I mostly finished the intro I was working on, but it's not what I want it to be! I've come up with some revisions though which should make for a better world and story...
Games take a long time to make, even simple ones! It's annoying! I'd hoped that Atonal Dreams would only take around six months total... but obviously that was ridiculously naive! I'm glad I keep these blog posts though, as I can look back and see I've been making constant progress, even if it's not as rapid as I might like.
How should a game - or a JRPG in particular - begin? That's something I've been wondering a lot recently. Originally, Atonal Dreams started rather jarringly with a battle against Pierce - an antagonist who turns protagonist - which contained a lot of dialogue and (at least in some revised versions) introduced some basic gameplay mechanics like attacking and taming. Alpha testers said it was too abrupt, which I agree with, and I think it's probably too text-heavy as well.
I've spent the last three weeks working on a revised intro which was supposed to address some of those concerns... though what I've ended up with probably has them too! Here's a mostly 'finished' (though very unpolished) version I posted on Patreon earlier in the week:
(Is that blurry for you? The version I uploaded was much sharper, though there are a bunch of technical settings things I don't understand and probably did wrong!)
There are some aspects I like about that... but overall it just doesn't feel right to me, not a good start to the game. And as this is the bit the player will first see and form their opinions on, it's important to get it right. First impressions matter a lot!
It feels tragic spending weeks on something only to realise it's not working, and I had a huge mood slump in the middle of the week because of that. Felt so defeated, wanted to just give up. But thankfully I recovered quickly, and started thinking about how I could fix it.
I watched the first few minutes of a bunch of longplays (I'm glad those are a thing, saves a whole lot of fuss!) of several JRPGs I grew up with and which inspired me: the PS1 and PS2 Final Fantasies, Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, things like that. Maybe I should have been looking at more recent stuff instead, but what was the most modern RPG I actually played? Bravely Default II? Hmm...
There's not much consistency at all between their beginnings, though. Some start with tutorials, some throw you right into battles, some start with dialogue... Chrono Cross in particular started with a dream section where you could encounter wild battles, but the whole thing just felt vague and disconnected from any story (though I think the story of that game was convoluted anyway and I can't remember it).
It's interesting how directly some of these must have inspired my stuff! Chrono Trigger starts with Crono just waking up - nothing dramatic at all - and many of my earliest (unfinished) games started the same way.
I got thinking about how I started things in MARDEK - driven by intuition born of combined (and much fresher then) inspirations rather than some need to do things 'right' - and I feel like that's not a bad start at all!
MARDEK starts with a brief, impressionistic cutscene with narration, setting the scene, there's a very brief bit of dialogue between the two protagonists, then the player immediately gains control and can run around and explore (as much as the limited area allows, anyway).
There's the concept of the gameplay loop that I've seen people talking about a lot in recent years. I'd been thinking for ages that it'd be best to start with a battle because I always got frustrated and impatient with games that took a while to get around to that gameplay feature. But battles are only one part of the gameplay loop; exploration is just as important.
It seems best, then, for an intro to focus on letting the player experience this gameplay loop in its entirety as soon as possible, at least in a simplified form without threat of loss. As much as we like to think of story as important, most of what's presented in dialogue early on won't even be retained, and players are likely to judge games based on whether or not they enjoy playing them, not reading them.
So I spent a couple of days just brainstorming ideas. I revisited the entire story again, and came up with some stuff that ties things together in a way that feels like it'd improve what I have a whole lot! I can't talk about all my ideas without spoiling everything - as they pertain to the story as a whole - but I'll talk about a few.
One concept I was intending to explore in Divine Dreams and Atonal Dreams was the drealm, which was essentially the reimagined version of MARDEK 3's 'dream realm' (or was it 'dreamrealm'?). I knew that it was some kind of unformed consciousness, like a sea in which material worlds float like ice crystals (that is, they're made of the same stuff, just given fixed form), but I'd never been sure how to actually depict it in the games.
Another concept - which, unlike the drealm, I don't think I've talked about in this blog before? - was that of psycodas, which were kind of like mental cocoons that minds formed in the drealm after death, in which they had a kind of dream to resolve various life concerns before moving on. The point was to allow for certain dead characters to be revived by visiting them in their psycodas in the Divine Dreams events that followed those based on MARDEK 3's.
Oh, and in Atonal Dreams, I've planned for pairs of characters to have these shared dreams, in which one person's beliefs determined the looks of both. Those dreams were originally planned to first occur somewhere around the middle of the game, but this newer intro (the one in the video, which I'll be revising) came from the decision to move one to the start instead.
The new idea that I've come up with essentially combines all those. Now, the drealm is kind of like a mirror to the waking world - a not-uncommon theme in fantastical settings - which would be perceived as an endless ocean with islands. Each mind would have its own chain of islands in the drealm called a psychepelago (way better than 'psycoda', I think!), and all the bits involving visiting dreaming or dead characters would involve visiting their psychepelago.
I had in mind the area Magicant from Earthbound:
That's a similar concept, of a world created by the mind... though I watched ∞ a longplay of that section ∞ to refresh my memory, and it (like a lot of these old RPGs I watched) felt so vague in its storytelling. It's more about relatable impressions, feelings, rather than specifics of the Ness character in that game (not that he had much of one). Not a criticism, just an observation, since it's so different to the more focused and meaningful intentions I have for these psychepelagos.
This concept helped a whole lot with a few plot points I'd vaguely decided on, but wasn't sure before how to actually depict. The intro - rather than being one dialogue-packed battle with too much crammed in - would take place on Collie's psychepelago, for example. That is, it'd be a dungeon, not unlike the dungeon at the start of MARDEK. The Beast would be a boss at the end that you'd have to fight your way through some encounters to get to.
In Taming Dreams, I tried using the intro dungeon as a tutorial... but I feel it was just too much of an overwhelming info dump. So with this, I'd focus the intro only on attacking and taming, with little actual explanation. Features like runes and arousal would be locked off initially, until the first island which is full of explicit tutorial tips I've already written (though I'll need to revise some).
So essentially the intro would throw the player into the gameplay without explanation - but it'd be so simple there wouldn't need to be one - and the tutorial would come after, explaining some things in more detail.
I was also trying to portray Savitr as a superhero in that intro, someone who'd have a lot of popular comics written about him (which don't fit with how he sees himself)... but that doesn't really make much sense for the setting. Much more meaningful for players and in line with what I've made before would be to make Savitr a parody of a JRPG hero!
So Collie would still kill the Preyloot, but inside its chest would be a book about the Splendid Savitr rather than a comic. This book would open up a new island in her psychepelago, where she'd meet this comically generic version of Savitr. They'd fight a few battles together during a section that'd parody familiar JRPGs in some ways I still need to decide on.
A lot of people do use JRPGs as a portal to a more enjoyable world than the real one they know, so Collie using one to escape her own abusive home would hopefully resonate with some people. I can't really make her get a game though since it doesn't fit with the technology of the setting, and a book seems like the only thing that wouldn't be too jarring (as a comic might since they're not associated with fantasy settings).
Also, originally I had Collie be the one who tames monsters, though I compiled lists of reasons why either she or Savitr would be the one to do that (most meaning for the character's arc being most important), and it makes more sense for it to be Savitr who tames. It could be something he's renowned for, and which Collie looks up to him for. Collie might remain violent during the intro, then, while Savitr introduces the taming mechanic.
Revisiting my story plans with these new ideas in mind helped to solidify a lot of things (which really should have been decided ages ago!), one of which was deciding on how many areas I'll actually need to make. It looks like I'll only need to make around 10 (four of which are the main characters' psychepelagos), which isn't a huge amount, but which might make for a decent-length game? We'll see!
I was also able to tie things together more with what I had planned for Divine Dreams (and MARDEK too, kind of, since that was meant as a reimagining of it). Originally, Divine Dreams was supposed to involve exploring elemental 'sanctuaries' housing artefacts called the Mementos of the Aolmna, or MotAs, which were essentially equivalents to MARDEK's (vague, stolen from Final Fantasy) elemental crystals and temples. Atonal Dreams wasn't meant to include anything related to that.
I might make it so that the archipelago the game's set on contains the Destruction Sanctuary, though, for a bunch of deep story reasons I won't spoil here. I'm still working things out, but it might make for some more interesting story stuff.
It's frustrating feeling like I'm constantly revising things rather than just following some linear path to a goal, but I suppose it feels a bit like... archaeology, or something. Digging up little bits, forming ideas about the whole as you go, but sometimes you'll reveal bits that don't fit with your theories, and they have to be revised. But with each new discovery, you get closer to something that really makes sense. Or something like that??
The revisions I want to make will take a bit of time now, but I feel that they'll speed things up in the long run. I need to make a tileset for Collie's psychepelago, for example, but the story has the player visiting it again later, so making it now will mean I'll have it for that later bit. Plus the thought of making the other dream sections feels far less daunting now, and some plot threads that felt too vague to me before feel a lot stronger. So I'm hopeful! But we'll see!!
Thanks for your patience if you're still keeping up with the development of this game!
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