NPCs
At first, I wanted the NPC mechanic to be having to play a minigame almost every single time the player walked past an NPC, transporting them to a different world where you couldn’t move, but had to do the minigame in front of an audience that would insult the player whenever they messed up, and when finished the player would just resume until
it happened again.
By minigames I was thinking something like the tasks in Among Us:
Simple tasks, some harder than most.
However, I couldn’t think of a way to make this hard enough that the player could mess us regardless how many times they played it, and I also couldn’t figure out how to make each minigame fit within the context of the game, especially if I had to have more than 10 different ones. It didn’t make sense to me that the character would just be playing connect cables mid shopping session in their head, even though the point of the minigames is to represent the mind jumping through loops to make the person anxious about what people could possibly be thinking about them, in fact this is why I was considering it, but I just wasn’t convinced.
I then revisited this bit weeks later by talking to Vanissa about it we ended up discussing whether or not the encounters could just be dialogue instead of an entire minigame to figure out the designs and internal mechanics of.
So, in the end I decided on this:
NPCs ask you random mean questions or just ask you random things that you have to answer; they could also just say random mean things you can’t answer to (ex. They tell you have terrible taste in food, ask a math question or tell you to spell something).
Answer wrong and your anxiety rises, answer well and you’re okay, evade and your anxiety rises significantly. Perhaps during anxiety mode, the NPCs actually follow you until you reach a safe zone (shelves and quiet spaces).
However, I just realised that there would be no benefit to evading. If the game had a timeout, then the benefit would be that you buy slightly more time to shop, but each encounter isn’t too long anyways so it wouldn’t be that much of a time loss. Therefore, I think I will be removing the option to evade
NPC triggers
Anything that could make the player stand out in any way will trigger them.
Once they spot you doing any of the following, they will “attack”. They’re all timed up to 7 seconds:
- Making eye contact, (0s)
- Bumping into them, (0s)
- crouching down randomly, (0s)
- tripping, (0s)
- running, (0s)
- looking way further up, (2s)
- looking way further down, (2s)
- crouching down by a shelf, (7s)
- standing in front of a shelf for too long, (7s)
NPCs viewing range
Stealth:
I just though making it somewhat of a stealth game would work best with the desire to hide that needs to be instilled into the player. As a reference I had Night of The Consumers because you always need to be on the lookout and make sure the coast is clear.
However, I felt that hiding in plain sight (a sort of camouflage) worked more than the player just being able to literally hide.
Me and Vanissa also talked about how it could be made a bit easier for the player to navigate the game, for example through a little overhead map to show where the NPCs are, but I wasn’t completely sure about it, so I considered another possible idea, such as having corner mirrors in some parts of the store.
So, in the end I got to:
Avoid NPCs, by acting like a normal person. Do this by interacting with shelves to appear busy, but only for a limited time before having to switch shelf to interact with.
You can check corners by looking at the top view mirrors, (may have to give this up because coding mirrors is crazy). Maybe the character looks around the corner. If they catch you doing that, they immediately walk up to you and attack you with their words of judgment (ex. “Why are you just peeking, you’re being such a creep!”). You can avoid this interaction by interacting with a shelf Inconspicuously before they reach you around the corner.