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Prelude to Divine Dreams?

4 years ago2,058 words

I've been thinking about it all week, and I've got an idea for a shorter, more concise version of Divine Dreams that I could conceivably finish by the end of the year...

These past few days have been interesting. Just over a week ago, I wrote ∞ this post ∞, where I talked about how committing myself to a long series might be a bad idea if it's not going to be profitable. The next day, I wondered in ∞ this post ∞ whether there were any shorter ideas that I could produce first.

One of those ideas - the only interesting one, really - was for a shorter self-contained prequel starring the character Savitr, Dayvha's father. I hadn't really refined it, though, and spent several days incredibly uncertain about whether doing that or just starting with Divine Dreams as planned might be my best bet.

I've given it some more thought now, and I'm getting excited about the idea as there's a lot that I can do with it!



I recently started playing the RPG Octopath Traveler; I wrote about my first impressions from just under an hour of playtime in ∞ this post ∞, and I might write another now that I'm seven or eight hours in. It's alright, it's nice to play an novel RPG, I suppose, though there are a lot of things that I've been annoyed by or which I'd want to do differently in my own game.

One of those things is the sheer length of the game. There are eight characters, each with their own stories spanning multiple chapters, and you visit and unlock them one-by-one. I've got five now, but it feels like it's been such a slog, and the thought that there are more left to unlock put me off playing at all yesterday. (Though factors such as depression and comparing my work to this make it more draining an experience in general than it might be for the average player.)

One of the thoughts I've had is that now that I'm older and don't have the time or energy to devote to a dozens-of-hours-long RPG like I could as a teenager, I like the idea of a 'bite-sized' RPG which contains the same essential experience, just streamlined. Longer than a film, but not a weeks-long commitment.

I don't know whether this would appeal to other busy adults too, or whether it'd just put off typical RPG fans because length is something they highly value in RPGs, but I wanted to mention it first because I feel it could be a selling point for the idea that I have. Plus something shorter is far easier to produce, of course.



Anyway, as for the idea:

I'm imagining it as a story told in three acts (in terms of narrative/gameplay structure, I mean; they'd all be released as a whole and might not be explicitly divided in-game), which would be devoted to three thematic concepts I've been incorporating heavily into my recent games: light, dark, and aether.

That is, act 1 would be set in a bright and vibrant overworld, act 2 would be set in a gloomy underworld, and act 3 would make a transition to the aethereal drealm, at least in part. Life, death, transcendence to an afterlife.



This would be both overt in terms of the visuals of the areas you're exploring, and more subtle in terms of character psychology during the acts.

I was able to come up with some plans fairly quickly for these, though they're still rough and there are a lot of gaps. I've only devoted a few hours to planning, though. I don't want to spoil the story, so I won't go into specifics here.

I will say though that it makes a lot of sense to use a small island as the setting. That means that this 'overworld' - which probably brought to mind something vast - would be a smallish 'dungeon' surrounded by water on all sides. That'd give the feeling of exploration without necessarily being a huge open world to explore. I'm intending it to be quite linear, but with the potential to explore off-path if you choose to (either to get hidden loot or maybe for sidequests). The underworld would be similarly-sized, and the drealm might be like MARDEK's dreamrealm in that it's just an alternative version of the existing areas (or not; I'm still planning this).

There'd also be a monastery you'd reach at the end of act 1, and which would serve as a sort of hub: this gives an excuse for all its inhabitant NPCs to look quite similar (they're all monks), and it fits well with the themes I'm trying to explore with these games.

I've planned four protagonists who join the party:



These are all characters who I've already planned for Divine Dreams - three are based on (though have developed well beyond) NPCs from MARDEK, and one was exclusive to Taming Dreams - so nobody's new. This is set ten years before the events of Divine Dreams, so the characters here were chosen because of their availability and goals during this point of the world's timeline. That allows me to keep the story I already spent a long time writing, to return to if this game does well.

It worked out sort of oddly though, because of these four, three are male, and two of those are eccentric bald men! Hardly the sort of cast I'd design if starting from nothing, and I wonder whether people would be drawn to them or not. Both the weird men have entertaining speech styles and personalities, though, so hopefully that'll sell them to players despite their lack of superficial sexy coolness. (By contrast, of Divine Dreams' 9 characters, 2 are male, 6 are female, and one is two parts male and one part female.)

The story would mostly centre around Savitr, who's a deeper character than the two incarnations of Enki that he was originally inspired by. He's got a fairly deep backstory, and what I've planned so far allows that to be explored in an intriguing way which I could see sparking a lot of wondering and discussion if I pull it off well enough.



I've already built Divine Dreams' engine, so I'll be using that, of course. I wouldn't need to make many more assets, since there are only three (or maybe even two) major areas, four playable characters, and maybe 4-6 NPC types (if that). Monsters and music might take the longest, but even those shouldn't take that long once I get the ball rolling since there aren't many of each that I need to make.

I'm planning to keep the mechanics the same as what I've already built, though I might remove the concords feature - for this at least - since it's not like you can choose your allies so it's a bit pointless. I'm also wondering whether tamed monsters could drop items which allow you to summon an instance of that monster species once when used; that could be interesting, and makes sense for some plot stuff I've planned.

Oh, another important thing is that since this'll be short, adding meaningful decisions would be fairly easy to do and potentially compelling. Perhaps each act's boss could either be killed or tamed, and how you choose to handle that could determine something about the next act. If you kill one boss, one of the two weird men doesn't join you in the next chapter; something like that. I could see this adding replayability and intrigue. (I have specific plans for three major choices like this, one at the end of each act, but obviously describing them would be spoilers!)



So that's the idea. It's hard to find a balance between explaining so much that it spoils everything, and too little that it's not clear what I'm trying to do!

The aim would be to release it by the end of the year; I'd set up a Steam page and start promoting it as soon as I had enough assets and enough certainty about the direction.

If it's well-received and profitable, then I'd be able to make the first part of Divine Dreams as a sequel. I don't think releasing sequels would be received the same as releasing something explicitly described as episodic. The three Divine Dreams games might have a common plot thread through them, but I'd write them such that they'd be accessible enough to newcomers, and they'd each have their own beginning, middle, and end. I'd also make improvements to the engine with each installment to, so it wouldn't just be like what could instead be DLC.

I've not played EBF, but if you have, what do those do? Do they continue on story-wise from the previous one, or are they all their own things?

If you ever played Golden Sun, I think that might be an example of this kind of thing, too? It was forever ago that I played them, but didn't the second continue directly on from the first narratively, or something?

If this thing wasn't profitable, then I wouldn't have left a story unfinished, as such. This thing would definitely hint at a wider world and leave the opportunity available for a continuation, but it wouldn't be incomplete without it. Hopefully it won't come to that, though!

Also, perhaps I could have a really small free demo for this? Some of the Pokemon games offered extremely short demos, didn't they? Like on the scale of two battles or something? Maybe I could do that for this, so the demo was just a small slice of one of the acts. Or something. Demos do seem to help with promotion, from the research I've done.

(I still need to do more research, by the way. I've done a bit this week, but then I got distracted by planning this!)

As for a title, perhaps something like Prelude to Divine Dreams could work? It could also be 'Divine Dreams: Prelude', but I feel that suggests there'd be more while the former could work as a standalone title. I like 'prelude' because of the musical association, which is appropriate if everyone's using musical instrument weapon things. I could also go with something else involving 'Prelude' which makes sense with the story I've planned, though I'll likely come up with ideas as I develop the story more.

(Or maybe something like "Prelude to a Requiem", stressing the life/death thing?)



I recently posted the design - and the process that led to it - for Savitr on ∞ the Patreon I recently revived ∞. The number of patrons and monthly earnings are still fairly small (49 and $257, as I write this), but they're definitely not nothing, and this gives me a lot of hope that perhaps I can continue to grow this and that it might ease some of my recurring money woes! The Savitr posts were more well-received than I expected them to be, so talking about character designs on there is definitely something I'll keep doing.

I'll probably post designs on this blog and Twitter eventually too, since I'll need to start advertising the game sooner rather than later, but you'll definitely be seeing them at least a few days early on Patreon.

I've got other stuff to do too, like finalising the Discord I've set up (there are a few people using it already, but I need to decide on channels and moderators and bots and things before opening it up more publicly). It's annoying how long things take - depression and being busy get in the way a lot - but at least I feel I've made some progress with a lot of stuff this month.

Anyway, this idea is still a tangle of swirling potentials, so I don't know if anything I've said here is actually clear! I'll likely post about some of these specific things like characters on my Patreon over the next week! I am excited though about having a Divine Dreams RPG I can release before the year's end! I also feel the story I have in mind might actually be more compelling than something based around the rambling skeleton of MARDEK.