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Belief Video Demo!
5 years ago - Edited 5 years ago1,819 words
Here's a video of Belief, giving a very good idea of the graphical style and gameplay mechanics!

It's quite a long video - 20 minutes - and I'm aware that maybe a minute-or-two-long one would have been more digestible. You don't have to watch it all to get an idea of how this game will work, but if your curiosity is piqued by the first bits, then there's more there for you if you want it. I'd really recommend watching it with the sound on!

Here's the video:



The 'story' is just a silly temporary thing, so the dialogue and environment here are just for this video. The actual story will be at least somewhat more serious, dealing with themes I've written about in previous posts.

Also, as characters point out in the video itself, it's still early days and all the skills have the same animations and particle effects. When I have the time to change these, giving each skill its own animation and effect, everything will look much more interesting. But for now, you can see how the 'battles' function in a broad-strokes way.

They're 'non-violent', but not anti-violent, as I've tried to explain in previous posts. They're just an alternative, and one which I think presents a lot of potential for silliness and emotional intrigue which is lacking from typical combat. Already I find just watching the shifting allegiances in these encounters quite enthralling! Though of course mileage will vary.



Obviously the mechanics will be explained in the game itself; the player won't just be thrown in the deep end! But here's a brief summary of what's going on:

The point is to fill up the opponents' belief bar with your side's colour until they convert to your side. You win when everyone converts to your side, or lose when everyone on your side converts to the other one. You can lose characters - including the protagonists - mid-'battle', but can win them back.

Characters don't have stats in the traditional sense, like Attack or Defence or even Speed or whatever. Instead, there are three variables that affect essentially everything:

Excitement is represented by the size, speed, and colour of the beating hearts, and it varies from 0 to 100%. It's altered by rousing or calming skills. Excitement affects turn order; characters with more excitement effectively have a higher speed stat. It also affects the power of skills, so characters with higher excitement both inflict more 'influence' (what 'damage' is called here) and receive more as well; it's double-edged. Finally, it affects which skills are available to you. Each character can equip up to four skills from their personal arsenal, and each one has a range of excitement for which it's available (but no cost or cooldown otherwise). Encounters are largely about manipulating excitement.

Runes are the letters like AFG or rtj. These represent personality in a story sense, but they're also mechanically used for skill effectiveness. Each skill has an associated rune, and the effectiveness of that skill is increased if the skill's rune is similar to the user's and the target's, and reduced if the rune is quite different. Runes come in pairs, and represent spectra, so for example the first rune (Real/Abstract) has the potential values A, a, x, r, and R. A character with an A rune using a skill with an A rune on a target with an A rune would be very effective since all the runes match, but if that same character used an R skill on the same A target, it'd be very weak because the R is very unlike both the user's A and the target's A. Obvious, right?!? Runes can be shifted, so when you see text like "Abstract+", that's moving the first rune further towards that A. "Real+" (not "Abstract-") would shift it in the other direction. "Abstract++" would shift it two steps, so an r would become an a, or an x would become an A.

I'm aware this isn't as obvious to a naive observer as "a bigger attack stat makes you deal more damage". But I think it's more interesting, especially since the runes also convey information about the character's personality, so it blends together gameplay and story in a way I find very appealing.

The third variable is moods. These come in pairs too, and characters can have one from each pair at once, so three in total; they can be Aroused and Crying at the same time because they're not opposed, but not Aroused and Panicking at the same time because those are opposed, for example. Skills have a corresponding sentiment as well as a rune. Like with runes, similarity produces greater effectiveness. A Crying character using a Sorrow skill on a Crying character will be very effective, while a Laughing character using a Sorrow skill on a Laughing character will be very ineffective. In a nutshell, moods boost both the effectiveness of skills of that sentiment, and vulnerability to that same sentiment; again, it's double-edged. However, moods also grant resistance to the opposite sentiment, so a Crying person won't be affected as much by Joy skills. So it's multi-faceted! Characters don't have innate sentiments, so mood isn't taken into account at all if neither the user nor the target have any.

This is a system that I think produces a whole lot of potential for nonlinear interactions. Everything's based on changeable states rather than largely fixed innate characteristics, and I just think it's incredibly interesting! Similarity between battles was something that always bothered me about JRPGs (often I'd just Attack over and over, especially when doing anything else cost MP and wasn't worth it on worthless random encounters), and this addresses that by making each one quite different.

It'd be introduced gradually to the player in the actual game, but there are a couple of things to alleviate the learning curve. One is that you'd be able to press a key at any time to make this image appear (which is shown hilariously briefly in the video):



That doesn't actually explain the mechanics exactly, but I can imagine "how am I supposed to remember all these things?" being an objection (or rather it already has been), so with this, you don't. If you aren't sure which runes are paired, the answer is just a button press away. And, like with the convoluted Pokemon type relationships (why does Bug beat Dark or Fire beat Fairy? Or wait, is it Fairy beats Fire?), experience would bring familiarity, so eventually you wouldn't need to check anymore.

Another, more important thing is that when you're choosing an skill to use, you see something like this:



The circles glow in colours that represent how effective the skill you're readying will be. The 'hotter' the colour, the more effective, so blue means quite ineffective, purple is a bit more effective, then red, and finally gold means very effective indeed (the multipliers range from 20% when everything's off to 400% in the most ideal situation). Here, Salvia is readying an Abstract skill, so the A-runed opponents glow gold (rune similarity) while the Real ones are more red (but it's not ineffective since the skill matches her own rune at least). The black letterbox bars appear to make these glows as clear as possible.

So I see it like this: You can intelligently use runes, moods, etc to set up situations to your advantage, but you don't really have to work them all out mentally every time you take a turn. Mostly it'd be a case of choosing the warmest-glowing target, not really thinking very much about it, letting things just flow naturally. You'd probably be able to get by in most situations just by doing that, though a deeper understanding of the mechanics would give you an edge, which is how it is in most games.

It's less complicated than some systems like Dungeons & Dragons, which have an audience despite their complexity.

That's the gist of how it works. I think it has a lot of potential, but then again I thought that about Sindrel Song, so maybe I'm making the same mistakes again and appealing to thoughtfulness more that the average player is willing to give?



Also, I quite like how the graphics and music turned out! Using a tile-based approach seems like a good decision I wish I'd made sooner; I might talk in more detail about the path that led to that in another post rather than rambling about it here (I already touched on it a bit in the previous post). The overall vibe I'm going for is one of novelty, but with nostalgic reference to the old games that I made in the past. It's very much a 3D version of what I used to make and what I'm familiar with, so hopefully it'll appeal to the more open-minded of my old fans, if not the ones who want a perfect replication of an experience from their younger years.

I was unsure about the proportions of the characters at first, especially the relatively realistic faces on the super-deformed bodies, but now that I've made a few different NPCs, I think it works okay? Again it's a reference to how characters in my old games - and old JRPGs in general - were proportioned, to some degree. The huge faces also make the important expressions highly visible.

With the 'battle' music, I was going for something overly dramatic in a slightly silly way, which made these social encounters feel like ridiculous over-the-top bouts of critical importance. At first I was wondering whether to do something more relaxed, even jazzy, but now that I've got this, it just feels perfect for the mood I was hoping to convey.

Both the music tracks were done in one morning - as Salvia points out in the video and I did in my previous post - and I was seeing them as temporary placeholders for that reason, just to give the video a bit more life. They've really grown on me now though, so I might end up keeping them in the final game.



I'll be very interested to hear your impressions of this! Personally it feels way more alive to me now than it did just a week or two ago, and I really feel I'm onto something here. But I'm also bracing myself for criticisms about how it's too complicated or flawed in this way or that which is always discouraging, but that's how some people seem to be...

One thing I want to point out again is how the Earthbound/MOTHER games are a big inspiration. They've attracted a not-enormous but very loyal following due to their quirkiness, and it's a similar kind of quirkiness I'm aiming for with this. I'm not exactly aiming to target the Call of Duty crowd or whatever.

17 COMMENTS

Astreon152~5Y
I'll watch the whole video as soon i can, but just a quick question based on what you wrote: why is the middle spot "x" ? I feel it confusing to introduce a new letter.

Couldn't it be "o", or something that immediately appears as neutral, in itself and not through the positioning (in the middle of the sequence) ?

Might be just me having issues with this "x" thing, but since it's a value in itself, just as A and R, i figured it should be something that made more sense with regards to those ?

Maybe "a/r", or a fusion of the two letters (if that'd be readable) ?
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Tobias 1115~5Y
It's interesting that you suggest o as a neutral value, but see x as not neutral, whereas for me it's the opposite.

But it's also inspired by something called the 'OCEAN' system for representing Big Five traits, which used a similar caps-small-x-small-caps format.
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Ampersand68~5Y
I really like the overworld music, as well as the character designs! 3D was definitely a good choice- things look quite lively (movement in particular looks nice and smooth) and the character expressions are pretty amusing. The encounter (I guess that's what you'd call it?) system seems interesting, and though the demo didn't really show that much tactical gameplay I think that system shows a lot of promise. I also like that people occasionally interject with relevant dialogue when using skills.

I'm not quite sure about the encounter music- seems a bit too... high stakes for a non-combat encounter? It's kind of funny the first time, but I don't think it really fits as a generic encounter theme (I'd actually prefer a separate theme for each enemy class, but don't know how much of a hassle that'd be). The blush effect seems a tad too excessive as well, though that's just my personal taste. I think tuning it down a few shades wouldn't get in the way of the user being able to tell a status effect is active. The backgrounds are lacking in some detail, and a transition between "battle" and overworld states would probably help, though I'm sure you're aware of these and will add more as you continue to develop the game.

Overall, I think it's a solid proof-of-concept. I certainly think it's worth pursuing further, and that there will be an audience for this kind of thing. I do hope that the "combat" system will be fleshed out and isn't just "fire and forget"- perhaps there could even be a difficulty setting for toggling the glowing rings on/off? As it stands, the encounters felt a bit repetitive, though I'm sure that unique animations and particle effects will go a long way to alleviating this. So to sum up, I can only see this project getting better and better, so keep up the good work!
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Tobias 1115~5Y
I'm glad you see potential in it! Though it's still very early in development and everything in the video was quite quickly cobbled together; nothing's been given polish, and that would come in time. This is very much a first look rather than a finished thing.

Personally I like this music a lot because it's over-the-top, and it's not grown tired for me despite days with it, but everything's subjective. The MOTHER games had a bunch of different battle tracks, so I've thought about doing the same, but since I'm just one person I don't know how feasible it'll be, and keeping things simple might be best. I didn't even realise there wasn't a transition after 'battles'; that's an oversight I'll definitely address!

I think there's always going to be some repetitiveness in any turn-based 'combat' system. Or any game, really? I can't imagine sitting watching someone grinding MARDEK encounters for 20 minutes would be more varied and interesting than this. Playing and watching feel so different, so I think we'll have to wait and see how it feels to play before assessing how engaging the mechanics are. I know I'm enjoying it a lot, but I'm the one playing.
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Dingding32167~5Y
I was really impressed by the progress you'd made and how polished everything looks and sounds (despite the lack of different particle effects etc). I was especially impressed by the range of facial expressions the characters had, which I imagine would've taken quite some effort! I did find the system quite overwhelming to follow at first, but with your explanations below it made a lot more sense (and as you said, the players wouldn't get thrown straight into the deep end with it). I've always bene fascinated by personality types so that appeals to me, though how intuitive it is in the game system will require more playing around with it, but it doesn't seem insurmountable at least! I do second the x thing as not really being neutral in my understanding, but I don't foresee that as being a huge problem as long as players get used to the system. Really exciting, glad to hear you've been inspired and motivated!
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Tobias 1115~5Y
I'm glad to hear you see value in this!

The runes system is much simpler than it appears. All you really need to know is that "similar = effective", which applies to moods/sentiments as well. It helps to understand which runes are paired up, though that's only three bits of information, way less than other systems like Pokemon's type relationships!

It'd be laid out in social terms in the final game. "To better influence people, you need to communicate in a way that's in line with their personality". Something like that.
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TamaYoshi13~5Y
Loved it! The three-dimensional tiled map reminded me of Super Mario RPG, where exploration out of battle was actually satisfying and exciting. Adding 3-dimensionality really adds something. Love the humor and the expressive faces (especially the last one that says BUY SINDREL SONG). Weirdly amused by the last battle that was complete chaos with the enemies turning sequentially outing themselves.

I wonder what to make, even given a proper narrative, of the main characters repeatedly changing sides about something that is likely strongly established. I can imagine encounters like "I am a failure"; while it seems specific to one person, your teammates could be replaced by "ghosts" representing what YOU think your teammates think of YOU, instead of representing your actual teammates.

I'm assuming that it's not the same things we're going to have to convince each other of, for instance. But then, if the thing in question were trivial, that probably shouldn't lead to a game over. Anyway, does a Game Over really make sense given modern game standards?

These are such unusual gameplay mechanics; there's a lot that could be made with these, given some flexibility on how things are represented. You could even face yourself, in a way; that would be consistent with the current mechanics.

Two technical things that bugged me were:

1) The "action" camera when you select your moves. It feels a bit annoying because it's not immediately clear whose move it is (since the camera centers on the target, I understood?).
Also, the camera shifts suddenly, like WHAM. I can imagine it at least feeling smoother if there was some sort of quick translation. I'm trying to imagine games where cuts are made mid-battle; it feels to me like cuts are usually made for long animations, and the cuts are usually not "jump" cuts (a jump cut being a cut that frames generally the same kind of elements, but in a slightly different way, such that the movement camera is very conspicuous). I think the problem here is the presence of a jump cut; I'd find a way to get rid of it.

2) The design of the selectable moves in menus, like at 10:50. I have some idea that the LENGTH of the boxes represents something important; I'd say it's the cooldown of the move, except the boxes also appear to be positioned in a specific way from left to right. I don't understand D:
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Tobias 1115~5Y
I'm glad you saw some value in it!

I've been wondering about how it'll feel to the player if main characters switch sides. Currently it's possible for anyone to switch, including the protagonist - there's one time where that happens in the video - but I'm wondering whether it could count as a loss if she's lost. I'm not sure, though. I'm wondering whether to have a 'Game Over' just as a reference to (my) older games; I've already included save crystals for that same nostalgic reason. Though it'd probably just be annoying, so maybe a retry option would be best.

As for what these mechanics would actually be representing, at the start of an encounter, your party would believe - and would be trying to convince the others of this - that Lileah had been abducted, or that Dharma was bad, or Blight would be trying to convince people to believe in a new god... Different things based on the story. Losing an ally would mean that they'd been convinced that maybe pushing for this particular cause wasn't the best course of action. Maybe Lileah would be best helped by therapy rather than believing her at face value, maybe Blight's just delusional and needs a different kind of help. It's very possible for me to imagine these belief conversions, even with someone who's supposed to care about the protagonist. Much of it would just be in the player's imagination though, up to their interpretation, and I think there's a silly element to it as well because it's quite ridiculous and different to the usual solidarity of protagonist parties.

The moving camera is just there to make things more visually interesting, really; otherwise the camera would just be fixed in one position all the time. It moves back and forth, not focusing on anything, and you can tell whose turn it is because they look at the camera, and there's a marker around their stat circle. You'd be able to tell just from the skills though, usually, and it's not something you'd need to concern yourself with. I could consider a transition, though it's instant like this to reduce delays (and because it was easier to code).

The length of the skills shows their availability range! The area they're contained in is one big bar, which shows the acting character's excitement level. In the image in the post, this excitement is about 50%, and in the video preview image it's lower, for example. Skills become available when that bar's end point is contained within their length.

Thanks for the feedback!
1
Ampersand68~5Y
Maybe there could be a "happy medium" between your friends being converted and losing the main character ending in defeat? Like, if a main character's belief meter reaches zero, they might be incapacitated for a few turns, or even need to be convinced to carry on, but won't actively take part in the fight. Or if they do, they could have a separate moveset to indicate that they haven't really been "converted", but have had their beliefs shaken. Maybe this could even be a thing that could extend past PCs for "boss" encounters, where the main person you're trying to convince can't be converted to your side until everyone else is.

All this said, I guess it depends on how silly the game is supposed to be in the end, and whether or not your friends switching sides would get in the way of more serious moments.
1
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Tobias 1115~5Y
Thanks for the wholly positive comment, I very much appreciate it! I'm glad you got something out of this, and see value in it!
1
MontyCallay101~5Y
My first comment on the new system! Oh boy. Just watched the demo, and I'm really impressed! The graphics, the music, the character models, just wow! And you did all of this in such a short time? That's amazing!

The gameplay looks fun too, especially the more irreverent parts of it - though I have to say, I'm unsure how long some of those "non-fights" alone would keep me hooked, I found myself skipping over some of the longer ones because it just felt like more of the same, over and over (oh, he's converted... but now she's been lost to the other side? I guess she's going to have to be convinced all over again...). That might be something to pay attention to, especially with some of the gimmicky fights - the one with all the lunatics (and the chaos they caused) was funny at first, but the novelty wore off rather quickly for me as it descends into a cycle of conversion and re-conversion. But that may be more of a case of it just being a simple demo rather than anything else, and perhaps someone watching a video just has less patience for classic turn-based RPG battle antics. I especially like the writing and the humour though! "I want to play SINDREL SONG!!" delivered with that expression may just be objectively funny ^^

The faces and the emotions really stand out, I think - it's very over the top and reminds me of CBC quite a bit (which is perhaps unsurprising, considering Belief is somewhat based on that), and I think it sets the tone effectively for what you're trying to do.

You were asking for interesting games to play in another recent post that I couldn't find the time to comment on - I've never been all that into most "AAA" games myself, so perhaps this is not what you're looking for, but I recently played a most fascinating narrative-based cRPG called Disco Elysium, where you play as an amnesiac detective trying to solve a murder with his partner, while at the same time dealing with his own mental instability - words can't possibly do it justice, but the writing is some of the best I've ever seen in a video game. Your skills literally act as different *voices in your head* giving you advice while you're working your way through the story. There's almost no fighting at all, not in a combat system anyway, and it sounds like something that you might find interesting, at least for the writing alone. It's not that well known, and certainly a niche title, so it might not be *Undertale* levels of intimidating. I'm not sure about getting a console, since I never saw the benefit (though I never had one, so perhaps I'm biased) but I do see the advantage of having a separate space that puts you in a different mental state than that where you do your work.

And it's great as well that Sindrel Song is going up on Steam! No matter how well it ends up doing, I'd certainly consider it a success. I recently saw a talk on YouTube by a marketer who works for an indie studio called Failbetter Games, who you might know for their reasonably successful narrative-based game Sunless Sea, explaining how to "Market Your Game in 3 Hours a Week" as a small studio or solo developer, which you might find interesting, for obvious reasons:

[LINK]

One of the things she emphasises, for example, is growing a supportive community for your game, which is something I think you're already doing a good job at, since you do put in a lot of effort into communicating to your fans what you are doing and why you are doing it :) I hope you can find that motivational, seeing how you're already on the right track in a lot of ways.


1
Tobias 1115~5Y
I'm glad you liked it!

With the repetitiveness or lack of interest in the encounters, couldn't the same very much be said of any turn-based battle system? Or many games, for that matter. Repetition of basic elements is usually much more enjoyable to do than to just watch. I can't imagine sitting and watching a 50-hour longplay of MARDEK - or the majority of games, really - would be anything other than mind-numbing, but playing it for that long wouldn't be too unusual. This doesn't feel repetitive to play - if anything it feels a lot less so than typical JRPGs, which is what I was going for - but I suppose that's something that's not really possible to convey to a watcher.

Someone else mentioned Disco Elysium, so I'll add a mark next to that on my 'games I should play' list if it's got two recommendations! Anything that's close to what I'm trying to do is bound to elicit some negative thoughts, but I think I really need to start just facing those thoughts instead of using them as an excuse to not do things.

The link issue was due to the ? in the url (something called regular expressions was the cause), so I've fixed that now!

I'll watch that video at some point if you think it'll be relevant to me. Something strangely uplifting that I notice is that it's actually got fewer views in a few days than my Belief demo video got in less than one... but that does make me wonder. I've never heard of Sunless Sea, but you say it was reasonably successful? I wonder what actually counts as successful for an indie game, in terms of sales and views and things. And I wonder about retention too. Getting people interested in things beyond the one-shot release of a game, like development blogs, progress videos, etc. Building hype. The meagre view count on this post and the accompanying video have been making me very aware that I do need to do something to grow my audience again, and revamping the website community features was a step towards that, but I can use all the help I can get. It's something I'll need to start looking into sooner rather than at the end of Belief's development cycle, I think.
1
MontyCallay101~5Y
I certainly hope that the turn-based combat will be fun to play! It feels more like a puzzle-like interpretation of it rather than just a "press X to do damage" sort of thing, so I'm looking forward to that, especially if the encounters keep being interesting and humorous. I really like how characters actually "say" their attacks every once in a while, it really drives home what a unique concept it is.

The video has some decent tips, I think, on what a general approach to marketing and communication can look like, and there's some advice as well on what to pay attention to when setting up your Steam store page, which you'll surely be doing soon. The reason the video has so few views is probably because it's taken from an apparently rather obscure "narrative games convention" but that doesn't diminish the content.

I know about (and have played) Sunless Sea because it was received quite favourably by the games media for some time, and the game was successful enough to spawn both a DLC and a full-fledged sequel. According to Wikipedia, the game sold over "350,000 units by June 2018" so that's certainly highly successful by indie game standards. The studio also runs a browser-based game set in the same universe since 2009, so they clearly have benefitted from that sort of community-building over time.
1
TamaYoshi13~5Y
I was talking about indie games with my colleague, and showed you certain parts of the demo (the final battle and the "2 boyfriends" part); he found the idea very funny and weird, and appreciated that you put the time and effort to elaborate on various different uncommon ideas.

EDIT: Maybe remove the "delete" and "reply" buttons when in edit mode, for the forum buttons. Also, maybe darken the text bubble; there's not a lot of feedback for edit mode.
1
luckystreak3~5Y
I didn't think I'd watch the whole 20 minutes of the video, but I stayed hooked through the whole thing!

I love your writing! Seeing the expressions of panic and blushing on the characters, watching the (dramatic!) betrayals - I'm really excited for this project!

I had lost track of you after Mardek 3, and I'm really happy to see that you're still around! My next steps are to play Sindrel Song and follow this blog :)

Keep rocking!
1
nTabem3~5Y
Echoing the sentiments of everyone, those 20 minutes was time well spent. What you have looks funny, beautiful and with character, so it looks it's the right direction.

That cheatsheet with the runes and sentiments looks handy and having it easily accessible in-game might avoid complains from people about the "battle" system.

Still about those, my first impression was that one could play with little strategy, even if not the most efficient option (though I'm not 100% sure now). This could be fun, but could also make confrontations drag on. I actually think you have lot of room here to make things more or less challenging. In the challenging side, as not all skills are always available, some "fights" could be more like puzzles where there's some set of actions to perform by order; or you could have lots of ways to win a encounter, with a variety of wacky situations for something more chill; or really anything in between.

About the repetitiveness of encounters, a thing that traditional battles have is that they tend to end in a fixed amount of time/turns. Normally each turn is a step towards the end as 1) damage is dealt, lowering the HP, 2) monsters normally don't heal, or "stun-lock" the players, 3) players don't heal themselves/stall the battle very much because it's not a fun way to play and if they do it's their decision and 4) (in most situations) it's difficult to out-heal damage.
As here no one dies/is knocked-out, only switches sides, there's a greater potential to enter a loop. How likely this can materialize I've no idea, but I'm sure it's something that can be accounted for and handle.

Anyway great job!
1
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