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The Sindrelverse?

6 years ago2,604 words

I've been wondering whether to set several short games in a shared world, with these 'sindrel' creatures as characters. I've set a new short game idea in this world, which I conceived of then started building a couple of days ago, and it's almost done already. I like playing it again and again, too, so that's good! Maybe I'm getting somewhere...

So Christmas is over now, and it feels like things should be going back to normal... There's still this feeling that the world is still on hold a bit, though, and I suppose a lot of people are still busy with family visits and stuff. I'm just trying to focus on making games though, so I'll talk about those even if it's mostly to myself.

But first, the usual. I'm still having radiotherapy! I had session 16 today, so I'm just over half way (there'll be 30 in total). I was extremely anxious about the experience at first because I have to lie down for several minutes with my head locked in place in a 'mask' thing (mine looks exactly like ∞ this ∞, though without the shoulder bit). Because of that, I felt the strong instinctual need to escape, and it was torture having to control that. Now, I've got familiar with it - and the breathing exercises I've been attempting - to the point where I almost look forward to the chance to feel deeply relaxed for a few minutes. Maybe I've said that already, I don't know. The anxiety is still there, but I've got it under control. So that's good.

I do notice that a lot of my hair is falling out though. It's not noticeable yet, but when I run my hand through my hair, every time there are an alarming number of hairs stuck to it afterwards. So soon I might be bald. Great. (I'll just shave it all off if it gets weird and patchy...)

(I started writing this hours ago, and just had a shower... Normally a few dead hairs would come out when I run my fingers through my hair as I wash it, nothing to worry about... Today, I ended up with ∞ this ∞ in my hand. Imagine if you saw that in your own hand after having a shower! I'm just trying to see the humour in it at this point... I also wonder how many people would see that picture and immediately assume it was a clump of pubic bush. I wonder.)



Anyway, games. I've been trying to focus on making those during the Christmas period, as I said. ∞ I wrote recently about three ideas that I had ∞, for simpler, shorter games that I could finish and release relatively quickly to hopefully give me some kind of stability which I can build my more important, longer games from. I've worked on two of them now, but they haven't worked out quite as I'd hoped.

One of them was a game based around associative memory, where you remembered silly visual connections between random objects so then you could recall the ordered list of them accurately at the end. Making separate drawn or animated associations proved infeasible though (there'd be thousands), so I played around with an idea where the associations used game rules instead, and the random objects were miasmon - or something similar - with things like elemental/sentimental types. Ideally, you'd remember the order of the list by remembering the sentimental relationships you'd witnessed (for example, fear beats bliss, courage beats fear...). In practice, though, it, well... It didn't work. It didn't engage memory in the right way, and was frustrating rather than pleasing. So I don't think I'll continue with that, unfortunately. I do wonder whether I could do something simple with the whole sentimental relationships and miasmon, but I'll need to give that some more thought.

I also planned a game where you'd talk with random strangers, with the aim being to befriend them. Each stranger would have a procedurally-generated personality, and your aim would be to socially navigate that personality, which would ideally be different for every person. Could be interesting, I thought. I still do. I've not done much on it yet though just because it'll take a lot of time and effort to do all the writing. I'm hoping to return to it soon.

Over Christmas, I wanted to give myself a break from that kind of effortful and not especially enjoyable work, and my attention was redirected - for whatever reason - to a project I talked about in detail a while ago, in ∞ this (obnoxiously long) post ∞.




Basically, it's a game about the mating game that humans play in the real world, and how differently things are for you if you're female or male. Most media these days (where you can make your own character, at least) treat the genders interchangeably, as just an aesthetic difference, where the women are "just as tough as the guys!!!" and all that... but reality isn't so blind to such things. I thought it was quite interesting to explore the benefits and limitations that come with gender; perhaps it might encourage more sympathy for those in a different position to ourselves.

Reading the rantings of incels went a long way towards this, because they're always on about how women are playing the game of life on 'easy mode', and that those women would hate to be a male and can't see things from their perspective... though this is a two-way thing. It's probably true that women as a group aren't especially sympathetic to the struggles that they themselves don't have to endure - like having nobody at all show romantic interest, for example - but it also seems that the incel guys disregard any struggles the women really do face. Women, too, as a group tend to believe that men have it easier; I once heard some pretty-enough girls in class at university bitterly wishing they were guys because their life would be easier that way. So an experience that showed you both sides of the coin - and had you embody both different styles of life - might be interesting, I thought. Neither gender really has it 'better'; they just reap benefits in different domains.

It's something that's been on my mind for many years now; it's not just inspired by recent stuff. Because of that, I keep returning to it, mentally.

I already have a working prototype of this game, sort of, though there isn't much to it in terms of actual gameplay. I knew the game was ultimately about finding a mate, but most of your time would be need to be spent doing other tasks in service of that eventual goal, which I planned only vaguely. I knew that males would spend a lot of time fighting monsters to earn a living, and to earn female admiration, though I didn't know how the battle system might work. Females weren't going to battle, but instead they'd have to nurture virtual-pet-like 'sprouts' in the 'house plants' that they lived in, which involved feeding them, but also boosting their mood via a minigame, as is typical for the virtual pets I'm used to. I imagined that the female sindrels could sing to the sprouts in their care, since that's a nice thing that people like and which they'd be able to freely do in a lore sense.

So on Christmas Day, rather than having a delicious meal with my darling loved ones or whatever, I came up with the rules and mechanics for a simple-but-not-TOO-simple singing minigame for female sindrels and a combat one for males, which I felt could work. I wanted to add them to what I already have of that game (and I do have quite a bit; perhaps I'll upload the prototype I have sometime soon, not as a release but as some curiosity). I didn't get around to it, though.

Instead, I thought that maybe these minigames might work by themselves. That perhaps I could devote a small, short game to just a (female) sindrel singing, for example. And I have already managed such a thing in just a couple of days! It's something that works, and which I want to keep repeatedly playing, which is a good sign. I'll talk about that in a minute.

I thought about making another standalone game based on the male combat mechanics I came up with... though I can't see that one being nearly as interesting.

But one of the three ideas I talked about in that recent post was for a virtual pet, specifically a 'pocket person' who was more than just an animal to raise. At first that was meant to be an actual human, but I thought perhaps that'd be weird, that maybe it'd work better as an anthro, or furry, so that it had traits of both humans and pet animals. So the empathy for both was there without the social feelings you might have towards another human. But then I started wondering whether I could use these sindrels as the creature in that game, since I've already designed them and their world to a fairly deep degree.

I talked about their world in that other long post, but:

Sindrels are born into their world of Carna fully-grown and with 'procedural memory' (that is, memory - or understanding - of things like how to walk, talk, etc) fully intact. They emerge from a pool of 'nectar' in a large pitcher-plant-like 'house plant', with which they have a symbiotic relationship. They live for just six days before succumbing to a harsh 'winter' that wipes out them all out, so their lifelong goal is to procreate in what little time they have to ensure there's another generation. I designed details of their appearance to be familiarish, but alien enough to get around taboos that we have. For example, the females have a gemstone on their chest, which they need to get 'charged' six times by males in their lifetime in order to produce offspring. Males do this charging using an energy sword that can protrude from gems in their palms; females can produce energy shields using similar gems in the backs of their hands, to repel males who want more than they're willing to give (though it's rare that they actually use this). This 'charging' is essentially sex, but since it's not actually sex and doesn't physically resemble it, I think I could get away with showing it plainly in a way that, say, The Sims can't show human baby-making. Plus males' 'energy swords' and females' chest gems could be freely shown and commented about without having to hide them or use euphemisms because of our culture's hangups surrounding penises and breasts and such. And since they don't have genitals - they don't need them - they can get away with being naked in a way that's hopefully not shocking. Or at least that's what I had in mind when I designed them. I don't know how people who aren't me would perceive any of this. Maybe they'd consider it inappropriate anyway. Or maybe they feel weird about how you can see that guy's buttocks in the screenshot there. Screaming and calling the police about the indecency of it and such. Fanning themselves as they suppress bashful fainting. Or maybe they just wouldn't find sindrels appealing to look at, design-wise, since I'm a mediocre artist? I don't know.

Anyway, I really like what I've come up with for these sindrels, because it's sort of a culmination of thoughts and ideas I've been playing around with for years, and I like the depth and simplicity of their mating system, their short lifespans, and the life challenges that emerge as a result of those. I feel their world is unique enough to be something a little bit different. I don't think that a single game based around them would hold people for many dozens or hundreds of hours or be the next Big Thing or anything like that. But I would hope that people might see it as something interestingly unusual, but familiar, or something.

Since I've been thinking of these sindrels when I've been planning ideas for games - the virtual pet thing, the singing thing, etc - I've been wondering whether to make several small games set in a shared world, with shared lore and common themes. A "Sindrelverse", to use a name I already loathe (I think "Spider-verse" sounds exceptionally clunky too, as an aside). It wouldn't be the same as telling one single story across many episodes, but perhaps it'd be a way to tie these simpler games together in a way that's more interesting than coming up with new worlds for each one.

I don't know; it's just an idea! Very sketchy, as you can clearly see. I feel like I've done a poor job here of explaining it in a way that makes sense (this post feels disjointed to me, but I need to sleep so I'll just leave it), but I wanted to mention it in case something does come of it, then I can say "here's where it all started!", while pointing at this post, printed out on old paper, screaming at a wall that isn't even interested.



I was going to talk more about the sindrel singing game I've already mostly made, but since I've got a working prototype, I wonder whether it'd be better to refine that a bit and then upload it, to see what people think directly. Maybe. I could probably do that tomorrow. We'll see.

The gist of it is that it's a melody mimicking thing. You're a sindrel that can sing six notes, by tapping six different buttons. You hear a brief melody above a beat using these six notes, then you have to repeat it yourself. Unlike typical rhythm games where you play along with the music, and the notes have a visual representation as well as an aural one, this is entirely based on copying sounds that you've just heard.

I wonder whether that'd actually work... I for one find it very appealing - like I said, I want to keep playing it - but I'm into music enough to compose it, so maybe my sense of sound is different to someone who'd willingly call themselves 'tone deaf'. Perfect pitch - the ability to identify and name notes in isolation by sound alone - is rare, and I don't think I have that. But most musicians use something called relative pitch, where they can't identify the notes in isolation, but they can identify them with reference to other notes in the current scale. They can recognise intervals, essentially. Since this game would only use six notes, rather than the entire range of a typical instrument, I'd hope that would simplify it enough to feel doable rather than overwhelming.

But I might upload it to see whether anyone who plays the demo can get enjoyment rather than frustration out of it. I think I'll leave this here for now, and maybe I'll upload that then in the near future!

I might delay it a bit because I want to write a end-of-year post reviewing what I've made, done, and learned in 2018, then a New Year's one with what I hope to get out of 2019... but we'll see!