This time I want to talk about a system I spent a long time on, and was most afraid of breaking — the Heir System.
The reason is simple: when I was a kid playing Chinese Paladin and Taiko Risshiden, what hurt most was investing your feelings in a character, only for the story to end and then... nothing. So I set one rule for this game: time truly flows. The bonds you form in-game need someone to "survive" and carry on after you.
Below I'll lay out the full logic, a few design trade-offs, and what's new this time.
1. From "Stay Overnight" to "Grow Up": A Complete Event Chain
In many similar games, children are just computed stats. I wanted an event chain:
1) Stay overnight: when your affinity with a consort is maxed, she gets pregnant; if not maxed, affinity goes up +2 the next day, no pregnancy. (I deliberately kept the odds low, to preserve that "wanting but not getting" sense of anticipation.)
2) After 2 months: a joyous announcement pops up
3) After 10 months: a prince / princess is born
4) Each consort has a cap of 1–3 children, and the cap is randomly fixed at her first pregnancy — some consorts have a shallow fate and top out at one; others give you a whole litter. Once capped, she won't auto-get-pregnant again; if you want more, you have to try your luck at staying over again
5) Children only appear in the Prince's Hall / Consort's Palace after age 3
One point I wrestled with repeatedly: why not let the child run around the moment they're born?
Because "waiting" is itself part of the xianxia / palace narrative. Pregnancy, the announcement, the birth, raising them to age 3 — compress that rhythm and "the child's arrival" becomes cheap. I run this whole process on the game's real in-world hours and months. You go do your thing (rule the kingdom, march to war, manage internal affairs), and one day when you return to the palace you realize "oh, the kid can walk now." That feeling of being pushed forward by time is what this system most wants to give.
2. Children Aren't Sprites: 10 Outfits + Truly Random Names
For the looks I made 6 princes + 4 princesses, 10 independent portraits total, with gender a 50/50 random roll.
Names are randomly generated from a word pool at birth — Chinese characters are randomly combined (1–2 chars), and non-CJK languages draw from an English name pool. The name is only fixed after generation. So that child folding paper cranes in your screenshot wasn't written in stone by me — the system named her. Every playthrough, every birth, it's different.
3. Children "Recognize People": NPC-ified Heirs
After debut at age 3, the children and mothers aren't backdrop — they're real interactive NPCs:
· Walk up to a child and they'll talk to you proactively (10 random lines each for boys and girls — some reminisce about mom, some pester you to take them out)
· In the Prince's Hall there's a 50% chance the mother also stands next to her own child — click her to chat. This "mother watching over her child" detail is my personal favorite touch
· In the Consort's Palace, there's also a 50% chance your own consort is there with your child
4. New: Pick Up the Child, Go on Outings Together
The focus of this update is completing the dynamic expression of "companionship" — I made several new interactive animations with the children (picking up, playing together), plus a whole family outing flow:
Click "Play" → the child happily asks you to take them out → full-screen CG: the family by the lakeside → the mother reflects and reminds the child by the water → the child giggles → black screen "Three days later…" → you return, mother's affinity +1.
Note that final "three days later" — the outing really consumes 3 in-game days. I didn't make "spending time with the child" a zero-cost dessert; it costs you time as ruler. I kept that on purpose: companionship and empire-building compete for your time here.
5. Some Things Not Done Yet / On My Mind
· Right now, after age 3 the child is temporarily "companionship + small talk" — no growth line yet (e.g., whether they can join the army, be made a prince, or fight alongside you as an adult) — that's the next stretch I want to build out
· There are currently 5 Prince's Halls (4 cities + the old Yin Ruins hall); which hall a child lands in follows the mother's affiliation
· The naming uses a rather classical word pool; later I want to split a few sets by "dynasty"
I reworked this system several times; the core is one sentence: let players genuinely "leave something behind" in the game. You rule, you rebel, you conquer the world — but back at the palace a child calls you "Imperial Father," and the game is no longer "finished once cleared."
If you like this kind of dev log, please add the game to your wishlist — you'll get notified the moment it launches, and it helps me get more visibility on Steam.