Alora Fane

What should I do with this game??

Views on posts here are at an all-time low, but so is my productivity, so that's fair enough.

I've been lost and unfocused for a while now. Haven't touched Atonal Dreams in ages. Promotion is a barrier, due to mental trauma from the whole Fig Hunter stuff years ago.

There's some obstacle preventing me from working on ports of my old games, too, which I've been meaning to ask strangers about... but haven't yet due to the same mental blocks.

I've been at least getting more comfortable about posting on Reddit recently, though, which is something. Being able to do that and realising I won't be preyed upon by trolls is at least some forward progress.

I also contacted the counselling service to see if I was actually even on a waiting list, and was told progress is being made behind the scenes and I might be able to see someone for mental health help soon. Good!

I talked for more than 6 hours with my two remaining uni friends yesterday, too - 4 hours in a phone call and 2 in a video call - and the positive mental effects of that were so... like drinking a bottle of cold water after wandering for days in a desert, or something. I just wish it were easier to find people.

I've been trying to work on this still-unnamed Belief Battles/Frayth/whatever thing as a quick side project over the past few weeks or months, but it's been dragging on because I've barely been working on it. Partly due to depression and general distress about life stuff, partly because of uncertainty about what exactly to do with it.

I like the pixel-faced models and the battle system that I've made; those feel fixed. But what I'm uncertain about is exactly how to form a game around those things.

The working plan was to make what I suppose could technically be called an open world out of seven areas - one for each element plus a central temple - each of which was populated by silly archetypical characters you'd battle against to convince them to join your religion. The areas are made of a grid of rooms, and each room can contain a single battle. Some rooms can contain buildings which lead to sub-areas with more battles.

But I've made some progress on that, and it feels maybe too rigid and too... empty, simplistic, something like that. Is it actually fun wandering around just battling people over and over without much variety? The battles are predetermined too so there's no randomness, and being able to tackle the areas in any order makes it difficult to balance anything.

I keep wondering about other RPGs I've played, and what I've ever liked about those. And I've actually struggled to distill any reasons!

Is the forward progress of moving through setpieces towards an eventual destination crucial? Is a compelling story? Cast of characters?

What did I used to be driven to make in the past? I wish I could clearly remember. Though is what people want from games these days different anyway?

I'm really curious to hear what you might want from a game with battles and graphics like these!

Discussing possible directions with others would probably be beneficial, but few people read these posts and even fewer comment. Maybe I should go in my Discord (next week), or post on Reddit, though I'm not even sure where there exactly or whether anyone would care to discuss it.

Here are some possible ideas of my own that I've been playing around with:

Hub and Spokes

This is the direction I've been working along so far: a central hub (the temple) and six surrounding areas (effectively dungeons combined with towns) which you can tackle in any order. They're inhabited by silly human archetypes like Normie and Babe, and you have to convince people to join your religion devoted to a god you name in the character creator at the start. Follower count milestones would unlock story scenes, but you'd have to go to the centre of the hub to see/unlock them.

Linear Archepelago

Instead of giving you total freedom about the progression, you'd have something like a world map of nodes - like in the 2D Mario games and Crash Bandicoot (1 and 4) - each of which leads to a short island/dungeon and you have to complete them linearly. (MARDEK had a similar thing, actually.)

There'd be more room for a story, crafting little areas would be less daunting for me, and it'd be much easier to balance the content. Less player choice, though.

Closed Open World

Something like Pokemon games (other than the most recent at least), where there's a connected world you can wander around, but your path through it is directed by plot events and obstacles so you have to tackle things in an intended order.

Dreamons

A very different idea from earlier in development. You begin the game as a new member of an organisation that travels into people's minds - their psychepelagos - to tame their demons directly. The hub would be the mental-hospital-like HQ of this group, and you'd talk to NPCs to enter into their dreams (essentially), each of which would be its own dungeon/story. Perhaps there'd be three levels to the HQ with half a dozen or so short dreams you could tackle in whatever order; completing all the ones on a given level would unlock the next (Spyro-like progression), or perhaps you have goals within each dream and completing enough of them leads to progress (3D Mario platformer progression).

The battles would work the same, but the character designs could be more outlandish (within the restrictions of the humanoid models at least). You'd still tame them, but maybe you couldn't take them outside of the current dream? The aim would be to tame all the people in a given dream to heal the person.

There could also be the potential for players to make and share their own dreams (like AFC's quests).

This idea - and the title - were originally for more of a monster collector though, which would be far more work. I'm also not sure the nature of the skills (verbal quips) would make sense for this, and I'd lose some of the absurdist elements (social interactions as battles, people swapping sides fluidly).

I basically just want to decide on something that's quick to make but fun to play, and the uncertainty combined with all the mental health stuff has just left me feeling stuck.

So I'm very interested to hear some thoughts other than my own about this!!

Or maybe I should stop thinking about it and just get back to Atonal Dreams... Probably. This was only meant as a side distraction until I could break past some mental issues, anyway - a way of productively procrastinating - but it's dragged on for months because of how hard it is to find mental health help.

I'm intending to try some more social engagement stuff next week (by which I mean Reddit posting, mostly) which might hopefully allow me to progress further with the ports of old games, finally. Maybe I'll also try posting about Atonal Dreams or something?

Also, ∞ I've been uploading some piano compositions to my YouTube channel, as listed in this post ∞, if you missed that. Interest is low, as anticipated, but I've been meaning to upload those for ages so actually getting around to it is mentally beneficial for me at least. I've also been trying to play the pieces on my piano again, so that's been somewhat entertaining (though my performance skills aren't really any better since I composed them a decade ago, which is a shame!).

Remakes for Super Mario RPG and Star Ocean 2 - two games I played and liked many years ago - are coming out soon, apparently. Makes me wonder (not for the first time) about just doing a MARDEK remake... but that's what Divine Dreams is, and Atonal Dreams was meant as a prequel to that. These remakes seem to be direct recreations, but I just don't think I could do that.

Makes me wonder whether to just use what I've made for Atonal Dreams to make Divine Dreams as a MARDEK reimagining though rather than spending ages on Atonal Dreams, but... the whole point of Atonal Dreams was to have something self-contained so then it wouldn't feel unfinished if I had to give it up...

I don't know.

10 COMMENTS

GrayNine35~1Y

I think it's important to base the structure of an RPG around the story it's trying to tell. Going through the examples you had in order:

- Hub and Spoke structures work well in Soulsborne games due to a combination of most of the storytelling being about what happened before the game began, so details of the past can be revealed to you in any order, but each bit of storytelling within a spoke requires progressing through earlier parts of that spoke

- A Linear Archepelago worked well in MARDEK because it wanted to tell a linear story while occasionally utilizing previous areas in a world where teleportation is possible

- Pokemon has a fantasy of "you can go explore and take down gyms as you find them" conflicting with a narrative need to play out evil team schemes in a linear order, so a Closed Open World provides enough exploration to feed into that fantasy while still directing the player to each plot beat in order

As for what makes an RPG interesting, here's some things I always like to see:

- A great and *varied* soundtrack - besides the obvious "good music is good," giving the player enough non-combat time to enjoy music besides the encounter theme(s) is important, and varying up boss themes (or random encounter themes, but this is much less common) depending on who you're fighting can tell you more about the enemy and give you something to look forward to.

- Varied enemy designs - there's a reason old Final Fantasy had big, detailed enemy sprites in combat that were way bigger than your characters! Granted, they also liked to re-color them, which kind of goes against this, but you get the idea. It's very satisfying to reach a new area, get into an encounter, and find three new creatures to just *stare* at and admire while coming up with a strategy.

- Gameplay twists - if we look at Final Fantasy 6, getting the airship to change how overworld travel works, getting magicite to change how you use each character, reaching the midpoint of the game to radically change what characters are available to you, and getting your fifth recruit after the midpoint to add the element of party building are all huge moments that completely change how the game is played. Other games play with promotions/evolutions, various methods of going on new routes in old areas, or entire gameplay systems.

I think it's important to base the structure of an RPG around the story it's trying to tell.  Going through the examples you had in order:

- Hub and Spoke structures work well in Soulsborne games due to a combination of most of the storytelling being about what happened before the game began, so details of the past can be revealed to you in any order, but each bit of storytelling within a spoke requires progressing through earlier parts of that spoke

- A Linear Archepelago worked well in MARDEK because it wanted to tell a linear story while occasionally utilizing previous areas in a world where teleportation is possible

- Pokemon has a fantasy of "you can go explore and take down gyms as you find them" conflicting with a narrative need to play out evil team schemes in a linear order, so a Closed Open World provides enough exploration to feed into that fantasy while still directing the player to each plot beat in order

As for what makes an RPG interesting, here's some things I always like to see:

- A great and *varied* soundtrack - besides the obvious "good music is good," giving the player enough non-combat time to enjoy music besides the encounter theme(s) is important, and varying up boss themes (or random encounter themes, but this is much less common) depending on who you're fighting can tell you more about the enemy and give you something to look forward to.

- Varied enemy designs - there's a reason old Final Fantasy had big, detailed enemy sprites in combat that were way bigger than your characters!  Granted, they also liked to re-color them, which kind of goes against this, but you get the idea.  It's very satisfying to reach a new area, get into an encounter, and find three new creatures to just *stare* at and admire while coming up with a strategy.

- Gameplay twists - if we look at Final Fantasy 6, getting the airship to change how overworld travel works, getting magicite to change how you use each character, reaching the midpoint of the game to radically change what characters are available to you, and getting your fifth recruit after the midpoint to add the element of party building are all huge moments that completely change how the game is played.  Other games play with promotions/evolutions, various methods of going on new routes in old areas, or entire gameplay systems.

Tobias 1115~1Y

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Based on my own experiences, I'd be surprised if the story came first for any game. It's likely more a case of coming up with a way to play the game ("you collect monsters via turn-based battles!"), then trying to figure out how to structure that in a satisfying way, then adding a story on last. Like the story is wallpaper over the walls of the structure.

The Pokemon team likely didn't know what they were doing with gen 1, just as I didn't with MARDEK, so they just cobbled together a bunch of inspirations into something that mostly worked. They likely structured things the way they did to allow for a linear strength progression of opponents, as I did in MARDEK, and in Scarlet and Violet they made it more open world because that's what's trendy these days (maybe I should do a Roguelike Metroidvania like every other indie dev!).

Immersion is what I like most about games, and the music and creature/character designs fall under that category. They're probably what I focus on most too; maybe the whole reason I made games at all was to have something to compose music for. And my favourite part of Pokemon games is going in blind and discovering new Pokemon designs myself.

It's tricky with this side project I'm working on though because I want to minimise the amount of work it'll take to finish, which limits what I can do. I want all the characters to be humans so then I don't have to make or animate other models. And I feel the idea of 'human archetypes having silly social battles where they try and convince the other side to convert to theirs' is amusing enough to form at least a short game around... I'm just uncertain of how to do so in a way that's fun without getting tedious or repetitive.

It's also tough to write a linear story for it because your party can change so much and the characters you recruit aren't actual characters.

Hmm, I suppose an equivalent is something like the Final Fantasy Tactics games, where you only really have one or a few named characters with story roles and a bunch of faceless recruits, but they've got a story focused on that main character anyway. Maybe I'll think about how they went about it, do some brainstorming...

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Based on my own experiences, I'd be surprised if the story came first for any game. It's likely more a case of coming up with a way to /play/ the game ("you collect monsters via turn-based battles!"), then trying to figure out how to structure that in a satisfying way, then adding a story on last. Like the story is wallpaper over the walls of the structure.

The Pokemon team likely didn't know what they were doing with gen 1, just as I didn't with MARDEK, so they just cobbled together a bunch of inspirations into something that mostly worked. They likely structured things the way they did to allow for a linear strength progression of opponents, as I did in MARDEK, and in Scarlet and Violet they made it more open world because that's what's trendy these days (maybe I should do a Roguelike Metroidvania like every other indie dev!).

/Immersion/ is what I like most about games, and the music and creature/character designs fall under that category. They're probably what I focus on most too; maybe the whole reason I made games at all was to have something to compose music for. And my favourite part of Pokemon games is going in blind and discovering new Pokemon designs myself.

It's tricky with this side project I'm working on though because I want to minimise the amount of work it'll take to finish, which limits what I can do. I want all the characters to be humans so then I don't have to make or animate other models. And I feel the idea of 'human archetypes having silly social battles where they try and convince the other side to convert to theirs' is amusing enough to form at least a short game around... I'm just uncertain of how to do so in a way that's fun without getting tedious or repetitive.

It's also tough to write a linear story for it because your party can change so much and the characters you recruit aren't actual characters.

Hmm, I suppose an equivalent is something like the Final Fantasy Tactics games, where you only really have one or a few named characters with story roles and a bunch of faceless recruits, but they've got a story focused on that main character anyway. Maybe I'll think about how they went about it, do some brainstorming...

RedHalo30007~1Y

Is there a link to your Reddit posts that you referred to?

I think a closed open world is nice, but any of your proposed ideas would work imo.

And you mentioned Discord, do you have a server?

Tobias 1115~1Y

I'm trying to find personal connections unrelated to games dev on Reddit and don't really want people from here following me around over there.

I have a Discord server, but it's for Patreon patrons only and is essentially dead at the moment. I keep meaning to make it public, but I'm not a social person so I don't want to deal with community drama again.

RedHalo30007~3M

Well this is a very late response, but if you're ever interested you can create alt accounts on Discord and talk to people all over the world, in countless different groups.

I have friends in Australia, Canada, Romania, Austria, France, etc.

Many servers are chill, and revolve around a common theme like writing servers, or servers for anime, or specific games, etc.

I've been playing your games since your early days on Newgrounds (Deliverance was my favorite), and if you ever want to Voice Chat feel free to send me a message on Discord. I'm Red.Halo on there : )

Tobias 1115~3M

I have no qualms about using my main Discord account elsewhere, I just don't enjoy the format of Discord in general because I don't like groups or talking about interests.

The few conversations that I do have are intense and mostly about shared past experiences, human behaviour and psychology, mental illness and general insecurities, and there are some fairly strict criteria that have to be met before I can feel comfortable talking with someone at all. Otherwise I just run away.

Astreon152~1Y

I'd go for Hub and Spokes, because it feels more efficient.

You'll develop it faster than if you have to design a storyline, not to mention you tend to get really immersed in those and with how perfectionist you are, it'd take ages to complete.

It'd be easier for the audience to focus on the game mechanics. People who like RPG with a rich lore can play a quick simple game every once in a while, but i doubt the opposite is true. Simple is key to success here. And you could also make it quite short, with few hubs, so it'll make development faster on your side too.

I say, make it simple, short and dynamic: like a dungeon crawler with 6 locations (i imagine 6 different types of "mobs and bosses" according to their personnalities: the jock+babe, the goths, the nerds, etc.). In between each locations you go back to main town to "manage" your team (only 1 type of personnalities, or varied types team, etc.), restock, and maybe have a few mini-missions to unlock boost items (like a shirt that boost your confidence, or with a geek reference that'd make the nerds easier to convert; or you spam a key to enhance your muscles wich makes it easier to convert the babe and make her betray the jock, etc....).

I'd go for Hub and Spokes, because it feels more efficient.

You'll develop it faster than if you have to design a storyline, not to mention you tend to get really immersed in those and with how perfectionist you are, it'd take ages to complete.

It'd be easier for the audience to focus on the game mechanics. People who like RPG with a rich lore can play a quick simple game every once in a while, but i doubt the opposite is true. Simple is key to success here. And you could also make it quite short, with few hubs, so it'll make development faster on your side too.

I say, make it simple, short and dynamic: like a dungeon crawler with 6 locations (i imagine 6 different types of "mobs and bosses" according to their personnalities: the jock+babe, the goths, the nerds, etc.). In between each locations you go back to main town to "manage" your team (only 1 type of personnalities, or varied types team, etc.), restock, and maybe have a few mini-missions to unlock boost items (like a shirt that boost your confidence, or with a geek reference that'd make the nerds easier to convert; or you spam a key to enhance your muscles wich makes it easier to convert the babe and make her betray the jock, etc....).

Tobias 1115~1Y

That's pretty much been my direction so far for the reasons you mentioned. It's only by doing some work on it that I started to feel it's not exactly quicker to make like I'd hoped.

I think the main issue is the balancing. If you can go anywhere first, then which should have the lowest-level opponents? All of them? None? Would they scale with the player's level? That's a whole challenge to design in itself.

Personally I don't even like this kind of free choice about progression; I don't remember any games where I've enjoyed it. The latest Pokemon and Zelda games both used it, and I ended up overpowered a lot of the time which took the challenge out of much of the game.

I also made the first of the six dungeon areas and it just felt kind of... pointless? Just battle after battle without much motivation behind any of them. I feel like battles work as obstacles to be overcome in the journey to reach a goal, but the goal here was maybe too vague.

Could just be anhedonia from depression, though; maybe I'd feel differently about it all in a better state of mind.

That's pretty much been my direction so far for the reasons you mentioned. It's only by doing some work on it that I started to feel it's not exactly quicker to make like I'd hoped.

I think the main issue is the balancing. If you can go anywhere first, then which should have the lowest-level opponents? All of them? None? Would they scale with the player's level? That's a whole challenge to design in itself.

Personally I don't even like this kind of free choice about progression; I don't remember any games where I've enjoyed it. The latest Pokemon and Zelda games both used it, and I ended up overpowered a lot of the time which took the challenge out of much of the game.

I also made the first of the six dungeon areas and it just felt kind of... pointless? Just battle after battle without much motivation behind any of them. I feel like battles work as obstacles to be overcome in the journey to reach a goal, but the goal here was maybe too vague.

Could just be anhedonia from depression, though; maybe I'd feel differently about it all in a better state of mind.

Astreon152~1Y

There might be no need to make all hubs accessible from the start.

I was under the assumption that the player would unlock a new hub each time they finished one. At most, there'd be freedom in that they could chose which hub to unlock. That would also make it easier plot wise: if you decide on the order, you'll have to find a justification for it, and build a story line, etc.

As far as motivation goes, the gameplay itself can be one. When playing tetris, there might be some stage design/music, but there is not plot in itself, the fun is in the game mechanics. Same thing for lemmings, tower defense, or any platformer.

You could make a plot, but i think you just need to make a basic goal, like "i hate dissensions, so i'll convert everyone to my beliefs and they'll stop fighting".
Or right a pseudo scenario, like, "the king has seven children, the one who'll rally the others to their cause will inherit the throne". And the player is one of those children.

No need to make it overly complicated, and the game will be short enough that by the time it feels repetitive, the player has finished it.

There might be no need to make all hubs accessible from the start.

I was under the assumption that the player would unlock a new hub each time they finished one. At most, there'd be freedom in that they could chose which hub to unlock. That would also make it easier plot wise: if you decide on the order, you'll have to find a justification for it, and build a story line, etc.

As far as motivation goes, the gameplay itself can be one. When playing tetris, there might be some stage design/music, but there is not plot in itself, the fun is in the game mechanics. Same thing for lemmings, tower defense, or any platformer.

You could make a plot, but i think you just need to make a basic goal, like "i hate dissensions, so i'll convert everyone to my beliefs and they'll stop fighting". 
Or right a pseudo scenario, like, "the king has seven children, the one who'll rally the others to their cause will inherit the throne". And the player is one of those children.

No need to make it overly complicated, and the game will be short enough that by the time it feels repetitive, the player has finished it.

purplerabbits147~1Y

Since I tend to play a variety of games, I don't have a personal preference for different ways games present their gameplay, only that it works and that it's well put together.

In regards to the mental block you've been facing, I recently came across a video that's on topic: [LINK]

Not sure how helpful it is for your specific situation, but I hope it can be a starting point to make it over the mental hurdles.