The values of Catopia are: forward-thinking, an executive decision making. The system rewards players who invest food into training their cats, at the expensive of temporarily having less food, and it rewards players who can leave behind a few cats to handle unexpected “events” at home, instead of taking the instant-gratification action of hunting for more food. Actions with longer-term benefits are suavely rewarded, as are actions that anticipate the unexpected. As for executive decision making, you as the player micromanage your cat colony and develop a strategy for it in all your cat-sustaining and colony-growing endeavors. Some values we can think about adding are: harmony with other lifeforms, such as other predators, and prey. We could embed this value into our system by punishing over-hunting, etc.
As for the loops and arcs, the core loop is this: Players take actions to gain or modify resources: food, strength, and other cats. The system will react to these actions: food will be eaten, “events” will be randomly encountered and determined, and cats (with different properties) will be born and die. This creates a new state for the player to take further action, now with new amounts and types of resources, and Ian improved understanding of the consequences of their actions. To illustrate one simple loop at the core of the game:
Cats eat food to increase strength. Cats use strength to hunt and gain food. Food sustains current cat population and is consumed in the acquisition of more cats.
Another loop:
Cats consume food to increase strength. Cats engage in a strength-based gamble for more territory, which may reward more food and more cats. Unsuccessful gambles leave cats with lower strength, or dead. Successful ones leave the colony in an altered, probably improved, state. So on.
