kitsch [active at chitter.xyz] @kitsch@witches.town

have you ever just wanted to reach out your tentacles and pull someone into your lair? you know what i mean?

holy hell i bed to go to need

maybe to a degree it's an subconscious association. loud, casual, energetic, and making myself at home, etc. are things i'd often associate with Rhea.

the thing is, i'm pretty sure that it's still, to some degree, forced. an act.
or... being aware of a choice of phrasing, accepting it, having fun with it?

it feels nice to do.

except for the bit that feels bad when i... realize i'm acting, overdoing it(?) (compared to what would've come naturally had i not become aware of it?).

the squealiest train i've ever known

squealy train

apparently this evening is one of various small aches

though, they'd have more choice in it, after a point. the bear's motives aren't clear, maybe he just prefer not settling down. the duo might have a home, but go wandering anyway just to see what's out there. i dunno. probably won't ever get around to manifesting any of this.

on even more of a tangent, i realized my semi-characters, the picayune bear and toothpaste duo, are very... wanderers. i'd imagined the duo as looking for somewhere safe to settle down. and the bear as indefinitely passing through and moving on.

i mean, those are mostly kind of negative feelings, now that i look at them. i guess that reflects my attitude towards life <<
but i'd like to convey optimistic feelings too. finding a new home. meeting friendly people. travelling through strange and pretty locations. i uh. yeah

but like... all in a low-key, low-energy, maybe calming sort of way, i guess

not that i ever end up doing much, but...
i'd love to make games with environments (and the protagonist's place in them) that might cause the player to feel a bit lonely, or pensive, or unsteady, or faintly threatened, or so on... idk

thinkings for this are... "what kind of design would elicit the feeling that seemed to accompany the game in the dream."
secondarily, "what would be fun to play" is filling in the design gaps

hm... i guess it could be interesting to have lots of short-term resources, and have them constantly being used up.
it'd be sort of another depleting meter, but a less strict one.
but it'd probably correlate with lazy enemy/level design (unavoidable damage), and progression wouldn't feel very good.

how much focus should enemies take up vs. how much focus should area traversal take up? should it be possible to dodge past most enemy groups? (maybe enemies left undefeated become more powerful on the way back out?)

can there be anything to engage with besides hurrying to the goal and fighting enemies?

one thing that comes to mind is that 90's dos platformer shooters have resources that are mostly used in the short term. like, the main gun doesn't upgrade much, and superweapons have small ammo capacity.
if i want players to seek out loot, it needs to have long-term significance. otherwise it isn't worth the risk of trying to get anything.

... i'm not sure how powerful a player character should generally be compared to most enemies. or what the enemy density should be.
having a harsh timer ALONG WITH enemies taking time to deal with would just be unpleasant.
i guess that's something to experiment with.

what i'm imagining:
you get a couple missions to choose from, with indicators of difficulty/reward value.

as soon as you enter a mission, the timer starts. you have to be back at the entrance (teleporter? escape pod?) before it runs out.

each mission has three objectives:
1. progress the story, in various ways.
2. recover battery power.
3. find items & loot.
each objective is optional. you can enter the mission & immediately exit again if you want.

exiting rerolls the mission selection.
BUT: every time you exit a mission, your battery depletes. running out is a total failure.
maybe the difficulty increases each time too?

it's probably because i've been looking at, uh, roguelikelikes more recently, that my mindset is that there'd need to be some randomness and a total loss state, and some choice about how exactly to progress.

there's not really any reason that the dream-pieces couldn't work in a hand-crafted linear set of levels,
and maybe a lighter punishment for failure, though that'd sort of reduce the franticness of it.
it'd have less replay value, i think? but it's not like i expect a lot of players or playtime for anything i'd make.

i feel like, if i were to try to make something out of these pieces, there'd need to be some randomness to the levels. i've never felt ready to approach random generation, but maybe it'd be enough to just change around where the goal is located, and the enemy placement.

i feel that the timer would need to be the biggest threat on a player's mind. as soon as you enter the level, the timer starts, and you have to be back to the entrance before it runs out, or else... the entire campaign ends?
maybe dying via running out of health would have a smaller but still major punishment. like "just" removing a ton of your resources and items.

i think maybe it wasn't for the fate of the world, but for the fate of the protagonist. that sounds more like the kind of dream design i'd have <<

it was like a mix of wario land 4 level design, early 90's dos sidescroller shooters mobility and weapons, and i think there was somehow some kind of collect-em-all aspect. the whole thing had an air of tensely racing the clock, probably for the fate of the world