The Basic Idea:
A brand new minigame in which the player can surf using a wooden board of some kind on islands with big beaches. The longer they surf, they can beat records of other NPCs with high records and get monetary rewards or ingredients for potions, possibly even exclusive accessories.
You can also surf with party members and race them to see who can surf the longest before getting wiped out.
Why this makes sense in my head
This is literally an ocean based game filled with islands all across the sea, you’d think that people would be surfing on a few of em, especially something like shell island.
It’d be a fun little minigame that can add immersion into the universe + help with obtaining items, you could also challenge your friends through it to see who surfs longer.
Mechanics and how to access it
On islands like shell island or places where there is a beach and a village/town/city of some kind, there could be an NPC holding a surfboard that could be interacted with.
They’d teach you the basics if you’re new, and if you’re a returning player, they’d ask you if you’d like to surf, remind you how to surf again, or for some lore on how it was invented (WIP)
Now onto the actual surfing.
I haven’t come up with the exact movement controls yet, but I do have ideas in that it could be a combo based system with acceleration and board tricks that can factor in points to your run, and the faster/more stylish you can surf while being stable and not fall off will add to your total points, thus giving you a higher score.
There’s also something called a “stability” meter that shows how stable your avatar currently is on the surfboard, the higher it is, the more stable your character is, you don’t want it to get too low, or else you’ll fall off and wipeout, thus ending your run.
There could also be a board perhaps, that shows the top surfers in the world, and the top surfers in the server. similar to a bounty board.
There could be various obstacles when surfing, such as sharks, which require certain tricks to avoid/attack them, perhaps driftwood that can cause you to go unstable and start wobbling, and so on.
As for rewards from this minigame, you could get things like galleons, potions, expensive trinkets like golden pearls, and even possibly a badge if you go far enough as well as some accessories.
Maybe even the surfboard you own could become a weapon type if you win it via meeting some kind of score criteria?, some sort of heavy blunt object?
Why this might not work
Vetex might not know how to model these kinds of things/might be hard to implement.
Does surfing even exist in the 19th century???
Final thoughts
Honestly I think it’s a pretty neat idea for some worldbuilding potential and even ways to obtain cool gear and helpful items, and I don’t see anything wrong with it besides possible timeline issues + coding problems.
