I've been thinking about the short story and "format" ideas. I recently started binging Steven Universe (and will probably finish soon); I realized Steven Universe is surprisingly close to this idea of a "short story" format; each episode is a mere 10-ish minutes, each/most with a certain amount of world building, character development, conflict and resolution. It's even more strikingly appropriate since Steven Universe tackles a lot of "non-violent" and "social" themes of the kind you'd probably enjoy.
Obviously, SU is a cartoon and you're making games, but I feel like there are useful parallels.
I noticed that SU deliberately designed its world in a manner that allowed for easy, random intrigues that were abstract and frame-able in different perspectives, allowing for great diversity and flexibility, while also having a mysterious "core" easily exploitable for more central "plot" episodes. Your main idea with Belief has similar qualities: the battle system is abstract and can be framed in multiple different ways (you can convince others of silly benign things, or more serious things; you can convince yourself out of a mental predicament; you can convince people to be friends with you; you can have more violent encounters with villains; you can dive into the very concept of what a belief is and go way beyond concrete metaphors and into deep abstraction). It allows for the same kind of diversity and flexibility! It's also amenable to a "core" storyline, in the way you seem to want; if you preferred a larger complex narrative, that wouldn't be out of the question either; you'd just have to dilute the world-building and character development across several "episodes."
This might sound far-fetched, but... honestly, we've had serialized Visual Novels, we've had serialized animated series, we've had Homestuck. Why not a serialized video game?
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Tobias 1104~4Y
I like Steven Universe a lot! It's been one of the pieces of media I've most admired since it first came out, and it's one of few series I've watched more than once. There's a lot about it that continues to inspire me, and I watched the film after trudging through the Marvel ones back to back earlier this year, and found it far more satisfying than all of them combined.
I've been wanting to make something episodic for years. I first envisioned it as a Star-Trek-like thing, where the setting was a spacecraft with a consistent crew who visited new worlds each episode, as that's an interesting way to explore very different situations while keeping a regular cast (plus I like aliens). Later, Taming Dreams was planned to be told in chapters released about a month apart, and it seemed a good idea at the time.
I'm unsure though - based on those experiences - whether making a serialised game would be a good idea, at least for me. The biggest issue would be gameplay, ensuring the player's adequately powerful - but not too much - for each episode, while also keeping things fresh somehow. I get the feeling that any repetitive gameplay mechanics like battles (or some equivalent) would feel like irritating, unnecessary obstacles after the first two or three episodes, but I wonder.
I don't think I'll do that with Belief though just because at the moment I'm interested in actually finishing something rather than starting a series that ends up incomplete again!
Obviously, SU is a cartoon and you're making games, but I feel like there are useful parallels.
I noticed that SU deliberately designed its world in a manner that allowed for easy, random intrigues that were abstract and frame-able in different perspectives, allowing for great diversity and flexibility, while also having a mysterious "core" easily exploitable for more central "plot" episodes. Your main idea with Belief has similar qualities: the battle system is abstract and can be framed in multiple different ways (you can convince others of silly benign things, or more serious things; you can convince yourself out of a mental predicament; you can convince people to be friends with you; you can have more violent encounters with villains; you can dive into the very concept of what a belief is and go way beyond concrete metaphors and into deep abstraction). It allows for the same kind of diversity and flexibility! It's also amenable to a "core" storyline, in the way you seem to want; if you preferred a larger complex narrative, that wouldn't be out of the question either; you'd just have to dilute the world-building and character development across several "episodes."
This might sound far-fetched, but... honestly, we've had serialized Visual Novels, we've had serialized animated series, we've had Homestuck. Why not a serialized video game?
I've been wanting to make something episodic for years. I first envisioned it as a Star-Trek-like thing, where the setting was a spacecraft with a consistent crew who visited new worlds each episode, as that's an interesting way to explore very different situations while keeping a regular cast (plus I like aliens). Later, Taming Dreams was planned to be told in chapters released about a month apart, and it seemed a good idea at the time.
I'm unsure though - based on those experiences - whether making a serialised game would be a good idea, at least for me. The biggest issue would be gameplay, ensuring the player's adequately powerful - but not too much - for each episode, while also keeping things fresh somehow. I get the feeling that any repetitive gameplay mechanics like battles (or some equivalent) would feel like irritating, unnecessary obstacles after the first two or three episodes, but I wonder.
I don't think I'll do that with Belief though just because at the moment I'm interested in actually finishing something rather than starting a series that ends up incomplete again!