eat your own food

It’s interesting how one can have strong opinions, talk and think a lot about something, and not apply it to their own creations.

Yesterday, I was playing Dance of the Spirits a bit, the game we’re working on, and I noticed that no matter what you did during the game, the final dialogue was always very similar and didn’t have much connection with what was happening before.

So, I added a small system:

Fede, the last character you talk to, is on the stage playing the harp throughout the game while you talk to the rest of the ghosts at the dance.

I decided to randomly integrate Fede into this situation.

Every time you go to talk to a character, there’s a chance that Fede is watching you. There’s also a chance that the game will notify you of this.

If Fede is watching you, he’s going to “pay attention” to your conversation, and if you empathize with characters he doesn’t get along with, it will lower your reputation with him.

The opposite will happen if he sees you talking with the characters he gets along with.

Abril, your character, can use this to their advantage…

At the end of the game, depending on the reputation you have with him, and what you have found out, you will have certain options and certain reactions from Fede, enabling different endings of the game.

I thought it would be interesting to tell you this so you can see how a single decision integrates several things I’ve been talking about:

Randomness
Reaction to state
Designing around narrative needs

What do you think of this example? Any suggestions on how to improve it?