The game has a top-down view and looks similar to minima, but instead of an entire toroidal world, it is just a single island (perhaps with some very tiny islands surrounding it). You can swim, but the water around the island extends forever, and there are sharks in the deepest of depths.

The game play mostly consists of walking around the island, picking up items, using items, combining items to form new items, and burning items. You have no inventory; you can just hold one thing at a time, but vehicles or carts, which you must build or find on the island, can assist you in moving multiple things. More on that later.

Movement is with the mouse. You 1-click to move, 2-click to move and pickup/drop an item, and 3-click to move and use an item. Keyboard movement will be available too.

The game should have very simple rules (water flow, spreading fire, boids, etc.) but complex interactions and emergent behaviors that make for a variety of things to do and ways to play.

The World

The world is simpler than minima in some aspects, but a bit more complex in others. For example, no elevations, no deserts (though the island is surrounded by beach), no glaciers. But, water will have a current (a value between 0-1, and a direction). This will be simple: the ocean will flow toward the island, so floating items like crates eventually wash up on shore. Rivers have currents too: they flows toward the sea. They are the main source of fresh water, so there should be enough that the player can find one early on. Perhaps the first trek that the player makes is to find a good spot next to a river.

The water around the island extends forever. So (implementation detail), we generate an island with something like wgen, and tiles that are off of the edge of the world are just “deep water.” (Pirate accent:) Here there be sharks.

There is “fog of war,” so while you can see the land under all tiles, you cannot see the items on fogged tiles. Perhaps campfires or a shelter will give you a fog-free radius around them (even though this is obviously impossible in real life, where you can’t see through the eyes of your house or a fire), so you can build small fires or shelters to spy on the happenings of distant locations.

Some rare worlds can have a volcano limiting your time on the island, but this can be added later.

Maybe it rains sometimes, and your fires all go out. But, after it rains there are new berries and things in the jungle.

Winning: getting off the island

There will be multiple ways to get off the island, but the standard approach is to signal an airplane (one passes over the island every 10 minutes or so of game play) by making a sufficiently large signal fire. If you successfully signal a plane then “you are confident that they saw your fire,” otherwise, “you feel that your puny fire was overlooked.” Once signalled, you need to survive for another 5-10 minutes waiting for a rescue boat or helicopter. It should be difficult for a very new player to live long enough to see their first plane, and certainly it should be hard for them to have a big signal fire by then (they should be struggling to survive, never mind keeping a big fire going).

Other ways to get off the island:

1. Quitting. You can always give up to get your current stats/score.
2. Build a big enough raft. If the raft is too small then you sink and get eaten by sharks. Also, your raft will hold your supplies for the escape; it must be big enough to hold food and water for the trip.
3. Maybe there is a small chance that you get re-stranded if you raft off the island. But, the advantage of rafting is that it accomplishes an achievement.
4. Swim. But this is hard, because you have to really level up your stamina, speed, and strength (if we have such attributes) otherwise you’ll have no chance at avoiding sharks.
5. A super-secret way to win is to build a big enough shelter, a farm or garden, and survive for >4hrs (obviously we’ll allow saving--probably in the nethack/FTL style where you just get one save that you can continue or quit). The winning message is “You have successfully made a home for yourself on your own private island.”
6. Joining the natives. There may be islanders on the island in some difficulties. Appeasing them with offerings and learning their language may allow you to become one of them.