Here are some of my Ideas:
1. The Goal of the Game: - Your first goal is to build up your raft to survive on it.
- The second Goal is to build some type of things to move your raft over the water to specific points
- The third Goal is to get to some island, which you already could see from the raft far far away.
- On this islands are some rare materials for which you have to dig or knock on rocks (items which you can't found in the sea and which can give you more opportunities like reinforcing your foundation, better fire places where you can put more than 1 steak at a time etc.). And on some islands you can find pieces of an map in some kind of treasures. (So you have to get to more than 1 island to get the map.)
- The fourth goal and main goal is to get to the land, which you now can see on the map! To get to this land, you have to pass some dangerous zones with your raft (maybe not pirates but something like for example 5 sharks at a time and you have to throw in some meat in the water, so they won't notice you while drive threw them. So things for which you need a strategie to get threw, not to fight threw) When you reached the land you see a beach with a forest behind that. Maybe the world border could be a mountain in the forest. So you kinda finished now your game on the water.
- The final goal on the land is to build up a colony. For this you can find some natives in the forest. These persons only will follow you, when you build them specific houses. For this you can now craft a new house building hammer. Each house has a different thing to do. So you can have a taverne for drinks, a fishing house for fishing, a wood chopper for wood, a collecter house for collecting some berrys, a bakery for bread, a farming house for planting and collecting potatoes, and a market with a well for water. So to build up your colony, you have to collect the materials for each house you want to build. But you have to be careful with this. Because all natives need a specific amount of water and food everyday. If you cant reach this on 1 day it is okay, but if you cant reach it on the second day aswell, they burn up the house in which they work and run away. So to get them back you have to rebuild the house.
You dont have to go to every person itself to give him food and water, you just have to put it at the market, the natives are going every morning to the market and picking up their amount of food and water from their chests (so you have to put the food and water seperatly for each native in a specific spot in the inventory of the market, so you can get rid of a native by not giving him food). Some natives even need specific type of food, like only fish etc..
So have to slowly increase your colony, otherwise it will fall apart because you cant collect as much food and water as they want. Of course in the long time, you cant build a farm house and a native who picks up water, so you dont have to do this by yourself, but they need specific ressources.
So to end this my idea is, to add more goals to the game. So your first goal is to reach a island, because if look in your history you see, that you had a accident with your boat. On the island you find a piece of a map on which you see half of a name and something which looks like a land. Now you paddle with your raft from one island to another. Finally you have the full map and know where to go to reach the land. When you reach the land you see a native and you think why not build up a colony.
So thats my idea. What do you think about it? :)