Game
Petrichor
9 months ago

Q: So why the change?

A: Song of the Stars' concept would've only worked in a game that was larger than the one I was willing to make. If I'd continued how I was, the game would have suffered.

Long version: (In article)


Song of the Stars' concept was too big for its own good.

Given the core idea about helping others with empathy, all the characters you encounter would've needed to have a lot of screen time to show their flaws and begin to relate to them.

In turn, that demands a larger overworld so they can HAVE that screen time, as well as giving the player time to breathe in between each scene.

The overworld I ended up making was nowhere near big enough to support this, so everything started feeling rushed in the game's story. I could've theoretically made a larger overworld, but that would make the workload of developing the game impossible for me to overcome.

One difference with the new concept is that the overworld will be a lot simpler, with big dynamic backgrounds that span many rooms. This makes it easier to construct lots of rooms without having to populate it with tons of objects -- giving the time needed for the player to breathe.

Importantly, the spaceship setting that Song of the Stars put forth demanded a lot of objects to interact with, which caused all the problems I stated above.

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