Haha, hilarious concept.
Although I think the majority of players would prefer playing as a human or at least human-like character.
I personally feel that ideas like this are hilarious for the first few hours, then they tend to decline unless you're being constantly bombarded by more absurdness..
*snip*
Perhaps as heraldic icons or special abilities.
Yeah, I think so too. It's hard to stay connected to a character that is non-human, but I believe that certain approaches to the actual character will fix it. The biggest problem, in my opinion obiviously, is that most games (and stories) over emphasise the fact that someone is not a humanoid or are infact a washing machine which results in you (player) think the character is either lesser or not genuine. One just has to establish a style for the character, stay true to it, but not go overboard with forcing the information.
I've recently played Just Cause 2 and Ultima VII (again for millionth time). They're two VERY good examples. Just Cause 2 tells about the characters by forcing certain habits or styles to them. Blackmarket broker and another agent in addition to main character Rico, speaks with heavy american accent, splurs stupid movie quotes and forces one or two spanish words in his lines. Another character, Rico the main character, has forced accent. Unsure what, some latin american I think, but he is not beliveable at all as it's only his accent that's foreign. He has less human in him than washing machine has flesh. The storytelling of the characters is a written fact sheet which they use for every line and acting they do.
Now Ultima VII has very different approach, and very good approach. The main character is from Earth, travelled to semi-medieval fantasy world (set in somewhere else, another planet, time space or something like that) and the story telling leaves A LOT open in the main character's development. You have certain frames set: You're a good guy, avatar of virtues, a fighter skilled in magic, travel with famous companions, everyone knows you for these things. But the game doesn't force a personality to you. Yes, you are avatar of virtues, but you don't hate fish, love rock'n'roll with zebra centaurs (ignoring the intros) and spew random quote lines at everyone. Instead they concentrate on other characters, your companions, citizens in towns, bandits on the road. They refer to world lore here and there, but even that is not forced and only present places where it matters.
Why you (not you, but people in general) get bored to such forced personality characters? If the personality does not match, you feel detached all the way through. Also the more fact sheet the character gets, the more likely you disagree or dislike certain parts of the character and the more you dislike, the less you wish to take his role.
I will definitely refer to things, but I don't think forcing the point through is ever a good thing
A believable story and characters set in a world that just happens to be about washing machines, is the best!
Thanks for the link, I'll definitely use them for something. I forgot about the laundry symbols :D
I saw this earlier. Great graphics. Is the whole thing going to take place on squares? Forgive me if this was mentioned in the thread already - I'll check it later.
There is travel between tiles, definitely. The latest screenshot set there, I traveled south (well, bottom left) from gate tile to just a random road to the village. Of course screenshots are not the best thing to show it with, but I don't want to make proper videos (or more of them anyways) before I have sounds!
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