Need help discussing ideas for next VERY REPLAYABLE game

Project Ideas & Discussion
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New game very focused on replayability
treat this topic as a brainstorm
Right now im working in a new game based in Species:Unknown. If you don’t know the game you basically enter a spaceship where a monster tries to hunt you down. You have to complete an objective like killing the monster, getting important data from a specific room or blowing up the ship, etc.

The game im working on is quite similar, you control a small crew tasked with going from ship to ship completing different objectives, each ship will have a monster that will cause transformations. You can also get transformed (this means fattened, expanded, transformed etc.) from different things. For example, if you are in a scientific cruiser you might find experimental medicine.

The gameplay will revolve around exploring the ship, completing a few objectives needed before completing the final objective (For example: The room you want to go to is blocked by debris, so you have to find a way around or you have to find a keycard to a closed area etc.) The more you explore, the more risk of encountering the monster.

What i have now:
In each ship there are subsections, some are always there, some depend on the type of ship. A military ship will have a prison, a “food” ship will have a greenhouse for growing food etc.
All ships will have a bridge, lab, machinery and crew quarters section.

All of these sections will be randomly generated (or atleast that’s the idea) following 1 of 3 patterns available. For example, the crew quarters area might look like a donut, with the crew cabins on the outside and the mess hall in the middle of the donut or it might be a very long hallway with the mess hall at the end and cabin crews in each side of the hallway.

This adds replayability because:

  • Each section will be somewhat different, even if you get 2 crew quarter sections that look like a donut, one might have 6 cabin crews and another one might have 30 (depending on the size of the ship).
  • Enviroment will adapt to the specifics (bit of a spoiler but i plan to make one of the monsters a giant bee or a giant bee hive, so you might find honey or bee hives around, maybe there is one hiding in a container and it stings you when you try to open said container).**
    -** Lots of enviromental hazards that do not involve the monster (maybe radiation from the reactor can cause growth?) and lots of enviromental hazards that DO involve the monster (depending on the ship there will be vents either on top of you in the middle of the hallway or below you to each side of the hallway, so choose wisely if you walk in the middle of a hallway or hugging the walls because something might catch you if you stand below or close to one of the vents)
  • You only control 1 member at a time, if one of the members is trapped or kidnap you will need to control another member and go rescue them. Im planing on making members interact with eachother, so if one gets infected and is not treated, they might infect the others.

IMPORTANT: The game is a “dungeon-crawler” (kinda? i guess?), a random grid is generated for each section, you move square by square like in chess, interactions with objects, transformations, etc are all text based.

What i need from you guys:

I have a lot of ideas but i do not know if they are worth it and i also lack ideas in some departments.

I need monster ideas, i have like 6 but i would like to add atleast 10 or more.

I also need to know how these monsters will interact with the enviroment, how they interact with the player.

I also want to know: Would you like to see the monster move on its own around the hallways or would you like it to be more trap-based, hunting the player in specific spots like resting or close to a vent or opening a door etc. Maybe a mix of both? (might be hard)

Any ideas, any at all are very welcome, even if you think your idea is not worth it, please share it, treat this topic as a brainstorm. Every idea is valid.

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Good artists steal, right? Have you played Duskers? It’s set on a series of space derelicts infested with various threats. (Spoilers for a wonderful game below, although I’ve modified the entries somewhat)

Hunters - Strong and fast. Usually immediately lethal. Like to set up a hunting ground, pacing between a small cluster of rooms. Can loudly, slowly, permanently rip open normal doors if they feel trapped.

Security Bots - Ranged fighters. Tough and can rapidly kill, but not quite the xenomorphic glance-then-die pacing of a Hunter. Risk of penetrating the hull when they let loose with their guns, ‘filling’ a room (and connected rooms) with vacuum. Random Walk navigation patterns. Can open any powered door, which they’ll close behind them.

The Infestation - A creeping, oozing … biomass? digital infection?.. that slowly, slowly advances by growth. Terribly hard to damage, and doesn’t die unless every single bit is wiped out. Doesn’t ‘attack’ exactly, but automatically deals damage within a small radius. Mostly serves as a navigation hazard that gets constantly worse. Can’t do anything about closed doors, but if part of it is next to the door it’ll jam it and make it impossible to close if opened by anyone/anything.

The Swarm - Nano assault drones / Bugs. Can get through vents. Very, very resistant to non-AOE weapons. If they’re around, there’s a small but constant threat of any vents spawning them. Duskers doesn’t have it, but maybe some kind of airflow control console could exist for the player to manipulate, with the Swarm only spawning from vent covers that are currently connected to the Hive… and it’s possible to ruin the air in a room / the whole ship by mishandling the circulation system.

I’m not proposing taking those whole cloth, but when seen side-by-side they raise some interesting questions to answer about your prospective monsters. “How do they navigate?” “Are they immediately ‘lethal’? Moderately so? Do they cause environmental complications instead / in addition?”

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I do like the idea of an infestation that slowly grows. Maybe one square can spawn in 1 room and it can slowly grow out of control. If you catch it fast its just one room, if you take too long to find the source it will consume a whole subsection. Good idea! TY!

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(bit of a spoiler but i plan to make one of the monsters a giant bee or a giant bee hive, so you might find honey or bee hives around, maybe there is one hiding in a container and it stings you when you try to open said container).

Rather than have them be naturalized to the ship, perhaps they could be alien insects that can withstand the vacuum of space and they reproduce by creating an incubator type of room somewhere in a ship (maybe the engine room, since it’d potentially be the place with the most concentrated heat) or even the crew quarters can be turned into it by having the crew itself turned into incubators for them.

Would you like to see the monster move on its own around the hallways or would you like it to be more trap-based, hunting the player in specific spots like resting or close to a vent or opening a door etc. Maybe a mix of both? (might be hard)

it would be difficult to do, but maybe each type of monster would have different methods of hunting. For example, depending on the hive’s size, the bees would move around the ship hunting the crew down once they detect them inside the ship, but if the hive is still small and doesn’t have too many bees, then instead they would hunt them by catching them off guard, be it through traps or hiding in vents/dark rooms.

In each ship there are subsections, some are always there, some depend on the type of ship. A military ship will have a prison, a “food” ship will have a greenhouse for growing food etc.

Maybe differentiating between a military and a prison type of ship could work better. For example, a military ship could have experimental drugs which enhance one’s body, with things such as Power Armor, weapons, drugs and alike stored there. In that case, the monster could be robots following the orders of the ship’s rogue AI, who thinks that the best way to get the soldiers previously present inside the ship would be to have them bulk up on as many calories as possible, using experimental supplements to increase their performance and trying to get the soldiers to get more muscles, only it thinks the bulking up part trumps over every other step of the process and instead just fattens up whoever it comes in contact with.

A prison ship could have either the wardens overseeing the operation go mad with the power and enact punishments on the prisoner population by using experimental drugs to transform them/make them dumber, forcefully fattening them, whatever comes to mind. You could either have the choice of aiding the warden to stop an uprising from the prisoners by having their leader delivered to whoever the warden is, effectively crippling the rebellion and giving more power to the oppressors, or you can help the prisoners overthrow the warden and end their tyranny. Hell, you could even stumble upon this same ship later on and check on how they’re doing, and they would serve as a shopkeeper for you to buy exclusive items from them.

Also, just a small thing, but I think a “food” ship could be renamed to an Oasis/Pantry Ship instead, which could have a few events tied to it.

  • One where it works as intended, a communal ship ran by people who have your best interest in mind, nothing unusual happens.

  • One where it would be taken over by bandits (probably have this be their introduction, have the ship’s purpose be properly explained and such), they’re raiding the ship in order to resell the products they have in the ship for a higher price, or just because the leader of the bandits just wanted more food for themselves.

  • One ran by feeders (would have a chance to be triggered if the character you’re playing is over a certain weight range), they’d be overly affectionate and convince you to spend more time there. If you accept, you already know where that’ll go; they’d feed you until they don’t feel like doing it anymore, with a chance of them feeding you until you pass out from the fullness. If you decline, they’d either begrudgingly let you out, but there would also be the chance they put the ship on lockdown. In that case, you’re knocked out and they’ll force-feed you, at which point you need to escape their ship.

  • One event that could happen in this ship can be an eating contest of sorts, either ran by the normal ship crew or by the feeders. In the feeders case, they’d ask you to stay with them in the ship, while on the former nothing extraordinary would happen.

As for monster ideas:

  • Slime monster. It would spawn at different sizes each time you get in a ship it’s residing in, hunting strategy would also change depending on how big it is. If it’s small, it’ll hide and try getting bigger by eating to overpower you, otherwise it’ll prowl in tight/dark spaces. Medium size would be a mix of both, if it’s heavier than you it’d just hunt you down and overpower you, if you’re bigger than it it’ll use the same strategy as the small size. If it’s huge, it’ll chase you in order to eat. You could eat it, but the bigger it gets the harder it’ll be to pull it off.

  • Semi-sentient Xenomorph type of alien. It’s intelligent enough to hunt you similarly to how the slime monster would, only way more efficiently than it. You could try reasoning with it so it could help you complete your objective, even bringing it along to your ship with you for further training. If you already have a slime pet inside your ship when it comes, it’ll eat the slime and impose itself on its place. If you fail to convince it to help you, the alien will become hostile and try laying eggs inside of you.

  • Creature made in a lab. It’d be like the Regenerator from RE4, only you can’t kill it and doesn’t have any method behind hunting you down, it just slowly lumbers around the ship until it stumbles upon you again and tries swallowing you whole. You could trap it in a room, stagger it for a period of time, but no matter what you do it’ll just keep pushing to eat you. You can’t beat it, you can only survive it.

  • Tentacle/plant monster that exclusively hunts you through vents. It has a room where its main body is stored, the tentacles are only appendages which can regrow fast, they will overpower you if given enough time. It can’t stand cold environments and will shrivel up upon getting too cold. Since the plant was originally meant to be a self-sustaining food tree, it’ll take you out by fattening you up and then using your body as fuel until its next prey comes around.

  • Group of robot helpers controlled by rogue AI (as mentioned in the military ship bit), they roam around the ship like guards. AI learns your hiding methods and employs it on the robots to make your time harder, the longer time you spend inside the ship, the harder completing the objective will get until it’s almost impossible and leads to a game over. The robots can be disables with an EMP but will soon turn themselves back on, only way to take them out for good is by disabling/reprogramming the AI.