ronynn's blog

Building a Community driven life simulator game

July 25, 2024

Imagine a game where players can experience the ebb and flow of life—progressing through years, making decisions, facing random events, and seeing the effects of their choices on their virtual lives. At its core, the game will be lightweight by design, with a simple yet compelling structure that makes it easy for everyone, whether a hardcore gamer or a casual player, to jump in and enjoy.

The game will have expandable features through add-ons that represent life in different regions of the world. This allows the game to continually grow with contributions from the community, making it an open platform where players can suggest, contribute, and even create their own localized experiences. Whether you’re navigating life in New York, Tokyo, or a small town in rural India, the game will allow players to step into diverse life experiences through community-driven events, missions, and goals.

I’d like to outline the proposal for such a game, discussing its core design, key features, libraries I plan to use, and technical considerations. The focus will be on creating a community-driven platform, where collaboration and expansion are at the forefront of the game’s evolution.

1. Core Design: Lightweight Yet Deeply Interactive

The design philosophy for this life simulator game is based on simplicity and accessibility. The main interaction loop will consist of yearly progression, where players’ stats, relationships, career, finances, and other aspects of their lives evolve based on their decisions. The game’s core mechanics will focus on:

• Year Progression: The player advances through time, typically year by year, with each year presenting a set of choices and random events that shape the player’s life.
• Stats and Random Events: Stats such as happiness, health, wealth, and relationships are tracked. Random events—such as a job offer, a family emergency, or a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—create unpredictability. Each event gives the player choices that affect their life path.
• Choices That Matter: Choices should feel meaningful and impactful, leading to long-term consequences. This could involve decisions like whether to invest in a property, pursue higher education, or even handle relationships in a particular way.

The game will include tabs for various life aspects, such as:

• Missions: These could be specific goals the player works toward (e.g., achieving a certain level of wealth, completing a personal challenge, or reaching a relationship milestone).
• Education: Players can decide whether to pursue further education, and their choices will influence job prospects and career trajectories.
• Jobs: A system of career progression based on the player’s education, skills, and networking. Players can work towards achieving their dream job or start a business.
• Buying Property and Investing: Players can buy virtual real estate, invest in stocks, or start their own business. The economic system in the game should mirror real-world economics in some ways, offering both challenges and opportunities.

2. Expanding the World: Addons for Life in Different Regions

One of the most exciting aspects of this life simulator is its ability to evolve through add-ons. These add-ons will allow the game to expand into different regions and cultures, introducing new types of events, missions, and challenges that reflect specific aspects of life in different parts of the world. For example:

• Life in New York: High-paced, competitive, and career-focused with a heavy emphasis on networking and economic opportunity.
• Life in Rural India: A focus on family, agriculture, and community-based living with a different set of challenges and opportunities.
• Life in Tokyo: A blend of modern city life with traditional values, where personal achievements and relationships are deeply tied to societal expectations.

Each of these regions can be packaged as an expansion pack or an add-on module, allowing the game to grow organically over time. The idea is to give the community the power to build and share these new experiences, either through crowdsourced content or individual submissions. As the game evolves, each region or country can have unique missions, career paths, educational systems, and life choices.

3. Technical Considerations: Libraries, Vanilla JS, and DOM Manipulation

The game’s design should be built on a foundation that allows for easy expansion and customization. A crucial decision here is whether to use vanilla JavaScript or to integrate additional libraries and frameworks. Here’s an overview of what I am considering:

Vanilla JS vs. Libraries

• Vanilla JavaScript offers the benefit of being lightweight, fast, and easy to control. Since the game will have a simple UI with tabs for missions, stats, and random events, vanilla JS could be an excellent choice to avoid unnecessary dependencies and keep the game lean. It also gives the team complete flexibility over the structure of the game, which is important for a community-driven project.

  That said, if the scope of the game grows significantly and we want to add more complex features like dynamic content loading or advanced animations, incorporating libraries such as React or Vue.js could make sense. These libraries allow for better state management and make handling dynamic updates (such as year progression or changing stats) smoother.

• DOM Manipulation is at the core of this project, as the game will be highly interactive. The Document Object Model (DOM) represents the structure of the game’s interface, and players will interact with elements like buttons, stats, and choices through it. Using vanilla JS to manipulate the DOM allows us to keep things lightweight and flexible, especially since we’ll be dynamically adding or updating game elements (such as displaying new random events or updating stats).

Libraries for Random Events and Gamification

For the core gameplay, including the handling of random events and stat updates, there are a few libraries that can be used to streamline development:

• Chance.js: This library generates random numbers and handles the randomness behind random events. It can be useful when simulating probability-based events (like the chances of meeting a potential partner or getting a promotion).
• Moment.js: Time and year progression is central to the game, so libraries like Moment.js can be useful for handling time and date formatting. It would help us manage time progression smoothly, such as updating the in-game year and reflecting changes in stats accordingly.
• Chart.js: For visualizing stats like wealth, happiness, health, and career progression, we can use libraries like Chart.js. This would allow us to display engaging, interactive charts that represent a player’s journey visually.

4. Gamifying Interactions and Motivating Players

To keep players engaged, gamification elements will be critical. Gamification not only makes the game more fun but also encourages players to return to the game regularly and continue progressing. Here are some ideas for gamifying interactions:

• Progression and Achievements: Players will have multiple goals, ranging from career milestones to personal achievements. Gamification could involve unlocking achievements based on life goals, like “Own a House” or “Become a CEO.” These rewards encourage players to work toward specific milestones.

• Leaderboards: Leaderboards could track certain achievements like wealth accumulation, happiness, or successful relationships. This fosters a sense of competition and encourages replayability.

• Random Events and Choices: Random events should present tough choices that have real consequences. Whether the player decides to quit their job to follow their passion or takes a risky investment opportunity, these decisions should impact their stats and the world around them.

• Narrative Branching: Life events that lead to branching storylines based on player choices will keep players invested. Players can return to the game to see how their life might unfold differently depending on past decisions.

5. Community-Driven Content and Expansions

A key element of this project is its community-driven nature. By allowing players to submit events, missions, and even localized experiences (e.g., life events specific to a region), the game can continuously expand. This approach makes it scalable and inclusive of diverse cultures and life experiences. The game will include features like:

• Event Submission Portal: Community members can submit new events, missions, or even career paths, which are then reviewed and added to the game (github pull requests could be easier alternative).
• Localization Support: Add-ons for specific regions or countries can be developed by players or content creators from those regions, allowing for a truly global experience.

Conclusion: The Path Forward

The proposal for this community-driven, lightweight, and expandable life simulator game offers an exciting new approach to text-based games. By focusing on accessibility, simplicity, and the ability to grow over time through community contributions, this game can become a platform that reflects the richness of human experience across the globe. Whether it’s through year progression, stat management, or random events, the game can provide a dynamic and evolving narrative that keeps players engaged and invested in their virtual lives. By incorporating gamification elements, community submissions, and careful technical design, this life simulator will be an open, evolving project that engages players from all walks of life, all around the world.