Yesterday I had a bit of a writer’s block so I did some environment work while newprogrammer was implementing new skills the player. I tested them today and they work alright except for a couple glitches. Noticed we needed a tooltip (sketched that one just a bit ago) and make the window go away after use so players don’t get confused.

Also today I wrote quite a bit inside the game and made whole new conversations that weren’t in the original script. Turns out writing based on the game scenarios is way comfier. Who woulda thunk???

Speaking of game scenarios: It’s something I actually never thought much about until now. In Va11halla I definitely thought of designing the game around “set pieces” like drinking with Dana and whatnot, but when it came to the normal gameplay loop I never had any concrete things I wanted players to do or go through since the goal was to have natural conversations with unchallenging gameplay in the middle. Some people loved, some hated it but that’s how it ended up.

With this one I’ve found myself coming up with scenarios first, then write around them. I now think in terms of “What do I want players to do?” which is interesting and makes me wonder in which ways N1rvanna will be benefitted from such mindset.

Things like this make me realize I’m essentially learning how to make games again, just from the genre shift.

Food for thought.