Hello, I'm looking for advise on a way for a survival game I'm making to let the player win, if it's needed, the game is a species nearly extinct, and trying to survive and reestablish the species. But I don't want the win condition to be population, as we want to allow the player to choose in a way when they win the game.

Hopefully you guys can help,

Edit: just going to add a bit more info to help you get a idea of the game, the species is dragons, and the setting is medieval fantasy, the creatures trying to kill off the dragons are a combination of beasts, and humans. The dragons can build things, but they're mostly simple things, like caves and such, as the dragons are quadrupedal.

You could combine it with other goals, e.g. survive and escape from the island/planet which will be destroyed in the near future. Or you should add an external threat, an ancient enemy who want to extinguish the species a second time (you win after defeating the enemy). Or you can fight over resources with an other species.

You could use population as the win if you give the player the option to continue playing in freeform mode after they win. But have you played Tokyo Jungle? That's a survival game where you are playing as an animal, though you cannot increase your population beyond yourself and your siblings which function as extra lives. In Tokyo Jungle the ultimate goal is to survive X number of years - and yes it does get boring that that's the goal for every game. But each shorter time period gives you 3 goals which are like achievements: Eat Y calories worth of food, Change generation once or twice, Kill Z enemies, go to a certain location within the world... So those are other elements you might consider as victory conditions. The one thing I really thought Tokyo Jungle was missing was some kind of base building or self-upgrading thing to spend your earned calories or achievement points on.

Spore is another similar game. Spore has a "collect the set" gameplay going on with mutation options for your critters, as well as eating stuff to collect calories (this is what their advancement condition is based on, which I didn't really like as a choice) which are used to buy mutations, and achievements like "conquer 5 nests" or "ally with 3 other species". If that game had worked a little differently, you might have been able to get access to unique DNA segments by allying with (and thus interbreeding with) another species. Or, the game had some random items like sticks and seashells - they could have given you something to do with those. They also could easily have had collectible stars or something at hard-to-reach locations. They could have combined the critter mode and the next level up, tribal, to let you have your critters build a tribal settlement and climb the stone-age tech tree by inventing things like food storage, walls, armor, etc.

Well theres always the option of letting the player go for as long as they can until something eventually brings them down. That might make it more replayable since you can go for a new 'high score' assuming it doesnt devolve into a month long grind.

Sunandshadow offers some great suggestions in my opinion.

A few other ideas could be:

• perhaps they find another hidden community where life is peaceful, but then they don't create another future for humanity
• perhaps they find a safe place and go there with another character they meet to start a new life
• perhaps they clear out a certain number of enemies
• perhaps they become a respected figure among the other species and choose to save no one
• perhaps they gather enough of a natural resource, perhaps old machines?

One goal might be technological: have the species become stable through technology, whether that be violent (being able to fend off most enemies) or otherwise (cloning vats, colony ships, etc.).

Some good suggestions, a couple others

- alignment with nature and finding a balance in its habitat as either a predator or prey finding the dynamic equilibrium with the surrounding renewable resources

- unification, with a classic strategy structure, using economy, diplomacy and might to bring all species together

- historical realization of common ancestry, with a focus on exploration, puzzles, clues and resourceful combat

- proving the existence of a higher power that names their species worthy to the other species

- uncovering a common enemy

- help an NPC survive/escape(you know, the player has gotten so good in the game that he can make 2 people survive)

- establish an outpost/civilisation, someplace where characters are "safe"

Im pretty sure the win condition of a survival game can be pretty much any win condition of any game you've ever seen before, it just has to take into account whatever you are surviving against in terms of crafting the difficulty curve.

Survival games have stages, usually.

Stage 1: I must secure my basic necessities (Food, water, a weapon)

Stage 2: I must secure a shelter or base (Build a hut, find a building, find somewhere moderately safe)

Stage 3: I must develop myself the means so that day to day survival is no longer my challenge (A food stock, good weapons/armor, etc).

Stage 4: I must explore my surroundings to find/exploit the resources to a greater degree.

Stage 5: ???

And Stage 5 is where most survival games kinda just end. You treadmill stage 4 until all has been explored/expoited and then you run out of stuff. If you want to have an end game you can just put it here. Stage 5: I must destroy the evil zombie robot that put me on this island.... or build a helicopter from tin cans and bubble gum.... or literally murder every other player in the style of Battle Royale. Whatever you want!

Obviously whatever the end game is you want it to match your theme, but it isn't actually constrained by the normal survival game.

It seems like it depends alot on the type of game it's going to be. If you're controlling a whole species though some sort of god-mode perspective, nudging it along, it sounds more like a Sim/Strategy game. If you're controlling a single member of the species at a time, or jumping between them, then it's going to be quite different.

Survival seems to lend itself well to open-endedness - since the continuation of the journey is the goal, really. However, when it gets to the point when the environment is no longer a threat, the game will feel like it's over and the player will get bored. You can continually introduce new environmental hazards to avoid that. Weather, infections, new species, drought, etc to disrupt their comfort zone.