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.
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
Playing on a windows gaming laptop with the engine.ini fix … Hardware lumen settings affect crash frequency… if I have it maxed there are some areas that are so “sparkly” the game will gracefully crash with an error send option. Also the nights of the nine bug is still present where you go to all 9 shrines but you only show 8 so you have to find an alternate shrine to complete the quest.
Morrowind was made by a team of about 35 people. Sure they could have put the effort in but then you’ve got all those animations to make and test. How do they tie into stats? Do they look dumb at higher stat levels? Also they’ll use up a little more resources on console which was a big struggle (Morrowind literally had to reboot the Xbox mid game to free up memory).
I played one a few months back that might fit the bill. ‘Garden Life: a Cozy Simulator’ It’s a game where you grow/decorate a garden of flowers and sell/give them to people. Very pleasant.
This was a really awesome read. I appreciate the work you do. This brings me back to some of the older days when k actually enjoyed checking out game journalism. Do let me know if there’s something I could do to support your work :)
You could try Animal Well. Dark yet pastel-oriented colorschemes. Minimal “combat” but more of a puzzle and exploration style of gameplay. More mysterious than scary. Mild peril. Not romantic in the slightest, but very original.
Last night I tried doing the Corruption and Conscience quest in Cheydenhall and got to the very end.
It told me to wait 2 hours before meeting a dude at a tavern. I waited 2 hours and the dude never showed up. Turns out you’re supposed to wait in front of the tavern and not right next to him. Totally bugged, can’t complete it.
I looked it up and used a console command which reset his character and allowed me to finish the quest but at the expense of any and all future achievements (since using a single console command removes steam achievements).
Had to decide if quest completion or achievements were more important to me. Sucks.
You don’t need to use the mod manager, you can manually install it. You are also playing a Bethesda game, you are already playing Russian roulette with stability.
Does NMM even exist anymore? Vortex is the current mod manager - which is somehow worse than I recall NMM being. That said, manual modding until MO2 officially supports Oblivion is what I suggest.
I feel like Lost Records: Bloom & Rage that came out recently might be a candidate? I haven’t played it myself because I don’t think I’m the target audience but it seems like sort of what you’re looking for?
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