The handy part about coming up with all those environment and event ideas is that I now I have a pretty clear idea of how to block out each phase.
What I mean by this is the overall order of encounters, roadblocks..etc
I like the idea of keeping these flexible and modular, as this allows for randomisation of events per playthrough; which can be a good thing.
How I will achieve this will vary from event to event, which will be discussed in their own posts
So what’s the general order of progression for phase one?
- Start
- Narrative only
- First Encounter (Nemesis)
- Narrative only
- Second Encounter
- Sidequest + narrative.
- Third encounter
- Alchemist
- Fourth Encounter + sidequest reveal.
- Narrative only
- Fifth encounter (Bridge Troll)
- Sixth encounter (Nemesis)
- Transition to next phase.
This is a good starting point for testing out a full phase. I’ll need to design up the required tiles, but implementing them will be easy enough for this section. I’ll write about them, as I do them.
My current questions about this are:
- Time-wise, is there enough ‘playtime’ to form a run-through?
- This is less of a question about ‘physical’ time and more about ‘perceived’ time. I’d rather have a shorter story that felt ‘natural’ and well told, as opposed to stretching out a story to be thin and inconsequential.
- Quality-wise, does this run-through feel satisfying?
- This ties into the first question.
- Quality-wise, does the play in each action sequence feel good?
- This is a scoped version of the first two assessments. What to the moment to moment sequences feel like?
- Quality-wise, does the narrative fill the travel time between tiles well?
- This becomes more relevant when with think about the written narrative that will support the game. The idea is that the player shouldn’t have a moment where they are a) wondering what they are doing or b) bored with what they are seeing. In the context of ebs and flows, this questions how the ebs can still be entertaining.