In thinking about the different systems and the ways I want players to interact with them, I have decided that health should only be curable by potions, or in specific locations. Typing this now, it basically sounds like Dark Souls flasks and bonfires, although that is not how I got to this decision.
I’ll talk a bit here about why I think this is the right decision for All Hail Temos, and how it can focus the gameplay.
What is Health?
To start with, let me just say that I think of Health as “the device that triggers a halt in the current play”. It is like a “Time Out” in a sport, where the teams stop playing until the timeout is over. Except in games, you often go back to a previous saved state.
In All Hail Temos, running out of health doesn’t halt your progress, it moves you into a new narrative position. If you were in a cave exploring, you get knocked out. Now you wake up in a prison, or at home, or in a makeshift camp in the cave. Whatever is going on will collect your unconscious self and move it to another place in the story, and some changes may occur in the previous story you were doing.
Maybe your companions finished the mission without you, or abandoned the mission to bring you back, or all of you were captured by an enemy. Since All Hail Temos is a narrative focused game, there will be a narrative waiting to take over. If no specific narrative exists, than one of the general ones will be used, so that the story moves forward.
A player’s health going to zero is what triggers this narrative progression.
Getting Healed
With this understanding of health, how do you get healed? There are only 2 solutions, through specific locations, such as shrines, or taking potions. Sleeping will not heal you. Sleeping gives a well-rested buff, so it is beneficial to sleep, but it will not heal your injuries.
The 2 main factors I am excluding here are: sleep and magic.
Magic is the reason I got to this position. All Hail Temos is a magical world, where magic is infused into everything, and everyone can perform magic.
The problem with this gameplay wise, is that healing spells effectively turn healing into stamina/time pools, after completing a fight, and used in combat are either instant heals or heal over time, and mean you are just kiting to stall for time while you heal, or using bursts of stamina you didn’t need in combat to use instant healing spells.
This is not the gameplay I want for All Hail Temos, as I don’t think it’s as engaging. Instead, there is the same time penalty for drinking a potion as performing an instant spell, the animation to drink/cast must be played, but the potion is based on items you possess, and items that are the best candidates for crafting (reason: used often), and whose ingredients can be found exploring.
By allowing casting healing spells, I am reducing the incentive to explore and craft, which are two fundamentals. Also, inside of crafting, there can be different ingredients that yield different effects. Healing may happen slower to faster. Healing may be able to keep healing you after 100%, so damage received after is still being healed before it runs out.
Also potions can provide other buffs besides healing, so having a reason to already collect potions, and possibly craft and explore to get the items (or explore to buy the items). This makes it more convenient to also craft or buy and use other potions, because potions are already part of the core gameplay.
Food and Potions
Food serves the purpose of granting buffs that last for a period of time. Eating food has a cool down period, so you can’t change these buffs immediately, but you can change them after a few minutes, which lends strategy for when to eat something. A potion can be used to clear the cool down, so you can eat quickly, but it will cost you resources and you have to keep that potion. More strategic play opportunities here.
The buffs you gain from eating will have different styles, and these styles will interact with potions differently. So you can eat food that increases the effectiveness of certain kinds of potions, which deepens the strategies of what to eat, based on what potions you have available.
This also gives a benefit to buying or crafting food, and engages with the possible ingredients there to improve the effectiveness of potions.
All of this also promotes farming as a crafting skill, to directly create the ingredients you want for food or potions.
This style of flow is how I want to tune the economy.
Tap, Store, Sink
There are 2 main patterns to an economy:
- Tap (Faucet), Sink
- Tap (Faucet), Store, Sink
Tap, Sink
A Tap/Sink system is one where a product is produced (Tap) and then used (Sink). You could also think of it like a number goes up, then down. Start with 0 apples, then tap or grow 10 apples, then eat 10 apples. The Tap was 10, and the Sink was 10.
This creates a type of ping-pong effect, where first you tap, then you use. There is no ability to store the item, it has a direct purpose. If a treasure chest is found, and the player takes the items, this is like a Tap/Sink.
This simple pattern is useful for simple loops, such as “loot items, and sell them”. Find potions, and drink them. We use this pattern all the time.
Tap, Store, Sink
Tap/Store/Stink adds a middle step, which is what creates the beginning of an economy.
10 apples are tapped. Then they are stored with a merchant. Then customers come and buy apples (sink).
This more complex pattern allows for hierarchy. We don’t just get an item and do something with it, it goes somewhere else, and can feed other loops that need that item or service.
Tap, Store, Sink Chains
A simple merchant is not that interesting, but where it gets interesting is in the chains of these elements.
For example, we have the Tap 10 apples, Store 10 apples, Sink 10 apples, with the merchant.
But now let’s add 2 crafters. 1 makes food, and another makes potions, and they both use apples. Now the Tap/Store/Sink is supplying 2 crafters, who tap (create) food and potions, and then can store them with merchants.
And so on, there can be layers of this, as in the raw materials needed to construct a building. And as these layers build up, a type of economy comes with it, where there are incentives to craft at each level, which the player can choose to get involved with.
How will this affect gameplay?
This design is all about improving the breadth of possible gameplay, and getting players to be using more rich systems, instead more poor systems, in terms of how they interact with other gameplay.
Being able to cast healing spells on yourself avoids all the other gameplay systems, after you have learned the skill, and the only interesting decision is use of stamina and time to cast the spells, but I think those are poor gameplay systems compared to the rich crafting, food, potion and economic system that removing healing spells encourages.
Conclusion
All of the systems in All Hail Temos are designed in this way. Trying to look at all the best things that have been done, and seeing how they will work brought together, or if there are ways to improve on them.