A New Game Direction

As odd as it might sound, this project started off as basically a clone of Animal Crossing, but with villagers and fantastical elements. The difference between the first version and what it is now is kinda’ staggering. The first version actually involved typing /north and /talk and /eat. I wanted the character to be able to interact with a world.

Even when things became procedurally generated dungeons, I wanted the player to be able to encounter NPCs who would provide quests, like, “Could you make me this cure for lycanthropy?” And then the player could whip up a cure for lycanthropy or taint it with something that would blow up the NPC. If the player give a cure, you get a male NPC in the dungeon that might help. If you do something else, you blow up the wolf:

This character never made it in, and the dungeon itself stayed mostly empty. I started to like the idea of fighting against time, but coming back to the project after a hiatus does leave it feeling a bit empty.

Dialog in games is more complicated than you might think. You have to pause the world (not all of it!) and make sure NPCs aren’t attacking, except the ones who should be attacking, and you have to manage cameras and events and user interfaces and and and…

SquishySofty released a game called Bakery Bloat Out which I think is phenomenal. Link here: https://www.deviantart.com/squishysofty/art/Release-Bakery-Bloat-Out-V1-1-889854… It does a huge number of things right. In particular:

• The game is fun. The mechanic is simple, but challenging and addictive.
• The player has to tow the risk/reward line of being more powerful while inflated but also more vulnerable.
• The inflation is fairly well integrated. It doesn’t feel like someone said, “Let’s make a puzzle game” and then added inflation. It feels like it was made with it in mind. That said, it’s still slightly bolted on, but it somehow works.

There are some things that I think could be done differently:

• Once you see the maximum size of the player, there’s really not much more to see. The game is still fun, but it never surprises me.

This point is one of those that I really loved about Trap Quest. Even after reaching the “biggest state”, the interactions with the world would leave me wanting to explore it and see if there were things that could make me bigger. Same with the Corruption of Champions. I would love to try and give those surprising (but rare) bits of content to this game, and that led to this decision in design:

"You pretty much never see the player at her biggest."

Unless you’ve been really grinding or hacking, the player’s max size is, in fact, room-filling, and you’ve probably not seen it. Why would you? It’s a boring grind. But, inspired by SquishySoft, I think there’s a way to change the direction and make it both more fun and more satisfying. (I will admit I’m ripping off Bakery Bloat Out.)

• Bonk enemies with telekinesis and then blow them up with magic.
• If they bonk you and you’re KO’ed, struggle before they blow you up.
• Being more blown up gives you less control but more speed. You use half of your fill on enemies to blow them up faster.
• Importantly: you stretch out. Your limit at the start is very low. Towards the end, you’ll reach a point where it’s hard to fit through doors.

That’s the direction I want to go. I haven’t decided if I’m going to change the random level generation yet, but it’s not off the table. I also don’t have a time frame for how long it will take to do these changes because I can never predict my work schedule and I only have a few hours per week to work on this. And I’m lazy.