Devlog #4: Games, games, games

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1 Progress

Despite originally intending to plough ahead and complete the rest of the art, I've ended up switching back to prototyping the minigames that will appear in the first act.

Figure 1: Collage of the minigames worked on.

All of them are looking rough at the moment (and at least one of them doesn't function as an interesting enough puzzle game yet) but revisiting them has been overdue after two months of dormancy.

Apart from that, I've been working on more of the Pendant UI so that I can display IM, inbox and generic notifications - something that will come in handy once I start integrating these games into the main story.

1.1 Skara-Daphne

Figure 2: Initial sketch of minigame.

This is the first of a series of four related mini-games in Daphne's virtual world, Skara-Daphne. It's supposed to be a simple reflex/timing co-ordination game. Unlike the other games, this one is intended to be played once so I'll be aiming for minimising complexity.

Figure 3: Daphne and her friend Sarah role-playing in Skara-Daphne

Features have been pared down since the sketch but I do intend to add the zombies after the other three Skara-Daphne games are created.

1.2 Painting

This is less of a game and more of a painting activity at the moment; the player is given thought processes to draw (with the goal in later variations to minimise the number of strokes or draw until a time limit) and is supposed to illustrate the creative process undergone while doodling by hand.

Figure 4: Daphne deciding what kind of cake she wants for her birthday. Why is ice-cream cake missing?!

I'm happy enough with the high-level design for this to leave it until a juice-adding pass.

1.3 Narrative Crafting

This 'narrative crafting' mini-game is supposed to represent Daphne's eventual day-job of synthesising news from her assigned hashtags and relaying them in person to others with as much impact (and virality) as possible.

It began as more of a puzzle game (drawing inspiration from Kurt Vonnegut's narrative arcs) but after a few iterations, I found it difficult to work as an fun puzzle.

Figure 5: An earlier prototype of narrative-crafting.

In its present form, it's split into two reaction games (one for reading and one for speaking); I haven't decided yet if this is too much of a design cop-out, but I'll try integrating it into the game first to see how it feels.

Figure 6: Oh boy there is a lot going on here. Don't worry, it's just a sandbox!

1.4 Scheduling

This is another mini-game that's gone through a few iterations; it's flicked back and forth between real-time and puzzle.

Figure 7: An earlier iteration of scheduling in real-time. Invitations expire so you have limited time to decide whether to accept or decline them.

Here, Daphne is trying to fulfil her herald goals by scheduling in appointments, while making sure she has enough money (transport credits).

At the moment it's leaning more towards puzzle, but there is a lot of design still to be worked out.

Figure 8: Current iteration of the scheduling minigame.

2 Coming Up

As evident from the lack of writing about any tooling or craft, this fortnight's mostly been straight programming, stopping occasionally to churn out some placeholder art. I can see the light, though, and hopefully by next fortnight I'm hoping to have:

Done the three other Skara-Daphne minigames
Weaved all of the minigames into the main story
Done another playthrough to feel out the weakest part to work on next

Finally, although I've still not started on the music despite having hoped to for the last two devlogs, I have now got my midi keyboard connected up and capturing snippets; hopefully some compositions will take subconsciously shape. Until next time!