LIFELIKE: Corruption Guidelines

(I've decided to copy over some of my posts from the Lifelike dev blog, 'cause who's got time to read two blogs? No one, that's who.)

So, as we've mentioned quite a bit, our game focuses around a transition from a realistic setting to a surreal fantasy setting. That's pretty much the extent of the detail we've shared about it, and that's not because we were being secretive... it's because we didn't know.

With nothing more than an ambiguous idea about normal things being slowly replaced by very not normal things, it became clear that we needed more clarity in order to move forward with art and design.

As such, I decided to write up a guidelines document, detailing what we want to do with our weird, eclectic inspirations.

an early corruption comparison sketch

So, here's the doc (after the break):

LIFELIKE: Our Initial Design Document

(I've decided to copy over some of my posts from the Lifelike dev blog, 'cause who's got time to read two blogs? No one, that's who.)

We've finally finished putting together our High-Level Design Document! It's pretty snazzy. Check it out after the break.

LIFELIKE: Narrative Tools

(I've decided to copy over some of my posts from the Lifelike dev blog, 'cause who's got time to read two blogs? No one, that's who.)

One of the loftiest goals that we have for this game is to create a story that does more than just rest alongside the gameplay. As much as we all love roguelikes and tactical RPGs, their rigidity and the level of abstraction inherent in their mechanics usually forces the narrative into a secondary role.

So, we want to find a way to tie the narrative and the mechanics of our game together in a more meaningful way than we've seen done before in this type of game. 

Being completely overwhelmed by this, I decided to start small. I wrote out all the tools I could think of that our game could have to deliver narrative to the player.

Click "read more" to see the document!

LIFELIKE: A Corporate Roguelike

Teaser!

Work on my final capstone project has begun! Hurray! It's such a big deal, in fact, that it has its own blog. Development progress will be posted to corporateroguelike.blogspot.com. Check it out!

Capstone Time!

I'm entering my final year at Northeastern very soon. What this means is that, for the majority of the next year, I'll be focusing on completing (hopefully) super cool capstone game projects!

So, Dear Data-Log will probably have to take a back seat while I focus on those projects. However, there's a good chance that at least one of the capstone projects will have its own blog dedicated to production. If/when that happens, I'll make a post about it here! Or maybe just copy all of my posts from that to here. We'll see.

Hiding Depth

Is it worth hiding the depth of your game's systems from new players?

Many games--specifically, MMOs--have an almost completely consistent track record of making their mechanics start off incredibly simple. Many of them have interesting and complex mechanics, but, at the beginning of the game, they are consistently simple. Most MMOs start you off with one or two very basic combat abilities, and it takes quite a long time to unlock the complexity of your character.
There are, of course, valid reasons for doing this. It allows for players to be slowly immersed in complicated mechanics. It can make the game far less overwhelming for new players, potentially preventing them from being turned off by the complexity. It also allows for a clear feeling of progression, the mechanics of the game getting more complicated as you and your characters progresses. From a design standpoint, new abilities/mechanics are often some of the most anticipated and desirable rewards, so spreading them out over a long time could help insure that the player consistently has something to look forward to for a long period of time. But is it worth it?

Internship Hiatus

So, good news and bad news!

Good news: I landed myself a shiny new Game Design Internship at Creat Studios!

Bad news: I'll be working there full-time under an NDA, so I won't be able to talk about it!

In all likelihood, there will be a dearth of posts to this blog for a while as my focus shifts to being impressive at Creat. By mid-summer, I'll hopefully be able to start posting frequently again.

So, in case anyone is reading this, no I have neither died nor given up on posting here. I will be back, I promise!