In the design process of this project, I have experienced many direction adjustments and trade-offs.
At first, I tried to put the dumplings in their original natural environment from a more intuitive point of view and build an experience around survival and exploration.
However, in the deduction, I gradually realized that for small and weak creatures, the behavioral motives in the original ecology are highly closed, and they often repeat the cycle. Although this design is reasonable in ecological logic, from the perspective of player experience, it lacks enough changes and long-term goals, and exploration is easy to become boring.
Then I turned the scene to human cities, hoping to create new exploration significance through ecological dislocation and scale differences.
The urban environment does bring more complicated risk structure, but if we still focus on “survival itself”, the problem is not completely solved.
At this stage, I clearly realized that simple survival behavior is not enough to support the continuous exploration experience, and weak creatures still need a directional goal that can push them forward.
It should be noted that “going home” here is not a traditional task goal, but closer to a homing instinct at the biological level. For weak creatures, this instinct does not come from clear rational planning, but a persistent sense of direction, which does not require the optimal path, but will constantly push individuals to leave the current area and try to get close to the familiar or safe environment.
It is this driving force between instinct and direction that makes exploration no longer a random walk, but a process of constantly adjusting direction in the midst of risk and uncertainty.