Hello. I was designing a new game just for fun and I got a bit stuck when looking at the mechanics involved.

I am writing it as a text adventure in javascript. I have most of the basics done, but to continue I need to straight out and define some mechanics.

The theme of the game is you're a scientist gone rogue in a futuristic lab, working undercover on your own after the lab has been closed on a dangerous project involving mutant cats.

The main mechanic I wanted to include in the game (and this is already coded in a fairly solid way) is the cat breeding you do (via machines) to get new species of cats with different traits. This includes from normal cats to ridiculous fantasy cats that are barely cats 8but I still call them cats because I find it fun that way).

So you can make hybrids and get new ones that way or you can risk it and edit the genetic code manually aminoacid by aminoacid (or with shortcuts like full gene swapping, etc), but you risk messing up and creating a horrible mutant though data corruption (like if you type in an extra aminoacid).

The objective of the game is, in theory, to discover a kind of cat that was supposed to be very powerful in some way, but also was the cause for the oppressive government to close the lab. Effectively, though, no player will reach that discovery, because bad things will happen. You could look at it like a roguelike. You play with the hope that you will get the amulet of Yendor, but you will most likely fail in the way, and that's still fun.

The problem, though, is that the main mechanic of the game, breeding clonic cats until you get something new, is pretty dull on itself, even with whatever help you get from the game in the form of tools or data.

I would like to ask of you what would you consider could be a good way of improving the fun while dealing with this mechanic as a central point.

If you have questions about the game, I'll gladly take them, since it's the best way I find to improve. Questions will make me think about the things I wouldn't have thought by myself.

Thanks.

Thanks, sunandshadow! I haven't played those, but I'm surely going to. I will read that tutorial. Sounds like a good refresher.

I didn't plan on having a specific purpose for the creatures, since they're the purpose in itself, but I guess I will consider it for the sake of fun. If anything, i's a good starting point. =3

Ah, right. That makes more sense. Treating it like a board game instead of a role play is a perspective I hadn't considered, who knows why. I love board games.

I feel much better about this now. =)

But I'll have to work a bit on it before I can show anything. =/

In the meantime, I wouldn't mind some ideas about what could some of this mechanics be represented by. For example, I had an idea to have a market where the player could buy new specimens at the cost of a resource and the risk of a penalty for the higher tiers. However, I'm not sure it makes much sense thematically. What could be a differen way of introducing new resources for the player to utilize while restricting it so it's not a make money - get resources - make more money loop?

Actually, yeah, that was the direction I was going, Thaumaturge. =D

I think I forgot to mention the story is that kind of gritty cyberpunk where you're never sure what option is worse. =P

Right now I have a set limit of 5 cats you can have jailed. While jailed they'd be mostly safe (except the worst ones) and you can control them. But if you want to have more, you could have them loose. That would mean many risks, even for the tamest ones, though obviously very little for those. Now that you mention it, though, I could see about making the lab bigger so it has areas for the creatures to roam.

When I started this, I had a small framework that didn't allow for that, but now I've made a new one that has actual room objects, so I can extend it, make it bigger and scarier. That's gonna be fun, for sure. =D

I'm glad I posted here. I'm reconsidering things that had just slipped my mind due to the time that passed since I first wrote the story in spring. =3

I appreciate your efforts, but I'm not new to game development. XD I like your way of looking at it. I see it the same way. =3

I have worked on several small projects before (for maybe 15 years?) and I've talked with many devs. I've also been participating in the CataclysmDDA project recently.

I'm an artist, though. I draw and write. Coding and level design have been my main focus, and I've worked on some pen&paper RPGs and board games. I have never finished one, but as you say, it's about the journey. XD

With this I wanted to make something fairly simple to code (that's why I use javascript, so I don't have to worry about handling rendering and event pools) and with a focus on the story and a single solid mechanic. Obviously, the mechanic will need some expansion from what I first considered, but that's ok. =)

About the money, I don't mind how the resource is called, but what I don't want is for it to be a "everything can be derived from" kind of resource. And since I looked at it in a more board game perspective, I realized some games that do it the way I want, like Arkham Horror. So I think I know how to attack that front now. =3

Due to the background of the story, minions are a bad idea. Besides the point that I don't want exponential progression to happen too aggressively, if at all, you're supposed to be alone in this enterprise, not being able to trust anyone but you. Reading your document I realized that's a pivotal point in the story. It is you alone, fighting an abstract entity that is not even a single person or organization. You could call it fighting society, but it's also not quite right. You're mostly fighting the statu quo, like heroes and villains do, but as the story unfolds you'll see that's not really what you're doing, though the ending depends on your actions, of course.

Also, you are supposed to have an almost limitless supply of basic materials, so the reason to breed cats is not because the cats are important or useful directly. It's because it's the only way to see what a given genetic makeup produces as a phenotype. In layman terms, making the creature is the only way of telling what it can do from a cryptic, uninformative piece of data. The important part is the genome, but that's (easily) inferred information, not given straight to the player.

And it is not "alien cats", though some shapes they take might suggest that. It's mere greed that spawned the ultimate genetic manipulation technology the player will encounter. =P

So I would say you could sell cats(genome), but only in order to obtain other breeds that you didn't have access to. Maybe later you could obtain a tool that makes some task easier, but not if it's as a limitation to the way the game starts. Though tying into the above idea of expanding the lab, maybe you could buy too some automated weaponry to prevent infestations. That sounds like a deep puzzle mechanic that could be easy to implement.

Having a limit of 5 cats is a tentative and could be as easily 10 or 7 or whatever number. Of course, you can store as many as you want, but you can have only a limited number active. Or risk having them loose. The point of that is both to tie in the mechanic of creatures being potentially dangerous with the aspect that you're not actually caring for the creatures. They're a means to an end. And there's also a path (several) in the story where you're forced to ignore that limitation, thus balancing risk of losing the game in two different ways.

And furthermore, thinking about that made me realize I could include a feature similar to a New Game+, but instead of having it when you win, you have it when you lose, so you can recover faster from a loss while not breaking the story or mechanic progression. Whatever genomes you store away in a game you lose could be available on the New Game+ at some kind of black market. That way you can get back to the part of the story you failed at as soon as you have the ability to potentially do it, but without going though all the process again.

I don't mind savescumming, but I guess it would be nice if it just is not necessary. Also, the idea of the player having the improbable possibility of chancing upon a endgame creature by typing randomly in the genetic code machines is too amusing to pass up. =P