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Embracing Eternity Gameplay Concept

6 years ago2,146 words

I intend to return to ∞ a project I started a while ago called Embracing Eternity ∞, and I've been playing around with some ideas for a 'battle' system that'd be more in line with the concepts I want to explore. While I like it conceptually, I don't think it'd work as a fun game, unfortunately. I thought it might be interesting to share anyway though.

First, a personal note. Now that my time at university is over, I want to start updating this more often, because there's a lot I want to write about, and perhaps it'd be best to write shorter, more specific posts about the topics I have in mind rather than writing one big one clumping unrelated topics together. So I'll probably do that over the coming days.

I felt I should start by talking about this topic because I'm planning for Embracing Eternity to be my 'main project' that I'll focus much of my time on over the coming weeks or months. I can't exactly get a job any time soon even if I wanted to, because I'll most likely be having brain surgery next month, which will take a long time to recover from. This brings its own frustrations (I'll probably have to move back home, the thought of which makes me feel abysmal), and I wonder if I'll be able to get anything done at all while I recover. If I even can recover fully. But I'm trying not to think about all that right now.

I wanted to reply to some of the comments on previous posts before posting another, because I read and appreciate them, some inspired me to seek things out, and don't like the feeling of distance that develops when I don't reply directly, but I've really been struggling to find the energy. I've been neglecting to reply to other messages too, from people I know in person, for this reason. I suppose I just still need to rest a bit more.

I did however reconnect a bit with my ex-friend B, which I'm mentioning because I've essentially chronicled the progression of that friendship and its demise in this blog, though there's not too much to say about this phase of it. She was at least willing to exchange a handful of messages, which I appreciate, but it's clear that she doesn't want to let me back in because she doesn't want to be hurt again. There's much I could say about all this... but won't, at least not in this post. It's all been a big learning experience though, that's for sure. Mostly I just can't stand the thought of inadvertently hurting someone then just shrugging and moving on as if it doesn't matter, so I try to make things right... It's probably naive to think that everything can be made right though. Anyway, I'm being irritatingly vague, so I'll actually get to what I wanted this post to be about.



As described in detail in the linked post, ∞ Embracing Eternity ∞ is a game about the post-death experience, a journey through the minds of three people who'd died by suicide in order to find peace with themselves and learn from the experience before moving on. Gameplay-wise, it was meant as an extension of an idea I've been exploring via various iterations through the past few years, of a turn-based RPG 'combat' system which is based on the idea of calming unpleasant emotions rather than defeating enemies with violence.

In the demo I included in that previous post, this 'battle' system was essentially the same as that from Taming Dreams: it was functionally familiar for anyone who'd played a traditional JRPG before, just with some relatively minor details like the 'runes' system instead of stats, emotion-based 'sentiments' instead of elements, and filling a 'rapport' bar instead of depleting a health bar. It's not bad, but it feels a bit stale and uninteresting (and some comments supported feelings I already had about this).

So, a few weeks ago, I tried to design a 'battle' system around certain ideas that feature in approaches to overcoming negative emotions in the real world, such as positive psychology, meditation, mindfulness, things like that. I'll try to explain it, but I'm very aware while doing so that it's not all that easy to understand. Even if I linked to a demo, it likely wouldn't be easier to understand though!



In traditional JRPG battle systems, your party fights together against a horde of monsters... but in this, each character faces their own 'monster' (a manifestation of their dark emotions) alone. Viva - the 'angel' who's guiding them - doesn't participate directly, as she's not exactly going through the same post-death process that they are. So your three characters stand around Viva in a circle, and you focus on one at a time.

The aim is to control each character's current overall emotional state by focusing attention on thoughts that come to mind.

Each character has a customisable 'deck' of a number of 'thoughts' - so it's like a collectible card game in a sense - and four of these (randomly chosen) appear at a time in that pink cloud thing, which represents their mind. You don't select or use them like commands - it's not about action - but rather you move a cursor (the white 'eye crosshair' thing to the lower-right of that black heart thing), and if you hover this cursor over one of these thoughts, the bar around it begins to fill. When it's full, the thought becomes 'active', and glows. Its bar drains again, and when it's empty the thought disappears, but if you hold the cursor over it, the bar will fill again (though each thought can only 'activate' once; holding the cursor over an active thought just prevents it from expiring, keeps it in the mind).

Each thought has runes, as in the original 'battle' system and Taming Dreams (though I might confusingly call them 'sentiments' in this). So in that screenshot, the top-left one's runes are Axx, the bottom right is AxG, etc. To the right of the mind is a flower representing the character's overall emotional state, which is derived from the combined runes/sentiments of all of the thoughts that are currently active. So in that screenshot, both Axx and xxG thoughts are active, so the total emotional state is AxG.

Each character and each monster also has a flower which represents their personal runes, and the aim is to match the emotional state to the target. If there's a match, then the rapport bar for the target steadily fills, over time, but if there's a negative match (for example having an RxJ mood with an AxG monster), then the rapport bar drains instead.

Characters' willpower bars also drain over time, though currently this is at a uniform rate; the monsters don't actually do anything at all, other than exist. You can switch between characters whenever you like, and it's important that you do, as all characters' willpower bars are draining all the time, and if you focus on just one character while neglecting the others, the other two might run out of willpower... and if even one person does, you lose.

So, what you can do is choose a target for each character. Either they can focus their attention on their personal monster - affecting its willpower bar and eventually taming it (the aim of course being to tame all three to win) - or they can focus on one of their two allies. In the screenshot, both Sam Sara (represented here by Oneira) and Vex (Gemma) are focused on Fey, as shown by the coloured connections between their circles (an unintuitive GUI element I'd have to change if I kept this system).

If they do choose to focus on an ally, then their overall emotional state is applied to that ally in the same way it is for a monster. That is, if the active character's current emotional state is AxG and she focuses on an AxG ally, then that ally will have their bar steadily fill because of the perfect match, whereas if the active mood was RxJ, it'd actually speed up the rate at which the ally's willpower was draining. What this means is that if you actually want to help someone, it's crucial that you do so in a way that speaks to them, in a way that matches their personality and needs, rather than just forcing something that clashes with them, which only makes things work.

That's the gist of it, I think. The main idea is that we're all facing our own demons, and nobody can directly intervene to tame them for us. However, we can support each other in our own personal challenges, but it only works if we understand the other person's needs, and how they might differ from our own. Also it's important to check how other people are doing rather than just focusing on yourself, but you shouldn't neglect yourself to focus entirely on others either. The thoughts we choose to focus on determine how we feel, but thoughts are fleeting; if you choose not to focus on them, then they'll fade and be replaced by new ones.

Some details:

You'd acquire new thoughts by taming monsters, or by collecting personal memento items which grant character-specific thoughts.

Some thoughts have a special property, marked by an icon on top. These trigger when the thought is activated. They include moods - which are like status effects, and increase the rate at which compatible thoughts' bars fill while slowing the rate at which they drain (being Sad would make Grave thoughts stick longer, for example) - and 'exciting' or 'calming', which increase or slow the rate at which the thoughts spin around in the mind (making them harder or easier to focus the cursor on) while also increasing or slowing the rate at which the character and their monster's bars fill or drain.

Active thoughts remain active even if you switch characters, so the aim is to 'set up' some thoughts for the active character, then switch to another. You can see this here:



It's not turn-based, but you can speed up or slow down (or pause) time using buttons at will if you need time to stop and think.

The orientation of characters, monsters, the camera, etc is very flawed here, but I'd change that if I stuck with this system, which I probably won't!



I really love the idea behind this system, as it represents a message I'd really like to convey... but currently I just don't find it very fun at all to play. Most of your time is spent just staring at this huge GUI, so you lose sight of the actual characters, and it alternates between the stress of multi-tasking and the tedium of watching bars slowly fill. Though it would of course be introduced gradually in the final game - you wouldn't be thrown in with a full party and thought deck and everything - I'd expect it to be prohibitively complicated. It lacks the dopamine rush of a ∞ Skinner box ∞ that drives most games (push button to get immediate reward, with an action such as launching an attack - and seeing its immediate consequences - being an example of an inherently rewarding behaviour).

I suppose this is unavoidable when trying to make something novel, though. It's not like it's going to be perfect and wonderful the first time! It's why going through many prototypes is necessary to get something that works well and is satisfying.

So I'm going to play around with things to see if I can come up with something that retains many of these concepts that I want to include, while actually being a game that people might want to play.



In case you're interested, the monster in the screenshots is called Anguist (pronounced like 'disguise' more than like 'anguish', so 'AN-giest'), and I like it because it's multi-layered. Fey's mother collected tribal masks, which she found creepy, and it's born from memories of those. It looks like four or five different things depending on how you look at it, its name is based on just as many or more different, relevant words (guise, geist, anguish, angst, anxiety). It's a mask, representing the masks that everyone hides behind for fear of being seen as their 'naked' selves (also incorporated into its design). So I like it because it's deceptively complicated... and more interesting, in my opinion, than something like "Lava Goblin" or whatever!