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I'm making a video game! - and I could use your input/comments

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oddtail:
Here's some very brief background.

I'm working on a video game (no, I have neither a background nor tangible experience there). It's a long-term project. I wrote the first note on it, let's see... 4 years ago? Yikes.

The game is in the vague area between a simple cRPG and a resource management game. It takes design cues from "choose your own adventure" books, too. The central element is a semi-abstract representation of the current "Mood", which represents how the situation is developing so far (e.g. whether your actions have been persistent, risky, subtle, confrontational etc.). Based on the "Mood", the game semi-randomly comes up with the next danger/opportunity/story beat. So, to simplify a fair bit, it's "choose your own adventure" style gameplay, but semi-random instead of deterministic.

The player's main task is making the right decisions to stay alive and react to how things unfold. There's more to it, but that's the gist of it.

(yes, I know. This is an order of magnitude too ambitious for a first-time project. Don't worry, 90% of what I do is simplifying everything I can)

Anyhow. My main problem right now is with the narrative, even though I described the mechanics for context (I believe you can't divorce mechanics from story/writing, otherwise it's just very poor design).

The world is inhabited by sapient animals. Carnivores still eat other animals, but it has to do with social role and class (think feudalism, but the peasants are, say, rabbits and offer the wolves one of their own to eat, rather than give up their harvest). Basically, "species" is a stand-in for "economic/social class" or "caste", but with culturally-sanctioned murder.

You play as a female wolf who loses her family land to a more powerful neighbour. Your husband is murdered, your holdings are lost and you somehow escape.

Which is bad timing, because then you discover you're pregnant (with a healthy litter of five, as it turns out later).

The main focus of the game is a struggle to survive. Early on, you escape/dissuade/avoid pursuit, later you take care of your young. Based on how well you cope and how you secure your children's future (whether by reclaiming what's yours or starting anew), the game has multiple endings.

So, what's the problem?

I believe in games that tell the story at least partly via mechanics. Especially in a non-linear game where only the loose story beats are predetermined. I also think all art is necessarily political. It *will* have unstated assumptions, even if they're just genre-inherent. And since my game is about a fall from power - it's by definition about power structures and relationships.

And I do plan on addressing it in gameplay.

Take the "you eat people" thing. Avoiding starvation is crucial in-game; the player may (and early on, likely WILL) default to hunting or to "tribute" from loyal subjects. But as you make herbivore friends (a valid tactic in-game), the game will give you few options to ignore the reality of what your easiest food source has been. Even if you only associate with carnivores/omnivores, there will be hints to the consequences of your actions if the player pays attention.

I'm also subverting certain RPG tropes - for example, character advancement is via friends/allies (and who your children grow up to be), not personal strength and wealth. Without going into too much detail - traditional RPG progression has some disturbingly Randian implications.

Anyway. The game's implicit goal is to retake what is "rightfully yours" as per the game world's cruel, feudal system of power. With the player likely eager to try. That makes me uncomfortable, and I'm looking for ways to subvert this or point it out as a negative.

But how? I could make the game's antagonist actually rather egalitarian, in contrast with the heroine. I could double down on the "feudalism is evil" theme that carnivorous behaviour already explores. And I can always use NPCs and the heroine's children as mouthpieces, one way or another (and I likely will).

But the problem remains. It's still your goal to prop up an unjust system. And in a game, the player's "job" is to win. If the game simply punishes the player for doing what the game's mechanics support? It's lazy writing, bad design and it's preachy.

I do plan to include other win states, but I worry they'll feel like hollow lip service ("yes, you can go out of your way to do the right thing, but c'mon, COOL CASTLE. Don't you want the cool castle? So people get eaten, who cares?").

I'm looking for story beats, subversive choices OR consequences to strike a certain balance. I don't want a big neon sign pointing to "this is the morally correct thing to do, do this" - I want to account for moral ambiguity, difficult choices or even moral indifference if the player so chooses. I also don't want the game to simply say, after the fact, "how DARE you do exactly what the game told you to do!". It needs to feel natural, like the player decided a certain way and it led, among other things, to regrettable consequences.

So in other words, I want the player to mostly do as they please, but have the chance to realise "do as you please" is a meaningful decision, with meaningful consequences, too. And I want the player to understand - ideally, through what happens as they play the game - that the choice *is* actually there, without a tacked-on morality system or arbitrary (gameplay or narrative) punishment. I don't want to beat them over the head with a preachy "you did a bad-bad", but I don't want another narrative of "your character is special, and special people deserve more. Also, feudalism is not that bad, because you're SO NICE, see?".

Thoughts?

(and again - this is the tip of an iceberg. I'd *love* to talk about the game's mechanics, story, or design, but only if anyone expresses interest. So any questions or comments, even completely unrelated to the issue I described, are more than welcome)

Thrillho:
I'm afraid I lack the spoons to read all of this and see if I can help. So I thought I would bump it at the very least.

LTK:
The thing that I always hear people say about making your first video game is that before anything else, you should have something that is fun to play as your foundation. Making a complex RPG as your first game is not unheard of, but so few people can do this that you're likely setting yourself up for failure and frustration, because getting your game to the point of something even remotely playable takes a colossal amount of work, even assuming you know what you're doing.

So start small. Want a strong choice-and-consequence narrative? Start with a Twine game. Want an impactful predator-prey society? Start with a little simulation of cattle herds versus single predators or pack hunters. Want a game about feudal territory disputes? Start by thinking of something strategy-esque to do with that. Focus on one thing, and relegate the rest of your ideas to set dressing for the time being.

Once you have something that meets the bare minimum standard of playability, you can refine it and build on it, or put it out there and get feedback. It could be as basic as chasing colored boxes around a flat plane, or a 500-word Twine game, as long as you have something to do in it. Having something that's kinda fun to play for a little bit is enough. This foundation is enormously helpful for keeping your motivation up and makes your progress tangible. Plus, if the idea isn't working out, maybe because it's too large in scope or because you can't think of anywhere to go with it, you can start over on something new without having wasted too much time on a dead end.

Disclaimer: I'm not a game developer, not even an aspiring one, but I read about and talk to enough of them that I have a good idea of the challenges and pitfalls that new developers face, and there's one piece of advice I see over and over again: Start small.

And personally, I would suggest looking for inspiration in other recent games with strong narrative elements but nontraditional gameplay. Cultist Simulator and Pyre are both examples of games built on a simple foundational mechanic that fans out to create a vast range of narrative possibilities.

Cornelius:
My two cents: please don't reduce feudalism to might makes right. I know it's a common fallacy, but it makes the middle ages increasingly become shorthand for brutality. There were abuses, like in any system you care to name, but on the whole, while different, it worked, and had its own protections for the peasants rights.

Other than that, it sounds like an interesting concept.

oddtail:
@LTK: it may not seem like it, but I *am* trying to simplify and start small. The concept I'm working on CAN, technically, be reduced to "a screen with text appears, it has three buttons to choose what you do, and depending what you click, another screen appears. Rinse and repeat until you win the game or die". This is how the game structure will look for a while. I am deliberately designing the entire game so that every system, every part of it can start simple like that and be made more complex as needed/possible, one step at a time. Many, admittedly much more ambitious, game concepts I have in mind may be introduced graduallly as I work on the game, be reduced in scope or ambition, or be thrown out if they turn out to be too much work.

Heck, everything in the game is designed to be as modular and optional as possible. In-game events and story developments are ultimately to be linked, but they are still designed to have definite endings to each tiny plotline, so that I can start with very few of those (even one) and experiment by fitting new ones in. So I don't have to go all-out on either game mechanics *or* story. In fact, the first playable version that I will show anyone will be reduced to a few decisions about how the heroine escapes immediate pursuit, and will be completable in like a minute or two.

Besides, I'm designing the game on the basis of what I actually do know. I've made (hobbyist style and not published, but still) board games that I actually played with friends. I've written tabletop RPGs from start to finish (of arguable quality and extremely small in scope, yes, but I still created them to completion). I couldn't make an action-based or manual skill-based video game that'd be any kind of fun - but I know a little bit about what works in games where you essentially roll the dice to have a chance to succeed at something. On a mathematical level, tabletop RPGs can be very reductively thought of as "pick the goals, then have a random chance of succeeding to varying degrees in the goals you picked. To win, either pick safe goals, or work extra to make your rolls easier to succeed". And my game concept mimics this approach - including making what "actually happens" the interesting part, rather than making the numbers overly exciting or complex. Or in other words, the game technically *could* be written as an Excel spreadsheet, in many ways. To an extent, it has/will.

So - yes, every part of the game I work, or will work, on starts with something that can technically be played, but is as bare-bones as possible. Often starting with "have a screen and a button or two, and those buttons do one simple thing when you click them, like display a box of text". Can't get simpler than that! ;)

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@Cornelius:

That's actually an interesting point, and exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for. Of course, allowing for certain "buts":

- I take a pretty dim view of feudalism as a whole, even though what you say is true. Peasants had some protections, but the system was still skewed towards those with military might. Peasants were still, especially in the parts of Europe I'm taking inspiration from, mostly bound to the land they worked. They still had fewer legal rights than nobility. They still largely didn't own much property. They were still forced into work whether they agreed to or not. And so on. Fundamentally, feudalism was still a system based on the idea that some people have the *right* to rule (I don't think it's coincidence that the European feudalism coincided with a powerful Roman Catholic church, nor that European monarchies were so in love with the concept of the divine mandate to rule).
- Also, I see parallels between feudal serf's duties and modern capitalism. I am not going for a lazy parallel of "feudalism is capitalism", because I do want to take inspiration from history rather than have an allegory that's both blunt and bland. But the notion is not NOT there. Every story about the future, the past or (especially) a fantasy land is in some way a commentary about what the author knows. Just like Macbeth was a way to prop up Elizabethean monarchy, a game made by someone as strongly mistrustful of modern structures of economic power as I happen to be will show feudal structures even more rigid than modern neoliberal systems in a negative light. I can't exactly make a story I write devoid of my own view on things, nor do I aim to be objective at all cost.
- Not to mention the fact that feudalism is still a starting point for an allegory. The game is not necessarily about realistic feudalism in that it's explicitly about carnivores feeling it's their right to eat other animals. This is automatically different from a historically accurate depiction, pretty self-evidently so ;) Feudalism is just the most useful tool for the allegory and a way carnivores justify staying in power. I imagine a story like that could very well be read as, dunno, pro-vegan rather than anti-feudal (that's not my intention, but again - unspoken messages and so on).

I *am* open to suggestions as to how make the picture more nuanced. I do plan on the game not being explicitly judgmental (as I mentioned), and carnivores will not be presented as malicious, just used to the way things are (and to an extent, relying on eating meat as logistically the most viable option, and to an extent a biological near-necessity that is difficult to avoid. If I ever make a sequel, I plan to introduce cats in it which, unlike canines, are obligate carnivores in real life, and the issue will be explored via fictional "cat culture"). But I don't want to accidentally have a message of "what the carnivores do is OK, because they can't help it", so I'm careful to present a picture where bad things happen because the system is unjust because of the way it's set up, but it's still a harmful system.

I'm open to suggestions as to how make it more interesting and not a reductive "the strong rule the weak". One way I could do it is basing it less explicitly on feudalism. Another is highlighting omnivores and how they navigate the system (currently, omnivores fulfill the social role of soldiers or mercenaries more often than not, at least in the context of the narrative). Yet another is the fact that larger herbivores are perfectly capable of defending themselves, are more independent, less scared of predators and often friendly towards them. So, again, not a one-to-one parallel to feudalism.

But any suggestions as to how to make the world more interesting without going too simplistic are VERY welcome. Bearing in mind that all this needs to be expressed, ultimately, via player choice and player-visible consequences. The game has too small a scope to present every facet of its setting from every possible angle. Everything is by necessity confined to a narrative about personal loss of the heroine, and filtered through the lens of her having to survive and take care of her children (heck, this is the reason why the game will not unequivocally preach "carnivores are bad". The game includes very real and immediate threat of starvation, hunting will often be the most immediately obvious and accessible option, and the player will make of that what they will).

At any rate, your comment *does* help on its own, I'm already thinking about it and its implications, and furiously scribbling notes about certain plot moments that I might introduce or change or reconsider. Thanks!

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