[JRPG Idle] Dev Log #4 - Exploration Station
/Hello friends, and welcome back to the Dev Log.
Up until now, our main focus has been on getting a basic version of the gameplay loop up and running. Currently most of our mechanics are represented by a simple progress bar, but for the time being, this is sufficient to determine that our game’s structure works.
Now comes the fun part: now, we can begin replacing those basic progress bars with more engaging mechanics! Hooray!
If we take a look at the design pillars we established previously, I think there’s one that pretty clearly stands out as having more structural implications than the others. Arguably, it’s also the mechanic most under-served by our current prototype - and that is:
“The feeling of progressing through, and exploring a lived-in world”
In the first prototype, “Exploration” basically amounts to unlocking progressively harder content as the player levels up.
On one hand, it feels pretty clear why this is an important goal - the whole RPG genre is built upon the fantasy of exploring vibrant worlds. One of the fundamental elements of storytelling is setting, after all.
I think it’s really powerful when game elements feel like they belong in a specific place. Rather than just clicking the “Get Copper” button, it’s much more engaging when the player can contextualise where that Copper lives, and how it relates to the world around them. If a player knows “Copper comes from the first field”, this is not only a form of passive world building, it also helps them build associations and learn the game’s patterns. In an Idle game, the biggest skill being challenged is typically game knowledge, and so we want to invite the player to increase said knowledge as they progress.
But on the other hand, These gains don’t come for free. Trying to smoosh a big RPG world into a little Idle game introduces complications for sure.
Creating a whole game world is a big commitment that could easily explode the project’s scope. Beyond that though, it also doesn’t really match the game’s vibe. The whole point of an Idle game is that they don’t ask the player for very much input, and so It’s not really appropriate for exploration to be a demanding or time-consuming activity in what is otherwise a very simple point-and-click type of game.
Our first shot at making a World Map for JRPG Idle. Eventually we’ll make a nice map with a tile engine, but for now we draw squares in the Godot editor.
So If we don’t want to commit to a fully explorable game world, then the next best way to hit our Exploration goals is probably through using clickable area maps. This still requires us to create a bunch of area assets, but setting up a single non-interactive scene per area is a pretty reasonable compromise.
With this approach, player’s can still get the feeling of seeking out specific things in the world, progressing through an area, and discovering new locations. This method still does the job of tying things to a location in the world, while also being a great way of visually showing progress through the game.
Now, if we think about the type of things we want the player to be able to do in JRPG Idle, we can start to get a picture of the kind of areas we would need, and what should be in them:
Towns
Shops
Crafting / Harvesting points
Quests / story progression
Fields
Fight enemies to progress through to next area (unlocks new map region)
Monster lairs (high chance of finding a specific enemy)
Harvesting points
Dungeons
Fight enemies to progress through the dungeon
Branching paths, treasure chests, locked doors
Boss events / story progression
A field area the player can progress through. As they advance they can unlock other content, like Harvesting points and Monster Lairs.
With that all spelled out, we can begin to understand the structure of how the player progresses through the game and unlocks new content. It feels very cohesive for the player to, for example, unlock a new Harvesting point by directly discovering it in the field. However the next question then becomes, how much of a pain is it to navigate all the way back to this point every time they want some Copper? Did we just make navigating our game really annoying?
As much as there is value in going to the physical location, I think it quickly becomes tiresome after the first time. Harvesting is its own mechanic that has its own menu, and that’s where Harvesting should happen. The map location is great as a shortcut, but we don’t really want the player to use it every time. We still want the player to think about the in-world location though, so that we can sell the fantasy that this is where the action is taking place.
I think an important part of achieving this feeling will be by forcing the player to go to the in-world location to unlock the Harvesting point. Even if the Harvesting screen points the player to the location, the unlock fanfare should happen in-world to cement the player’s association between the material and where it comes from.
The Harvesting menu is setup so that the player can easily compare different elements. A list is easier for the player, but we still want to evoke the in-world location.
We’ll continue to look for ways to increase the connection between gameplay elements and their in-world location as we go, but this will serve for now. It’s beginning to become clear the kind of things that will be in our game, and how the player will move around it. We’re kind of trying to mesh together two different systems here, but so far we’ve been pretty successful at adding context to our game world without having any significant impact on the player’s experience of navigating around it.
Now that we’ve begun to answer the “how” of moving around the game world, we can begin to think about the “why”. What pushes a player to explore an area to begin with? How does the game push objectives onto the player? How does the player come up with and pursue their own objectives? We can begin to see an inkling of an answer in the way we think about Towns and Dungeons, but - that’s enough Dev Logging for one day.
Thanks for reading 🙂