Hail Wanderers!
Sorry for not posting anything for so long. The game is still alive and well, but it is going through some growing pains. I've come to realize that the format of the game as it currently stands will not deliver the experience that I want so I am breaking down several parts of the game and rebuilding them. Progress is still being made, and the project is in no way dead, but the next build won't be out until I can work through the redesign. What follows is an explanation of the issues as I see them and part of my ideas for how I'm going to try and fix them, so if that doesn't interest you, feel free to skip the rest of the post.
The original intent of this project was to create a character-oriented dungeon crawler. The way I was going to accomplish that was by having each NPC the player encountered be unique. For example, instead of running into a random goblin the player would be running into the same named goblin. This goblin (we will call him Bob) would have a personality, a backstory, goals, dreams, etc. Over the course of several encounters, the player would get to know Bob and move through his character arc. This sounds great in theory, but it runs into several issues. I'll highlight each issue and then explain my intended solution.
The first issue is a conflict between gameplay and narrative. To really get to know Bob requires several encounters with him. Which is fine, Bob is a standard enemy, the player will run into him several times in the dungeon as they try to level up and get strong enough to fight Bob's boss. Yet Bob is a basic enemy, one who really doesn't have a large place in the narrative. Bob's boss on the other hand is a major character (being a level boss) both in terms of gameplay and the narrative. Yet the player will probably only encounter that major character a handful of times due to the nature of the gameplay (beat the boss, move on to the next level, usually don't come back). The solution to this is rather simple. Instead of having the boss of each level patiently wait at the end of the level for the player to come and fight them, they will have an active role throughout the level. They will confront the player (not necessarily attack them though) early on so that their character can be established and then continue to build up their character, and the player's relationship to them, over the course of the level. All of that will eventually culminate in the boss battle, but by that point hopefully there will be a relationship between the boss and the player which will then make the fight and the aftermath of the fight much more compelling. In addition to that, the basic enemies in this level (Bob and his friends) will play less of a role, which I will discuss more in a moment.
Going along with this issue is one of scale. To write a full character for every minor enemy in the game, while nice in theory, really isn't practical on any level. It takes a ton of time for one. For another, most players really won't be all that connected to every single NPC, and having what would normally be random enemies have full characters really bogs everything down. To put some numbers to it, there will (eventually) be 105 basic enemies in the game plus 35 bosses plus 7 major NPCs (plus or minus a few depending on what I add or take out as things go along). To make each and every one of those NPCs be compelling and interesting would take several games at the very least. The solution, as much as it pains me, is to turn the basic NPCs into exactly that, basic NPCs. Now the basic enemies within each level will simply be nameless enemies the same as in most other games. I'm not going to deviate from the format I already have of the different bits of combat flavor text (you can still expect enemies to have some personality and they will have all the basic parts that are already there) but they won't have any progression to them. You won't get to know Bob anymore, you'll just be fighting a bunch of goblins. A bunch of goblins with interesting combat text and mechanics, but still just nameless goblins. That being said, that means that the boss of each level will step into the narrative void that has been created and take on a larger role, as I outlined above.
Before I go any further, let me take a moment to explain what is going to happen to the NPCs that are already in the game. Some of them will get removed from the game but most of them will remain in one form or another. The bosses will certainly stay, and you can expect to see them grow considerably, but most of the minions will either be taken out or moved to a new location within the game (some may wind up as shopkeepers or the like). If there are specific NPCs that you are attached to (even in passing, I know they aren't terribly well developed so far) please let me know which ones in the comments and I will try to find new homes for them.
One of the other major issues I've been having with the game is one of gameplay. To be honest, the linear form of the dungeons just isn't working. I did it for a variety of reasons, but the time has come to change it to be something more robust. What I'm probably going to do is something of a hybrid between the current system and a more traditional text based adventure format. There will be exploration and investigation of an environment (though not in 3D space, just through text) but it will still have some method to try and trigger random encounters. The idea is to have a system that will allow the player to explore the area in a more meaningful way, while at the same time allowing for random and scripted encounters.
The last massive issue, and one that I still don't have a good solution to at the moment, is one of narrative logic. I know the sort of story I want to tell in this game, and I have an overall plot in the works, but I can't quite figure out a good way to have a good aligned main character fight good aligned NPCs. As some of you may have noticed, there aren't any villains in the game as of yet, and all the NPCs are generally somewhere in the neutral or good end of the alignment spectrum (to borrow from the logic of Dungeons and Dragons). So, again as you may have noticed, I keep coming up with rather illogical reasons for them to be fighting. Now this problem partially solves itself for the minor enemies (as they will no longer have full characters it is easy enough to give them some sort of basic reasoning. "I'm going to rob/arrest/attack/etc you now" in essence but with better wording of course) but the major enemies need some sort of logic to back their actions up. I was toying with the idea of having the main character be part of a group that generally provokes a hostile reaction in other people, but that seems like it will get old fast and is rather unfair to the player. I can just spin a narrative reason for each NPC, but I would like to try and find some form of unifying logic that I can use though the entirety of the game....which I think I just thought of as I write this.
With that in mind (and as this is already quite long winded) allow me to apologize once more for the long gap between updates and bid you all a good day. I'm off to rewrite my narrative.
Guardian Soul
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