Now that 24 hours have passed we have our winner!
A huge thanks to @frezik@midwest.social for suggesting this awesome idea!
A survival crafting game where the tech tree goes backwards. You start in a prepper hole with working water filtration, food sources, etc, and everything is nice. Then something breaks and maybe you fix it. Something else breaks and maybe you fix that. Three things break at once, and at least one of them is going to stay broken. Have to do something more primitive and time consuming.
Eventually, enough things break that it’s no longer sustainable and you die. Game ranks you based on how long you last.
I would also like to thank every person in the comments for making their wonderful suggestions! I’ve read through every single one of them and all of them are really good!
You can view the game’s code at https://github.com/SamLeeway/project-196, which is currently empty at the time of writing this, but every day from now I will contribute code there.
The game currently does not have any name other than “Project 196”, so I will probably host a poll when we have at least something playable.
When the game would be playable? Making games ain’t easy so it’s pretty hard to estimate. I would say in around a week or so I should have a rough prototype if things go right.
Update
Didn’t really have much time to work on this this week, so my week estimate is going out of the window. I will not estimate anymore. But I am still working on things, so game will happen. :)
I had some very similar ideas. This could be tied into some sort of a base management survival game like Rimworld. Start off with some educated people and nice survival tech like solar panels etc., friendly neighbours and ample access to information and so on. Then try to keep things going as time takes its toll on equipment and people and the climate gets shittier and shittier. First all fancy tech starts to get scarce when global supply chains start to fail and foreign imports stop. The internet starts to go down and you have to get your news via radio, then by mail and then as hearsay. At some point the local government goes fash and starts sending raids to you, or maybe it’s a nearby declining military power that rolls in with some rusty tanks. Neighbours start to get desperate as crops fail and savagery spreads. Or maybe it’s you who will be doing the rading and the cannibalism?
If you get far enough in the game that your original population starts to be replaced, you’d better hope that you managed to preserve at least some of their skills and knowledge by writing books and teaching the kids, because rediscovering shit is a whole lot harder.