"Every choice has its shadow."
Early in Travelling‘s development I was playing around with art direction and drawing our first interiors. Behold, I said, this vast room wot I have drawn. Bask in its amplitude. Tremble at its generous size. Lottie, said AK, I’ve been binging isometric CRPGs and have discovered that large spaces aren't interesting per se. It can be better to have smaller spaces which feel full than large spaces which look great but feel like a long commute to move through. Thus the boot-heel of design came down once again on the trusting face of art - but he was right.
One of the things we’re trying to do with Travelling is to keep the scope relatively small so everywhere feels rich and interesting and full – of lore and stories like Planescape: Torment, of beautiful prose like Disco Elysium‘s where every snippet feels like a present, of ambience and life like Shadowrun. One of the ways we're doing this is with a system we teased in September's newsletter, so I thought now was a good time to talk about it: OPPORTUNITIES.
AK games tend to combine 'pungent prose with crunchy crafting mechanics', and Travelling is no different. We've moved the slider up to the 'pungent prose' end of the bar, but we still want to underpin this literary CRPG with some satisfyingly chompable systems. Opportunities are essentially a distilled version of Cultist's crafting system, where you combine disaparate items from your inventory to create something new. Unlike Cultist, this system does not want you to experiment until you 'figure out the game'. Cultist is a deliberately difficult roguelike that emulates the sense of fumbling through the dark towards uncertain ends. Travelling wants you to baste yourself in the glory of the Secret Histories, like a helpful goose on Christmas Eve. So you'll discover Opportunity recipes as you explore the world, and Spencer will remember them for re-use in the future (AK adds: YES WE PUT A NOT-CODEX IN THE GAME AND ALSO NOW A NOT-RECIPE-BOOK. bunk.gif) You'll also be able to auto-fill recipe slots with relevant items from your inventory (though you can still hand pick what items go where if you're being strategic about it or particularly don't want a specific item to be consumed), because the point here is the creation of items, not the discovery of the combinations themselves.
However, you now have to be in a particular physical location in the world to craft - you can't do it on the fly, from anywhere - and different locations unlock different recipes. For example, you might expect to see more Lantern-inflected recipes in a 'Holy Place', such as in front of a prominently-displayed giant portrait of a Fulgent. Alternatively, you'd expect Heart-inflected recipes in an 'Agreeable Place', which we haven't actually placed anywhere in-game yet, but will presumably be next to things like tins of biscuits and anywhere there's a cat.
Once in a suitable location, you'll pick from your list of known recipes and combine physical inventory items...
Examples: pre-war British passport, Incorporate cigarette, silver pyx
...with Memories...
Examples: Impulse, Revelation, Fear
... and/or Influences (very similar to Memories but disappear when you travel to a new city - unlike BOOK OF HOURS, though, you can often crystallise Influences into Memories).
Examples: Ministry, Grail, Incorporate
AK is always telling me about trying to make failure interesting. One of the ways he's doing this with Opportunities is replacing the percentage chance of success - which is fun when you succeed but disappointing when you don't - with a percentage chance of something additional happening that complicates things. In Opportunities' case, the unexpected are called Troubles:
Examples: Nightmares, Pain, Trace
You'll pick up Troubles as you move through the world, just like Cultist's EXILE DLC. Like EXILE, Travelling also has Traces, but adds Troubles like Weariness (which only sleep will remove) or Dizzy Acquiescence (which has no description yet except an enigmatic note to 'trust upwards'). Savvy players will find Troubles can be useful in certain situations: think of gumming up a Hunter's efforts in Cultist Simulator with a slew of Mystique cards, or finding a bug that creates infinite Flushed Mommets in BOOK OF HOURS and then emailing us about it. But as the name implies, having lots of Troubles is a problem you'll need to address. Like Ben Kingsley says in Sexy Beast, 'you're gonna have to turn this opportunity yes'.
Right! Back to getting all of this actually working in-game, so we can get an alpha out. As Hokobald might say: more of everything, soon.