My suggestion for a simple and hopefully easy to implement overheat mechanic to make hot areas more unique.
If the outdoor temperature gets to over 30c (or whatever works best) then draw a line from the player to the sun. If the line is uninterrupted start some wavy screen effect that eventually causes damage similar to freezing. If the line intersects blocks then the player is in the shade and would naturally be cooler so is unaffected.
This would incentivize the player to build structures in places like hot deserts to create shade such as covered walkways or underground pathways. It could also make players choose to travel through a forests shade to get out of the sun which could then create hostile wildlife encounters. Also having the shade mechanic would make it different enough to just being hot freezing and is a way of implementing overheating without needing thirst mechanics like other survival games. .
There could also be clothing for hot weather that keeps the player "cooler" by raising the temperature required to higher than 30c threshold before affected similar to how fur works in the cold. It could also be the case that cloths made for cold weather could lower that 30c threshold as they make the player warmer already thus easier to overheat. Currently there's not really a reason to ever take off cold weather cloths once you have them so hopefully this would make clothing choice drive gameplay more.
My suggestion for a simple and hopefully easy to implement overheat mechanic to make hot areas more unique. If the outdoor temperature gets to over 30c (or whatever works best) then draw a line from the player to the sun. If the line is uninterrupted start some wavy screen effect that eventually causes damage similar to freezing. If the line intersects blocks then the player is in the shade and would naturally be cooler so is unaffected. This would incentivize the player to build structures in places like hot deserts to create shade such as covered walkways or underground pathways. It could also make players choose to travel through a forests shade to get out of the sun which could then create hostile wildlife encounters. Also having the shade mechanic would make it different enough to just being hot freezing and is a way of implementing overheating without needing thirst mechanics like other survival games. . There could also be clothing for hot weather that keeps the player "cooler" by raising the temperature required to higher than 30c threshold before affected similar to how fur works in the cold. It could also be the case that cloths made for cold weather could lower that 30c threshold as they make the player warmer already thus easier to overheat. Currently there's not really a reason to ever take off cold weather cloths once you have them so hopefully this would make clothing choice drive gameplay more.
