This week has really been something of a dichotomy in how its influenced my belief that we can actually pull off this project. For one thing, it’s exhilarating to finally be able to focus all of my time on the project that I actually care about, rather than splitting my time between three barely functional prototypes. We’ve made some startling progress, especially considering some of the fast and harsh changes we’ve made from the original conception of what we thought the game would be.

First off, we got rid of the gun. We realized that the gun was going to make players judge the game as a shooter above all else, meaning regardless of how innovative or emergent we made the choices in the game, players would think of it, and play it, like a shooter. The power that we’ve settled on as a replacement is temporarily dubbed “projection”, and involves throwing out a spectral version of your mask that you can redirect mid-flight. It’s obviously a very offensive power, which is good, because it replaces the gun in our selection of powers, but plays very differently in combat. A player would be able to redirect it through one enemy multiple times, or tell it to bounce between multiple enemies in a larger scale fight.

I’ve also spent a bit of time this week concepting the design language for the different powers. The symbols that represent them need to be present in the world for the player to discover them, and they need to be visually distinct, easily recognizable for what they pertain to, but also able to blend and merge together so their designs can be blended on the surface of the mask.

The plan is to hand these off to Mike and let him see if he can blend these into something that actually looks good on the surface of the mask. I’m not really a person with a strong artistic sense, but it becomes a much easier process for me when I can link it to the actual game design, which I almost always can. These aren’t just visuals, they’re the way that the player can tell what a new symbol they’ve acquired does instantly. It’s how the player identifies which power they’ve chosen to focus on when they glance at their mask, as that series of symbols will be covering its surface area. It’a part of that elusive part of the design that people so often fail to think about: making the world make sense. Fortunately, that’s why I’m so excited to use this project as an excuse to put my narrative design skills to the test.

On a related note, I had a fascinating experience that led me to what I think will probably be the final background narrative for the game. I played a game of Magic: The Gathering with friends last night, which ended up being one of the most fascinating exercises in politics that I’ve ever taken part in. We played with a couple of rules variants, but the gist is that every player had a hidden role and objective, excepting the king, who reveals themselves at the game start. The king ended up being usurped, I pretended to be both kings’s loyal servant by stabbing my teammate in the back, the new king began killing off the other players to survive, and I assassinated the king for the game.

In our game, I think it would be very compelling to adapt a version of that where the inventor, our main antagonist, played the part that I played, siding with whoever is letting them build their masks how they choose, and backstabbing wherever they see fit, especially after their latest partner (the usurper king in our game) questionably eliminating other members of the company. We’re always encouraged to look to real life for our design inspirations, but I’ve never seen something this direct. That said, this is narrative, so not all of the details I’ve come up with will actually be in the game, it’s just important for us to establish the details so the situation seems real.

In laying out the project plan this week, it has become apparent that we’ve (obviously) got a scope problem. Our project plan as it stands leaves us very little time for polish if we want to get all of our main systems in the game and working. That said, our gun replacement power was done almost the day after we came up with it. At that rate, I’m very confident we can get at least enough done to showcase the essential qualities of the game. The hardest part is likely going to be enemies and their behaviors, and we’ll start looking into how to simplify those next week.