I liked this perspective better and the game is looking nice
I could give you many ideas but i really like the simplicity in that and i don't wanna ruin it. Best of luck for you !
I love the way this game looks. I'm glad you settled on a side perspective instead of top down. It makes things easier to read.
Thank you both!
What is the goal of the game? Are we just grinding away at commissions to buy new furniture for our workplace?
There needs to be a drive to want to do this...
Maybe have a competing art studio nearby and you have to better your studio in order to attract more patrons to your place instead of the competition? Are we painting to feed our families? Are we painting for a better life?
I look at a game like Papers, Please and I think that game would be incredibly boring without the drive to better your family's situation. If you are just playing "job simulator" with no end goal or driving force then I'm not sure where the fun would come in.
This is good feedback.
Yes, I've thought of competition. But it would appear in an abstract way. There'd be a ranking of the greatest guilds by prestige. You start at the bottom and have to work your way up. With higher prestige, more important patrons will ask for paintings (for example, the Pope). You might also compete with other guilds to keep your good artists - better guilds might offer them higher pay and you need to match the price.
Families are not involved. You control the guild, not an artist. You're painting to improve your guild. It is true that this leads to a boredom state after you make all the progress you can make - like after you build your dream house in The Sims, that's usually when you get bored and stop playing. My only idea to counter this is to allow the player to make up his own goals. I want to focus on emergent narrative: the player makes his own story, there is no story in the game (like in Crusader Kings 2 - it's a sandbox with interesting things you might want to accomplish). Some elements that should help this are characters and customization.
The characters are the painters. You can hire an apprentice at age 16, poor skills, and groom him into a master at the age of 40. He'll then be the one teaching a new generation of artists for the guild. Characters should have depth also with gender (there were many female renaissance painters) and style. What if you want a guild full of female painters in the chiaroscuro style? You can set that goal for yourself.
I don't think this is a job simulator, more like Game Dev Tycoon. That game had lots of promise but it became pretty boring after a while. Grindy almost. One thing I'd use from that game is letting the player choose painting style / subject and name paintings. It's a lot of fun giving stuff silly names.
I was thinking of random names for paintings this time. I did the whole naming thing in
Avant-Garde and one of the most requested features was random names. Perhaps random names with the ability to change them if you want? The style will be determined by which artists work on a painting. Clashing styles will result in worse paintings. Patrons might also make style requests. If your painting turns out in the style they wanted, they will pay a big bonus. This makes it an interesting choice in guild management: do I have a bunch of artists who all paint in the same style (thus making better paintings), or do I have a few in each style so that I can get the bonuses?
I think the best solution to boredom is challenge. Give the player a problem to solve. One such problem that will be in the game are hurdles that appear while you're painting. They'll be little icons that show up in different parts of the painting and that will require an artist painting in a specific style to overcome, otherwise no progress is made in that part of the painting. More hurdles will appear in more difficult paintings, and you might need to get an artist that is doing something else (like practicing) to solve this problem and allow the painting to be completed.
Thanks for the feedback guys, let me know what you think.
Edit: You mentioned more variation in challenge. I think it could come in form of random bonuses that you might get if you fullfill a patron's request. Like a "Youth" bonus if the painting is made by artists under 30 years old, or another if it's made only by female artists, another if the guild master paints most of the painting (and not his apprentices) and so on. I think this could spice things up, thanks for the suggestion and let me know if you like this idea.
If anyone is interested, this is my
design document/idea dump.
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