Prior to the development of Survivor: Winter, four other game ideas were compared to the game idea for Survivor: Winter. Other games that were proposed included a memory game, which would test the users ability to remember the order in which objects appeared on the Proteus’ screen, a story-maker game, which would use a series of “Would You Rather…” questions to build an individualized story, tic-tac toe, and a Christmas Buzzfeed quiz, which would allow the user to select a quiz to take and provide the user with a response to the quiz that they selected based on his/her answers to each quiz question.
Because the selected game is required to have user-defined function, loops, selection structures, operators, and at least one class or object, the developers checked to make sure that each game could meet each of the requirements. All of the games could met the requirements and the developers then began to rank the five game ideas in terms of uniqueness and ease of programming. Tic-tac toe was eliminated first; despite its status as one of the world’s simplest yet most entertaining games, it lacked the originality that the developers were striving for and thus ranked very poorly in the uniqueness category. Likewise, the memory game and the story-maker game were also eliminated early in the selection process due to the development of similar games by other pairs of developers. In order to decide between the Christmas Buzzfeed quiz and Survivor: Winter, the developers discussed which game that they would rather develop and play. While the Christmas Buzzfeed quiz would have been fairly simple to program, the Buzzfeed website provides an individual with nearly the exact same experience that the Proteus program would. However, a game that is exactly the same as Survivor: Winter does not exist. Thus, Survivor: Winter was the most unique game and would not be too complex for the developers to program.
After selecting Survivor: Winter as their game to program and download on the Proteus, the developers began to create an outline of the manner in which the game would be played. The developers decided that the game would include a random tribe generator, a series of challenges, a series of scenarios, a loop that would be completed up to ten times, and single player capabilities as basic features. The challenges would use a timer to time that amount of time that it took the used to complete a task; this time would be compared to a randomly generated number. If the randomly generated number is greater than the time that it took the user to complete the challenge, then the user wins immunity. If the randomly generated number is less than the time that it took the user to complete a challenge, the program will give the user a set of scenarios. The user’s answer to the scenario will be compared to the pre-selected right or wrong answer. The selection of a wrong answer results in a vote being added to the running sum of votes; the selection of a correct answer keeps the running sum of votes the same as it was the previous round. If the user gets the majority of the scenarios wrong, then they lose the game. The user wins if they complete all ten loops. In addition to the basic features of the game, the game will also provide the user with the option to search for a hidden immunity idol, design his/her hut or igloo, make “tree mail”, ask for advice from a previous player, and/or choose the items that he/she brings to camp.
A more detailed version of the developer’s game proposal can be found in the Project Proposal Form.