New Sprite Style
Style Tweaks
Made some more changes to the sprite style to make it a little taller. Decided that 480x270 is a bit much for a solo job so 384x216 will be the target resolution. Probably not going to have internally and externally consistent dimensions anymore. Internally 3 tiles = 1 floor. Externally, I’d like to stick to a 1.5-2 tiles = 1 floor scale to make the kaiju feel tall. It also makes it easier to play around with floor width to make more proportionally design buildings.
The main difference in the two is the depth of the z level that the player is positioned. The bottom is closer to the scale used by Chasm. I think the top has a little too much depth and draws more attention to the fake perspective.
For fun I made a mockup with some outdoor tiles. It’s going to be a lot of work animating the kaiju at the proper scale.
Mechanic: Return To Safe Rooms At End Of Day
I was thinking about Harvest Moon and its daily game loop that requires you to get back to your bed before each sleep cycle. I find it an interesting mechanic the way it adds tension to simple things like travelling or collecting ores. The player is often conscious of where they are and how far they travelled to make sure they get back home before they pass out.
I think this could work well in a survival horror setting. As the character you really wouldn’t want to fall asleep in a strange environment. It’s not secured, there’s food uncertainty. Maybe you run into horrible or dangerous people. It’s a lot less stressful to return to a familiar place, your home, when the rest of the world is falling apart.
Risk .vs. Reward
I think the reason this mechanic works in HM is because of a tension that comes from a balance of risk and reward. The longer you stay out the more ores you collect, crops you can harvest, and people you can visit. You could play it safe and always get to bed at a safe time but that conflicts with the desire to maximise your cash or get that latest upgrade.
in HM, missing your bedtime will penalize you by leaving you with less stamina the next day. You will also wake up later in the day. Having less stamina is more of an economic impact since you might not be able to water all your crops. By waking up later, you might miss a yearly event and having less time in the day means less time for non-farm activities like giving gifts to villagers.
The trick then is coming up with a similar risk/reward structure There are fairly obvious penalties that could be applied but I’m not sure what the motivation is to take the risk. Brainstorming some ideas:
- kaiju has much higher chance of finding and eating you outside of safe rooms, resetting all progress for that day
- you can only sleep in safe rooms, when you’re tired, your movement speed drops, vision drops
- lose items on your person… don’t realy have items, though, except for water :/
- water clock that ends the game if you don’t find water
- negative gameplay consequences are mostly a last resort. It could increase difficulty, but nobody plays something just because it’s difficult.
- as a last resort, there could be plot-driven rewards. People to be rescued before the Kaiju gets to them.