First, a big “Thank you!” to everyone who has stopped by, and especially to everyone who has subscribed to the blog. We really appreciate your support, and we desperately need it to get the word out there about the game.
Here’s a bit of concept art that leads into what I will talk about now.
That is part of Lila’s Tableau. (Remember, Lila is the 11-year old girl who’s mind will be inhabited by you, the players.) The Tableau is a kind of communication device. It’s pretty big, about the size of a two-level house. There’s one in every major town, and it’s connected to that mysterious tower you might have seen in the concept art gallery.
In this game, emotions are a really central aspect. Because we’re frolicking around inside this girl’s psyche–and you know how emotional pre-teen children can be!–we’re going to run into emotions. Therefore, emotions will touch almost everything in the game. Your character will have an emotional “alignment,” abilities and items will have attributes that are affected by emotion, and the environment itself will change depending on Lila’s mood.
A very cool feature (to which we owe credit to Chris Pasley from Kongregate for spawning the idea) is that players can actually affect Lila’s mood. I won’t get into any details, because I want to save that all for later when the design is more stable, but I can say that the Tableau is one key part of the process of how players change Lila’s mood. The rewards are many, so if your character is aligned emotionally with Lila’s mood, good things happen.
This is one of the central activities in the game: a kind of tug-of-war to influence Lila’s mood to match with your character’s alignment so you can reap the benefits. It isn’t a direct PvP type thing, but more of an indirect process of mass cooperation among the members of each emotional “faction.”
I really want to say more, but I have to wait and let those cats out of their bags later. Stay tuned for more exciting adventures!
10 comments ↓
My eyes are getting wider and wider as I read more about this game. This sounds wonderful!
I can see it now:
A: “What alignment are you? I’m Temper Tantrum.”
B: “I chose Blissfuly Oblivious.”
C: “I’m Happy.”
A&B: “Boring.”
That’s a very nice piece of art.
Kudos to the fresh and imaginative minds behind this game. Absolutely loving it. I’ll be staying with you guys till you launch.
Wow, looks great. I never thought emotions could affect a game.
Cannot wait!
Like Being John Malkovich, were he a she and not 60 but 11 and not a movie but a game.
If I play as an “angry”, can I change MY mood on a whim? Or am I invested in one emotion and penalized when I try to change?
Just trying to get my head around this. Looks great!
Ryan, I haven’t decided if emotional alignment will be permanent or not, but I’m leaning towards making it so.
I am trying to give players every opportunity to experiment with options, though, because I don’t want to force players to restart from scratch unless it’s for a good reason. Without a level ladder to climb, that solves a lot of those types of problems.
We’ll be talking about this and more in future blog posts. Hope you’ll stick around and join in the discussion!
I think making emotional alignment permanent would be a good thing. Firstly, you’d allow players to in effect choose a ’side’ and then cooperate with everyone else to change Lila’s mood to get any bonuses. If it’s not permanent then people will try to change to whatever Lila’s mood currently is or choose her current mood when first given the chance. Then no-one will be inclined to try to change her mood.
Perhaps random mood swings will prevent the above scenario as well as wresting control away from a particular side that is too strong.
It also offers character variation and allows some identity.
- “indirect process of mass cooperation among the members of each emotional “faction.””
amazing idea, perfectly stated
I also agree with Fyorl that if you can change your mood alignment, then everyone will always be shifting to get bonuses. I guess you could use a ‘balance’ system to help alleviate that but it might be easier to lock the mood alignment down.
So I was thinking about these ideas and wondered, are the memekins fighting each other in an attempt to change Lila’s mood? (ex angry vs sad)
or is the fighting more based around fighting crazy imaginary creatures from Lila’s psyche?
or maybe both… i know you guys don’t have all the specifics yet so i guess i am just thinking aloud
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