Rethink

After spending some time with the source material today, decided to have a rethink.

I may pivot on the direction of this project.

When I started, I wanted to create a dating sim.  (I still want to create a dating sim, but that's for later.)

What this game morphed into was a choose-your-own-adventure style game with a battle system, achievements, and and a bunch of other stuff.  Up until today, I was contemplating adding a world map system, maybe some walking around, some mini-games, etc. 

In essence, I was going to create an A-level game. 

But reviewing everything, it doesn't look like an A-level game.  And for the longest time, I couldn't figure out why.

The answer is simple.  It's not fun to read the text. 

And any text-based adventure, where the activity of reading, the font, the size, everything....if that's not good enough, I'm failing at what I'm doing, which is trying to provide an interactive, immersive story.  What I have is a collection of game elements that could work together, but don't speak to that immersive quality I'm searching for, that addictive feeling that would make a player, no, a reader, come back for more, while on the train, while at home, etc.


What I have decided, after reviewing the game material, the art and sound assets, is that this is nice for me, it's very mainstream, but it neglects that fact that this is slowly becoming a game I don't like, and this wasn't the game I set out to make.  This isn't the kind of game my core audience would like.  Namely, me.  And people like me.

I wanted to create a story-based game.  Ie.  the story 'is' the game.  Interactive fiction, but with just a few small bells and whistles to make it more appealing to rpg fans.  Basically, I want to turn an rpg on its head, and put the story back in the middle again, with the player, where it should be.  Battles are nice, puzzles are fine, but a game should be a game, and nothing else.  Not a 'concept' not a 'piece of art,' but something made for the player's benefit.  (And, maybe, if we're lucky, also for the creator's benefit as well.)

I'm going to continue this rethink throughout this week, and report back.