I wrote a kickstarter update a few days ago that got a response I kinda knew it would. In the post, I wrote the following:

“Right now, the entire open world is traversable, and you can enter all the different shops and buildings. There’s a notoriety system in place that functions kinda like a cross between GTA’s star ratings and pokemon’s random battles. Basically, the higher your notoriety, the higher your chance of being attacked by bounty hunters. It’s pretty fun.

You can buy protection from mercenaries, or even drive up your notoriety so high that your rating just says “Pablo Escobar”, and you become immune to any law enforcement.

This has actually become a way bigger part of the game than I thought it would, since it’s kind of a cool badge of honor to drive up your notoriety. Also, when you’re attacked by a bounty hunter, the chase scene that plays out it pretty fun. I won’t go into details here, you know, spoilers.”

Before I get ahead of myself, I just want to show you a comment that the post got:

I re-read my own post and realized that, yeah, I was saying “play this obligatory mission that pops up randomly”. It just bugged me for ages, because I was playing through the game, and getting these random encounters and I didn’t find it frustrating or annoying. Why? Was I just super infatuated with my own work? Am I that much of a narcissist? So I ran it by some people and asked them if I was crazy.

The consensus was that, no, I’m not crazy, but I’m shit at explaining the systems and design of the more abrasive parts of my game.

Let’s try to do that then.

In Desert Child, you can take jobs from people around the city. These all have a reward (usually money), and they also have certain penalties.

Most jobs just have the inherent penalty of taking an in-game day to complete, and maybe the damage that you’ll take completing it. No biggie.

There are some jobs, however, that have big rewards, but big penalties. These are clear from the start that they are offered on the wrong side of the law, and it’s up to the player to decide that they want to take them.

Illegal jobs feed into the game’s Notoriety system. This ranks the players wanted level in 4 stages:

1 - Kenny G
2 - Beastie Boys
3 - ODB
4 - Biggie

If your Notoriety is any higher than Kenny G, then you have a chance of getting into a random encounter each time you move into a new part of the city.

The idea behind this is that it naturally balances the types of jobs the player will want to take, instead of me having to arbitrarily balance out your playtime.

So taking illegal jobs will raise your notoriety, and increase your chance of random encounters. This chance caps at 40%, so even at full Notoriety, you’re still at an advantage, and I guess this is where I was having fun. There’s a back-and-forth of seeing how high you can get your Notoriety and get away with it. To me, at least, there’s something gleefully fun about that.

It’s like winning at the casino, and betting it all again.

If you want to make big money, real fast by doing illegal jobs, go ahead, but that’s a huge risk. You’d better have a good exit strategy. (or just put you money into some secure investments…)

There’s other things that can tie into this system, too. Occasionally, you can find unattended hoverbikes around the city. If you choose to, you can steal parts from them. This has a percentage of success equal to your Notoriety, so hoverbike thieves will have to cool it from time to time, or risk getting done by the cops.

Oh, and there’s actually a 5th level of Notoriety. If you max it out, your rank will go up to:

5 - Pablo Escobar

At this level, you’ll actually be totally immune from any random encounters as long as you keep your Notoriety up. I got this idea from a Colombian friend of mine who told me about the photo of Pablo Escobar outside the White House, right when he was literally the most wanted man in the world by the USA.

Of course, this is a super hard achievement, but c’mon, it’s pretty cool. Just look at how many shits that guy does not give.

The whole system is my attempt to translate GTA’s wanted star levels into an RPG sytsem. I think it works.

Also, I hope it doesn’t seem like I’m calling out the commenter who said that. He actually had a follow up comment saying he was just kidding. But honestly, that’s why I why I write these devlogs, and kinda why I did a kickstarter, I want to get people’s responses to the game so I can make it better.

Yeah, in this case I’m not actually changing the game, but I’ll definitely make sure to explain the Notoriety system EXTREMELY clearly to players.

So thanks, man.