Future Plans #25

Alright! Next up is the Future Plans post for this month — another preview for my next project, the xianxia otome/BL game, Fate of the Celestial Mirror, coming right up!

Last time, I was showing off some of the customization settings of the game and highlighted the ADV Textbox vs Speech Bubble mode. Originally, I was going to either reveal the MC sprite or cover the next setting available i.e. display mode of the MC sprite today, but unfortunately, the artist needs more time with the MC sprite, so it's not ready yet.

Instead, I'll jump ahead a bit and show off this one feature of the game that I'm really excited to explore.

Point and Click Map Exploration & Quests

Instead of a more linear flow of scenes automatically happening one after another like a traditional visual novel, this game will have a more non-linear free approach similar to RPGs, using a quests-based + point and click map format.

For example, this is the first map you'll find yourself able to explore in the game after the starting prologue — the Main Peak of the sect you join. Each visitable location will have a label above it, and you can click on it to enter the location.

Now you may be wondering — what are the little icons at the top of some labels? Well, your guess is correct. These icons represent quests available at the location! When you enter the location, if there's a quest scene linked to it, the scene will trigger immediately.

There are three types of quests:

• Main Story Quest — the main storyline that can't be skipped for progression. The quest bubbles are in red.

• Side Story Quest — the side quests which are optional. Generally, they explore some side arcs and side characters of the story and offer more insight into the world. You may also be able to improve relationship with some characters through the side quests. Some consequences of the side quests may carry over and impact the main storyline as well. These bubbles are represented in blue.

• Flavor Conversations — now this isn't really a type of quest, but they are the green speech bubble icons you see on the labels. Basically, they represent opportunities to have more flavor conversations with the love interests that don't necessarily have plot consequences. Sometimes, these conversations may offer some of their insights on the current events in the timeline / main story questline that you wouldn't otherwise know of!

Time Management / Action Points?

You'll probably have noticed the top left corner of the above preview screenshot indicates the Year / Season of the game.

If you're wondering whether there will be time management and actions points / energy restricting how many locations you can visit in a season / year, the answer is... NOT REALLY.

I'll give more details on this later, but basically, visiting a location on the map does not progress time in general. Most of the time, you can go anywhere you like as many times you like. Hell, repeatedly enter and exit your favorite LI's house to stalk him for all I care, I won't judge. 😂

BUT I say "in general", because there are two exceptions where time does matter:

1. The only way time progresses in this game is through progressing a quest i.e. the story.

So for example, let's say you're doing the main questline. The next quest scene is at the Palace, which will be a... I don't know, 3 month long ceremony / banquet or something.

What happens is that when you click to enter the Palace, before triggering the scene, you'll be alerted that continuing with the scene will progress time to Year X Season Y. If there's something else you still want to do before progressing time, you'd be able to back out and return later when you're ready!

2. Some quests are time sensitive.

Sometimes, there will be quests that have a time limit for both picking them up and completing them. So for example, maybe a sect mission is only available for taking in the first year, and it won't be available anymore afterwards.

When you look at the quest in your quest log, it'll usually state on it if there is a deadline for completing the quest. If the quest is not finished by the stated deadline, the quest will be failed and no longer be able to be continued.

So there is a small degree of time management in the sense that you need to not procrastinate too much on certain quests. 😂

I haven't figured out the programming side yet, but the idea is that tying in with the point #1 above, when a quest scene would progress time beyond the deadline of one of your current ongoing quests, it'll have an extra red text in the warning saying something like "YOU HAVE 2 UNCOMPLETED QUESTS THAT WILL EXPIRE AFTER THE TIME PROGRESSION. ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO CONTINUE?" Or something of that sort.

Some finer details are still up in the air right now as I want to wait for feedback from more interested players and alpha testers in the future, but for now, this is the design of this system / game mechanic.

Okay, whew, that ended up being a much longer ramble than I thought. There's still quite a lot I can talk about for this core game mechanic and some really cool previews I want to show you guys in the future, but for now, I guess I'll stop here with just this quick overview.

I hope this is enough to pique your curiosity! 😂 Feel free to comment to let me know your thoughts too on the game design and mechanics of this project!