Core Game Design
These documents contain Goob Station’s Core Game Design Princples and should be used to inform the design of any new designs or large balance changes.
Questions around Core Game Design should be directed towards maintainers via Discord.
Caveats
- These documents are living documents and will change overtime as the design of Spacestation 14 evolves.
- These documents are one interpretation of what Goob Station should be and only reflects the direction of official Goob Station servers
- Forks and other communities may have different ideas and directions which they want to take the game
- This is primarily intended to serve as a direction for Goob Station development, but forks can use these design documents as a base if they so choose.
What is Goob Station?
Goob Station is a game where one moment you could be mopping up chemicals spilled by alien artifacts and another moment you hear a distant explosion and protect the station from invasion by nuclear operatives.
Core Pillars
These pillars serve as the guiding concepts for designing features for GS14. When creating features or changing balance you should be actively thinking about how these concepts relate to your design or change. The pillars serve as guideposts for creating a cohesive design for GS14. Further detail about each can be found in: Design Principles.
Chaotic
- No two rounds should play alike. The combination of antagonists, incompetence, and disasters should create situations where players have to deal with rapidly changing and escalating situations.
Seriously Silly
- aka “Skibidi Toilets are invading the station while a traitorious clown is killing off its command structure by making them slip and fall into a hacked recycling machine.”, a situation like this on its face is completely ludicrous but should be taken seriously by players.
Dynamic Environment
- The gameworld should be malleable, letting players build, deconstruct, or modify anything. It should be possible to build an entire separate station and continue the round there if players put in the effort.
Intuitive and Inter-Connected Simulation
- Simulated systems should be complex enough to create engaging gameplay/decisions while still being intuitive enough to learn without wiki-diving. Systems should interact with each other as much as feasible to create new emergent gameplay opportunities.
Player Interaction/Agency
- Players should be encouraged to interact with each other as much as possible to create opportunities for conflict or cooperation. Mechanics should reinforce the player’s ability to make impactful decisions while mitigating those decisions’ effects on the agency of other players.
Roleplay First
- Players should be encouraged to learn about the game from each other first, and gameplay should be centered around fun and creating stories through the perfect interaction of roleplay and mechanics.