My most recent game idea was inspired by a YouTube video. My partner showed me this video about the themes of colonization in games like Minecraft, which observes that many sandbox RPGs and other games about building and exploring end up encouraging the player to basically "tame" the wilderness, depleting natural resources and destroying biodiversity in order to create buildings, factories, and other non-natural structures that essentially turn a beautiful landscape into a personalized playground. Of course, building and using natural resources in games aren't inherently bad, but overall these games can result in (hopefully accidental) pro-colonization propaganda. I'm not great at explaining these sorts of things, so I fully recommend checking out the video.
But while I was watching this, I gave it a good hard think and came to the conclusion that I would probably enjoy Minecraft just as much (if not more) if, instead of "taming" wild lands, I were restoring the natural habitat of a land full of ruins from a past destructive civilization. I would love to pick up old pieces of buildings instead of chopping down trees, or even chop down trees in a sustainable way (and, I mean, I already try to do so in Minecraft, but I think it'd be great to have a game that openly encourages me to be as sustainable as possible). If there are NPCs in the game, they could be enemies, remnants from the destructive society that are still trying to reap more from the land than they ever intend to sew, or they could be indigenous to the land, and trying to reclaim it. If the latter, I would have to be careful to make sure the relationship between those NPCs and the player is one of working together, and not the player deciding how to best help a colonized people without their input. For now though, I probably wouldn't be adding NPCs. I can imagine this becoming a bigger project where I eventually have teammates, and I don't think I would be comfortable implementing people into the game until I have a team.
I'm going to be thinking this over for a while, perhaps adding thoughts to a Google Doc, and once I'm done with my current main project on Patreon, I may decide to have this follow it. If I get overexcited (which I probably will), I may make a very tiny demo in the meantime.
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