In the eighth week, during the discussion with my supervisor, I was asked again what kind of game I wanted to make? What is the mechanism of my game like? What exactly is the core loop like? It was at this time that I realized my understanding of my game was still somewhat vague. So this week, I thoroughly confirmed many specific details of my game.
The core of the entire game is a value called “karma”, which is invisible to players in the game. Players’ actions will affect this value and also influence the direction of the game’s story. This idea was derived from “karma” in Escape from Tarkov and “Honor” in Red Dead Redemption 2（Fig.1）. For instance, if a player constantly kills innocent people and kills teammates, it will lead to a decrease in this value and bring about many negative effects in the game, such as: The prices of equipment in the store have doubled. Some tasks that require high values will not be open to players. Even the originally neutral NPCS（Fig.2） in the game will actively attack players.
Figure 1. The honor system in Red Dead Redemption 2, where player actions influence NPC reactions, ranging from admiration to hostility.
Figure 2. “Partisan — a boss character in Escape from Tarkov who specifically targets players with low karma.”
In my game, I designed a similar mechanism to generally categorize the options of events into two types: “good” and “evil”. However, my idea is to “hide” this value, but it will remind players by changing the surrounding environment whether they have deviated from the path they want to take. For example, if a player wants to take a peaceful route in the game, then when a choice comes, the player needs to choose the better side more often. When the player’s karma value increases, the player will observe: When the sky becomes clear and people around greet the player voluntarily, etc., all these indicate that the player’s current “goodness” is greater than “evil”, and vice versa.
As for how to define it, what is goodness? What is evil? This question is actually quite difficult to answer. I define it based on my own standards for measuring “good” and “evil”. My original intention in creating this game was to “let both the good and the bad have their own corresponding endings”.