If I make the original idea for a piece of life without the adventure segment, I can focus on making the social segment.
My idea is that most of the game will take place within a large town with a fairly sized (and constantly expanding) community. The game will take place in a fantasy world in which people don't age. There will be a designated area (Edit: a shrine) where new characters will spawn from time to time. That will be where all people originate from, including you. As more people gather, the town will expand and you'll have more things to do. There will be shops, a school, and other places that we come up with. Just to clarify, the majority of the population will consist of little girls, though there will be some exceptions.
If I were to include the adventure segment within the same game, it would be difficult to make both segments rewarding while still leaving the adventure segment as optional. Therefore, I think it would be in the best interest of the game to leave the adventure segment out for now. It can be made as it's own game or maybe as an expansion later on. Please let me know what you think of this proposition.
Edit: I still like the idea of at least allowing the little girls to leave town occasionally to go on walks. There will still be some exploration, but without enemies.
New Edit: When I said 'constantly expanding', I didn't mean infinitely. The population and town will expand as time passes and as you complete various tasks. It'll stop expanding eventually though.
I'm a bit concerned about having a constantly expanding community. After a certain point wouldn't you run out of character options, causing a lot of the NPC's to look really similar? Also wouldn't some of them end up looking like the main character?
ReplyDeleteIt seems like it'd be a better idea to give the player however many options they get for customizing their character and make a fixed number of NPC's out of a separate set of clothing that the player can't wear. To add more variety.
Will the weather in town ever change? As far as locations go, a library could be cool, and a planetarium. Maybe the little girls could visit /jp/ on the libraries computers.
As for the exploration, what do you plan to use as an incentive for people to explore? Will there be more little girls outside of the town? Will there be music that you can only hear on walks? Maybe they'll be able to go fishing with friends they've made? Special items you can only find outside of town? Wild animals?
Also for the spawn area, It'd be cool to spawn in a shrine.
You've brought up some good points. I edited the post to clarify the 'expanding community' part.
ReplyDeleteAs for clothing worn by NPC's, I was considering the same idea. You'll be able to look pretty similar to some characters, but I'd like to make it so they're at least a little unique at all times. NPC exclusive outfits will help with that. Their outfits will reflect their roles in some cases.
I'd like to include different weather, and seasons, but since the time will be based around days of the week and not months or years, weather changes will be fairly random. I like those location ideas. They're very good ideas.
Incentive for exploration will vary from time to time, I think. Perhaps you'll get food to cook with or you'll find materials for expanding the town. We can come up with various things to find while heading out of town. I'm not sure if I'll include any other towns at this point in time though, in case you were wondering.
Regarding music, I've yet to really decide how to handle it. I intend to focus on that a bit later.
Spawning at a shrine seems like an obvious thing to do. I should have known better.
Have you ever played a Harvest Moon or Rune Factory game? I think they both are good examples of games that make you both want to spend time in town and go outside to explore. In Rune Factory's case, outside and exploring also includes adventuring and enemies.
ReplyDeleteI'm familiar with what those games are, but I've actually never played them, oddly enough. I've read about them a little though. I'll have to look into them some more sometime.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Harvest Moon, it would be great if you could gather seeds or saplings to grow flowers; eventually getting a greenhouse and a garden (or even specialized buildings like an orchid house with precise temperature regulation for each room) for dedicated gardeners would be even better. Suitable plants may be used in tea or food. Since you're gathering the plants (or perhaps getting them as rewards for townsfolk in a "I don't know what this is, but please take it." manner) instead of buying them from a specialist, you wouldn't be sure about what you are growing until they bloom and you'd need to slowly learn the temperaments of each type of plant to make them look their best. This could make for a minigame of sorts, where you compete with NPC gardeners to grow the prettiest flowers. Guessing what sort of plant one will get from the description of the seed might also be possible (though the seed icon should probably stay the same to cut down the work.)
ReplyDeleteIn particular, the inclusion of peculiar plants like Welwitschia, Catasetum, Roridula or Rhizanthella alongside more well-known flowers like roses or chamomiles would be great, since growing those could be quite entertaining (Welwitschia for example only grows two leaves in its millennia-spanning life, though those split as the desert plant braves the harsh weather. It'd be nice to grow one to maturity and watch as its leaves split more and more, even if the "leaf section count" is just a statistic written under the plant's description.)
I like the flower-growing idea a lot. I'll need quite a bit of help upon getting to that segment though since I'm not so familiar with flower varieties or how to grow any of them properly.
ReplyDelete