Developer Diaries: Evilibrium: Soul Hunters (#2)

ORC WORK producer Sergey Himmelreich continues to share the history of the development of Evilibrium: Soul Hunters on the pages App2Top.ru . In the second issue of the diaries, he talks about working on the narrative of the game.

In the reflections of illusions

Sometimes we are so sure that the accumulated experience gives us the opportunity to control the production of the game that we are extremely surprised when everything goes wrong.

So, I want to assure you that in the development of games (and not only games) everything always goes wrong. This is the main rule that should loom in the head of every professional.

Game designer Nikita Ermachkov knows about the rake of the narrative, because he has such a skeptical view
In the last diary we talked a lot about the wonderful world of Evilibrium.

We have come up with a cloud of documents on the history of the world, personalities, politics, relations between factions and the like. But the difficulties began when we began to introduce all this history into the mechanics of the game.

Of course, even at the pre-production stage, we put the atmosphere of the world into the project, both at the level of game mechanics and in the audiovisual style. But when the game is at the late alpha stage, you begin to realize that not all the embedded elements of narrative mechanics work, or they don’t work that way.

And it’s not even a matter of poorly written dialogues (many mistakenly believe that it is the text that conveys the story in the game). The point is to combine narrative mechanics in a complex way to make a whole game with “preference and young ladies”.

What are we doing to properly connect the story and game mechanics? I’ll try to tell you about it…

About the narrative

For me, a narrative is a properly prepared dish. The slightest mistakes in the recipe can ruin the whole meal. Therefore, a clear sequence and properly verified ingredients are the guarantee that your food will be good and the players will praise you.

Meta-game as an important element of the atmosphere of the game

We have this trampling of cells as in the mainswiper and the opening of the encounter. The mechanics turned out to be very attractive, as it combines simplicity and excitement.

To convey the necessary dark and mysterious atmosphere, we have come up with several techniques in the metagame:

• We made the cells covering the area that the player is exploring in the form of a stained glass window with a pattern corresponding to the type of location: dungeon, forest, city, desert, etc.

1. Broken glass as a metaphor for destruction. The solution turned out to be very successful.
2. The color combination creates a mood appropriate to the location, and does not contradict the general style of the game. In any case, everything is subject to the main colors of the game – black, white, red and muted cold shades.

• Each aggressive creature is framed by a frame with sharp spikes, a chaotically trembling red color under it and the appearance itself is preceded by an unexpected sound.
• There is music playing in the dungeons, which heightens tension. A similar effect is used in horror films when long, tedious music prepares the viewer for the appearance of something terrible, and this terrible thing comes exactly when the viewer gets tired of waiting.
• There is an idea to insert a nasty repetitive whisper in Latin, warning that there are creatures or a trap nearby.
• The surrounding decor items of the location are a simple, but working technique to convey the mood to the player.

Dialogues and “many letters”

As I wrote above, dialogues do not solve the narrative, but are just one of the ways to convey the story. It’s sad, but colleagues in the shop say that a lot of text is bad for a mobile game. But we have a story about people in a fantastic alternative history, and you can’t do without detailed dialogues. Now this is one of the most problematic places in the project, since none of us knows how to write scripts, and we still do not understand the measures in the volume of texts (only the high price of translations stops here).

We used several interesting, in my opinion, techniques in the presentation of dialogues.

• First-person view – we don’t show the player’s avatar, the characters communicate directly to him, as in visual novels. This method makes it easier to merge with the role and immerse yourself in the events.
• A special character is a Narrator (narrator) who explains what the hero sees and feels. Let’s just say we used this element for two reasons: (1) Cheap. (2) Helps to better understand what is happening.

Also, in parallel with the Narrator, it is supposed to show pictures that would be consistent with the text of the Narrator, but they are not all drawn yet. We’re working on it.

Quests

The quest system in the game is not just complicated, it is a game within a game! This is the framework on the basis of which we build stories, connect them together and mix them with game mechanics in every possible way.

Here are some interesting solutions that we have implemented using the quest system:

• Quests can affect changes in the game world, and, in particular, the affiliation of cities to factions. This feature is still in the process of implementation, but it will allow the players themselves to change the game world and the alignment of forces.
• With the help of quests, the submission of training is realized. In fact, the entire tutorial is written on a quest system, which made it easier for programmers to work at the final stage of development.
• We also built on the quest system: daily quests (we have contracts that can be taken in cities); achievements; notification system; interaction with some encounter players in the meta-game.

A little more about the plot

We tried very hard to get away from the linear plot in the game, because it’s an online game, actually an MMORPG. And we want to build a unique experience for each player, realizing that this is practically an impossible task.

So far, we have taken as a basis the idea of side and faction quests, as well as story arches, which generally explain to the player that something is wrong in the world, and set some distant goal.

Let’s see what happens.

Did you like the format? Let me know in the comments.If you have a desire to participate yourself – write to press@app2top.ru .