by tlaero » Fri, 10Jul16 11:42
Phreaky and I will talk about specific plot/storyline things in private messages. But I wanted to discuss more general adventure gameplay ideas here so that others can participate. Warning up front, I will have minor spoilers in this, so if you want to have no hints whatsoever, I suggest skipping this post.
Phreaky, there’s a lot that I like about the Jessica game. And I’ve spent enough time putting together one of these games to have a strong appreciation for how much work they are. Although there’s room for improvement, you should be proud of your accomplishments.
I’m going to lay out what I call “Tlaero’s rules for adventure games.” Follow these rules, and your games will be even better than they already are.
Rule 1: Always give feedback to the player
I’d say the most important thing you can do is let your player know when the choices he’s making are good or bad. The most effective and least satisfying way to do this is to display the variables at the bottom of the screen. That way, whenever the player makes a good choice, he can see the “good” variable increase. Clearly, this gives feedback to the player, but it’s not very satisfying. It breaks immersion and takes the player out of the game. I don’t suggest it. Largely due to his refusal to listen to advice, Chaotic inadvertently has a similarly effective but unsatisfying way to give feedback. He uses a button to set variables, so you always know when your choices have an effect in his games. If you don’t click a button, you’ve had no effect. Similarly unsatisfying for the same reasons.
For more satisfying feedback, you want to build it into the characterization of the game. You’ve got two methods available to you: Facial expressions and what the date says. It’s very important that if the player has two choices, and the choices have different impacts on the game, that they have different feedback. For instance (small spoiler alert), it’s wrong that Jessica says the same thing and has the same body language if you say you like Rock music and if you say you like Jazz. Instead, she should say something like, “Oh, yeah, I love ____” on the good one. Whether on the other choice she says, “I like ___ better” or she doesn’t give any feedback is up to you. The former makes the game easier, the latter harder. But the game is unreasonably hard if making the right choice doesn’t give any feedback.
I suggest you go through your game, take every place there’s a varPlus1 or a varMinus1 and make sure that each leads to a page that reveals in some way that the player had an effect. Text is the easiest way to do this, but facial expressions are great. A smile when you make her happy, a sultry look when you make her feel sexy, etc. The important thing is that you distinguish the right choices from the wrong ones. Its fine if the player needs to play through multiple times to figure it out which choice to take, so long as he can tell when he finally makes the right choice. In the Rock vs Jazz thing, there’s really no way to ever know that the conversation had any bearing on the outcome of the game.
I tried to do this in Amy Redux, but probably wasn’t consistent. Do as I say, not as I do. (-:
Rule 1a: Always give the right feedback
Unless you’re specifically setting out to make the character crazy and hard to understand (not necessarily a bad idea) then make sure the feedback makes sense. Another spoiler. When you kiss Jessica in the bedroom and say “I want more” the feedback you give (the shocked expression on her face and questioning statement) suggests heavily that the player just did something wrong. It makes no sense that this immediately leads to her wanting to go to the beach. If the feedback had been something sultry “ Keep making me feel sexy and you might get it” then people would understand at least that they did something good and might figure out that’s why she went to the beach. As it stands, most people will see the bad expression and never do it again.
Rule 2: Give hints, especially on failure
When you ask her to do something and she refuses, most of the time you should give a subtle to overt hint why she’s saying no. “I don’t know you well enough, for that.” “I’d have to be drunk to consider that!” “My thighs are too big to wear that in front of you.” “I don’t have a bathing suit.” “A first date would need to really knock my socks off for me to consider that.” “You haven’t been nice enough to me.” You don’t need to do this for EVERY time she turns you down, but the more you do, the more your game becomes a fun attempt to interpret her signals and less a “try every combination until I get it.” Tune the difficulty with how subtle the clues are, but give clues. This will also go a long way toward solving the Dildo problem that TheBrain brought up. If the player is going to get someplace and fail because he didn’t pick something up earlier, then she should let him know that he’s missing something, not just skip the scene. I thought I did a pretty good job of this in Amy Redux. After draining you, she asks if you’ve got something for her. If you don’t, she’s disappointed. If you do, the scene continues. If you don’t, you can think, “What could I use to satisfy her in this situation? Oh, maybe that dildo I saw at the store.” This is a lot better than, “The scene never happened and I didn’t even know it could have happened if I had happened to have a dildo.”
Rule 3: Vary the difficulty of the paths
This leads to serious replayability. Have a reasonably straightforward path that leads to a simple sex scene, but that allows the player to learn about the woman and the game world and might help him dig deeper on the next playthrough. Then make the harder paths lead to better sex scenes. This way, you don’t have frustrated players saying, “I can’t do ANYTHING” but you reward the better players who figure out the harder paths.
Those are the big three. There’s a fourth, but it’s kind of a judgment call, rather than a hard and fast rule. I think the player should be given second chances if his only mistake is to go somewhere early. In other words, if you go to the mall and she’s not ready to go lingerie shopping, let the player leave, do the appropriate things, and come back. An example of this happened in Amy Redux on the beach walk. When you ask her to wear less, she says, “I don’t have a bathing suit.” But I then let you go buy one and come back on the walk. Like I said, judgment call, because some people think you should start over when you make a mistake. That does increase the time spent playing the game, but the added time isn’t really all that enjoyable. Better a shorter game that is fun throughout than a longer game that is half fun and half tedium.
Tlaero