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.
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.
When doing the quest in town after the first Oblivion gate, the guards didn’t follow me into the building. Had to look up how to finish the quest to continue.
After that, the PoI marker for bringing Martin back to the monastery was at the wrong location (close to the edge of the map & high up in the sky), so quick travel killed us both. Had to look up where the monastery was to continue.
They’re easy to make, actually, all flags and variables, but it seems like a natural fit for what you want to do. The “princess” is usually pretty limited by the trainer, which can be herself or the dragon in this case. Have the dragon own a library and something she can use for training and the game becomes about your princess getting Prison Jacked while finding ways to communicate with her rescue, with events and endings responding to the training choices.
Making the player feel trapped is relatively easy, just place limits on her actions based on the dragon in various ways.
Can’t train in the morning because you have to serve it breakfast. Can’t go riding or outside or whatever until it trusts you or whatever. Can’t research certain topics in the library unless you find a way to sneak in, etc.
Honestly, even if you want more of a 3d exploration game the limitations should probably be the same vibe. Just have the dragon be a constant voice of “No”
How does the telepathy get fueled? Is there something the princess has to do because she keeps running out? Can the knight progress on her own without her?
If you want to produce the sensation of being trapped you have to use the feeling of power and loss. It stems from the sense of ‘If I could just…’ If I could just get out there, I could defeat that henchman for him. If I could just get out there, I could solve that riddle for him. If I could just escape this box, all would be fixed.
Now, the trick is, because this is a video game, players have a reduced sense of agency. The player’s sense of capacity is ‘what happens when you hit the button.’ Mario, before more modern adaptations, had a capacity to move left and right, jump, run, and ‘use ability.’ The player never had the ability to do anything else, so it never feels like a limitation. No one ever said, ‘playing Mario makes me feel trapped because I could beat Bowser if I could just access the cannon that’s right over there.’
So, to produce the feeling of confinement, one must create the sense of power, and then take it away. Give the player enough power that they could even defeat the dragon, but then take it from them so they feel limited. If you can find a way to make it feel like it’s not even forced, as in they feel like they could have won the game in Act 1, Scene 1, but their lack of skills as a player were what made them lose, all the better.
Would that be your classic ‘meant to lose’ fight, usually against the big bad, which is technically winnable but the vast majority of players will lose and progress the story as planned? The example that comes to mind is Ghost of Tsushima, but it crops up in plenty of games.
It can be that. Never played Ghosts so I don’t know about that one in particular. Some games do other things with it, but that sort of thing is absolutely usable to create that ‘trapped’ feeling.
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