The Hunger Games - video game ideas

[Damascus]

By no means do I have the capability to make this happen, but I keep getting ideas for this so I just kinda want to get it off my chest. No major company has taken a stab at a Hunger Games video game, which is sad, because I think it would be perfect for an online multiplayer game.

So, my ideas are below the spoilers to save room. Hell, I don't even care if someone steals my ideas. I'd be super happy if a developer wanted to use these to make an actual game.

Controls

Spoiler below!

Normal Mode
WASD - Walk or Swim
Mouse - Look
Space - Jump, Hold to Climb
Hold Ctrl - Sneak
Hold Shift - Run or Swim fast
Left Mouse - Attack/Use/Place equipped item
E - Use/Place equipped item
Right Mouse - Interact with/Pick up targeted item (equips weapons)
Tab - Open chat box (transmits within 30 yards)
Esc - Open menu (can equip weapon)

Spectator Mode
WAS - Move Horizontally
Mouse - Look
Space - Move Up
Ctrl - Move Down
Tab - Open chat box
Esc - Menu

Playing

Spoiler below!

The Hunger Games is a fight to the death. Though players may make alliances, the game ends when only one player remains.

The primary goal is to survive. Finding a hiding place, hunting for food and water, finding high ground, etc. Many players will want to make camp by a reliable water source. When identifying plants, false negative or false positives may be given for poisonous plants. Eating poisonous plants will of course kill you.

Players may interact with the environment in a variety of ways. Many surfaces or objects can be climbed. Some items can be scavenged for later use. For example:
--Branches can be broken off to fashion weapons or make fire
--Stones can be picked up for creating tools
--Berries can be picked for eating

Environmental hazards are everywhere. This could be fire traps, angry hornets, falling trees, or just about anything. There is also an outer perimeter of the Arena. Touching it will kill you.

Combat is an important factor, but doesn’t last very long. One or two hits with a bladed weapon will usually kill.

Menu

Spoiler below!

Inventory
A menu displaying all items currently being carried. Here, you can organize your items and move them into your equip slot

Status
This map displays your character, it’s current health and hunger levels, a list of its skills, what Tributes you have killed, and current status. Here is a list of statuses that your player can have:
Healthy – The status that displays if there are no other health detriments.
Encumbered – A status incurred from having an empty hunger meter or certain poisons. The player moves at a slower speed and has blurry vision.
Poisoned – A status incurred from certain poisons or toxins. The player loses health at a steady rate for a certain amount of time or until an antidote is used.
Paralyzed – A status incurred from electrical shock or certain poisons. The player falls and is prone for a set amount of time, unable to move or take any actions.
Deranged – A rare status incurred from certain poisons or drugs that causes powerful hallucinations. These may include phantom animals and people (or real ones that are not seen), or a change in the landscape’s shape and color.

Crafting
This menu is used to craft items, and is split into two halves. The left half shows the inventory, and the right half has a set of boxes on top for ingredients. The player can drag inventory items into the boxes, and the bottom of the right side will show one or more results of the crafting.

Tributes
While still in Normal Mode, this menu only displays the tributes in the game and whether they are alive or dead. When in Spectator Mode, it also displays their health, hunger, and status. Spectators can also select a Tribute to teleport immediately to their location.

Map
In Normal Mode, it starts out totally obscured except for the Cornucopia, and no player positions are revealed. The map fills out as the player visits new areas. In Spectator Mode, the full map is revealed, along with markers for the position of every player (both surviving Tributes and Spectators).

Game Options
Here, you can choose to leave the game.

HUD

Spoiler below!

Time of Day – Displays current time of day in top left corner.

Health – Displays your general health in lower left corner. You start with 100 health points, which do not regenerate unless medical expertise is applied. Being reduced to 0 health makes you die.

Hunger – A meter displaying how full you are in lower left corner. Decreases at a rate of 2% per minute. Once empty, you begin to move slower and your vision becomes poorer. After ten minutes of having an empty hunger meter, you die. Eating replenishes the hunger meter by a fixed amount, and immediately stops negative effects.

Breath – A meter that only appears when you are submerged. It drains quickly at a rate of about 2% per second, and whit it reaches 0%, your character drowns. When you surface, the meter instantly replenishes to 100% and disappears.

Character Creation

Spoiler below!

Characters are created in a separate menu, and have two main lists with which to create: the Attributes, and the Skills.

Attributes are fairly self-explanatory; they give your character their appearance and do not affect the game. Select your: Name, Gender, Height, Weight, Hair Style/Color, Eye Color, Skin Color. Also select your clothing for Lower Body, Upper Body, Feet, and Accessories.

Skills determine how well your character performs in the Games, either hindering or helping their performance in various areas. Players can have from 0 to 5 points in any skill, out of a pool of 20 points to spend.

Hand-to-hand combat – This dictates how much damage you can deal if you attack with no weapons equipped. Not having this skill means you do not deal damage with your fists.

Melee weapons – Dictates how much damage can be dealt with melee weapons such as swords and combat knives. Without this skill, these weapons deal a base of 10 damage.

Throwing weapons – Dictates how much damage can be dealt with thrown weapons such as spears and throwing knives. Without this skill, these weapons deal a base of 10 damage.

Archery – Dictates how much damage can be dealt with the bow and arrow or slingshot. Without this skill, these weapons deal a base of 10 damage.

Nature – Dictates how well the character can identify flora and fauna. When the crosshair is focused on a target, click “use” and pick “Identify” from the drop down menu. The item may either be correctly identified, give an incorrect answer, or remain unknown. Without this skill, you cannot identify flora or fauna at all.

Stealth – This skill dictates how well the character can move sneakily by holding CTRL. With higher skill levels, noise is reduced and the character’s colors are darkened.

Camouflage – This skill allows the character to hide when standing still by using Camoflage, an item created by crafting. Without this skill, the player cannot apply camouflage at all.

Athletics – The higher this skill, the faster the player can move while running, swimming, and climbing. It also increases the chance of keeping a grip when climbing difficult surfaces. Without this skill, movement is normal, and the base chance of falling from a surface is 30%.

Craft – When crafting items, each product has a base chance of failure, which destroys the items used for the process. With higher points in this skill, the chance of failure is reduced.

Medicine – When using the medicine skill, the player triggers a regeneration for their health by bandaging and treating wounds. Without this skill, regeneration is not possible.

Players can choose to either distribute their skills evenly or choose to specialize in a few select skills. A few examples are given for players wanting to play the game a certain way.
Career – Combat and Athletics - A basic approach. The Career chases down and slaughters enemies, as simple as that.
Assassin – Combat and Stealth – This approach is one that lets the player hide in plain sight, waiting for an unsuspecting player to wander by before suddenly launching a deadly attack.
Trapper – Craft and Camoflage – An alternative to the assassin, this type of approach can let an otherwise weak player get the drop on an opponent by rendering them helpless with traps, and then executing a coup de grace.
Suvivalist – Nature and Medicine – Some players may opt to instead hide and wait out the game, easily able to survive on their own. Even when they are attacked, they can heal themselves quickly.

Item Types

Spoiler below!

Weapons
-USE: Attack -INVENTORY MENU: Drop
Food
-USE: Place -INVENTORY MENU: Eat, Drop
Tools
-USE: Use on target -INVENTORY MENU: Drop
Traps
-USE: Place -INVENTORY MENU: Disassemble, Drop
Medicine
-USE: Use on self -INVENTORY MENU: Drop

Joining a Game

Spoiler below!

There are two game types to choose from, based on a number of players:
Mini Match – 12 players
Hunger Games – 24 players

Players create a character ahead of time that they join a lobby with, at which point they are automatically sorted into games. Games may begin with 75% the maximum amount of players if a sufficient amount of time passes while the game is being started.

The Arena

Spoiler below!

Maps are selected at random when the game starts, and no player knows what it is until they see it at the beginning of the game. Maps are sorted by difficulty, according to how scarce resources are and how many hazards the players will encounter.

Easy maps have a wealth of resources available for the Tributes, and a relatively low amount of hazards. Of course, that is only relative—expect a hazard to kill you at any moment. Examples include temperate forests with bodies of water, or a tropical rainforest.

Hard maps are usually noticeable for their harsher climates, which make finding resources more strenuous, and having an increased amount of hazards to deal with. Examples include a snowy tundra or an abandoned city.

Expert maps are incredibly dangerous. The Tributes are more likely to die from starvation or exposure than from each other. Resources are scarce, the terrain is difficult to navigate, and dangers lie around every corner. These maps include barren deserts, and a chain of islands isolated by an inhospitable sea.

Impossible maps are designed to kill an overwhelming majority of the Tributes in horrible fashions before they can even think about fighting each other. The winner is usually decided not by which Tributes they killed, but simply by surviving the incredible amount of danger thrown at them. Tributes will have to give serious thought to banding together to heighten their chance of survival. Examples include an active volcano, a poisonous swamp, or a clock-based arena that unleashes horrors in every section by the hour.

Game Progress

Spoiler below!

Once all players have loaded the map they start within metal tubes below the ground and are raised up until they stand on podiums in a ring around the Cornucopia in the center of the map. Players cannot move for 30 seconds. A countdown begins above the Cornucopia once 15 seconds are left, and once it runs out, all players may move.

The Cornucopia is a black horn-like structure that holds a wealth of supplies and items for players. Picking up any of the backpacks scattered around it immediately deposits all its items into the player’s inventory. As the amount of supplies are limited, players that choose to run for the Cornucopia must fight over them. Others may simply choose to take their chances in the wild, scavenging supplies.

Time passes at about 1 hour in game per minute until all but one player is dead, with day and night cycles progressing appropriately. As the game progresses, hazards appear more frequently, along with the possibility of hostile animals spawning randomly.

The feast occurs 30 minutes into the game, provided the game hasn’t ended already. For each surviving tribute at this time, an extremely valuable item will appear at the Cornucopia. Tributes will not know when the Feast begins until it is announced. Items range from life-saving medicine, to enough food to totally fill the hunger bar, to a very good weapon. An item can only be picked up by its corresponding player, unless a player is killed after the Feast begins, at which point it becomes fair game.

One hour into the game or when five or less tributes remain (whichever comes first), a hazard will begin at the edge of the arena and progress inward. This can be a desert sandstorm, forest fire, or howling blizzard. It deals damage to any player it touches. The hazard constricts until only a small area of survivable land remains for which the remaining tributes to fight in.

When only one player remains, the game ends. If the game ends with two or more tributes dying simultaneously (within 0.1 seconds of each other), leaving no survivor, the game is ruled a draw.

Wild Animals

Spoiler below!

Wild animals will be encountered during the games, which have hit points and may or may not attack the player. When killed they give up supplies.

Small animals, such as squirrels and rabbits, can be picked up right into the inventory when killed, and later used to cook. Large animals, such as deer and bear, cannot be picked up. Players will have to use a knife or other weapon on them to pick up meat or fur into their inventory.

Sponsors

Spoiler below!

Though the only supplies at the beginning of the game are in the Cornucopia, this is far from the last chance for a player to get supplies. Randomly throughout the game, a Sponsor will drop a supply box near a Tribute. It appears as a silver container floating down from a parachute, stopping at the first surface it touches. Its contents may be mundane, such as food, or irreplaceable, such as an incredibly expensive weapon. Unlike the Feast, all Sponsor objects are up for grabs, so if one falls near a group of Tributes, it’s first come first serve.

Spectator Mode

Spoiler below!

After your character has died, you may choose to either leave the game, or enter Spectator Mode. In this mode, you can remain in the Arena to observe the rest of the match. In this mode you can fly around quickly in three dimensions, and even teleport quickly to the location of any surviving player through the Tribute menu. Spectators are not visible to any surviving players, but other Spectators can see each other as floating eye-shaped cameras. Spectator chat is also not visible to surviving players, only to other spectators. Spectators cannot interact with the environment in any way.