Game concept: Justice on Living Hell — looking for feedback on the core systems
Hi everyone. I'm not a professional game developer, but I've been developing a game concept in my head for a while and I'd like to finally get some feedback from people who understand game design.
The working title is Justice on Living Hell.
It's an open-world sandbox survival RPG that can be played solo or multiplayer. The main idea is to let players create their own Hero rather than forcing them into traditional classes.
The elemental system
Players begin by choosing one of four primordial elements:
- Earth
- Wind
- Water
- Fire
Each element is intended to influence both player abilities and the behavior of monsters.
For example:
Fire monsters are aggressive and brute-force oriented.
Earth monsters are bulky and defensive, often prioritizing survival or protecting themselves/allies.
Wind monsters are highly agile and tend to target players with the lowest health.
Water monsters specialize in crowd control, such as slowing, trapping, or disrupting groups.
The goal is for the element to represent an actual combat philosophy rather than simply being a different damage type.
Character progression
The maximum player level is 100.
There are no traditional skill points. Instead, players receive stat points and decide how to build their character.
There are also no equipment class restrictions. Players can use whatever equipment they can obtain and support through their build.
Mana is one of the major limitations on magic.
Players can create their own spells based on their elemental mastery, somewhat similar to the idea of constructing ammunition in God Eater. The intention is that two players using the same element could still develop very different spells and combat styles.
Level 50: Awaken or Rebirth
At Level 50, players have an important choice.
Awaken:
Continue developing their current element from Level 50 to Level 100. As mastery increases, the element becomes much more powerful, eventually allowing the player to create increasingly advanced custom spells.
Rebirth:
Return to Level 0 while retaining their previous elemental mastery.
They can then develop a second elemental path and eventually combine the two masteries into a hybrid element.
For example:
Fire + Water → Steam
Earth + Fire → Magma
Earth + Wind → Sand/Dust
Water + Wind → Storm
The player can have a maximum of two elemental masteries because of the game's mana limitations.
Sandbox and automation
The world is intended to work somewhat like a survival sandbox such as Valheim.
Players can construct bases, gather resources, explore, fight monsters, and automate parts of their base through elemental magic.
One example is Elemental Golems.
An Earth-based player might create a golem for mining or construction, while other elements could be used for different forms of automation or defense.
The idea is that elemental mastery affects not only combat, but also how a player develops their settlement.
Death
The world can have different death rules.
One option is a normal penalty such as losing experience and/or inventory.
Another option is permadeath.
With permadeath enabled, a character that dies is permanently deleted, but that character can become a Legend within the world.
For example:
«Level 87 Hero — lost during the assault on a Demon Castle.»
The intention is for important characters and deaths to become part of the history of a multiplayer world.
Players who don't want this system can disable permadeath.
Multiplayer and Hell Realm
The game can be played solo or multiplayer.
The world has a maximum player capacity, and the ultimate endgame is the Hell Realm, which contains Demon Castles and powerful bosses.
Players themselves can never exceed Level 100.
However, Hell Realm bosses are intentionally far stronger than individual players.
The boss scaling is based on the world's player capacity.
For example:
- 1-player world → Level 200 boss
- 2-player world → Level 400 boss
- 4-player world → Level 800 boss
- 10-player world → Level 2,000 boss
The idea is that multiplayer doesn't simply make the game easier because there are more people. The world itself presents a much larger threat.
Players instead become stronger through better builds, custom spells, elemental mastery, equipment, and forging.
What I'm looking for feedback on
I'm especially interested in hearing from people with game-design experience about:
1. Does the elemental system sound like it could support genuinely different playstyles?
2. Does the Awaken/Rebirth system create interesting long-term character progression?
3. Is custom spell creation a viable core mechanic, or does it sound too difficult to balance?
4. Does having no skill-point system and unrestricted equipment make sense with the rest of the design?
5. Does the elemental monster AI concept sound interesting enough to build around?
6. Is scaling Hell Realm bosses according to world player capacity a reasonable approach?
7. What parts of this concept immediately look problematic or unrealistic from a game-design perspective?
8. Most importantly: does this sound like a game you'd personally want to play, and why or why not?
I'm aware that this is an ambitious concept and that an actual implementation would be considerably more complicated than the description above. I'm mainly trying to determine whether the core gameplay ideas are interesting and coherent enough to develop further.
I'd appreciate honest criticism, including negative feedback. I'm trying to understand what works and what doesn't rather than just looking for people to tell me the idea is good.
Thanks for reading.
