Survival mode win state

[dawaltco]

This would be a challenge / survival mode that would introduce a few randomized objectives into the game world, allowing for an eventual escape from Bear Island.

There should be only one available escape out of several possible options (firing a flare from Desolation Point, distress signal from Timberwolf, encrypted radio channel from the radio tower, refuel & board a boat from Bleak Inlet, etc.). Each option requires a unique item (special flare gun, plane's black box, decryption key stored on some computer, boat fuel, etc.), which you can only access after talking to (maybe doing a task for?) Methuselah / the Grey Mother / another character. They are randomly placed each game in one of the major shelters outside of your starting region. Maybe you can tell from outside by the lit windows & smoke in the chimney, maybe not. Either way, you don't know what you're supposed to do until you find them.

I realize that the existing challenges all have win conditions, but I've found that they're usually geared towards people who know the maps very well (which after many hours I still do not), and even those not limited by timers are less exploratory as a result. A randomized win condition encourages the player to play survival as normal from the beginning, but to explore the map as thoroughly as they can in search of the character that will lead them to the end game.

As the game world grows, I'm interested in mechanics like this that would force the player to traverse more of the regions within the open, basic survival mode. I've had a lot of fun doing this by tweaking the difficulty options to make items very scarce, but even then I'm usually incentivized to hunker down / make a home somewhere after getting some basic gear. Don't hate that at all but it can become repetitive.

Possible that this would pair well with a semi-progress-preserving mechanic like the one I described here. Maybe you wake up next to Methuselah's fire after dying and have a chance to find your corpse. Maybe not. Just looking for a possible way out of the sandbox, even if it's extremely difficult.