Quote:Mama Kat used to live a peaceful life family: her owner and her owner's other pets. She had everything she needed, and the only thing she had to worry about was her brother and the family dog annoying her. Now the humans are gone and the town pets are either dead or want Mama Kat dead. All that remains of her family are her three young kittens. To keep what's left of her family alive, she must hunt and avoid being hunted.

But feral dogs, and a crazy territorial calico, are not the only creatures she has to fear. In absence of man, strange and terrifying beasts have begun to arrive. Some from the cold forests of the north, others from the dark ruins to the south. These deadly creatures now fight to claim rulership of this land, with Mama Kat's family caught in between.

• A strong emphasis on creature interactions in a dynamic ecosystem where the player is small and not special to the world. Each creature has it's own ways to hunt or avoid being hunted (the prototype has 32 different species of creatures, 12 of which prey animal for the player)
  
• Many creatures are individuals with unique personalities.
  
• Various habitats and regions that require different playstyles having different dangers and prey sources.
  
• The animals, especially the player, can use foliage and their environment to their advantage. Such as hiding in the grass or using trees to escape predators.
  
• A combination of artstyles such as pixel and photomanipulation
  

Content Hidden

 

•  Ai that has dynamic interactions. For example, in the video the "Twerbivores" form mated pairs and work together to protect their offspring from predators. Carnivores stalk their prey because if they charge to soon they can run out of stamina and the prey can escape. Later versions of the game (not the one in the video) had pack hunters and creatures were only females engaged in parental care while males would kill offspring to bring females back into heat.
  
• Most ecosystem games I've played the only thing that influences populations is death by starvation and predation to "balance the ecosystem. While predation is important, it is not the only factor (plus the way most games have it set up, often predators consume everything and cause their own extinction). Plus death is not often the main cause of population decline when it comes to malnutrition, it's lack of reproductive success. In my ecosystem game, animals can only breed if they have enough nutrition. Evidence suggests that inability to reproduce from malnutrition (or stress) can be just as, if not more, important to animal populations than predation and may be the true source of population cycles. I also had plans for predators to be defend territories and kill rivals so as to limit population density or predators as is the case with many predators IRL.
  
• Not in the sim, but I wanted to include diseases and parasites which are also important in controlling animal populations.
  
•  Complex soil and flora that's more dynamic than is typical in most video games. In most games, plants are only scenery or, at best, intractable objects. In this game, they are just alive as the animals and have their own needs (e.g plants reproduce, require sunlight and moisture but can also die from drowning or overgrazing.) I also had plans for them to have defenses as real plants do, or utilize animals for reproduction (while the plants in the video produce fruit, it doesn't really do anything other than feed herbivores).
  
• Weather that influences the ecosystem (later versions have rain that effects soil moisture and players could set what kind of weather the ecosystem had such as monsoons)
  

• • Continue current direction with real animals. It's important to note that this direction would have FAR FEWER species and much more limited gameplay.
    
  • Fictional species that have fantasy powers (I always toyed with the idea of a game that's based on Steven King's The Mist where people play as the alien creatures). This would probably allow far greater freedom gameplay wise and allow for a much much higher species diversity. Design influences would be Half Life, Metroid and Wayne Barlowe's Expedition.
    

• • A combination of real and fictional animals. Not sure how that'd work though. Possibly include some abnormal animals (e.g resident evil, rainworld, stalker, the isle)