I've been contemplating an ability mechanic I want to try out, but I can't really figure out how it would balance itself out.

Essentially it's a condition that provides the player with a 'progress/status' bar, indicating the severity of the condition. What I wanted to do, was to provide benefits at higher levels but balance them with negative effects. So while at the beginning, the effects are relatively benign and non damaging, the player can worsen/improve the condition to raise their level, and thus gain alternate powers and negative benefits. There is no combat in the game, and health isn't really a HUGE deal (think Amnesia: the Dark Descent). The condition at various stages would basically serve as an alternate means of solving some puzzles, allowing for a secondary solution that can be utilized or outright dismissed according to the player's playstyle.

I've got a few different benefits to try, but because health isn't an issue and there is no combat, what could some of the negative aspects be? Messing with their UI/GUI? At the highest stage of the condition, I've speculated that the player will actually be able to go through certain walls at the cost of health (I know I said health isn't a big issue, but it still exists) but I want there to be some other negative aspect to accompany it since if they are able to figure it out and mitigate the damage taken by going through walls with stock-piled health items, I don't want it to be something that can be abused -- although maybe there is still a way to go around this second negative aspect? The condition itself sort of serves as a puzzle in a way, which is why I don't want it to be picked up and then just abused -- it has to be carefully manipulated. And there is a way to lower the condition, and for it to be raised so they can manipulate the levels if they need to. I just haven't figured out how many stages/levels there should be.

Any thoughts/suggestions? Did I just say all of this and not make a lick of sense?

Here are the positive benefits I've considered so far, in order of lesser to greatest:

- Become neutral to certain enemies
- Short-circuit electronics
- Pass through walls

Negative effects so far
- Cannot operate electronics
- Attract certain enemies
- Takes damage (when passing through walls)
- Messing with the GUI

I don't know how possible it will be to affect their screen because the more I delve into possible effects, we seem to be rather limited.


In Amnesia: the Dark Descent, for example, when the player's sanity is waning, their vision becomes blurred. I'm not sure if that's even something our technology/processor will let us do, unfortunately. It just seems like one of the few things we can do, really. I'd love to make them hallucinate though.

I think you should start with how the statuses are cured. Because that will be the key balancing factor.

- poisoned
- bleeding
- confused
- insane
- afraid
- exhausted
- immobilized
- suffocating
- hungry & thirsty
- sleepy
- invisible
- your shadow being eaten (when your shadow reach 0% you disappear from the human world and become a ghost)
- blind
- mute
- deaf
- burning
- split personality (when it reach above 50% one of your hands starts trying to kill you)
- greedy (at 100% you die out of hunger because you don't want to buy any food and waste it by eating)
- lazy (at 100% you die because you are too lazy to eat)
- overeaten (at 100% you explode)

(chack Angband or other roguelikes, these usually have interesting statuses)

There's only 1 status/condition, let's call it "sickness" and it goes from "mild" to "sever" with maybe 3-4 levels of severity. There is a single medicine you can take to reduce your Sickness level by 1, or maybe 1 half. Contact with certain entities raises your level. My goal is to make each level provide 2 sides of a coin -- to encourage the player to utilize it, but not to depend on it (the abilities, that is).

I remember that one game (someone will probably know the title instantly).
There was no health, but there was a madness factor that interacted in the game in several ways (you could walk on the ceiling sometimes).

What I'm thinking is something like being 'werewolf-esque'.
Your smell and hearing get better and better but you no longer cogitate well.