This seems like it fits more of a management/strategy type vibe to me.
Maybe you hear news of the 10 greatest knights of the realm coming to save you. But you don’t know what they’re great at and you only have a limited amount of instructions to give them.
You could have the first knight leave hints by telling him to leave marks in specific places. But he might be the best at combat and would be best sent against some of the other monsters guarding the path. You just don’t have the information.
But honestly, I’m not sure if that makes a player feel trapped. They have power to change things. Maybe you steadily take away that power? I’m just not sure how.
Makes me think of the special Silent Hill ending where a dog was in a room pulling all the levers.
I imagine this concept as a rogue-like, the princess (player) loots the dragons stash and chooses power ups for each round and the order they apply (like super auto pets or Noita wands), then tosses them out to the approaching knight.
The dragon then sends goons in waves while the knight fights, getting power ups when the princess decides they need it. Essentially a tower defense game too. Or, with more player agency, the knight could also be controlled by the player, but making it a tower defense makes the player feel trapped as needed
Each Knight drops more loot for the dragons stash, increasing the mix of power ups and empowering the next knight even more.
It’s a bloody road of knights until the princess is rescued, then the player can be the next princess. In a different tower, with a different layout and starting stash.
A game where you play Silvia, a potion crafter who has taken over her uncle’s shop on an island full of adventurers. You get to meet many kinds of people, both adventurers and not, and have a chance at romancing pretty much all of them (at once, if you select the polyamory mode). The art style is adorable (please physically release the cards, devs) and the voice acting is so well done.
Monster Prom
Strictly a slice of life / dating sim about trying to get a date for prom. The cast of characters are very cute, as is the art style. It’s also multiplayer if you’re into that.
Emily is Away
I believe this one is free. It’s a nostalgia blast for those of us who grew up with instant messaging like MSN or AIM. It’s been a while since I played, but I remember it being cute and very interesting.
Fantastic story, voice acting and mechanics. It’s such an odd mix of deck building, crafting and VN romance. Yet it delivered on all fronts with a solid character writing that kept surprising me.
Is everyone posting about Oblivion simply new to it? Seems weird to me that everyone’s so excited about it but it’s probably just because I played it to death the last time it came round.
honestly i’m not surprised. now i look at the old graphics my eyes hurt, even though i remember it looking like the remake, my mind’s eye really had to work overtime on that. makes sense that people were put off by the bright textures with both over and under saturates colours and decided to not play it
Maybe the game is figuring out HOW to send him messages and assistance. Like the princess is trapped in a room full of stuff and she has to figure out that she has to grab a tapestry off the wall and charcoal ash from the fireplace so she can write a big message on the tapestry saying ""I'M IN HERE" and then hang it out the window so the knight can find which room she's in.
And another puzzle could be that she has to figure out how to get a key to the knight who is unable to get past a locked gate in a hallway, so the princess has to find the key, and then she has to figure out that she has to tie it to the waist of a guard who walks around the hallways so that the knight can grab the key off the guard.
Another puzzle could be something with figuring out you have to do something with a rat that scurries between areas.
Another could be doing something with a bird that flies somewhere and does something helpful
Another could be using the toilet tube to drop out a map to the knight waiting below (castle toilets were just a hole in the wall)
Another could be freeing a monster from another cell so the monster will kill all the warriors waiting in the hallway before the knights arrival
Another could be talking to the person who delivers her meals to convince/trick him into doing something outside like drawing an arrow on a hallway wall so the knight knows which way he should go
Etc.
And importantly you can have the story lead to her being in different locations so that the game environment can change to keep it fresh. Like as the knight starts to get close to her location the bad guys will move the princess to a more secure cell (with a wink message to the player audience referencing mario "the princess is in another castle"). And the game can actually start with her trapped in a wing of her home castle with her dad (the king) trying to keep her chaste away from interaction with any men. So she can be trapped in multiple different places throughout the game as the player advances through the game
What kind of gameplay do you have in mind? I’m guessing a puzzle-type game (like a room escape), but you could honestly do a number of different things (tower defense? Platformer?).
I think the answer to your original question largely depends on this. Did you have anything else in mind about the experience?
I have in mind a puzzle game. Not a room escape, but more of a code golf-style game. For example, those programming puzzles that say “write a computer program that adds numbers, but you’re not allowed to use the + sign anywhere in your code”.
Not sure if it would be puzzly enough but if the player can wonder the halls or get escorted through them having part of the knight’s efficiency based on how well you mapped out the area you send as a note plus you could try to find info on guard rotations or over hear about other things that could help the knight
That sounds really cool. If the princess’ telepathy instructions are strangely like code because that is how telepathy works in your setting, and this is a nice frame story for a programming puzzle game… all sorts of whacko fantasy analogues and justifications for why you are not allowed to use the equivalent of the addition command. (Maybe the princess knows through her rich royalty education that the only reason her addition command could be not going through to the knight because his trip took him at a place full of this kind of magic rock with properties that somehow block the wavelength… so she has to work around that. Worldbuilding yay!)
A 3D game where you’re locked inside a tower with tiny windows that allow you to see outside just enough to understand what’s happening out there while the knight navigates the fortress/castle. You have multiple forms of influencing what the knight does and what transpires outside (sending letters and packages with items, crafting said items or potions, using magic, commanding assistance from other loyal servants, distracting enemies, unveiling traps and puzzles to aid in the quest). The place can be a tower with multiple floors and as you progress you might gain access to new floors of tools, while also having maybe “putting out fires” elements such as keeping a dragon asleep with music, filling a moat so evil minions cannot cross, sending equipment and maybe even firing/camping enemies like a sniper but with a crossbow or smthn.
You make them feel trapped by limiting what they can see and do. When things go out of sight or cannot communicate effectively with the knight and limits their actions it then forces succinctness to their effect on their own rescue.
This concept could work great with “combat” in the style of A Plague Tale. If you’re not familiar, the main character is a child. She has a few tools available to manipulate enemies and environmental hazards.
It made me think of indirect games like Black & White, Dungeon Keeper, The Settlers or The Sims. You can give orders but you cannot directly control your characters / units. If you limit the amount of orders, add a delay / the possibility for an interception or introduce areas where your orders can’t reach your hero it could do the trick.
I’m only a hobbyist promammer but have probably read too much about game design. So all this advice is theoretical, I’m just quoting. All I have read always suggest that theme must follow gameplay, not the other way around. Suggestions are always to work on gameloops and gameplay elements first. Also, if a game can’t be physically prototyped, it isn’t ready for development yet. This is an odd suggestion unless you have tons of experience with board games, most games we play can be traced to physical simulation. RPG, FPS, puzzle games, management games, even visual novels can all be physically gamed. So I would suggest to do that first to find out which gameplay elements make sense with your desired themes. Iterate a lot, then it will be more intuitive and obvious what works with the theme and what doesn’t.
The actual gameplay is based on combat, paintball, and other simulations whose rules are replicated. Call of Duty doesn’t emulate real combat, it’s a shooting range circuit skinned like real combat. The gamefying elements are usually card based, or attribute based, which comes from euro board games. There are games whose weapon customizations are based on RPGs or card based deck building.
Yeah, armies have weapons simulator that shoot blanks and lasers to train for real world operations. There’s also BB guns. Most FPS studios send their developers to these places so they get experience and inspiration for weapon models and interesting level designs or combat scenarios.
One of my favorite games to play with my SO is Out of Space the vibe is very similar to Overcooked but it’s procedurally generated and a lot more chilled out, i.e. less chaos.
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