I apologize for missing Friday, loyal readers. Yesterday was a weird day that got away from me. For your March work in progress update I thought I’d focus on the status of the choose your path adventure game, since there was no new information on it last month.
Progress on the game is being made, albeit slowly as this is a busy time of year for me and other projects are higher priority right now. I am continuing to make progress on floor plan drawings for the menagerie. Here is my drawing for the ground floor.
As you can see the first floor of the menagerie has everything you’d expect from a facility to research and combat a corruption that twists living things into dark shadows of themselves. A library, observation labs, an intake area for dangerous animals. Examine the drawing closely, though, and you’ll notice some hidden compartments that may not be as easily accessed by certain characters.
In this drawing of the second floor, you can start to see some of the darker side of the menagerie and the work that gets done there. There are some more secret compartments that not all players may be able to access, depending on their character and the choices they make. The mage may have an easier time getting to the secret magic item storage just off the Purifier armory than a warrior will, for example.
These drawings are still rough and may change as my vision and plans for the game adapt, but you can see the direction things are heading from these pictures.
I have also been putting some thought into the various encounters one might have on the different floors of the menagerie. Some examples of what I’m currently considering:
- A morality choice involving saving research from destruction
- A morality choice involving helping a rebellious menagerie student sneak information out of the menagerie they think should be public knowledge
- Some kind of infected animal ending up in the botanical observation lab that becomes dangerous
- A morality choice to save an animal handler from a corrupted creature that gets loose or leave him to his fate
- A battle involving a creature that researchers thought was dead and dissected going on a killing spree
Any or all of these might have long reaching impacts on the story depending on how the player chooses to handle them.
One thing this process has shown me is that when I begin writing the game I need to be careful not to have too many options at any given point. I don’t want to overwhelm the player trying to decide what to do, and I can’t leave myself with too many branches to write or the game will never get finished. Finding just the right balance between having enough options and freedom of choice to deliver on my vision of this game and keeping the narrative and options streamlined enough to make the game feasible to both write and play is going to be a challenge, but one I have every confidence I can tackle.
Do you have any questions about the game or my plans for it? Ask them in the comments or on the contact page.
