I have been working on a minecraft mod pack that has a mechanic where the player can fly between different worlds via the elytra. eg. the overworld -> moon -> mars etc. I have a few different directions I can take Mars’ design:
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Dead world with remnants of the extinct martian civilization. Environmental storytelling used to convey a mystery to be solved by the player
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HG Wells’ war of the worlds inspired with the martian statues referencing their 3 colored pupiled eyes on a villager model and red weed plants growing underground that infect plants like trees and spread on corrupted dirt (basically dirt that has had blood within 4 blocks of it) and eventually turns white and dies if its in one of the overworld dimensions
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harmless/benevelant living martians based on the barsoon series
Or some combination of those
Thoughts?
I added structures that contain liquid blood as decoration/ambiance and pools of blood in the nether dimension variants (there are 3 in total: caves, surface and floating islands) so that could corrupt soil which then corrupts the red weed to make it spread like a disease. All 3 of these would be from different dimensions and would never interact without the player’s purposeful actions.
The corrupted red weed would spread a carpet over grass etc. that would occasionally spawn more red weed like mushrooms do. Destroying the carpeting would be easy and because it isnt converting the grass blocks, it isnt actually destroying anything other than the trees/mushroom blocks that it consumes. OR I could make it merely generate red vines that cover them.