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TIGSource ForumsDeveloperPlaytestingMerchant of Windvale - Fantasy shop sim rpg with social links, many activities
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Author Topic: Merchant of Windvale - Fantasy shop sim rpg with social links, many activities  (Read 447 times)
Tobius the Grand
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« on: September 20, 2020, 06:29:27 AM »

Merchant of Windvale is in the earliest prototyping stages, I have made this as quickly as I could to get my ideas out there and see what sticks and what doesn't. I am looking for feedback on what aspects of this game are most interesting and which areas I should focus on next to get more feedback.

Download (New Link): https://tobiusthegrand.itch.io/merchant-of-windvale-prototype

Extract the zip and run "Shope Game.exe". The game sort of "ends" after Vin gives you the rest of the day off. You can keep playing but there isn't any more really "designed" from that point on.

Summary
In Merchant of Windvale you play an assistant to Vin, the owner of the general store in Windvale. Sell items from your shop, meet new people, and hone your skills doing various tasks. Make friends who will help you and introduce you to new professions. Spend time doing the activities you enjoy most, while your assistants cover your other responsibilities. Make tough choices and delve deep into character stories that you shape with your words and actions.

Note: None of the assets are final or owned by me, they are pictures I found online.


The end goal of this game is to focus very heavily on developing interesting and deep characters for players to interact with. My vision is something like the social links feature of Persona games, or the social feature of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, but with much deeper / rich character stories.

My idea here is to have the player gain frienship / experience with the different characters they interact with. When interacting with them there will be different attributes associated with different dialog choices. The more a player selects a particular attribute the more experience they will gain when selecting that attribute in the future. The player must balance being true to themselves against the person they're interacting with, and the situation they're in.

The feature described above isn't yet fully implemented, and the writing in the prototype has has 0 thought in it yet, but that's the idea.


https://i.imgur.com/1hV9KX4.gif
Everything you do in the game comes back to the shop you run. I am envisioning a Recettear-esk shop management system, but I may come up with something more novel. You will go out and do various activities, interacting with different characters but will always return back to the shop to eventually sell the output of those activities. While the characters are going to be the driving force for the game, the shop will be the core anchor of the game loop.


Each activity will have a little bit different of a gameplay element, sort of like a minigame, but ideally not so obviously "minigamey". Just enough variety to keep the players interested and not feel like they're just doing the same actions over and over.

Eventually certain characters will come to help you, or even unlock new activities, or change or expand and existing activity.


https://i.imgur.com/P44S2wa.gif
As a board game designer I took a stab at creating a battle system. This was just a spur of the moment idea I was able to code quickly, but I kind of like it. The vision here is that different characters / items will provide different actions in your pool. The actions themselves getting more involved with things like armor, armor piercing, lifesteal, different elemental effects, etc. I wanted it feel somewhere in between a digital card game and a traditional turn base RPG system.


This is my first time doing anything like this, so if there are other details I can provide please let me know! Looking forward to your feedback!
« Last Edit: September 22, 2020, 06:46:46 PM by Tobius the Grand » Logged

Try My Prototype - Merchant of Windvale

Fantasy shop sim rpg with social links, many activities
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