A few days ago I posted about how to proceed with Dead Drift and about my concerns regarding its design.

Yesterday, however, I had a Eureka moment!

I was worrying about having enough mechanical depth with the power-ups to have a "pure" Survivors game.

Thinking in terms of having a completely "flat" game, with no progression between runs, Dead Drift really needed enough power-ups for players to want to play it again and again thanks to the multiple combinations of the power-ups alone.

This is, however, the hardest path possible. There's another path available, one that doesn't involve me having to change the game's genre.

The idea is to add a light progression to Dead Drift. Enter... the Mission System.

Missions!

Suppose there was a "Story Mode" for Dead Drift. In this mode, before entering a run, you'd have 3 different Missions available.

(this is an in-game image, btw... ugly, but it will do for now)

These missions would be regular stuff you do while on a Dead Drift run, like...

> Killing 200 zombies

> Lasting for 1000 seconds total

> Reaching a certain level

As you play the runs and try to survive, you'd also complete these missions. And completing these missions unlock new content in the game for you:

> New power-ups

> New cars

> Permanent stat boosts (Lives, Damage, Car Controls, etc).

When I started considering this idea, it all made sense, and the rest of the game just... clicked.

Now, instead of frontloading players with all options at the same time and expecting them to figure out how the power-ups match, starting with a small number of powers and unlocking them as they progress will give the game a cool pace and distribute discovery over time.

I'm even considering this story mode to really have some sort of narrative, to appear when missions are completed and to connect them to each other (like, why are the players killing the zombies? Are they trying to find a cure? This kind of thing).

So... lots of ideas! Lots of cool new things to do!

That's it, folks!

Until next time! :)