[JRPG Idle] Dev Log #7 - Crafting an RPG World
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Hello friends, and welcome back to the Dev Log!
Development on JRPG Idle is progressing well, and we’re nearing the point where all of our core features are represented in-game (even if we haven’t talked about all of them on the Dev Log yet). There are all kinds of cool systems in place, and actions the player can perform to progress their character. We basically have all the tools we need to craft our game!
The problem we now face, is that this functionality doesn’t count for very much without context. It’s cool that the player can mine copper and craft it into a sword, but that sword doesn’t have much value unless the player understands what it does for them in the bigger picture. How does it help them progress? The player needs goals they can work towards, and so it’s time we focus a bit more on the game content.
We can think of content as basically anything that makes up the game space the player operates in - people, places, items, enemies, art, music, and so on. By combining all of these elements, we create an experience the player can navigate, and reasons to interact with the game’s systems.The player has a narrative goal that pushes them forward, a world they can explore, people they can talk to, enemies to overcome, and equipment to do it with, etc.
Where we started: the placeholder map JRPG Idle used to test its core systems.
However, as a solo dev, this is where things start to get complicated for me. When I started JRPG Idle, I had a lot of goals for the gameplay systems and player interactions - but when it comes to narrative and world building, my vision is much less clear. I’m a designer, not a writer!
Of course, these are still important elements of the project, and I’ve planned accordingly. We previously discussed the importance of narrative as an extrinsic motivator, and I opined at great length about the importance of clearly tying the game’s mechanics to its world - I just didn’t yet know what that world would look like!
It can be hard to start from nothing, but as we frequently discuss in this Dev Log, the key to any creative endeavor is iteration. Developers often talk about how a game’s identity becomes clearer over time, and this is the process I’ve been leaning on as well. Without any solid narrative goals, it behooves me to figure out what the game is about before committing to a narrative direction.
That being said, ultimately the player just needs something to do - we have to start somewhere, so let’s just jump in.
A (very) Rough sketch of the basic world layout in JRPG Idle. One region for each primary element.
Luckily, by now we’ve developed a pretty good idea of the overall tone we’re going for: JRPG Idle is a game that leans heavily into classic JRPG tropes, and one such trope (which I’m already pulling a lot from), is the concept of “Crystals”.
Games like Final Fantasy are often set in worlds in which the primary elements (Earth, Fire, Water, and Air) are represented by powerful Crystals. Each Crystal resides in a geographic region that embodies their respective element, and said Crystals are often the main source of conflict in the narrative. It wouldn’t be a JRPG without a hunt for the Crystals, so maybe we can do something similar, too.
If we imagine the player travelling through 4 elementally-themed regions, we can start to envision the locales they might encounter, the residents therein and what kind of problems they might have, and the path the player might take through the area. We can firm up the specifics later - for now we mostly just need to decide on the key plot beats, and the order the player might experience them in.
I previously described how Idle games tend to be shaped like a web, with several overlapping progression paths - well in order to construct that web, our world design will need to reflect that same philosophy. Players will need to be able to access each region from early in the game in order to leverage the mechanics found there. They will also want high level tasks in each region, so that there’s a reason to consistently go back.
A slightly more detailed sketch of our world concept, after making some decisions about what’s in each region.
As we start making decisions about our world, things start to fall into place. Each region now has an element to define its personality, and we can think of each region as being its own branch of the greater narrative. Every branch has its own beginning/middle/end, and the player starts all 4 branches early on in the game, potentially converging afterwards. We also probably want some sort of hub at the center to connect all of the low level content - with higher level content being further away from the hub.
If we think of each region as its own three-act structure, then we can start to understand what we’ll need to realize the experience of each act - at minimum:
1 Town per region works best, systemically
1 Dungeon per act, since you need a boss to beat up
1 Field per act, to travel through on the way to said Dungeon
Of course each region doesn’t need to contain exactly this set of content, but it gives us a good idea of what each area will contain. Now we can start thinking about the terrain itself. We don’t really know where every cave or tower will go, but we can start creating points of interest - and become inspired by the process! Sometimes the terrain inspires a dungeon, and sometimes the dungeon inspires the terrain.
First attempt at drawing our world, using a tilemap.
And this is how we arrive at the Alpha version of JRPG Idle’s world map. Through this process we’ve achieved a deeper understanding of the overall structure of the game, and we’ve learned a lot about the world it's set in.
Of course, there is still a lot of writing looming in the future. Most of these locations are little more than an idea and a name attached to an icon. They exist because there needs to be a dungeon there - we still need to figure out what most of these places are really about, and why the player needs to go there. But now that we’ve laid the groundwork, figuring out one location at a time is much less imposing than creating an entire world. If it doesn’t work out, it’s easy enough to swap a Spooky Cave for a Haunted Mansion.
This, too, will improve with iteration. I could spend an eternity planting pixel trees, but for now we have a solid foundation for building our first “real” locations upon. We can start grayboxing out individual areas, filling them with “real” game content, and begin crafting the player’s adventure across this new world!