Category: Ideas

In this iteration of Morbus I want to explore humans having a victory condition besides just killing all the brood aliens or running out the clock. The original concept of humans running out the clock was that there was some sort of outside (human) party that arrives and they learn of the alien threat. The result would then be that all the aliens would be exterminated by some “off-screen” force, or maybe more sinisterly, all players (humans and aliens alike) are killed by this party because how can you tell who’s an alien and who’s a human?

This means that the ultimate alien objective was to convert all humans, so that when the next group of humans is detected, they’re none the wiser that an alien is amongst them. If just one human remains, they could snitch on the aliens. Or if we take this one step further, the ultimate objective is survival.

Meanwhile the human objective isn’t survival like running out the clock implies. Their objective is to alert the world that there are shapeshifting aliens and to not let them spread. Similar to the movie The Thing where the dude at the end of the movie destroys the research station to prevent the spread of the alien.

I like this idea of “I know I can’t win, but I could prevent you from winning too” and I think it could be played around with.

Self Destruct

Most Morbus maps takes place in space, either a space station or a space ship. There are a few earth based maps or remote planet colony maps but it’s a usually small building/facility.

What if the human team, when realizing that winning the game would be difficult, could decide to try and tie the game instead? A tie for the humans could mean “everyone died, humans and broods alike.” So how do we make this happen?

Let’s say there’s a nuclear reactor on the map, and you can activate a reactor overload, or a self destruct sequence. There’s a 2 minute period of time where if the sequence isn’t stopped, boom, everyone dies and the game is tied.

So how do you start this self destruct sequence?

Obviously you wouldn’t want to make it something you could start any time. Someone could grief the game and just start it at the beginning of the game. This is something that’s supposed to be used only when all hope is lost. So how do you turn this “story” into a gameplay mechanic.

A simple way is you add some basic check, if half the humans have been turned into aliens, then you can start the self destruct sequence. But then you get someone who camps the button and waits for it to activate and then presses it.

Obviously you could cancel the countdown, but then it might become meta to always have someone waiting at the button. I’d rather this be a tool in the toolbox of the human players that’s used sometimes instead of a constant occurence.

There could be “keys” hidden in the map. Perhaps you need 2 keys to be able to start the sequence, even cooler, you might need 2 people to turn both keys at the same time. The same could be said about deactivating the self destruct sequence. Maybe swarm aliens can’t turn the keys too?

Now this requires humans to search through the map, or just stumble upon these keys. The requirement to have half the humans turned into alien also might become irrelevant because now it will take time for humans to actually find those keys.

But how do we explain the “half the humans are turned alien?” Maybe the ship/station has some sort of global bioform scanner. It can detect the presence and quantity of aliens, but not the location. As more brood aliens are made the presence level goes up which unlocks the ability to self destruct.

Is this really a tie though? As we discussed earlier the default Morbus victory condition for humans for was to run down the clock, which in a way implies that all humans died anyways. So maybe this isn’t a tie but just an alternative human victory, just a lesser one.

Major Human Victory

Killing all the aliens seems like a major human victory; It leaves no doubt in mind that humans are victorious. If running out the clock seems like a “sorta” victory and causing a self destruct is also a “sorta” victory, we should give humans a choice to just “win” (besides killing all the aliens.)

I want to give humans more to do than satisfying their needs and pointing guns at suspicious people. A purpose to existence, a goal in life… i mean an overarching goal in a round.

I think Among Us is cool because in that game the crewmen have random responsibilities around the ship to do. It’s like Morbus where they are forced to split up to accomplish tasks, however not accomplishing those tasks only delays victory, it directly doesn’t harm the actual player. The indirect harm is it gives more time for the traitors to kill other crewmen thus reducing their chance of winning.

So in short, do your tasks, and if everyone does them, then you win.

Zombie Panic Source was another cool game back in the day with a similar idea. Humans vs Zombies, and for humans to win they need to complete a set of tasks on a map and then they win (ie escape.) These tasks were shared across the whole team though, and like Morbus, it was an FPS.

I think it would be really cool to give humans in Morbus a way to win by completing a set of team wide tasks. It’s adds to the “sandbox” dynamic of Morbus where every round is a different experience and plays out a bit differently.

Objective Victories

There are a couple types of objective victories I can think of

Escape

In this objective, one or more human escapes from the map, they live to tell the other humans of the alien threat. This is a loss for the aliens because they’re found out and assumably killed by off-screen humans.

The steps for this type of victory could be;

• Gather proof of alien existence
  • Perhaps a brood alien must be killed and a sample harvested from them
• Repair an escape lifepod which was damaged before the round started
  • Run around the map finding materials and tools
  • Complete little minigames to conduct the repairs
• Launch the lifepod

Brood Aliens could possibly sabotage this victory

• Put some sort of remote explosive device inside the lifepod
• Shoot the lifepod down with some sort of ship turret
  • Within some timeframe after the lifepod is sent away
• Be inside the lifepod instead of a human

Alert the outside world

This objective is similar in result as the previous one, but it doesn’t require a human to escape. In this scenario we should imagine that the communications to the outside world have been disabled for some reason, and the humans must repair them and use them to alert the outside (human) world of the alien threat.

The steps for this victory could be:

• Gather proof of alien existence
• Repair the communications array
  • Gather materials and parts around the map
  • Complete minigames/tasks across the map
• Transmit a warning message

We could imagine that transmitting the message takes some time which leaves the brood aliens a chance to deactivate the transmission process.

The Brood Aliens could also possibly sabotage the communications array again, thus delaying the humans.

Alien Killing Virus

This objective would see the humans winning in totality.

Through “science” the humans could create some sort of alien killing virus or bacteria. This virus could either be a hand held weapon used by humans, that’s super powerful against aliens, and/or it’s administered across the whole map via HVAC system (or life support) which causes either an immediate or imminent human victory.

The steps for this victory could be:

• Gather alien samples
  • Presumably by killing brood (and/or swarm aliens)
• Research/science mini games / timed tasks
  • Perhaps there are multiple labs across the map
  • You have to conduct research in all of them
• Manufacture the virus
  • Once again some mini game or timed task
• Disperse the virus
  • Take the virus to the Life Support hub which will disperse it across the map, thus killing all aliens

Brood Aliens can interfere at multiple points along this path. What could be cool is after the virus is manufactured, the human is given a virus sprayer (spray bottle?) which does massive damage over time to aliens in close range. The aliens could have one last kamikaze rush to try and stop the humans before they get it to the life support system.

Security System Activation

Similar to the virus but instead the humans activate automated turret security guns across the map. Maybe this isn’t an instant victory but it almost assures a human victory.

Minigames

There’s been mention to minigames in this post. I like the idea of forcing players to do silly minigames in the middle of a stressful situation. I think the Helldivers franchise is amazing for this; you’re in the middle of a huge firefight, explosions, bombs, gun shots, and you have to do a stupid button click sequence perfectly or the landmine you’re defusing will blow up in your face and kill you. Absolute cinema.

I could see the minigames in Morbus following a similar theme. Timed button clicks, sequential button clicks, dragging wires from one side of the screen to another. I’m really focused on clicking the button at the right time and oh my god was that an alien that just transformed next to me!?

Summary

I think there’s a lot of cool directions to explore victory conditions in Morbus. I would like to give human players more to do than just “survive and hunt.” These victory conditions could coexist with the timer victory, but perhaps the default time victory condition is longer, for instance 15 minutes.

Lot’s of cool ideas. Right now we’re still really early in the development of Morbus. None of this stuff is critical to creating an enjoyable “core” experience for Morbus, but they’re longer term features that will flesh Morbus out and make it more dynamic and replayable, and help build out that “sandbox” i’ve been referring to.

Most video games have just a simple Health/Hitpoints system. You have 100 HP, you take 50 damage, some time goes on and then you heal 20, and now you have 70 HP.

Some games then have armor, and how they handle armor varias from game to game

• 2 Armor in some games means you take 2 less damage every time you get attacked
• 2 Armor in some games means that you effectively have 112% of your normal max HP (each armor point increases health by 6%)

Some games will have attacks that affect your maximum HP as well as your current HP.

The other day I got a cool idea for Morbus.

Health in Peak

Peak is a game about climbing up a big mountain. You don’t actually have health in Peak but you have a stamina bar and when you climb you lose stamina. When you’re not climbing you regain stamina.

You have to eat in Peak, and when you don’t your max stamina decreases. It also decreases when you fall and hurt yourself. All of this “stamina damage” is portrayed in an incredibly intuitive way.

Your Energy Bar never changes size, instead it starts to be filled with these “damages.” And if your bar is ever completely full of damage, your character passes out (and then you probably die.)

What this has to do with Morbus

In Morbus humans sometimes have to accomplish “needs” which are silly things like eating, sleeping, showering, or using the bathroom. It doesn’t make any sense why you’ll need to do one or all of those things within a ten minute round but it’s a video game and there’s gameplay reasons why these exist.

If a player doesn’t have a need, has a random need assigned every 3ish minutes, and they have 1-2 minutes to “satisfy/accomplish” this need before it becomes critical. They can only accomplish their needs in specific places so they might need to hustle to get to where they need to go.

In classic Morbus, if the need every becomes critical (they haven’t accomplished it in time) then they start taking damage every second. This damage is inflicted directly to their health.

Now what would be cool…

In our new iteration of Morbus we use a similar health system as Peak, where the players HP bar is divided up between Actual Health and Damage. When a player’s need becomes critical they take Need Damage which effectively reduces their HP but the player can see what % of their health is lost to not completing their need.

When a player goes an accomplishes their need all, or a portion of their Need Damage is removed, effectively restoring their HP.

Instead of thinking about Health as a resource, we think about Health being the absence of damage.

In classic Morbus completing a need restored 20-30% of your health, regardless of whether you had been shot at or if you had taken Need Damage. With this system, we’d only be removing damage you had taken from your need being critical.

We can also introduce some interesting dynamics; Imagine a need normally takes 8 seconds to complete. If you have taken more than 20% need damage, then every 10% of need damage beyond 20% causes the need to take 1 second longer to complete. So there’s now an additional trade-off of delaying your need; it takes longer to accomplish.

This gives us another lever to help balance humans and reward or punish them.

Intuitiveness

I remember watching some YouTuber’s play the original Morbus and when they were unfamiliar with the game they were confused by why they were taking damage for not completing a need. This could more easily show them why they are taking damage.

Need Reducing Items

The Morbus community added a “Pills” item to Morbus which would extend the amount of time you could wait until your need became critical. An interesting item which I think could be supplemented or replaced with an item that heals only Need Damage.

Other Types of Damage

When players are attacked normally they would take a “Wound” damage type now, which would be healed like normal by the Medkit.

However we can explore the additon of additional damage types, whether they be permanant or temporary.

Aliens having venomous attacks could be really cool. They could build over time and then decay, or just be inflicted in addition to a normal wound. This venom damage could then decay over time, or perhaps only be healed by an anti-venom (instead of a medkit.)

Temporary damage, or certain types of damage, when they are inflicted and push the player into the “no remaining health” zone could also incapacitate a player, knocking them out but not killing them right away. Giving their allies a brief window of time to resuscitate them (by healing a type of damage.)

I think these are all cool ideas that i’m excited to experiment with as development continues.

Infection

In the original Morbus when a human player is killed by a brood alien (while in alien form) the human comes back to life as a brood alien. I’ve always thought it would be cool for brood aliens to have a way to secretly infect players while in human form, or for an alien infection to grow within them and then result in their transformation into the brood alien side.

A long time ago I played a game called Zombie Panic: Source which was a really cool mod about a bunch of humans working together to escape a scenario while they are killed and turned into zombies one at a time. It shared some similar mechanics with Morbus where based on the guns and equipment you carried your movement speed would change (heavy shotgun = you move slower.)

Sometime that could happen in that game is if you were hit by a zombie attack then you had a chance to become infected. As a human you were unaware that you were infected for a period of time. Zombie players could tell you were infected and might even stop targeting you since they knew you were to soon join their side. After some period of time the game notified the infected human player that they were about to become a zombie. Giving the player a chance to get into a compromising position for their soon to be human enemies.

It was a ton of fun being this infected human.

In the original Morbus I implemented a “Brood Alien Resurgence” mechanic. It happened if there was only one starting brood alien and they were killed before they were able to infect any other human. My imagination behind this mechanic was that there was some covert infection of a human that finally converted a human as the last brood alien was killed. I don’t think a lot of players liked this mechanic because it was a bit confusing, and i think it could’ve been executed a bit better.

In this latest iteration of Morbus I want to explore the idea of covert infection. I’m considering making a type of damage “Infection damage” which reduces health just like “wounds” or “needs” do. If a player dies while they have infection damage then they would become a brood alien.

I’ve had ideas on how to play with this infection idea:

• Infection below a certain threshold is benign and does nothing
  • Once infection hits a certain point, it starts to increase
• Infection is hidden from the human player until it grows to a certain point, perhaps until the human has been infected fully
• Infection can be revealed by medical scanning items or map features?
• Beyond the initial brood aliens, a few players may have slowly growing infections
  • Could result in a natural resurgency mechanic
  • This has other gameplay implications though

There are some things to iron out; for instance if infection damage is hidden from the player, then from their perspective they may die quicker than they expected, this could be frustrating.

Infection damage could just be another stat, not communicated via HP bar.

There could be a sort of “Infection Potential” which is actually inflicted, and slowly if the player has “Wound Damage” those wounds are replaced with actual “Infection” which does what we described earlier.

It could create interesting dynamics if a human player knows they are infected, communicates it to their allies, and they work together to cure the human instead of killing them. I think having items to cure infection would be crucial for this dynamic to arise.

The Sandbox

When I realize how many ideas and mechanics that could be introduced to Morbus I get excited. I view Morbus as a kind of multiplayer social deduction horror sandbox. I think that all, some, or a varied subset of these mechanics could all exist and result in a fun experience. It might be annoying to play with all of them all the time, but I think making things modular and either randomly turning them on/off or allowing server owners to tweak them could create some cool experiences.

Something you may thought about earlier is the concept of “some humans start the round with a hidden but growing infection.” In the original Morbus it would be kind of boring if a minute into the game you kill the one and only brood alien. Then you spend the next 3 minutes waiting around just to find out your buddy was infected and is now a brood alien too. I think in the current round framework of Morbus where the only human victory condition is to run out the timer (or kill all broods, which we’ve taken away with the hidden infection) this doesn’t work. Instead we need to introduce an alternative win condition for humans that involves completing tasks. This is something I want to explore later with Morbus but it’s still too early to address.