{"id":297,"date":"2026-01-12T14:22:35","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T14:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/mfm2g24\/?page_id=297"},"modified":"2026-01-12T14:27:04","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T14:27:04","slug":"gameplay-mechanics","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/mfm2g24\/gameplay-mechanics\/","title":{"rendered":"Gameplay & Mechanics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

NPCs<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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By minigames I was thinking something like the tasks in Among Us:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Simple tasks, some harder than most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, I couldn\u2019t 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\u2019t 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\u2019t 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\u2019t convinced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So, in the end I decided on this:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t answer to (ex. They tell you have terrible taste in food, ask a math question or tell you to spell something). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Answer wrong and your anxiety rises, answer well and you\u2019re 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).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t too long anyways so it wouldn\u2019t be that much of a time loss. Therefore, I think I will be removing the option to evade<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NPC triggers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anything that could make the player stand out in any way will trigger them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Once they spot you doing any of the following, they will \u201cattack\u201d. They\u2019re all timed up to 7 seconds:<\/p>\n\n\n\n