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Beliefrayth As Dreamons??

1 year ago2,284 words

Am I onto something with this idea that combines several different ones from the past few months?? Dreamons: A game in which you explore dreamscapes as a customisable avatar to tame humanoid - but with psychedelic aesthetics - dreamons to save people from their mental distress.

It's, what, July now? More than half way through the year. And I feel like I've spent pretty much all year trying to decide what I'm even doing with my time.

Looking back through blog posts from the past few months, I see a lot of going around in circles, trying to come to decisions (unsuccessfully). The most recent ones haven't been much more decisive.

Though I do feel like I'm finally getting somewhere? Hopefully? Am I??

(I have done stuff, it's just not as focused as I'd like and therefore annoyingly much slower than it could be.)

The Story So Far

Last Friday, 3 days ago, I wrote ∞ a post ∞ about some structure ideas for this Belief Battles/Frayth thing I still don't have a title for.

While the overarching story of the game was that you were the avatar of a god who was spreading a religion that you'd named, I'd essentially decided to scrap the idea of keeping a full party of six collected archetypes, and was wondering whether instead you'd just have a single ally, who'd be one of a small number of unique characters with their own personality, story, dialogue, etc. I also imagined (in a previous post, maybe?) a linear progression of six element-based areas with three sub-areas each.

I still wasn't sure about some details, though, like how exactly you'd acquire the unique allies.



I've also written previously about a project called Dreamons, which has kind of been conceptually tangled up with this one; there's a lot of overlap. I saw it as a separate concept, though, more focused on Pokemon-like monster collection (or even virtual pet raising, at one point). I seem to have given up on it after realising the sheer amount of work that'd be involved in creating enough monsters to collect.

Looking back, I'd say there was also a clash between the pixel-faced human models and the monster designs, which didn't use any pixel textures at all.



I wrote ∞ a public post on my Patreon about Dreamons ∞ way back at the start of February, full of screenshots of the project as it was then. The map and character editors I made for that are exactly what I'm using for this current 'Beliefrayth' (not actually called that, but I need to refer to it as something!) thing, though some other aspects, like battle mechanics, hadn't yet been worked out.

The basic idea presented in that post was that you were a member of a faction called the Oneironauts, who ventured into peoples' psychepelagos - a concept from Atonal Dreams (and as such Alora Fane lore) - which are explorable dreamscapes full of manifested thoughts and fears. There'd be a hub area, from which you'd enter into sleeping characters' psychepelagos and tame dreamons - their inner demons - via silly social skills.

In that post, I imagined the dreamons could be created using the pixel-face person editor, and perhaps there'd be a small number of body types alongside human (beast, bird, etc).

Though that eventually got scrapped in favour of reusing the figmon models from Atonal Dreams for a more Pokemon-like experience, which I also later scrapped.

The idea was also burdened by the intention to add an Alora-Fane-Creation-like editor for players to make their own content; I don't have any plans to still do that.

The Current Plan

What I've been thinking over the weekend (when I should have been resting, but I was excited about this!) was that maybe I could draw upon and combine all these old ideas.

The project would be called Dreamons. I absolutely love that title, and it'd obviously solve the issue of not having one at all!

As in the old idea, you'd play as a member of the Oneironauts, who venture into people's psychepelagos to heal them of what's essentially mental illness.

That'd fit well with my current interests; I'm less interested in religion than I once was, and there could potentially be some risk of offense in exploring religion anyway? (Though FIGHTING GOD is pretty much par for the course for JRPGs, so maybe not.)

The game would begin with a kind of first-person application interview where you answer simple questions about your race (from limited options like white, brown, or black), sex, personality, etc. Your player character would then be essentially premade based on your answers (and generic, not unlike Pokemon player avatars). This would mean the player wouldn't have to figure out the somewhat complicated and unusual face creator right at the start (nor would they be stuck with a result they'd grow annoyed by).

You'd be able to explore a hub area, which might be similar to a (psychiatric) hospital (or a fantasy version thereof). You'd enter into the dreams of sleeping patients and tame their dreamons, and there'd be some loose overarching narrative that'd lead to a conclusion I've vaguely planned but won't spoil here.

For each psychepelago, you'd be accompanied by the dreamer of that psychepelago as an ally. These would be the unique, written characters, and by exploring their psychepelagos, you'd learn their stories. Them being bound to each psychepelago would also explain how they'd join your party and why they'd leave. At the conclusion of their story, they'd awaken and leave the hospital.

(So you'd enter battles as your character accompanied by the dreamer, and you'd tame teams of up to four dreamons to your side. The tamed dreamons would leave (dissolve?) at the end of the battle. You may also have to initially tame the dreamer to have them join you; this would be you convincing a damaged person you were there to help.)

For the sake of simplicity (and development time), perhaps there could only be six of these characters and their associated psychepelagos, which you'd work through linearly. Each might be related to a single element, and each psychepelago might have three sub-areas you could tackle in any order. Basically ideas I'd already been working through in other recent posts.



In Atonal Dreams, characters who enter into psychepelagos appear as forms that the dreamer of the psychepelago imagines them as. In Collie's at the beginning of the game, for example, she imagines herself as a Blight Wolf and Savitr as a silly JRPG hero with six angel wings.

In Dreamons, you could create and customise your own dream form (lore reason: the dreamers don't know you, so it's up to you to decide how you manifest). So while you might be a plain human in the hub, there'd be a room you could visit to alter the appearance of the form you'd take when you enter the psychepelagos. As you progressed, you might be able to unlock new (aesthetic) features for this form. Maybe skills would be bound to the form too.

I'm really proud of the pixel-face-editing feature! But having it only during character generation at the very start felt like such a waste. This would give it more purpose and value, as the player could potentially keep revising it. I'd been wondering for ages about how I might do more with it ("could you customise your allies maybe??"), and this seems to me a great solution to that!




Speaking of that editor, as much as I like the idea of human archetypes, I felt while designing them that I was limiting myself to only a fraction of what the editor was capable of, especially with things like (skin) colour choices. When I first made the original version of it for Mentales, I had a lot of fun designing all kinds of ludicrous monstrosities with it. Here are a few examples (I made and saved dozens as I worked on that original editor for the joy of it):










While testing 'Beliefrayth', I've also amused myself creating idiotic designs for the player character:




Though it's been bothering me that in the old religion-based plot/setting, you were supposedly integrated into normal society despite looking like that, and that you're stuck with whatever you decide on in the creator at the beginning.

The dreamons that you'd battle against could be made (by me) using this editor (rather than being the varied figmon from Atonal Dreams, as in earlier ideas for Dreamons); here's a (not so ridiculous) test example:



I could also add additional body parts like horns and wings (which you could earn and customise on your own dream avatar) to further the idea that they're 'demons'. They'd still have equippable clothing items.

(Side note: Dreamons could also potentially look like normal people. Maybe one patient could have social anxiety, and their nightmares would involve just going to an ordinary shop with ordinary-looking people, who to them are as terrifying as demons. Or another might dream about being ridiculed by Babes and Hunks for being ugly.)




In Mentales, I also added an animal head (barely perceptible in this screenshot, but it has a vague snout), with the intention of adding more. Dreamons being animal-headed would work well (mythology is full of such things, after all). In the Patreon post, I considered multiple body types - like quadrupedal beast etc - but I think just using animal heads might be a better shortcut.



In Atonal Dreams - and the concept for Dreamons described in the Patreon post - psychepelagos were depicted as garishly-coloured islands floating in a void.

One of the issues I'd been struggling with was how the 'real world' areas could look in 'Beliefrayth'. I wanted each elemental area to have a different grass colour, for example, but experiments with colours for the Viscereal area were... unsatisfying, largely because the editor uses a limited palette of colours. I considered adding more colours/shades, though the way everything's set up would make that tricky.



It's been bothering me. Having the areas be supernatural psychepelagos would solve that problem, too, as they could each be a different garish colour without it seeming strange.



I also talked in the last post about having areas be broken into dioramas, which would fade in and out, though such a thing would look jarring for something set in the waking world. It'd be perfect for dream psychepelagos though! There wouldn't even really need to be any consistency with how they joined together if the whole area was effectively a dream (one room could be inside a bedroom, and an adjacent one might be a small island in the middle of the sea). Another problem solved.

(The waking world hub area might not have disappearing dioramas.)



The battle system would be the same as what I already have; I'm happy with it and have no intention of changing it. It's not quite as fitting or funny having these 'belief battles' - where people say 'How was your DAY??' or whatever as if it's some grievous assault - in dreams as it would be as if they were in the 'real world', which I feel is a shame. I'd also be losing the concept of arguing about whether, say, Racism or Sexism or Shrekism or whatever was what you should devote your life to. But challenging internal beliefs is a big part of mental health treatment, and this would be a silly rendition of that.

Regarding challenge and choice - as I've been unsure about those - perhaps you'd be able to enter the six psychepelagos in any order, but you'd have separate stats for each one? So you'd enter them all at level 1, but if you re-entered any of them, you'd be the same level as when you left.

I wonder if that'd be unsatisfying though; I can't think of any games that do such a thing (though I imagine they exist). I also don't know where I'd add a tutorial. Maybe a linear progression with a difficulty curve would be better.



Overall, I feel like a lot of pieces are coming together at last, after months of going around in circles. Hopefully that is the case!! I'm excited about it, at least!

Very interested to hear your thoughts, though, as always.



...While writing this, I got a call from the friend I have who for some reason calls me every week or so, and we talked about counselling. Long story short, I called some alternate counselling service after talking to her, and now I have a phone assessment next Thursday. Gasp. So FINALLY something's happening with that!