Devlog #0

A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.

For my second game jam I am building a narrative driven story, to knock the rust off my writing wheels. Right there, that was a pretty rough metaphor, so you can see I need the practice. While this will take extra time, it's compensated by the technicals staying the same from the last jam -- a 2D top down design with asset packs from itch.io with a few choice edits and filters.

My concept for this game is a linear story about a detective sent to rescue another detective in an isolated environment, a magical dungeon in this case. The interesting mechanic, or the twist I guess, is that our player has access to magical instruments that compel others actions. So for example, there may be a magic tool that compels others to love the user and seek their validation, or another that makes them feel a sense of superiority or pompousness toward the user. Ideally used in conjunction these tools could be used to compel someone to give up useful information. How this would manifest in the game would be differing dialog(s) offered to the player when equipping different items, under the assumption that overuse would turn the NPC hostile toward the player.

Since this style somewhat diverges from the Arcade style of game I previously created, I opted to split my initial time investment into some plot work and some mechanic work. For the mechanic work, I simply tiled out the three small areas that will be available throughout the game, added collisions, and transfer points with a fading animation. The player and NPCs have basic idle and walk animations, and have been placed in their mostly permanent positions. Finally I added a weird little shadow layer in two of the rooms that has different levels of opacity. Later I will come back and spruce up the rooms and move around the NPCs.

For the plot side, I came up with a short blurb for the story background, and then 4 paragraphs summarizing the intro, setup, and climax of the story. Most of the names, locations, and finer points are more or less stand-ins but I feel like about ~50% will make it into the final edition with what is currently in it. Because of the time box I'm in I have to be careful to keep the story fairly railroaded to avoid weird encounters. Because characters will have multiple dialog trees based on the magical tool being used, I already have a ton of dialog to write, adding side quests or weird edge cases should be avoided at all costs. If, and that's a big IF, I get time, I may add a decision at the end that gives an alternate ending and that would add variation without causing to many headaches.

The next thing to complete in between now and my next update is writing the dialog for path of least resistance, just so that you can run through the game. While this sounds like a chore, it should actually be done with some care because many players will probably take the shortest path and if they are left wondering what is happening because all the context is littered about optional interactions, it will make for a bad experience. After the shortest path feels decent, I can move on to adding more depth to optional dialog. If i get bored and want to take a break, I may work on the spike and pit mechanics that may be in the maze levels.

For now, that's all I have, more to come! 🤠

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EpZX1ASJWoSVorsgCjefaCAO8QUYX7DWGNtmEJEiLAo/...