Survival meters

Owns a few bounded stocks on the avatar or party, such as hunger, thirst, body temperature, fatigue, and sometimes sanity or calories. Each tick each stock falls at a base rate modified by activity, weather, and clothing; eating, drinking, resting, or standing near heat restores it. At zero or past a threshold the stock drains health, applies penalties, or kills. Don't Starve uses a default maximum hunger of 150 that drains 75 per game day, and at zero health drains 1.25 per second; The Long Dark tracks calories, body temperature, fatigue, and hunger against cold nights and weather; The Oregon Trail asks each round how much food to eat and kills the party through starvation, cold, or untreated illness. Roguelikes such as Rogue and NetHack use a food clock. Inputs are time, environment, and consumption; outputs are health drain and penalties.

Constant pressure to keep moving. The player plans every trip around food, water, and warmth, weighs risky exploration against returning to safety, and feels relief at a full stomach by a fire. The meters make the world feel hostile and give mundane items life-or-death value.

• which meters exist and which are lethal versus only penalizing
• base drain rates and modifiers from activity, temperature, and gear
• restoration value of each consumable and its availability in the world
• consequence at zero: health drain rate, penalties, or instant death
• difficulty presets that scale drain and resource scarcity

• Fast drain with scarce restoration forces repetitive eating and drinking that crowds out exploration.
• Abundant food trivializes meters by midgame, so they become noise.
• Several meters with overlapping warnings overload attention without adding decisions.

• Low meters reduce the ability to gather, which accelerates decline into a death spiral.
• Meters couple the avatar to weather, day-night temperature, and cooking or crafting systems.
• Players build bases and routes around reliable sources of food, water, and heat.

• Can drain rates adapted by a learned player model keep survival pressure steady from early to late game without feeling rubber-banded?