These factors can make or break your day in Green Hell. In Green Hell, you have to take care of all of life’s details, such as a good place to rest, fire (in a safe area, of course), nutritious food, and health. So, we skipped that idea and made the sanity mechanic dependent on how the player chooses to take care of themselves. ![]() After putting more thought into it, we decided this way very risky because it could limit the player's freedom of action. This mechanic would ask the player to think ahead and plan accordingly at the beginning of the game, and if that wasn’t done, their sanity levels would decrease (we learned a lot from Ed Stafford’s experience). Our first idea was to use having a ‘survival plan’ as a factor, which is the base of player sanity. Another pyramid we saw, and which we found quite interesting, showed that having a “survival plan” was the base need. Even your survival kit isn’t as important as skills and knowledge. It was shocking to us when we learned that food and water aren’t in that first stage. ![]() Kwiatek: There are many different takes on the Survival Pyramid but we like this simplified one where number one is at the base, with two and three built on top respectively: Do you waste time sitting next to a fire to gain sanity? Eat chocolate to gain energy or increase sanity? We believe that combining different mechanics together and allowing the player to balance between them is the way to go.īringing realistic survival to Green Hell with the Survival Pyramid Leeches attached to your body? You won’t lose HP, but they are irritating, decreasing your mental health if you don’t deal with them. All the gameplay mechanics are mixing - sure, you can survive eating just worms, but it will drive you crazy. Both the mind and the body’s needs create a feeling of constant struggle, where decision-making is crucial. Stawicki: The psychological aspect adds another layer to the player’s decision-making. We just couldn’t ignore this aspect in our game.Įndless fighting against all those Amazonian dangers can break a would-be survivor down, and this idea is what we turned into a game mechanic as a parameter called ‘Sanity.’ Players have to take care of what they eat, where they sleep, how they choose to stay healthy and more. A clear plan and a strong will to survive - that’s the only way to stay alive when you get stuck alone in the wild. The Survival Pyramid has, at its base the ‘will to live,' and most survival experts agree with that. ![]() Thanks to those books, we discovered that the long-term psychological aspect of surviving is the most important. The idea of ‘sanity’ as an in-game parameter began after reading some Ed Stafford books ("Naked and Marooned," "Walking the Amazon"). Kwiatek: We take an immense amount of care in the realism of Green Hell. Exploring the psychological toll of survival We spoke with the developers about the research they did on important things to note in survival situations, the specifics of creating a system where players can learn through failure, and making the player make constant trade-offs in the decisions they make. Gamasutra spoke with Michal Stawicki, lead game designer and Krzysztof Kwiatek, art director, to learn more about the nuances of focusing on character in a survival game. You may have food, but are you getting the right nutrients from it? Are you taking care of your mental state with rest, even if it wastes time? It’s not just a matter of finding food, water, and shelter, though, as the developers at Creepy Jar have put a deep focus on multiple aspects of surviving to make staying alive that much more challenging.
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