Devlog #2 - Personality
Welcome back everybody! It's RFB again with another devlog for our upcoming game Rovering to Sussex. Today we'll have a look at how to shape your main character's personality.
But before we dive in, I want to clarify what kind of game Rovering to Sussex is. From last week's devlog, and maybe even more from this one, some of you might think it is a sandbox game. Let me be very clear that it isn't. There is no repeated grinding of the same scenes over and over to increase some values so that you can finally advance individual paths of a loose story.
Instead, Rovering to Sussex is a visual novel with lots of choice. There is one story that you follow as you play the game, but you can often choose whether you want to see some scene or or not. Sometimes you have to choose between different alternatives. In some scenes you can decide whom to talk to, what questions to ask and what answers to give.
And whatever you choose, the game will remember it and change based on what you know and don't know yet or how the different characters see you. We hope that this makes it interesting to play the game over and over again as there will always be something new to discover as you check out different paths.
Now that this is out of the way, back to today's topic. Your character's personality is one of those ways how the game remembers what you decided and changes how different characters see you:
Traits
In Rovering to Sussex, the personality of your main character is defined by three traits:
- Athletic: This represents your character's interest in sports and fitness. You'll gain it for example by going to the gym or doing tasks that involve more manual labor.
- Social: This is about being open and talkative, but also about appearances. You'll gain it, e.g., by talking to people and you can lose it if you are a bad friend.
- Nerdy: The last one is about theoretic knowledge and can be gained for example in quizzes or when discussing nerdy stuff.
As with most choices you can make in the game, there is no right or wrong here, just pick what you like and see how it plays out.
Personality AI
The way you see the current state of your traits is the *Personality AI* app. It shows your personality as a point in the triangle between the three different traits:
As this presentation suggests, the three traits are mutually exclusive, so you can't have high (or low) values in all of them, but every gain in one trait will lose you some points in the other two and vice versa. If you want to reap the benefits of different traits, you may have to consider your actions very carefully, especially since decisions later in the game won't much the needle much (there is no distinction between decisions earlier or later, but after you've taken ten nerdy decisions, going to the gym once won't suddenly make you athletic).
The triangle also rotates to always keep your top trait on top to make it easier to see what you are doing.
The "Your Profile" button in the app takes you to a screen similar to the contact info presented in the first devlog so you can get some information about your own character:
It is pretty empty right now, but as you play, it will fill with more details of what you experienced and some of the choices you made.
Effects
So, why should you care? How does your personality affect the game?
First of all, there will sometimes be minor variations in the dialogue or thoughts depending on your traits. This doesn't affect gameplay much, but adds some touches to make your character feel more realistic and improve your immersion.
Second, a high enough value in some trait may give you additional benefits or options during the game. A nerdy character might get hints for quizzes, an athletic one might have an easier time with some manual tasks and a social one might have a better pick-up line for you to chose.
The final and probably most important effect of your personality is that each of the other characters you encounter will see you differently depending on your traits. We'll talk more about the details of relationships and how they are affected by your traits in the next devlog though so stay tuned.
See you next time!
RFB
