Interactivity, Choices, and "Focus" Actions

In a few days I'll be providing my November progress update, but in the meantime I wanted to talk a bit about how player choices and actions will be implemented. Standard disclaimer that this is a work-in-progress and that things could change.

Note that the choices and actions in this post are not actually in the game. I put this together as an example, and did not want to spoil the actual choices in v0.04.

In writing this, I started to get on a long tangent about what I find unappealing about how choices are presented in most games of the genre, but it was too long-winded and unstructured. Hopefully by explaining what I'm implementing, it will achieve the same purpose of explaining why I think my approach will be more intuitive to play.

Image #1: Interactions

In this image, we see the workout room from v0.02. There are four icons on the screen signifying areas of the room that the character can interact with: The door, the treadmill, the yoga mat, and the weight bench.

The icon over the weight bench has a "!" symbol. This represents the path that continues the story. What this means is that you, the player, are free to interact with everything else in the room before moving forward. There's no risk that clicking on the door will make it so you can't interact with the treadmill, because you know you'll be coming back to this screen.

Some screens may have more than one "!" icon. This means that there are that many ways to proceed with the story, and this indicates to you, the player, that there is a mutually exclusive choice to make. This is where "Big Choices" would happen. You won't have to guess where these mutually exclusive choices occur; the game will mark them clearly.

Image #2: Choices

This image shows what happens when clicking on the door icon from Image #1. Jenny is presented with two options: She can try to open the door, or she can back away to the previous screen. Let's have her try to open the door...

Image #3: Choices (continued)

Here, we find out the door is locked. The top choice is now greyed out, giving us some information about the scene. The bottom option to return to the previous screen remains.

A new choice has popped up to "♥ Shimmy the lock open". The "♥" is to let the player know that this choice is going to lead to a "Focus Action":

Image #4: "Focus" Actions

Like Jenny's daydreams, this is a puzzle (also disabled in story mode), but it is a mini-puzzle that can generally be completed in under thirty seconds. This represents a shorter version of Jenny focusing her attention on something, as she does with her daydreaming.

While this doesn't lead to long bonus scenes, it will often lead to one or two new renders, additional dialogue, and occasionally it triggers a "Little Choice" in the story. In most cases, the choices made through Focus Actions are minor ones, and will typically just lead to changes in dialogue between characters and not full-blown branching paths.

Some examples of what a Focus Action might do:

— Lead to a longer dialogue where a character opens up more to Jenny

— Makes it so a character talks dirtier than usual in an erotic scene

— Jenny might open a door to discover that two characters are secretly kissing. They don't see her, and she closes the door quietly. She might reflect on this later, and it could change some of her internal thoughts about them.

The point is that these are minor choices that could change the quality of the story, but there's no fear of missing any of them in particular, because they don't affect the overall narrative.

Image #5: Continuing the Story

Finally, this is the choice screen that appears when pressing the "!" icon in the first image. There may be some additional choices here, and the opportunity to go back remains, but there is a clearly marked choice that ends the choice loop: "[!] Look in the mirror". This continues the story onwards. And again, multiple "!" options signify a "Big Choice" to make.

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So there's how I plan to offer choices and interactivity, with a final reminder that this is not final. I'm open to feedback, of course, but I think this is a good middle ground that gives choices while not obscuring the effects of those selections.

Let me know what you think!