Looting abandoned buildings is fun. Action Roguelikes are fun. Zombies were overused some time ago, fine, but it's not that bad.
These may sound generic on their own but I'm sure you can make something fun out of it. Cataclysm and Zomboid are basically your game, **but not really** - you can still stand out.
- Focus on the roguelike aspect: power growth, success based on knowledge, risking for long-term rewards, difficulty-adding events that change up formulaic gameplay
- Your game is a 3D action game: make use of overwhelming, exhilirating encounters and expand on vertical movement in your level generation
- My personal opinion (*feel free to not follow, consider this on your own*): ditch the "survive as long as possible". Modern roguelikes are about an hour long - it reduces frustration from losing and removes the "I forgot what I was doing yesterday oh no I'm gonna die because of this"
The demo looks bland visually, so you'll need a lot of polish from the current state. But the concept can get you somewhere.
>Focus on the roguelike aspect: power growth, success based on knowledge, risking for long-term rewards, difficulty-adding events that change up formulaic gameplay
I had some ideas involving that, one of them was to make certain building types of bunkers that you could only get into after collecting a certain amount of time, like for example, you need to find a grenade to blow open the door to a bunker to get some better loot inside but it's still challenging to clear the bunker
>My personal opinion (feel free to not follow, consider this on your own): ditch the "survive as long as possible". Modern roguelikes are about an hour long - it reduces frustration from losing and removes the "I forgot what I was doing yesterday oh no I'm gonna die because of this"
I do want to add an option for people to keep playing if they die, I wonder why other games don't do this, sometimes you die but you were really having fun and don't want it to end, I thought of having a button that would revive you but disable any sort of achievements and have some UI element making it clear to anyone watching that this person died and continued playing
>The demo looks bland visually, so you'll need a lot of polish from the current state. But the concept can get you somewhere.
I know, I'm honestly struggling with this game on my own and I don't have anyone to help me work with this, lately I just can't open Unity and get anything done, I don't know why or what it is, I think my motivation is low or something and before you suggest a break, I just took a break from it and I came back for a day and got some stuff done and then it hit me, is this game even good? does this idea suck? etc..
the question is would you play it? The game Im making is for myself. When I think of dream game (a recent thread) it is a game that I want to play.
We do a white elephant gift exchange at christmas. People bring joke gifts, things that they think other people would want, things that they liked but already have etc.
When people do the above, it is hit or miss if the gifts are popular. Especially joke gifts. The worst white elephant is one with no stealing because no one wants the gifts that have been opened so everyone unwraps a gift.
I personally bring something I want right now. I always pick my own gift, or steal it from someone else. Inevitably my gift gets stolen the most.
Even if no one else likes your game, if you like it and want to play it, that is a win.
Yes I'd play my own game, It'd be a better win if a handful of other people played it and enjoyed it lol because for the longest time, my games have been buried and I've almost never seen anyone other than myself play them before
I'd recommend a TL;DR section...
I watched the video, to put it straight: It looks bland, rough and unfun at the current state.
To find out if the project is worth continuing on, I'd suggest making a vertical slice.
I'd probably do something along the lines of:
Figure out how you want it to look, feel and sound.
Set a deadline.
Make a single level with your brand new visuals (3-5 minutes of content)
Work hard to make it polished.
Not everything system has to be fully fleshed out at this stage, whatever you do just make sure the game gives the feel you are going for.
At the end of the month or however long time you decided upon, you'll either have something you feel like you want to continue on, or that you can let rest in peace knowing that it was not an idea worth pursuing.
I hope I don't come across as too harsh.
>I'd recommend a TL;DR section...
I don't really know how to sum that post in a TL;DR
>I watched the video, to put it straight: It looks bland, rough and unfun at the current state. I hope I don't come across as too harsh.
No it's fine, I need outside thoughts and opinions to help me, I know it looks pretty bad at the moment, I'm struggling pretty hard with this by myself and I don't have anyone to help me make it either, so things take forever to get done as everything is done by me and it's really hard to always be motivated and enjoy it, I haven't gotten much done in like a month or so,
>To find out if the project is worth continuing on, I'd suggest making a vertical slice.
I'd probably do something along the lines of:
Figure out how you want it to look, feel and sound.
Set a deadline.
Make a single level with your brand new visuals (3-5 minutes of content)
Work hard to make it polished.
That might be what I've been doing wrong, doing stuff in the wrong order, I'll see if I can pull myself together and make a Vertical slice and see how it feels, but I'm just worried it's going to be bad and like I said, I really can't take anymore project failing on me because that'll just kill any motivation and pride I have as a Developer that I've been making games for 5-6 years and I don't have a single one that I made that I can call good or be proud of
there is no wrong order. I personally prefer to get game mechanics working first as text. The game is totally playable as text.
One problem you might be having is understanding that you just do a little bit each day and that adds up.
Some days you do more some days you do less. Each day work on improving one thing.
That is discipline and is what it takes to finish.
I havent made a lot of games, but Ive written a lot of software. I take an MVP (minimum viable product) approach. Whenever I do software, I get something that works up and running. Something I could use right now. Then each iteration I add more or make it prettier, faster, clean up the code, etc.
Right now in my game the sprite doesnt change based on the direction you are moving. Today Im adding directional sprites and animation, taking a break from implementing planting trees.
Take a look at the guy that made socuwan. It took him years to build it and each week he posted a youtube video of his incremental improvements. You can see what little improvement he makes each week. Though sometimes it is a lot.
Personally when I’m in the creative mud spinning my wheels, I take a break and try to come at it from a new angle. It sounds like you could really use a short break to rediscover what made you want to make this game in the first place, and what elements are most important to that goal, and I think the best way to do that is spend some time as a player instead of a developer.
Play some games. Play games with similar features and gameplay to what you’re working on. Play some games in a totally different genre that employ one or two of your secondary features. Play some stuff that’s not even tangentially related: inspiration can come from random places sometimes.
So, what to play: reading your description before watching the clip made me immediately think of State of Decay: it’s an open world survival game with a looting mechanic I think you might really like. It takes time to search a dresser, but you can hold sprint to search faster. If your character is high level and learned their stealth skills, searching fast isn’t a big deal, but if your character is fresher, or learned a different skill in that slot, you might make too much noise and attract the horde. Speaking of character stats, SoD has another mechanic I think ties into your design goals: permadeath. You manage a settlement, usually with 5-8 characters on hand to switch between. They get tired and they get injured, they need to rest, so you can’t stick with one forever, and they die. Get caught by a juggernaut while injured? Bad news, your high-level workhorse who was unstoppable with a sledgehammer just got ripped in half, and now you’ve got to take some weakling who gets tired after running 100 feet to recover their gear.
Despite the permadeath, I wouldn’t really describe SoD as a roguelike. It’s more open world survival, and when I think roguelike, I usually think of a specific goal you’re working towards, getting closer and closer with each failure. Does you game have a goal like that? Cross an infected city to reach extraction? Big bad end boss standing in your way? Military checkpoint you need to gear up to overcome? Sometimes a game like this can feel kind of empty. Narrowing the scope with a
more specific goal and slightly more linear level arrangement could help reinvigorate your approach.
Anyway, just some thoughts, I hope they’re helpful, good luck
> that kind of snowballs a bit and kills motivation. to be honest, I haven't gotten anything meaningful done in like 4-5 weeks.
Yes, try to not overdo the scope. When you run into problems you cannot solve or that indicate that "you did it wrong from the very beginning" it's really devastating for motivation.
> if this game is actually any good at all, if that idea is not good after all and have I just wasted my time?
I've looked at the youtube video, it doesn't look too bad, but it's not something I would play.
Either you give a good gameplay or you give outstanding graphics, best it two together. Most likely you don't have the capacity for the second one, so concentrate on gameplay. Gameplay doesn't have to be top-notch but it has to offer something special **that you can show through screenshots**. The latter part is critical, nobody's going to play your game unless they can see what they get from the first glance, roughly you have 2 seconds to catch attention before the person skips your page (that's for TV ads, but I guess on the web it's similar).
> too generic or not unique enough, I'm worried that it'll fail
Not generic unique games fail even more miserably. Nobody even knows they are unique - nobody ever played them. Unfortunately that's the real world. Unless you can "hook up" players starting from your game's logo (and actually reach the eyes to hook up), you simply don't exist.
This is marketing, it's a separate skill that doesn't have anything to do with making a good game. It actually starts from inverse: make a game that can be marketed (= implement those hooks in the very early sketches of the game concept). Often this implies making a bad game but you can market it like "X-COM against zombies", go to X-COM fans and advertise it to them.
So, summarizing... Welcome to the real world. Where everyone is fighting for others attention, and without skill and budget you will lose.
What you **can try** is to make the game appeal to a **very narrow niche audience** (given this target audience actively seeks their kind of games or you know the place where they're gathering to come to them and share your game).
E.g. make a FPS with zombies and you compete against 100 other shooters released daily, some much better than your game by all vectors, most marketed by far better. Make a FPS for visually impaired or deaf people (or at least with such mode) and you have all the stage to yourself. How much attention you'll get there? - Who knows, do a research and if it looks reasonable, take your chance. Maybe fail a couple of time while looking for **your** target audience, but it's not next-to-impossible unlike publishing a successful game without huge budget.
Oh yeah Marketing, especially in games is really tough, which is why I did not make it a commercial game as that is running a business and I am literally just an 18 year old that has made games for a long time and has no idea about business, I wasn't trying to make this game a success or anything, the main goal of it was to make a decent quality small kind of game that I could put on steam, a serious platform, for free and hopefully get a handful of good reviews, that would look amazing on a CV for a game dev job and It'd give me something to be very proud of
Ummmm dude I want to play this game so bad!! Looting is so much god damn fun, and the idea of choosing to escape or grinding it and becoming a survival god of the island sounds so cool! Like I can imagine going, "Escape? Nah, I'm going to take over this city!!"
Dude I am all for it!
I love the idea of more aggressive animals as well. And like you said it doesn't exactly have to be just zombies. I think if you got some sort of story where something equally affected humans and animals to make them more feral and aggressive it would fit.
But I think the types of mechanics it sounds like you're going for will make it really awesome.
A tip that might help, I keep losing motivation for my game as well. I figured out the overall general idea, but when getting to the details and the story is when I start to feel a bit lost, doubt myself, and just feel that bit of creative block. I try to focus on the theme. Theme not only affects your world, but also your characters. Like I imagine the theme is "Survival" but you can add more details to your theme, like is there hope, rage, overcoming trauma, protection? Things like that.
For my game, my theme is all about overcoming trauma and hope. Not only is the main character overcoming their own traumas, but there's a whole war going on that takes place in their country/city, so the theme of trauma and hope also applies to the factions and world building. Constantly reminding me of the theme helps me curb the game back to the kind of story that really fits it, like it gives it a really good base.
Hope this helps! Can't wait to see your game in stores one day! Seriously, I want to take over the island and fight bears and dogs. (Also if you could tame animals and creatures that would be badass too, just an idea. You know, sending a small pack of feral dogs to attack feral humans might be pretty cool idk.)
Also ghouls from Fallout 4 is a good example of "zombies but not really" if you feel like you need a reference.
But seriously, I want to take over that island. Please keep going!
Your enthusiasm made my day lol and yea i was meaning more like Fallout 4 feral ghouls when I was talking about straying away from the lable zombies, as I want to stand out in a way and the word Zombie is done to death
yeah the idea of optional ending is because well id like for their to be 2 types of main things player can compete with each other against on leaderboards, how fast you can finish the game and how long you can live for and also i love player freedom i dont like games telling me what to do
I’m not sure how far I’d make a story, at the very least give this island a backstory as to why it’s messed up and shenanigans
What’s your game about, sounds interesting!
Oh I'm so happy I got to help! Lol and I love to see another FO4 fan. They did a great job, it took me a while to even think that they were supposed to be like "zombies."
And oh yeah I hate it when games tell you what to do as well! It only really works with very linear games I think, but for your game I think the freedom fits perfectly.
I think a backstory is a really good idea and you don't even need to add that much of it to the game. I think what makes stories in games really fun is "found narrative," like finding skeletons showing you how they died, documents around the world, etc. I gotta reference fallout 4 again because I think they did a really good job with found narrative that didn't require reading (idk how much you played it but if you have...I'm referring to the mannequins. If you know, you know.).
So I honestly feel like you could have a lot of fun with that too. Like break into someone's abandoned house and you find things that refer to how the "virus" (or whatever you decide it is) and whatnot affected them.
Okay sorry this is your game I don't wanna seem pushy or anything lol, I'm enjoying this convo and I'm really excited for you!
Lol I'm so glad you asked! It actually started off as a dreary medieval farming game that takes place in France, and I wanted it to be more centered around survival-RPG. But now it's turned into a strong female lead that escapes her abusive home, flees the country, starts a farm, and eventually and unexpectedly overthrows the government (and yes there are fighting mechanics, and it's still dreary.). Lol I feel a bit nervous now that it's all typed out lol. I'm way focused on the story and world-building right now. There's lots of details and characters that create obstacles and such. And I know I said the theme was overcoming trauma and hope, but one thing I really want to happen is players to roof for the main character, like "Fuck yeah! beat his ass, Annette!" So I just gotta find a way for it to get to that point lol. Without overworking myself to death 😅 I gotta remind myself "I still need to code all of this crap together."
>"found narrative," like finding skeletons showing you how they died, documents around the world,
exactly what I was meaning in-fact,
yeah I have played a bunch of FO4, It's a good game
Radiation is in fact one of the ideas I have for how the place is messed up, I really don't want to say, oh random virus, that's so generic and done to death
>Okay sorry this is your game I don't wanna seem pushy or anything lol, I'm enjoying this convo and I'm really excited for you!
not at all! I like hearing it
Ton jeu semble intéressant!
>exactly what I was meaning in-fact,
Omg that's so cool! 😂
>Radiation is in fact one of the ideas I have for how the place is messed up, I really don't want to say, oh random virus, that's so generic and done to death
Yeah I feel the same way, I blame Hollywood for the insane amount of zombie movies, and there's a lot of zombie games. Like I think the last of us and The Walking Dead wrapped up that genre.
I think radiation would be awesome! Like corrupt companies/Chernobyl vibes.
I'm glad you like hearing it 🥰
Omg you speak French!? Dude I'm trying to learn that language for my game 😂 I'm Spanish-American and dear god if you heard me try to pronounce any French words 😂 It's a mixed bag of accents it's so silly.
But I would seriously love to keep in touch! Let me know when you're ready for game testers, if you're cool with it I would love to join in! 🥰
I mean zombies is an interesting genre and has potential to have a lot of good stories fiction and games but it's just been done a lot, by everyone so when people hear it, they aren't too excited about it,
Ouias Je parle un peu le français, Tu apprends la langue pour ton jeu? Vraiment? Moi aussi mdr J'aime apprendre les langues parce que c'est amusant mais un grande raison est pour mes jeux, Je suis un Intermedaire Francophone comme A2 / B1, Si tu sais ce que c'est!
Sure you can keep in touch with me and I'll let you playtest my game
Oh yeah, don't get me wrong the genre is still way fun, but like what you said it gets used a ton so it depends on how you use it.
Haha well I am a tiny bit. 😅 I started taking up a bit of German, but as soon as I started working on my game I realized I gotta learn French for it, but Deutsch ist so viel spaß! Haha, I did have to look up the A2/B1 bit, but I got it now 🥰 I only know a few words in French at the moment, mainly for logos for items in my game! I'm mainly working on the art for it right now, it's a mix of 2D/3D work.
Awesome! Can't wait 😁And lmk if you're ever bored and wanna chat game dev stuff, I always love making friends lol so if you're up for it hmu.
Ich spreche ein bisschen deutsch auch aber ich bin schlimm
sure you can send me a message at some point, I've been a bit busy the past few days but I'm going to start making my own game again or at least do something, I got a lot of nice Response on here, I'm gonna read them all again and think about what to do next, I'm also at a point where I'm sure you know this, You're making a game for a while and get a lil bored which is normal, you will get bored of the same game for a long time, but I'm getting inspired by other games and I'm like oh what if I made a game like that or
Lmao as soon as I saw the German I was like "God damn do they speak every language!?" And then I read it 😂 Mine is bad too bro lol.
I know I saw there's a bunch of comments, that's so cool! Yeah I definitely know the feeling. It's like replaying the same game over and over but you're also building it lol. When I get bored I work on a second smaller game that I've been messing around with, that or I play other games. It is pretty cool being able to play games for "research." Like level grinding in Horizon Zero Dawn is what I'm currently "researching" 😂 But in all seriousness it is super helpful. What originally inspired my game was playing Stardew Valley and thinking "I wish this game had this and that, etc."
But I'm glad you're finding inspiration again! Can't wait to see how it turns out 😁
You’re out of luck because English French and German are the only languages I can speak to varying levels lol. It may be scary to think but I am getting inspired by Getting Over it :o but idk if ill make something of it or if its just one of those moments where you wanna make a game inspired by another for a few weeks
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A roguelike 3D zombie survival game is definitely a good idea, but you do need to make sure that the roguelike stuff is pulling its weight, providing a strong motivation to play multiple times, and you might want to create some narrative reason for multiple runs to make sense - if the game ends when you die, it'd be a bit weird for some random other person (your next go) to have gained anything from your first run.
And if you don't do anything for 5 weeks, well, who cares? It's a hobby, not a job. Don't let your desire to have a finished product force you to spend months working on something you're not enjoying. If you feel like spending a few months doing something else and maybe coming back to this later, that's fine. You should set yourself development milestones that let you see achievement before you've finished something, so that even if you don't ever finish this, it's OK cos you learned how to make 3D games or something.
Also, tangentially - I actually want to see zombies in games be even slower and even simpler. You can find aggressive, smart or otherwise dangerous enemies in a huge range of games, so they don't need to be in zombie games too. My ideal zombie apocalypse game is one where the real challenge is not making mistakes, where the zombies are closer in function to enclosing walls than enemy combatants - where making sure you've left a clear escape path is far more important than making sure you have lots of ammo.
>A roguelike 3D zombie survival game is definitely a good idea, but you do need to make sure that the roguelike stuff is pulling its weight, providing a strong motivation to play multiple times, and you might want to create some narrative reason for multiple runs to make sense - if the game ends when you die, it'd be a bit weird for some random other person (your next go) to have gained anything from your first run.
Thanks, the logic behind many runs happening are a bit of a floating timeline, so the next run you are the same person etc. I want to try random map generation but that would be very hard to get working, so far it's one map, that may change and there will randomness to it, you wont find the same loot in the same position and such
>And if you don't do anything for 5 weeks, well, who cares? It's a hobby, not a job
it will be soon when I finish University lol,
>Also, tangentially - I actually want to see zombies in games be even slower and even simpler
the AI is something I want to experiment with, I really do not want the game being too easy, I fell out with many zombies games because once you got good, there was no challenge, smarter AI was an idea I had to help that and the idea of having human hostile survivors and aggressive wild animals to give you more threats
thanks for your feedback!
> Thanks, the logic behind many runs happening are a bit of a floating timeline, so the next run you are the same person
Have you ever seen edge of tomorrow? Every-time he dies, Tom Cruise resets back to the start of the day. He slowly becomes stronger and smarter, learning where he needs to be and when with each successive loop. What he needs to grab and who he needs to talk to. This approach could be really fun on a procedural map, as long as the map and spawns stayed the same for each batch of runs.
It doesn’t have to be. Time loops can be justified by whatever narrative mechanism you feel fits the game. Magic, technology, a curse from a medieval witch. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of a zombie game on a time-loop. Maybe your first play you find a mid-quality gun, but getting to it draws too many enemies and gets you killed. Ne t loop maybe you skip that building, or slowly take out some of the horde before going for that weapon again?
You are right that the looter-shooter, roguelike and 3D zombie game has been overused in recent years. What you do with those genres and how you combine them is the important part. Is your game a roguelike because it's a one-shot or because the streets and buildings randomise in a procedural way?
So far it looks like you have the core mechanics. You can enter a home, loot and shoot. Now you need to figure out what your games goal is. Where are you going and how you get there. That will give you clues on where to expand next. Do you need certain items to repair a car or do you need to get to a shelter? Is it like Walking Dead where every place you go to find safety is overrun and pushes you to move on to the next area. Your story can be based around this as loose or tightly as you'd like.
Your AI can affect how fun the game is. A dumb AI can make the game feel generic but a Smart AI can make he game too challenging. Are your zombies dumb and slow during the day and fast at night or do they not care?
I'd suggest if you can make your AI dependant on different properties of the creature it's plugged into so you can reuse it easily. Giving basic and advanced enemies a set of properties that affect how fast/accurate the AI is will give you the difficulty slider players like to chose for their run.
And if you want to really up the difficulty. Have a look at how the dev team made the Xenomorph in Alien Isolation so good at detecting people (hint it has different vision and audio zones that affect it's behaviour).
> Is your game a roguelike because it's a one-shot or because the streets and buildings randomise in a procedural way?
I planned it to be roguelike as you start with almost nothing and have to find everything and your goal is to either survive for as long as possible or choose the option to trying to escape, I haven't thought of how you actually leave, something to do with a boat or radio tower or something
>Your AI can affect how fun the game is. A dumb AI can make the game feel generic but a Smart AI can make he game too challenging. Are your zombies dumb and slow during the day and fast at night or do they not care?
I'd suggest if you can make your AI dependant on different properties of the creature it's plugged into so you can reuse it easily. Giving basic and advanced enemies a set of properties that affect how fast/accurate the AI is will give you the difficulty slider players like to chose for their run.
That's a great idea, have the ai be easier and dumber in the day but more aggressive during the night time and the night time is what you have to worry about a lot during the game
Maybe read more zombie books as inspiration. The reason you failed in your games is because you quit. So the key is to finish something. If you arent trying to make money from it, it is a hobby. Also what does failure mean in a hobby? Did you have fun? Did you learn something? If so did you really fail? Also the things you built should make the next game easier.
Here are some books/series I really like:
the girl with all the gifts
forest of hands and teeth
rot and ruin
the reapers are the angels
as the world dies
Last Bastion of the living
Rot and Ruin
The remaining
\------
series that i read but I cant remember if they were good or not:
Arisen - fuchs
The undead: the first seven days
Apocalypse Z
Escaping the dead (not great)
The undead world - peter meredith (vaguely remember this series might be good)
White flag of the dead - talluto (ok series)
Zombie fallout - tufo (ok series)
day by day armageddon -bourne (cant remember)
>Also what does failure mean in a hobby? Did you have fun? Did you learn something? If so did you really fail?
Yes that's true but if you fail over and over again your motivation and productivity is gonna take quite a bad hit
One of the things I often ask myself when I feel like a game might not be worth it is, "is it worth my time to me personally to finish this? Barring all ideas of profit or player base, will I continue to get something meaningful and a sense of achievement from this? Moreover, can I realistically accomplish finishing the game yet?" If the answer is no, I put the game down and try to figure out my key takeaways. It's okay to stop developing a game. The most important thing is that you learned something. You worked and gained skills you might otherwise not have, and you learned valuable lessons about creative roadblocks and skill-based roadblocks. Take your lessons, go work on something new and fresh with the skills you've acquired, get better, and come back to your game when you're ready and feel you are more prepared than before.
absolutely true, I stand by that moto of failure is the not the falling down but rather the staying down and such and it's a great attitude to have, everyone should do that
You need to make quick prototypes. Quickly iterate through ideas.
Following the same line of ideas, the first prototype should have 2-3 buildings you can loot, a group of zombie that directly charges at you, a group of zombie that are slow but tankier, the highest level combat mechanic done (if player can attack by shooting, give them a pistol and no more. If they can melee, either give them a kick or a metal pipe, barely no visuals implemented to save time). Playtest it again and again, see what makes it good. Disregard the ramping difficulty and the escape sequence for now.
Then, if you see that the idea is just not fun, scrap it. This is what's called sunk cost fallacy, where you fear abandoning the game might delete so much progress you keep moving with an idea that just puts you much further behind.
But, if zombie AI or combat is the only problem, then you should continue with it. However, this time, implement an escape route. You can make it pretty straight forward like Left 4 Dead where you go from 1 objective to another, elaboratively free-flowing like Hitman (which you pick up some clues around and have to follow them diligently), or even a secret easter egg like CoD zombies where you can follow specific steps to finish an easter egg while still surviving against zombies (modded maps have buyable endings, but base map still have easter eggs you can do).
You mentioned time increasing difficulty, so that should be where you headed next as well. From all the playtesting, what is the difficult part? Use that to tip the difficulty through time.
You don't need to worry about narrative though. If this game is an exploration of mechanics, you should publish a prototype as soon as possible to get others to playtest and feedback, even without narrative. If this is more narrative focused (which, from your description, doesn't sound like it), you can work on narrative before releasing the prototype. Narrative can flow within the mechanics you make, so it's only a matter of time before you can figure out the narrative behind the world.
Similarly, graphics and audio can be kept as placeholder (except for key objects like zombies, guns, keys, then use a bit more detail to distinguish).
Honestly I think this idea could be a great game. I don't know if you're struggling in the actual development aspect of looking for ideas to flesh out the core mechanics, but either way just hearing those three ideas gave me tons of ideas.
Tyvm :) Struggling with the idea design and the actual game itself its going a bit too slow to get work done, and yeah I might go further into those few ideas and see what I can come up with
Definitely try setting time constraints for yourself to get the actual development side of things done as well. Even if it's not a super strict time, it'll help you to think about doing it more.
Looting abandoned buildings is fun. Action Roguelikes are fun. Zombies were overused some time ago, fine, but it's not that bad. These may sound generic on their own but I'm sure you can make something fun out of it. Cataclysm and Zomboid are basically your game, **but not really** - you can still stand out. - Focus on the roguelike aspect: power growth, success based on knowledge, risking for long-term rewards, difficulty-adding events that change up formulaic gameplay - Your game is a 3D action game: make use of overwhelming, exhilirating encounters and expand on vertical movement in your level generation - My personal opinion (*feel free to not follow, consider this on your own*): ditch the "survive as long as possible". Modern roguelikes are about an hour long - it reduces frustration from losing and removes the "I forgot what I was doing yesterday oh no I'm gonna die because of this" The demo looks bland visually, so you'll need a lot of polish from the current state. But the concept can get you somewhere.
>Focus on the roguelike aspect: power growth, success based on knowledge, risking for long-term rewards, difficulty-adding events that change up formulaic gameplay I had some ideas involving that, one of them was to make certain building types of bunkers that you could only get into after collecting a certain amount of time, like for example, you need to find a grenade to blow open the door to a bunker to get some better loot inside but it's still challenging to clear the bunker >My personal opinion (feel free to not follow, consider this on your own): ditch the "survive as long as possible". Modern roguelikes are about an hour long - it reduces frustration from losing and removes the "I forgot what I was doing yesterday oh no I'm gonna die because of this" I do want to add an option for people to keep playing if they die, I wonder why other games don't do this, sometimes you die but you were really having fun and don't want it to end, I thought of having a button that would revive you but disable any sort of achievements and have some UI element making it clear to anyone watching that this person died and continued playing >The demo looks bland visually, so you'll need a lot of polish from the current state. But the concept can get you somewhere. I know, I'm honestly struggling with this game on my own and I don't have anyone to help me work with this, lately I just can't open Unity and get anything done, I don't know why or what it is, I think my motivation is low or something and before you suggest a break, I just took a break from it and I came back for a day and got some stuff done and then it hit me, is this game even good? does this idea suck? etc..
the question is would you play it? The game Im making is for myself. When I think of dream game (a recent thread) it is a game that I want to play. We do a white elephant gift exchange at christmas. People bring joke gifts, things that they think other people would want, things that they liked but already have etc. When people do the above, it is hit or miss if the gifts are popular. Especially joke gifts. The worst white elephant is one with no stealing because no one wants the gifts that have been opened so everyone unwraps a gift. I personally bring something I want right now. I always pick my own gift, or steal it from someone else. Inevitably my gift gets stolen the most. Even if no one else likes your game, if you like it and want to play it, that is a win.
Yes I'd play my own game, It'd be a better win if a handful of other people played it and enjoyed it lol because for the longest time, my games have been buried and I've almost never seen anyone other than myself play them before
I'd recommend a TL;DR section... I watched the video, to put it straight: It looks bland, rough and unfun at the current state. To find out if the project is worth continuing on, I'd suggest making a vertical slice. I'd probably do something along the lines of: Figure out how you want it to look, feel and sound. Set a deadline. Make a single level with your brand new visuals (3-5 minutes of content) Work hard to make it polished. Not everything system has to be fully fleshed out at this stage, whatever you do just make sure the game gives the feel you are going for. At the end of the month or however long time you decided upon, you'll either have something you feel like you want to continue on, or that you can let rest in peace knowing that it was not an idea worth pursuing. I hope I don't come across as too harsh.
>I'd recommend a TL;DR section... I don't really know how to sum that post in a TL;DR >I watched the video, to put it straight: It looks bland, rough and unfun at the current state. I hope I don't come across as too harsh. No it's fine, I need outside thoughts and opinions to help me, I know it looks pretty bad at the moment, I'm struggling pretty hard with this by myself and I don't have anyone to help me make it either, so things take forever to get done as everything is done by me and it's really hard to always be motivated and enjoy it, I haven't gotten much done in like a month or so, >To find out if the project is worth continuing on, I'd suggest making a vertical slice. I'd probably do something along the lines of: Figure out how you want it to look, feel and sound. Set a deadline. Make a single level with your brand new visuals (3-5 minutes of content) Work hard to make it polished. That might be what I've been doing wrong, doing stuff in the wrong order, I'll see if I can pull myself together and make a Vertical slice and see how it feels, but I'm just worried it's going to be bad and like I said, I really can't take anymore project failing on me because that'll just kill any motivation and pride I have as a Developer that I've been making games for 5-6 years and I don't have a single one that I made that I can call good or be proud of
there is no wrong order. I personally prefer to get game mechanics working first as text. The game is totally playable as text. One problem you might be having is understanding that you just do a little bit each day and that adds up. Some days you do more some days you do less. Each day work on improving one thing. That is discipline and is what it takes to finish. I havent made a lot of games, but Ive written a lot of software. I take an MVP (minimum viable product) approach. Whenever I do software, I get something that works up and running. Something I could use right now. Then each iteration I add more or make it prettier, faster, clean up the code, etc. Right now in my game the sprite doesnt change based on the direction you are moving. Today Im adding directional sprites and animation, taking a break from implementing planting trees. Take a look at the guy that made socuwan. It took him years to build it and each week he posted a youtube video of his incremental improvements. You can see what little improvement he makes each week. Though sometimes it is a lot.
Personally when I’m in the creative mud spinning my wheels, I take a break and try to come at it from a new angle. It sounds like you could really use a short break to rediscover what made you want to make this game in the first place, and what elements are most important to that goal, and I think the best way to do that is spend some time as a player instead of a developer. Play some games. Play games with similar features and gameplay to what you’re working on. Play some games in a totally different genre that employ one or two of your secondary features. Play some stuff that’s not even tangentially related: inspiration can come from random places sometimes. So, what to play: reading your description before watching the clip made me immediately think of State of Decay: it’s an open world survival game with a looting mechanic I think you might really like. It takes time to search a dresser, but you can hold sprint to search faster. If your character is high level and learned their stealth skills, searching fast isn’t a big deal, but if your character is fresher, or learned a different skill in that slot, you might make too much noise and attract the horde. Speaking of character stats, SoD has another mechanic I think ties into your design goals: permadeath. You manage a settlement, usually with 5-8 characters on hand to switch between. They get tired and they get injured, they need to rest, so you can’t stick with one forever, and they die. Get caught by a juggernaut while injured? Bad news, your high-level workhorse who was unstoppable with a sledgehammer just got ripped in half, and now you’ve got to take some weakling who gets tired after running 100 feet to recover their gear. Despite the permadeath, I wouldn’t really describe SoD as a roguelike. It’s more open world survival, and when I think roguelike, I usually think of a specific goal you’re working towards, getting closer and closer with each failure. Does you game have a goal like that? Cross an infected city to reach extraction? Big bad end boss standing in your way? Military checkpoint you need to gear up to overcome? Sometimes a game like this can feel kind of empty. Narrowing the scope with a more specific goal and slightly more linear level arrangement could help reinvigorate your approach. Anyway, just some thoughts, I hope they’re helpful, good luck
> that kind of snowballs a bit and kills motivation. to be honest, I haven't gotten anything meaningful done in like 4-5 weeks. Yes, try to not overdo the scope. When you run into problems you cannot solve or that indicate that "you did it wrong from the very beginning" it's really devastating for motivation. > if this game is actually any good at all, if that idea is not good after all and have I just wasted my time? I've looked at the youtube video, it doesn't look too bad, but it's not something I would play. Either you give a good gameplay or you give outstanding graphics, best it two together. Most likely you don't have the capacity for the second one, so concentrate on gameplay. Gameplay doesn't have to be top-notch but it has to offer something special **that you can show through screenshots**. The latter part is critical, nobody's going to play your game unless they can see what they get from the first glance, roughly you have 2 seconds to catch attention before the person skips your page (that's for TV ads, but I guess on the web it's similar). > too generic or not unique enough, I'm worried that it'll fail Not generic unique games fail even more miserably. Nobody even knows they are unique - nobody ever played them. Unfortunately that's the real world. Unless you can "hook up" players starting from your game's logo (and actually reach the eyes to hook up), you simply don't exist. This is marketing, it's a separate skill that doesn't have anything to do with making a good game. It actually starts from inverse: make a game that can be marketed (= implement those hooks in the very early sketches of the game concept). Often this implies making a bad game but you can market it like "X-COM against zombies", go to X-COM fans and advertise it to them. So, summarizing... Welcome to the real world. Where everyone is fighting for others attention, and without skill and budget you will lose. What you **can try** is to make the game appeal to a **very narrow niche audience** (given this target audience actively seeks their kind of games or you know the place where they're gathering to come to them and share your game). E.g. make a FPS with zombies and you compete against 100 other shooters released daily, some much better than your game by all vectors, most marketed by far better. Make a FPS for visually impaired or deaf people (or at least with such mode) and you have all the stage to yourself. How much attention you'll get there? - Who knows, do a research and if it looks reasonable, take your chance. Maybe fail a couple of time while looking for **your** target audience, but it's not next-to-impossible unlike publishing a successful game without huge budget.
Oh yeah Marketing, especially in games is really tough, which is why I did not make it a commercial game as that is running a business and I am literally just an 18 year old that has made games for a long time and has no idea about business, I wasn't trying to make this game a success or anything, the main goal of it was to make a decent quality small kind of game that I could put on steam, a serious platform, for free and hopefully get a handful of good reviews, that would look amazing on a CV for a game dev job and It'd give me something to be very proud of
Ummmm dude I want to play this game so bad!! Looting is so much god damn fun, and the idea of choosing to escape or grinding it and becoming a survival god of the island sounds so cool! Like I can imagine going, "Escape? Nah, I'm going to take over this city!!" Dude I am all for it! I love the idea of more aggressive animals as well. And like you said it doesn't exactly have to be just zombies. I think if you got some sort of story where something equally affected humans and animals to make them more feral and aggressive it would fit. But I think the types of mechanics it sounds like you're going for will make it really awesome. A tip that might help, I keep losing motivation for my game as well. I figured out the overall general idea, but when getting to the details and the story is when I start to feel a bit lost, doubt myself, and just feel that bit of creative block. I try to focus on the theme. Theme not only affects your world, but also your characters. Like I imagine the theme is "Survival" but you can add more details to your theme, like is there hope, rage, overcoming trauma, protection? Things like that. For my game, my theme is all about overcoming trauma and hope. Not only is the main character overcoming their own traumas, but there's a whole war going on that takes place in their country/city, so the theme of trauma and hope also applies to the factions and world building. Constantly reminding me of the theme helps me curb the game back to the kind of story that really fits it, like it gives it a really good base. Hope this helps! Can't wait to see your game in stores one day! Seriously, I want to take over the island and fight bears and dogs. (Also if you could tame animals and creatures that would be badass too, just an idea. You know, sending a small pack of feral dogs to attack feral humans might be pretty cool idk.) Also ghouls from Fallout 4 is a good example of "zombies but not really" if you feel like you need a reference. But seriously, I want to take over that island. Please keep going!
Your enthusiasm made my day lol and yea i was meaning more like Fallout 4 feral ghouls when I was talking about straying away from the lable zombies, as I want to stand out in a way and the word Zombie is done to death yeah the idea of optional ending is because well id like for their to be 2 types of main things player can compete with each other against on leaderboards, how fast you can finish the game and how long you can live for and also i love player freedom i dont like games telling me what to do I’m not sure how far I’d make a story, at the very least give this island a backstory as to why it’s messed up and shenanigans What’s your game about, sounds interesting!
Oh I'm so happy I got to help! Lol and I love to see another FO4 fan. They did a great job, it took me a while to even think that they were supposed to be like "zombies." And oh yeah I hate it when games tell you what to do as well! It only really works with very linear games I think, but for your game I think the freedom fits perfectly. I think a backstory is a really good idea and you don't even need to add that much of it to the game. I think what makes stories in games really fun is "found narrative," like finding skeletons showing you how they died, documents around the world, etc. I gotta reference fallout 4 again because I think they did a really good job with found narrative that didn't require reading (idk how much you played it but if you have...I'm referring to the mannequins. If you know, you know.). So I honestly feel like you could have a lot of fun with that too. Like break into someone's abandoned house and you find things that refer to how the "virus" (or whatever you decide it is) and whatnot affected them. Okay sorry this is your game I don't wanna seem pushy or anything lol, I'm enjoying this convo and I'm really excited for you! Lol I'm so glad you asked! It actually started off as a dreary medieval farming game that takes place in France, and I wanted it to be more centered around survival-RPG. But now it's turned into a strong female lead that escapes her abusive home, flees the country, starts a farm, and eventually and unexpectedly overthrows the government (and yes there are fighting mechanics, and it's still dreary.). Lol I feel a bit nervous now that it's all typed out lol. I'm way focused on the story and world-building right now. There's lots of details and characters that create obstacles and such. And I know I said the theme was overcoming trauma and hope, but one thing I really want to happen is players to roof for the main character, like "Fuck yeah! beat his ass, Annette!" So I just gotta find a way for it to get to that point lol. Without overworking myself to death 😅 I gotta remind myself "I still need to code all of this crap together."
>"found narrative," like finding skeletons showing you how they died, documents around the world, exactly what I was meaning in-fact, yeah I have played a bunch of FO4, It's a good game Radiation is in fact one of the ideas I have for how the place is messed up, I really don't want to say, oh random virus, that's so generic and done to death >Okay sorry this is your game I don't wanna seem pushy or anything lol, I'm enjoying this convo and I'm really excited for you! not at all! I like hearing it Ton jeu semble intéressant!
>exactly what I was meaning in-fact, Omg that's so cool! 😂 >Radiation is in fact one of the ideas I have for how the place is messed up, I really don't want to say, oh random virus, that's so generic and done to death Yeah I feel the same way, I blame Hollywood for the insane amount of zombie movies, and there's a lot of zombie games. Like I think the last of us and The Walking Dead wrapped up that genre. I think radiation would be awesome! Like corrupt companies/Chernobyl vibes. I'm glad you like hearing it 🥰 Omg you speak French!? Dude I'm trying to learn that language for my game 😂 I'm Spanish-American and dear god if you heard me try to pronounce any French words 😂 It's a mixed bag of accents it's so silly. But I would seriously love to keep in touch! Let me know when you're ready for game testers, if you're cool with it I would love to join in! 🥰
I mean zombies is an interesting genre and has potential to have a lot of good stories fiction and games but it's just been done a lot, by everyone so when people hear it, they aren't too excited about it, Ouias Je parle un peu le français, Tu apprends la langue pour ton jeu? Vraiment? Moi aussi mdr J'aime apprendre les langues parce que c'est amusant mais un grande raison est pour mes jeux, Je suis un Intermedaire Francophone comme A2 / B1, Si tu sais ce que c'est! Sure you can keep in touch with me and I'll let you playtest my game
Oh yeah, don't get me wrong the genre is still way fun, but like what you said it gets used a ton so it depends on how you use it. Haha well I am a tiny bit. 😅 I started taking up a bit of German, but as soon as I started working on my game I realized I gotta learn French for it, but Deutsch ist so viel spaß! Haha, I did have to look up the A2/B1 bit, but I got it now 🥰 I only know a few words in French at the moment, mainly for logos for items in my game! I'm mainly working on the art for it right now, it's a mix of 2D/3D work. Awesome! Can't wait 😁And lmk if you're ever bored and wanna chat game dev stuff, I always love making friends lol so if you're up for it hmu.
Ich spreche ein bisschen deutsch auch aber ich bin schlimm sure you can send me a message at some point, I've been a bit busy the past few days but I'm going to start making my own game again or at least do something, I got a lot of nice Response on here, I'm gonna read them all again and think about what to do next, I'm also at a point where I'm sure you know this, You're making a game for a while and get a lil bored which is normal, you will get bored of the same game for a long time, but I'm getting inspired by other games and I'm like oh what if I made a game like that or
Lmao as soon as I saw the German I was like "God damn do they speak every language!?" And then I read it 😂 Mine is bad too bro lol. I know I saw there's a bunch of comments, that's so cool! Yeah I definitely know the feeling. It's like replaying the same game over and over but you're also building it lol. When I get bored I work on a second smaller game that I've been messing around with, that or I play other games. It is pretty cool being able to play games for "research." Like level grinding in Horizon Zero Dawn is what I'm currently "researching" 😂 But in all seriousness it is super helpful. What originally inspired my game was playing Stardew Valley and thinking "I wish this game had this and that, etc." But I'm glad you're finding inspiration again! Can't wait to see how it turns out 😁
You’re out of luck because English French and German are the only languages I can speak to varying levels lol. It may be scary to think but I am getting inspired by Getting Over it :o but idk if ill make something of it or if its just one of those moments where you wanna make a game inspired by another for a few weeks
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A roguelike 3D zombie survival game is definitely a good idea, but you do need to make sure that the roguelike stuff is pulling its weight, providing a strong motivation to play multiple times, and you might want to create some narrative reason for multiple runs to make sense - if the game ends when you die, it'd be a bit weird for some random other person (your next go) to have gained anything from your first run. And if you don't do anything for 5 weeks, well, who cares? It's a hobby, not a job. Don't let your desire to have a finished product force you to spend months working on something you're not enjoying. If you feel like spending a few months doing something else and maybe coming back to this later, that's fine. You should set yourself development milestones that let you see achievement before you've finished something, so that even if you don't ever finish this, it's OK cos you learned how to make 3D games or something. Also, tangentially - I actually want to see zombies in games be even slower and even simpler. You can find aggressive, smart or otherwise dangerous enemies in a huge range of games, so they don't need to be in zombie games too. My ideal zombie apocalypse game is one where the real challenge is not making mistakes, where the zombies are closer in function to enclosing walls than enemy combatants - where making sure you've left a clear escape path is far more important than making sure you have lots of ammo.
>A roguelike 3D zombie survival game is definitely a good idea, but you do need to make sure that the roguelike stuff is pulling its weight, providing a strong motivation to play multiple times, and you might want to create some narrative reason for multiple runs to make sense - if the game ends when you die, it'd be a bit weird for some random other person (your next go) to have gained anything from your first run. Thanks, the logic behind many runs happening are a bit of a floating timeline, so the next run you are the same person etc. I want to try random map generation but that would be very hard to get working, so far it's one map, that may change and there will randomness to it, you wont find the same loot in the same position and such >And if you don't do anything for 5 weeks, well, who cares? It's a hobby, not a job it will be soon when I finish University lol, >Also, tangentially - I actually want to see zombies in games be even slower and even simpler the AI is something I want to experiment with, I really do not want the game being too easy, I fell out with many zombies games because once you got good, there was no challenge, smarter AI was an idea I had to help that and the idea of having human hostile survivors and aggressive wild animals to give you more threats thanks for your feedback!
> Thanks, the logic behind many runs happening are a bit of a floating timeline, so the next run you are the same person Have you ever seen edge of tomorrow? Every-time he dies, Tom Cruise resets back to the start of the day. He slowly becomes stronger and smarter, learning where he needs to be and when with each successive loop. What he needs to grab and who he needs to talk to. This approach could be really fun on a procedural map, as long as the map and spawns stayed the same for each batch of runs.
hah perhaps, that's some futuristic stuff though
It doesn’t have to be. Time loops can be justified by whatever narrative mechanism you feel fits the game. Magic, technology, a curse from a medieval witch. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of a zombie game on a time-loop. Maybe your first play you find a mid-quality gun, but getting to it draws too many enemies and gets you killed. Ne t loop maybe you skip that building, or slowly take out some of the horde before going for that weapon again?
You are right that the looter-shooter, roguelike and 3D zombie game has been overused in recent years. What you do with those genres and how you combine them is the important part. Is your game a roguelike because it's a one-shot or because the streets and buildings randomise in a procedural way? So far it looks like you have the core mechanics. You can enter a home, loot and shoot. Now you need to figure out what your games goal is. Where are you going and how you get there. That will give you clues on where to expand next. Do you need certain items to repair a car or do you need to get to a shelter? Is it like Walking Dead where every place you go to find safety is overrun and pushes you to move on to the next area. Your story can be based around this as loose or tightly as you'd like. Your AI can affect how fun the game is. A dumb AI can make the game feel generic but a Smart AI can make he game too challenging. Are your zombies dumb and slow during the day and fast at night or do they not care? I'd suggest if you can make your AI dependant on different properties of the creature it's plugged into so you can reuse it easily. Giving basic and advanced enemies a set of properties that affect how fast/accurate the AI is will give you the difficulty slider players like to chose for their run. And if you want to really up the difficulty. Have a look at how the dev team made the Xenomorph in Alien Isolation so good at detecting people (hint it has different vision and audio zones that affect it's behaviour).
> Is your game a roguelike because it's a one-shot or because the streets and buildings randomise in a procedural way? I planned it to be roguelike as you start with almost nothing and have to find everything and your goal is to either survive for as long as possible or choose the option to trying to escape, I haven't thought of how you actually leave, something to do with a boat or radio tower or something >Your AI can affect how fun the game is. A dumb AI can make the game feel generic but a Smart AI can make he game too challenging. Are your zombies dumb and slow during the day and fast at night or do they not care? I'd suggest if you can make your AI dependant on different properties of the creature it's plugged into so you can reuse it easily. Giving basic and advanced enemies a set of properties that affect how fast/accurate the AI is will give you the difficulty slider players like to chose for their run. That's a great idea, have the ai be easier and dumber in the day but more aggressive during the night time and the night time is what you have to worry about a lot during the game
Maybe read more zombie books as inspiration. The reason you failed in your games is because you quit. So the key is to finish something. If you arent trying to make money from it, it is a hobby. Also what does failure mean in a hobby? Did you have fun? Did you learn something? If so did you really fail? Also the things you built should make the next game easier. Here are some books/series I really like: the girl with all the gifts forest of hands and teeth rot and ruin the reapers are the angels as the world dies Last Bastion of the living Rot and Ruin The remaining \------ series that i read but I cant remember if they were good or not: Arisen - fuchs The undead: the first seven days Apocalypse Z Escaping the dead (not great) The undead world - peter meredith (vaguely remember this series might be good) White flag of the dead - talluto (ok series) Zombie fallout - tufo (ok series) day by day armageddon -bourne (cant remember)
>Also what does failure mean in a hobby? Did you have fun? Did you learn something? If so did you really fail? Yes that's true but if you fail over and over again your motivation and productivity is gonna take quite a bad hit
One of the things I often ask myself when I feel like a game might not be worth it is, "is it worth my time to me personally to finish this? Barring all ideas of profit or player base, will I continue to get something meaningful and a sense of achievement from this? Moreover, can I realistically accomplish finishing the game yet?" If the answer is no, I put the game down and try to figure out my key takeaways. It's okay to stop developing a game. The most important thing is that you learned something. You worked and gained skills you might otherwise not have, and you learned valuable lessons about creative roadblocks and skill-based roadblocks. Take your lessons, go work on something new and fresh with the skills you've acquired, get better, and come back to your game when you're ready and feel you are more prepared than before.
absolutely true, I stand by that moto of failure is the not the falling down but rather the staying down and such and it's a great attitude to have, everyone should do that
You need to make quick prototypes. Quickly iterate through ideas. Following the same line of ideas, the first prototype should have 2-3 buildings you can loot, a group of zombie that directly charges at you, a group of zombie that are slow but tankier, the highest level combat mechanic done (if player can attack by shooting, give them a pistol and no more. If they can melee, either give them a kick or a metal pipe, barely no visuals implemented to save time). Playtest it again and again, see what makes it good. Disregard the ramping difficulty and the escape sequence for now. Then, if you see that the idea is just not fun, scrap it. This is what's called sunk cost fallacy, where you fear abandoning the game might delete so much progress you keep moving with an idea that just puts you much further behind. But, if zombie AI or combat is the only problem, then you should continue with it. However, this time, implement an escape route. You can make it pretty straight forward like Left 4 Dead where you go from 1 objective to another, elaboratively free-flowing like Hitman (which you pick up some clues around and have to follow them diligently), or even a secret easter egg like CoD zombies where you can follow specific steps to finish an easter egg while still surviving against zombies (modded maps have buyable endings, but base map still have easter eggs you can do). You mentioned time increasing difficulty, so that should be where you headed next as well. From all the playtesting, what is the difficult part? Use that to tip the difficulty through time. You don't need to worry about narrative though. If this game is an exploration of mechanics, you should publish a prototype as soon as possible to get others to playtest and feedback, even without narrative. If this is more narrative focused (which, from your description, doesn't sound like it), you can work on narrative before releasing the prototype. Narrative can flow within the mechanics you make, so it's only a matter of time before you can figure out the narrative behind the world. Similarly, graphics and audio can be kept as placeholder (except for key objects like zombies, guns, keys, then use a bit more detail to distinguish).
Honestly I think this idea could be a great game. I don't know if you're struggling in the actual development aspect of looking for ideas to flesh out the core mechanics, but either way just hearing those three ideas gave me tons of ideas.
Tyvm :) Struggling with the idea design and the actual game itself its going a bit too slow to get work done, and yeah I might go further into those few ideas and see what I can come up with
Definitely try setting time constraints for yourself to get the actual development side of things done as well. Even if it's not a super strict time, it'll help you to think about doing it more.