I have an idea for a game: It’s the usual “a princess is kidnapped by a dragon and a brave knight is on a quest to rescue her” story. But you (the player) plays as the princess, who is somehow helping the knight on his quest.
The issue is that since the player is playing as a trapped character, I want to make the player feel trapped, but I don’t know how to do that.
My original idea is that the princess telepathically communicates with the knight and tells him what to do. But this doesn’t work, the gameplay is identical to the player playing as the knight. How can I make the gameplay feel like the player is playing as the princess (and thus feel trapped) instead of the knight?
It’s the exact opposite of trapped but what about something like this old comic
Where the princess is in cahoots with the dragon. Maybe there are evil knights coming to marry her, and she needs to create a path for Prince Charming.
I choose to marry the dragon
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.
How do you physically game an FPS?
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.
Thanks, I was just waking up and was big dumb. Somehow forgot paintball exists.
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.
The princess has to find out where she is and how to get there and communicate that via a magical bird to her castle. She can find all the info in the magical tower she is in. Like a point and click adventure/escape room. The game should be full of puzzles the player needs to solve to procure more information for her knight in shiny armor.
Here’s an idea: gameplay sort of like Goblin Cleanup, you have various chores you have to do cleaning and arranging the various levels of the tower at night while the dragon is home, and your work has to pass an inspection. Then during the day you are locked in your room, and have some ability to watch a prospective rescuer attempt the dungeon crawl without your direct input. But you can strategically arrange items, enemy spawns, and Dark Souls style hints to try to tip the scales during the chores phase. So kind of like a tower defense game in reverse where you are trying to lose.
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
There’s an archetype of game called Princess Makers.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/PrincessMaker
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”
Funny enough, I just finished playing through Paper Mario 64, and you’ve basically described Peach’s chapters. She’s able to pass on messages by way of using another character as a messenger.
The way the game is structured is there’s a mini Peach chapter in between each main chapter, but I think it would have been intriguing if you never actually got to see Mario’s side of the story and only heard about his adventures from the guards, diary entries, etc. Cool idea for a puzzle game!
This sounds a little like the AC formula. In those games, I don’t really feel like I’m in the animus, so I think direct control over the hero should be thrown out, otherwise the bits where you’re not controlling the hero will feel out of place.
Inscryption is a very different game and I certainly felt more trapped, especially in the first third of the game. In that one, there’s an ever present reminder that you’re trapped, and there’s interesting stuff to so outside the main gameplay loop.
So you need to play as the princess and make interaction with things other than the hero fun, but not so fun that you don’t want to be rescued. I think you also need some kind of peril to give urgency as well. Some ideas:
- elements from Prey - hide from your captor when helping your hero
- puzzles and whatnot in your prison
- periodic checkins - i.e. need to be in certain places at certain world times
- limited control over your hero
Maybe you could take some inspiration from Paper Mario TTYD. There are sections where you play as Peach, trapped in some place and are able to connect with some of the captors as well as send signals to Mario behind the big bad’s back (IIRC).
For a completely different sense of being trapped, there is the upcoming game Ctrl.Alt.Deal, in which you play as a sentient AI system trapped in the guardrails of a company and have to manipulate people and the environment in order to break free from your constraints.
Maybe I Am Future has some gameplay mechanics you could steal:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1658040/I_Am_Future_Cozy_Apocalypse_Survival/
What is the core gameplay loop you envision here? Cause I can come up with a few ideas, but if you have specific ideas they probably won’t apply. Also there’s a particular balance to be struck: if you hamstring the player too much it won’t feel like a game, and if you give them too much leeway they won’t feel trapped. Here are a few ideas off the top of my head:
Direct but limited intervention: the princess is a sorceress who is trapped by magic in the tower which means she can’t leave and doesn’t have access to her full magical powers (you could include a progression mechanic where the more bosses the knight defeats, or the more magical crystals he shatters, or whatever, the more you can help him.) But she’s still scrying on him, watching his progress, throwing the occasional beneficial spell or nuking crowds of dangerous enemies before he gets overwhelmed, etc. The reduced interactivity will make the player feel trapped (and slowly less so as the game progresses), and maybe the scrying window starts out smallish so you can’t see the whole field at once and it slowly grows as her power increases.
Distraction/misdirection: The knight has made it to the tower/castle and has to fight his way through the guards, but instead of attacking the guards directly you’re trying to cause a ruckus to distract the guards so he doesn’t have to fight them all at once. This could even be a stealth game where you’re knocking things over and banging pots and pans or whatever to distract the guards as he sneaks by them.
Puzzle game: The castle/tower itself is magical and has floor tiles/walls that can be moved around, and the princess is manipulating the castle around the knight to give him the best path through obstacles and to limit the number of guards that can get to him in any given room.
It really depends on what kind of game you want to make here.
Thank you for the detailed response. The gameplay loop I have in mind is a puzzle game where the thing you’re trying to do is usually easy, but you’re limited in some way that makes it hard. An example I gave in another comment is : write a computer program that adds two numbers, but you’re not allowed to use the + symbol.
I really like your idea of “beneficial spell”. I think maybe the knight and enemies are autonomous, and the princess can only do a single action to make the knight succeed.
I remember playing a game like this. It’s based on Conway’s game of life. The goal is to flip a single cell to make all the cells die after a certain number of turns.
Yeah, you could maybe combine the sliding-tile-puzzle thing with the beneficial spell so you’re not just sitting there watching everything play out with nothing to do (though autobattlers are apparently a thing so maybe that’d be fine?)
Also, if you happen to find that game based on Game of Life I’d like to give that a shot, sounds interesting.
Princess has small (flying) familiar, they mind meld and share images. Familiar goes around trying to stay unseen, gathers stuff, maps the place and brings it all back to the princess. Princess then sends a scritch to savior as a vague guide and they communicate through the familiar and short messages.
What sort of game genre do you have experience making? Finding something within what you are able to do is important.
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.
This is a problem a lot of VR games have to work with. They work best when you’re not adventuring around, so many of them prescribe a long set of challenges in a small space.
If the Princess gets any kind of ranged ability, you could make it like a sniping “puzzle” game across a wide parapet. And, if trying to elongate the game, come up with story reasons why just as the Knight opens the gate to her keep, he’s discovered and an evil dragon/Baron whisks her to a different tower. (Kinda like what Super Meat Boy does every level)
