Wilderness

Frame · Nature and environment thematic

Untouched nature without human order – surviving, discovering, being at its mercy.

Design question – Imagine your game is set in the wilderness. What does nature give – and what does it take?

Reference example – Don’t Starve: alone in a wilderness that grows more hostile with every night. Firewatch: a lookout tower in the forests of Wyoming, radio conversations and wide open space. Cascadia: fitting together the landscapes and animals of the Pacific Northwest into a habitat.

Associations

• Typical Activities – Exploring, Surviving, Hunting, Navigating
• Typical roles – solo or small survival group
• Typical spaces – forest, mountains, steppe, impassable terrain
• Typical conflicts – survival, orientation, encounter with the unknown

Atmosphere

awe, solitude, danger, beauty

Coherence

Implied Activities: Exploring, Surviving, Hunting, Navigating. Mechanisms: Exploration (terra incognita), Survival (managing resources under pressure), Push Your Luck (risk against nature), Weather (as a dynamic system). Ludic Organisational Structures: spatial order (open world), survival order.

Compatible with

• Solitude (AT-03)
• Awe (AT-21)
• Pursuit (SI-03)
• Uprising (SI-05)
• Guild (SO-06)
• Host-Guest (SO-15)
• Island (SP-01)
• Forest (SP-02)
• Desert (SP-04)
• Workshop (SP-19)
• Antiquity (TM-02)
• Near Future (TM-05)

Tension with

• Restaurant (TH-16) – Wild-herb cuisine in the wilds. A game about cooking with what nature offers – survival meets gastronomy.