I'm loving this game so far! I think the beginning is very engaging in trying to balance survival, fending off the shark, and building up the raft, though later gameplay could be made more complex. Some ideas:
- Please have coconuts and those tiny barrels float?
- The option to put labels on chests.
- Not having resources constantly flowing by the raft. Right now, once the player builds enough nets to catch everything that floats by it's not important to really hold onto anything. Once the player has progressed far enough in the game, having new resources float by should slow to more of a trickle, or become an event. I think this would encourage players to utilize chests, value their scrap(the one thing they can't produce right now), and place more focus on self-sufficiency.
- Day/night cycles and the option(or need) to sleep to recover health.
- Weather: fog that reduces visibility, no wind/still water(no new resources flow by), rain that puts out unsheltered cooking fires, dangerous hot and cold temperatures. Also windy storms- the unsheltered player can be blown about, but lots of new resources flood the ocean. There could be some kind of visual cue that indicates what's coming.
- Shark variation: how much health they have(could be indicated by their size), how fast they are, and how often they attack the raft.
- Friendly or neutral AI, like crabs that scutter around the raft if you drop them. Maybe birds? They could be hunted or caged and have nests with eggs to collect. Maybe dolphins could appear in an event where if you feed them they could temporarily repel sharks or gift rare items from the sea floor.
Edits for spelling