Design Principles
The following are the set of core design pillars for Ephemeral Space. These principles are meant to underscore all parts of the game: as such, any mechanic or element in the game must—at minimum—abide by all principles listed.
Social Interaction
Ephemeral Space is first and foremost a multiplayer game. While there is obviously a ton of simulation content happening underneath it, everything should tie into the core experience of interacting with others.
There should not be elements of the game which exist solely to engage individuals playing in an isolated manner. Even if mechanics are not inherently social, they should still prompt meaningful social gameplay through their interaction with other systems.
An example of a mechanic which is not social by nature but still creates social gameplay would be something like hunger. There's nothing inherently social about needing to eat and drink regularly, but by virtue of having jobs and systems dedicated to making and giving out food, the experience becomes social.
Ambiguous Game State
The experience of Ephemeral Space is heavily built upon systems where individuals are not aware of the allegiance or motives of others. Similarly, mechanics should always strive to create ambiguous situations for players to play in.
The game should always strive to create situations where the events happening on station have plausible deniability. It's within this realm of ambiguity that the core gameplay of social deduction and intrigue can really shine.
Continuous Decay
A round of Ephemeral Space should always be on a constant trend towards a final point. Any given player should always have a concrete goal that they are striving towards and the game should always be moving towards success or failure.
While players should be able to control the course of a round, the round should simultaneously be able to function autonomously. On the other hand, a individual should not be able to single-handedly end or stall a round without reasonable counterplay from others.
The "decay" referenced here is both literal and metaphorical.
Physically, resources should be consumed, people should die, and things should fall apart until the end is reached. At the same time, the round (as an abstract object) should be continuously decaying until it terminates and the round ends.
Simulationist Design
The game should revolve around emergent interactive mechanics rather than isolated pieces of 'content.' Mechanics should not be tasks designed to pad time for jobs, but rather general systems for all players to interface with.
Create limited numbers of game elements with large amounts of potential interactions. Maximizing what one thing can do creates greater potential for elements to interact without bloating the number of different elements in the game.
Simulationism in this context is not a literal desire to accurately simulate various elements of the game.
The appeal of realism is how it offers intuitive ways to approach problems, a key appeal of games in the immersive sim genre. This intuitiveness can be preserved by replicating the high-level behavior while allowing the design to function in whatever arbitrary manner provides the best gameplay.