Desolation

Frame · Gloom & heaviness atmospheric · visual / auditory / haptic

Abandonment, emptiness, ruins – something was once here, now there is nothing.

Design question – Your game takes place in an abandoned world. What happened – and is there a reason to return?

Reference example – Fallout: abandoned cities, dust, echoes and the remains of a lost world. NieR: Automata: overgrown ruins in which no one lives any more. Football: matches behind closed doors in front of empty stands, cheering without an echo.

Atmosphere

Desolation

Sensory field

Sight: ruins, empty streets, dusty surfaces, broken structures. Sound: wind through empty buildings, creaking wood, distant echoes. Touch: cold, dust, loneliness, unease.

Coherence

Desolation implies resource scarcity, decaying infrastructure, discovery of remnants. Mechanisms: Exploration, Scavenging (a resource-management variant), Decay. Activities: Exploring, Surviving, Searching. Ludic Organisational Structures: spatial order (ruins as landscape), survival order.