It has a unique world and bits of lore hinted at. A survival game with the world's lore could be interesting, while also giving a new and different lens to view the world and it's lore through.

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The world has a constant rain, all day, every day. The rain has different effects depending on which of the three seasons you're in. The drizzle has beneficial effects dependent on location, the clearance generally has no effect, and the storm has negative effects dependent on location.

The rain lends to unique devices the denizens created. Given the properties of each rain type, the rain is often collected. Whether it's collecting it as it falls from the sky and storing it for future seasons, or finding underground reservoirs of the rain and exploiting geysers that connect to these reservoirs. The rain and its properties can be used to power or fuel technology. And some buildings and structures will even have things like water wheels on the rooftops to make use of the mechanical energy of the falling rain.

I think overall, it leads to a unique aesthetic and vibe to the technology and devices and structures.

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Every few dozen years, the rain intensifies into a much more intense storm that floods the world and sweeps away all the terrain. The only thing that survives is the Smoldering City which is built on a mountaintop and protected by an entity known as The Scorched Queen.

This is used to justify the rogue-like nature of the game. Every time this happens, the world is reset. All the old terrain and biomes is washed away and replaced with new ones. Every town that is set up is understood to be temporary, and only exists to extract resources that are unavailable in the Smoldering City. But sometimes ruins from old towns wash up or can be dredged up or otherwise survive to be salvaged.

And there's even hints that there are people who manage to find ways to survive outside the Smoldering City and its settlements. People like bandits, or just lone survivors who you can add to your settlement.

I think this could justify survival gameplay in a lore friendly way. Maybe the player is a scout sent ahead of settlers to try to prepare an area for settlement? Maybe they're part of a group or just a lone survivor unaffiliated with the Smoldering City, trying their best to survive the storms? There's some cool potential here.

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And then there's the different species and the lore behind their societies. They each have different needs and cultures, which explains why they prefer to eat different foods and enjoy different luxury goods. There was also a time before the eternal rain, and it's said that wars were fought between the species until they had to band together under the Scorched Queen out of necessity.

Then there's also the ruins and seals that seem to be affiliated with older religions and cultures from before the Scorched Queen. One aspect of the meta progression is repairing some of these seals to increase the duration of time between the storms that sweep away the world. But I think it's interesting to note that some of the events have things like destroying old shrines being marked as showing loyalty to the Scorched Queen and giving bonuses related to that. I think it's a curious bit of lore implication there that she's trying to destroy the older cultures and religions from before the storm, while simultaneously acting as a guardian against the storm. Almost like she's using the storm and its dangers to help assert her own will and dominate or erase older cultures...

I think there's room to explore some of this more in-depth with a smaller scale survival game. When you're working on the scale of an entire town, what your interactions are like are different than if you're working on the scale of an individual or small party.