Hi everyone!
The last time I wrote that this entry would be dedicated to the plot and game mechanics. I’m sorry I have to upset you here. They forbade me to talk about the plot. Yet I'll try to make it up to you describing carefully our game mechanics.
Let’s start then. As I mentioned before there are a lot of characters that a player should interact with. Every character has certain relationships with a graveyard keeper. Some characters are friendly to a new graveyard keeper in the first place. Some should be won over by doing what they want you to do or being eloquent or - like the old days - bribing. The better relationship with a character you have - the more useful he or she is for you.
6 key characters can be especially useful for you. They appear in the village or the graveyard surroundings only one time a week, each on an assigned day. So you should plan everything ahead, at least a week in advance.
Dialog with local blacksmith.
There is a lot of work for a graveyard keeper. The most important is to maintain the graveyard and bury new corpses. You get money for every buried body. So at the beginning it is the main source of profit, kind of your regular income.
In thanks for graveyard's reconstruction local Archbishop must ordain you and explain to you the basics of the local religion. Very old and intricate religion, built on the fear of the Underworld. So now you’re not only responsible for your graveyard, but also for the local church and its dungeons. One time a week you can preach, and if your speech is inspirational, you’ll have a positive effect for the whole week.
How to bury your first corpse.
The maintenance of such a big household is resource intensive. Either you run out of headstones or of candles. All basic resources you can certainly buy in the village, some - get from corpses. Yet at first the graveyard household makes little money, and locals are having good health. So you have to deal with woodworking, stone carving, winemaking and farming. All in all, there’s nothing impossible for a graveyard keeper!
Trading with locals.
At the beginning of the game this is definitely not like that. Step by step you discover new technologies that provide access to recipes and help you to get new resources. Every technology is equal to a certain number of technology points of a particular color. There are three colors of technology points.
- Red - shows player’s ability to do something manually, his/her practical skills
- Green - knowledge of the world around and the purposes of things
- Blue - knowledge of the spiritual dimension of the world
Every game activity gives you some points. Cut down a tree - here are green and red points. Write a new sermon on how useful church donations are - blue blobs are already headed to the indicator.
Following player every day routine, you get enough knowledge to open elementary technologies of every color. But in order to learn advanced technologies one should do special research, study alchemy or deep down for knowledge in dungeons.
Techs.
At the end of the day, you will be able to construct all the production chains necessary to create a ghost free graveyard.
We tried to balance the game in such a way that to finish storyline of the game it’s not necessary to master all the technologies. High level of several related fields are sufficient. The majority of what you can do by yourself, you can get for money or for faith (light spiritual energy). And if at the beginning of the game money are of greater importance, towards the end faith will become a priority issue.
We made faith in the form of items in inventory, so if you get killed in a dungeon, you are likely to lose a part of your faith.
Evening mass.
How to get money, I think, is obvious, there are a lot of ways to do that. As for faith, everything here is more complicated. The main source of your faith is your preaching. The better decorated the church interior is, the more beautiful stained glasses are, the more decent incense you have, the more faith is generated by a congregation. Faith is extremely important for more sophisticated crafts, where ingredients and skills are not as important as a fair amount of inspiration.
Now I should tell you about the game craft system. But then, I’m afraid, the entry is going to be too big. So crafts are for the next week and I’m going to dedicate them the whole entry of the diaries.
Thank you for your time! See you next week!
Don't forget to follow our game! Click that FOLLOW button on the Steam page!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/599140/Graveyard_Keeper/
–––
Nikita Kulaga - Co-founder of Lazy Bear Games