I've been a bit busy with other work and doing some freelance this past week, so I haven't made any significant progress on design and/or building out the first demo, but I still wanted to go back and discuss some of the design elements of the new game loop. In the original design there were set stages and narrative "paths" that the player could travel "through" in the a particular "level" or "setting." These were staged as vignettes of Sewilla's larger story and were written/designed to be told through the perspective of individuals that had encountered Sewilla along her journey home. This method is inspired by a storytelling technique that I attribute to Faulkner's As I Lay Dying; a kaleidoscopic story of characters, events, and perspectives around a central protagonist but never (or rarely) from their own perspective.

I won't go into further story details right now, but I felt that this technique was appealing only from a writing perspective; it didn't leave a lot to actual game play. During this development phase I considering whether or not this project should just be a novel. I kept coming back to the idea of wanting to play through the environments of this historical piece and wanting to  explore aspects of Sewilla's story in ways that I didn't know how to do in a traditional book.

ANYWAYS, I quickly came to a hurdle where the story was driving the design, which in some instances can be really great, but the interactive elements in the first build just felt... underwhelming. There was lots of flavor and lots of perspective, but very little "action." So I decided that I needed to take another look at how I wanted this story to actually be playable. I reached a moment of clarity when I decided that the narrative shouldn't have dialog choices at all at instead it should be shaped by player action (I've talked about this previously but reiterating it here for context).

So the problem became how do I translate dialog choices into game play actions? I'm still working on this, no doubt, but what I liked about the previous build was how the player actually moved through space as part of moving through the story. I thought if I could keep that design principle, since so much of the story is about travel and movement, then I could make the movement be the driving force of the story instead of the other way around. This made me think about what types of games rely on specific and calculated movement to deliver narrative beats. My best, or most immediate, answer was a Tactical RPG. Based on where the player is on the board, combined with the player/party-members abilities/levels, a story starts to emerge (even if only in the players head).

Translating these concepts for this game has taken me (and is still taking me) a bit of time to design. This is partially because I wanted to stay true to Sewilla's non-violent nature, and the non-violent nature of the BEF. Although I wanted to make a game that typically employs attacks and spells and damage and death, I didn't want those to be abilities for Sewilla. Instead I wanted to map what those abilities do within a game to pragmatic and/or real-world gestures.

• Talking
• Hiding
• Sabotaging

Talking will allow Sewilla a chance to observe, reflect, and engage with her surroundings to gather information, unlock tiles, or change aspects of the board that will alter enemies and obstacles behavior. Hiding will allow Sewilla the chance to "wait" in order to move larger distances on the subsequent turn. Hiding will also skew the enemy "dice roll" to always choose a random location (instead of bee-lining it to Sewilla's location or a set "patrol tile" on the board). Sabotaging will be a special ability that will allow Sewilla to affect the board in a similar way as talking but with some more drastic results for Sewilla and for enemies. I haven't completely worked out how that ability might mechanically work just yet, but it's something that I've been tinkering with.

These abilities won't always be available to Sewilla, and what I'm currently working on is creating a series of tutorials in the Anacostia camp before the first main conflict to introduce these abilities one at a time. In addition I want there to be a "downtime" phase where the player chooses a particular ability or "preps" an ability that they can use in the next board. Again, I haven't quite figured out what this might entail and how I'll mechanically implement this, but I love the idea of creating a space for "planning" and that this phase will affect how each board can be played.

Right now I'm thinking about how each one of those "preps" might affect Sewilla's rest and that rest will change how much Sewilla can both hide and move around the board. The more time spent prepping the more tired Sewilla will be and thus affect her ability to travel/move in the subsequent challenge. Again, I don't have this completely mapped out and I want to do a bit more pen & paper prototyping with this, but I think this simple integration of abilities and prepping will make the playing experience really rewarding and engaging. Plus each time the player "preps" something more elements of Sewilla's story will be shared, so there will be a narrative incentive as well.

I think that'll do it for now, and I hope to show off how these ideas are making their way into a playable demo soon!