature creep and being smart about my choices is important.

- Simulation heavy: Settlement produce goods (some produce a bit of coal, others fur or meat), and they also consume stuff (water, fuel, medicine). And your vitals (hunger, thirst, body temp) are ticking down, i.e. the game is heavy on simulations and systems. Testing this can be a challenge

- Art style: I am not an artist, so... I'll focus on great design for now and am using assets packs from the store to get at least a decent look together

Unreal Engine

This is my first project using UE 5. It might seem like overkill for an indie project (?) but I heard good things about Blueprints and I think they have a good community to help and good online documentation.

I taught myself the basics of Blueprints and have only used those so far (no actual coding), and I want to see how far I can get with that. This devlog might be interesting to you, if you cannot code or want to use Blueprints in Unreal Engine too. I will post screenshots of Blueprints and the beginning of this Devlog will definitely design- and tech-heavy, less focused on in-game visuals.