New Version on the Way, and the Importance of Choice

Hello all,

So the first public release is set for Sunday, and I’m currently working on a

new version for the backers with some more content that hopefully should be

with them this week. The plan going forward is to make small, regular updates

until the prologue is finished, and then start to work on adding Events which

will hopefully make the game more replayable as we add more.

In the meantime, I wanted to talk to you a little today about one of the

central design ideas that I am passionate about, to give you some idea of where

the game is headed as development continues. When I wrote the initial design

pitch, there were three keywords that formed the core of what I wanted the game

to be; Quality, Balance, and Choice.

Quality is pretty straightforward, as you might expect. A lot of games on the internet, both in and out of the adult field, made by indie devs do not look, read, or play particularly well. With Kickstarter and Patreon this is thankfully improving, but for everyPrincess Maker, there’s a dozen or so games that use the same RPGMaker assets, generic royalty free music, and poorly written dialogue. I wanted to make something I could be proud of, and I hope that those of you who have played the first release, or even just those of you who have seen the art, can see quality is important to us.

I cannot say a lot about Balance at the moment as we are still in the rudimentary stages of the event system, where it will be the key factor, but we are committed to fine tuning the game through playtesting and player interaction.

Choice, to me, is the most important of the three, and what I would like to talk to you about today. I have always loved the feeling that I got when I felt like I had the freedom to choose in games, from when I was very young playing The Hobbit on an old ZX Spectrum, to when I got a PC in the 90s and played D&D influenced CRPGs, and even recently playing games like Dragon Age, Dark Souls, and The Witcher. I like role playing, and in order to play a role, one has to be able to make choices for that character.

I spent a few months trying to design a combat system for the game, and what

that failure made me realize is that the real strength of a game like this is

not all of the bells and whistles, but simple variable tracking. Seeds of

Chaos, despite all the prettiness, is still a text game at heart. The core of

how its engine works is that it takes in the information given by variables and

then generates content (in the form of Events). Most of these types of games

use stats to do this, but there is also no reason why player choice cannot play

just as large a part. I want the things that the player does to shape the

game, and the world around them.

To that end, I came up with the Three Commandments of Choice:

All Choices should matter – The linear nature of most games means that they have very little in the way of actual choice. There tends to be a couple of big choices made at set stages, the results of which lead to a few different outcomes towards the end of the game. As Seeds of Chaos is less constrained by linearity, there’s more freedom in this area. It can still have the big macro choices, but it can also have micro ones effect the game as well. Not every choice has to be “Who will you put on the throne?”, things like deciding to steal something, what you say about one character to another, or deceiving a stranger should all have small ripples in the game’s world.

Choices should not be easy – Often in  games you will encounter what is colloquially known as a Hobson’s choice, in which something is presented as a choice, but there is only one real outcome. For example, you may be asked to choose to take a strong weapon or leave it, in a situation where there is absolutely no reason not to. The goal with Seeds of Chaos is to make the player think hard about all choices, and to do this, they will have consequences. You could take the sword, for our example now an evil one, knowing its power will come with a negative of equal strength, or you could leave it, and risk someone else discovering it. Nothing about choices should feel arbitrary, the player should always feel invested in their decisions.

Choices should not always be clear cut – One thing I never particularly liked about CRPGs (although the modern ones tend to be better about it) is how the choices always tended to consist of one good choice, one neutral choice, and one evil choice. While this is fine, in small doses, there was never really a sense of the shades of grey that occupy the moral landscape of the real world. In Seeds of Chaos, you will be asked to make choices that are far more ambiguous. For example, you may be asked to choose in a situation where it is unclear what is right and what is wrong, or where each of the possible choices only has a chance of being successful. You may be asked to choose from a selection of outcomes that are all bad. People lie, plans fail, and fate is a hoary old bitch, all of which will factor in the choices the player has to make.

I hope you all enjoyed reading this, and it gave you a better idea of what I’d

like to achieve with the game. We are currently working on the prototype for

the event system, and hopefully in a few months you’ll all be able to start

shaping your own events.