Platforms:

Game Genre:

Business Model:

Target Audience:

Themes:

iOS, Android

Procedural Idle Storytelling

FTP, IAPs

Older players (30+)

Horror, Detective

Design Goals

The Idle game genre started on PC and quickly split into a number of sub-genres. The one that found most traction as a mobile FTP is the idle clicker type. I wanted to explore one of the other sub-genres, the idle storyteller. These are slower games with less user interaction, but those interactions are more important and the market segment typically more faithful - this has been proven by the analytics of most whales being older players.

So, why not make a game specifically for them?

Making a clone of one of the established types would be an uphill struggle - the competition is fierce and the market saturated. Going back to basics and re-introducing the storytelling genre seems like a sound approach.

Make an idle storytelling game that takes place in real world time
- This enforces breaks on the player, commonly held as beneficial to avoid player burnout and churn
The story should be a set template with interchangeable elements that can be procedurally constructed
- No two stories should be identical in details, only in the act structure
The player's time is the most important resource in the game
- Purchasing time must be done in an oblique way so as not to devalue effort and consistency of play

Risks

This game type is slow burn
- This 'should' equate to slow churn, once we manage to capture the player's interest
- Patience will be needed during liveops to not jump the gun and apply game changes that break the core before we know for certain which features are popular or not
Push notifications will be very important
- Careful analytical study of how long each in game task requires will be necessary to not annoy the player and yet keep them engaged
Witchcraft is now recognised as a religion
- The game must not be about witchcraft as the antagonists
- It must avoid victimisations on the female side of the history of witchcraft and the pogroms that surround it
- Use of other historical legends, horror tropes and tales would be wise: lycanthropy, vampires, cthulhu mythos etc
- The world as presented should be clearly fictitious and not pretend to be based on real world events

Influences

A Dark Room
- Storytelling through gameplay
- Lead the player through an act structure as they progress within the game
- Content reveals should be important and leave the player wondering "What will happen next?"
Guess Who?
- Negative space clues about who the coven are, where they are meeting and what they are trying to do
- Over time, previously proven innocent NPCs can become suspicious as they are co opted by the coven
Reigns
- Simple branching story UX similar to dating apps - the player decisions are important but enacting them is easy
- Story a bit too repetitive to maintain long term engagement
Cluedo
- Player actions are important - if they accuse someone and are wrong then the game is over
- Player must discover the identity of three cards in order to win the game; this is easily understood and allows for endless variety if new cards are introduced
The Thing / Frozen Hell
- The mood of the berg; suspicion, anger and fear
- Any villager could be part of the coven and this can change over time as the story progresses
Tiny Tower
- Skillfully avoids Pay to Win
- Allows the player to get more invested in the game by customising elements they purchase
- Contains clicker style micro-mechanics that slightly improve the player's performance is performed diligently and keep the game active in the player's mind
The Hero's Journey
- How to build an act structure and tell a story following global rules
- How to engage interest across multiple storylines without being repetitive

Visuals

Medieval styled woodcuts or later era lithography with bright coloured ink whitespace, depending on the situation. Similarities to the Sin City look, but gothic and with ping pong gif / tiktok style animations illustrating each scene / task as the player engages with it. Colour is use sparingly, to heighten shock value as and when necessary.

Mechanics

To win the game, the player must discover the three pieces of Evidence about the cult needed to stop them:

Who is the high priest?
Where do they meet?
What are they trying to do?

The berg is made up of procedurally generated villagers. A certain amount of these are part of the cult, and one is the cult leader. Independently of this, each has a profession, dwelling, statistics that determine their behaviour (such as how likely to become a member of the cult) and ties to family and friends (or enemies) within the berg.

Additionally, there are global values that are shown to the player;

Civil Unrest
- The player's effectiveness as perceived by the townsfolk
- Some decisions are less popular than others and will increase this
- When high, this can cause riots and defections
- If the maximum reduced, the player character is lynched by the mob (Game Over)
Doomsday Clock
- The time remaining to discover the three facts about the cult
- Milestones within this timeline provoke new story reveals at uncertain intervals
- If this runs out then its Game Over
Corruption
- How much evil magical energy has built up
- Increases over time, faster the more cultists that there are
- Successfully arresting members of the cult or performing certain actions reduce this
- When high, causes evil Events

Some values are hidden from the player. These are the amount and who are cultists and who is their leader.

Play Loop

Actions

These are unlocked as the game progresses and the player meets the requirements. Each needs a certain amount of the player's deputies (see below) to be assigned to it in order to complete the action over a period of real world time. The player character themselves can view any ongoing action and improve how quickly it completes slightly and sometimes affect the amount of Civil Unrest or Corruption.

Example Actions

Recruit
- Rally villagers to your cause - some will offer to join the player's militia and they have a choice on whom from that group
  - Unwittingly recruiting cult members makes them infiltrators, who will undermine your efforts
- You can set the militia members to perform tasks
  - Different tasks need different amounts of people to perform them
  - Some militia and specialists (see later) are better at performing some tasks than others
  - Different villagers are faster or slower at different tasks
  - Infiltrators will be slow at performing the task, provide misinformation or actively help the other cultists
Explore
- Reveal a new area on the map
- Typically enables new actions to be made once complete
- The meeting place of the cult is always within an area unexplored at the start of the game
Arrest
- Capture a villager for later questioning
- Requires a goal and several deputies to make the arrest and then guard the prisoner
- Holding prisoners without resolving their status for long periods of time increases civil unrest and the likelihood of their friends and family joining the cult
- Holding a proven cult member over time reduces civil unrest and corruption
  - After an uncertain delay they will recant, giving the player clues and joining their troop
Raid
- Attack a dwelling with a large amount of deputies
- Any villagers in the dwelling are arrested
- Can result in injuries and cause various events (good or bad)
- A drastic action which always raises civil unrest, especially if anyone is hurt or innocents are arrested
Spy
- A deputy hangs around a particular area on the map and report back on what was seen
- Can provide clues if the deputy is loyal, misinformation if a cultist
- A deputy who is not that observant will produce few or no clues (regardless of if they're a cultist or not)
Interrogate
- Various types of interrogation are available at the player's choice, from merely talking to the prisoner to actually torturing them
- Interrogations always involve the player asking a number of questions of the prisoner
- How effective the interrogation is depends on various factors
  - The prisoner's toughness statistic
  - The type of interrogation employed
- This can have serious negative effects on the game or provide vital clues
- The more friends, family and the higher the status of the prisoner the more effect their imprisonment and interrogation has on the berg as a whole
- A heavy handed approach repeated interrogation or having a cultist deputy perform the interrogation can cause the death of the prisoner - this causes a critical rise in civil unrest usually meaning Game Over
Accuse
- The end game decision; with this the player either wins or (usually) loses
- Not available until the player has amassed enough clues to have a reasonable chance of success
  - Game will warn the player if the chances of success are low
- The must define the three pieces of evidence of the cult (leader, meeting place and purpose)
- They base their guesses on a process of elimination from the clues they have earned by performing actions
- Getting one or more of the guesses wrong causes a rise in corruption and civil unrest
  - Getting all three wrong results in Game Over

Agent Map

Other Characters

Lieutenants
- The player can hire these from the in game shop
- The act as militia who start the game with the player and are immune to becoming infiltrators
Captain
- Once the player has a minimum amount of Lieutenants, one can be appointed the Captain
- There can only be one Captain
- They have a bonus for fighting and reasoning actions
Specialists
- These are similar to Lieutenants in that they are purchased and cannot be infiltrators
- They are only able to perform specific tasks, however they are much better at those tasks than normal militia or lieutenants
Neophytes
- Regular cultists, no special rules beyond what was already defined
Acolytes
- Buffed cultists, better at sowing discord and increasing corruption
- May have some special abilities depending on the type of cult
Changeling
- A hybrid creature that terrorises the peasants
- What type depends on the cult involved
- Causes common events linked directly to the changeling type
- Must be hunted down and slain to stop these events
High Priest
- One third of the evidence that must be divined by the player to win the game
- Immune to interrogation and cannot be killed 'by accident'
- Powerful magical abilities defined by the cult type

Events

These come in two main types, Story or Common. Common events are of secondary importance to the main Story events, but still tie into those, albiet loosely. Which common events occur is based on the Civil Unrest, Corruption and Doomsday Clock values as well as the amount of cultists in the berg. The game selects various recurring villagers to be part of events - these will be used throughout each story arc. In each event, the player must make a series of decisions (typically 1-3) which will have outcomes affecting various things depending on which event is being played out. Some events change when or if recurring, having more critical results.

Example Common Event

The Outsider
- Instance 1: One villager has no friends or family and is under suspicion from the general populace.
  - Choice 1: Imprison them
    - Slightly lowers civil unrest
    - Must have a gaol and troopers to guard the prisoner
  - Choice 2: Try to recruit them
    - May or may not join as a deputy
    - May be a cultist or not
  - Choice 3: Do nothing
    - Causes a small rise in civil unrest
- Instance 2: The villagers are out for blood - they want the outsider hanged!
  - Choice 1: Hang them
    - Lowers civil unrest
    - Increases the chance of villagers joining the cult
    - If the outsider was the cult leader (very unlikely) then this results in the player winning the game
  - Choice 2: Run them out of town
    - Removes the villager from the berg permanently
    - If the outsider was a cultist, lowers the corruption, if they were not, increases it
    - If they were the cult leader then a new one is appointed from amongst the remaining cultists, if there are none then the player wins
  - Choice 3: Command the villagers to mind their own business with a speech
    - If the outsider is a cultist, instantly recruits various other villagers to the cult
    - If not, makes villagers in general slightly less likely to join the cult

Story Events

These are critical path and triggered by the doomsday clock. The final one is the cultists achieving their goal and Game Over, unless the player puts together the evidence and stops them first. The story events are an adaptive template which fits around several factors such as the relative size of the berg (inhabitants) which evil cult is the antagonist and which common events have already occurred.

Text

Text is important in the game, but the game is not a book - the amount of reading required should be light and the text displayed as in The Legend of Zelda: type one character at a time until the phrase is complete, but allow the player to complete the phase immediately by tapping. Text should be used to accompany the visual graphics as the primary story telling element and supply the player with game critical information. Paragraphs should be avoided during play

Economy Structure

The various game events, cults, characters, items and so on are divided into distinct cards. The player starts with a single deck of cards, which is enough from which to play several full games without seeing repeated content. Buying additional decks adds to this content, expanding the entire game to include these new options. Each deck features a single new cult type as well as various additional cards.

Booster packs are also available - these feature a handful of lower value cards such as items, places or characters but no new antagonistic cult.

Example Cults / Decks

The Crystal Kin
- These lunatics worship an unknown god who primarily manifests his presence as weird crystals found in meteors that have fallen to earth
- Cultists revere these crystals and use their strange properties to warp their bodies and minds
- A changeling of this cult is a large brutish beast with a single crystal encrusted into its forehead - a mix of beast and man that will terrorise livestock and kill any travellers found wandering when it hunts after dark
- End goals of the cult may be:
  - Construct a crystalline beacon to call the god down to our planet in physical form
  - Transform the high priest into a living avatar of mutation for the other god
  - Break open a large comet that fell to earth recently to disgorge a massive amount of mutative crystals
Risen Rose
- A debased cult focused on the pleasures of the flesh
- They use the poison from a species of rose to highlight and modify their reactions to pain
- Completely amoral, they see the rest of humanity as mere tools for them to reach even higher levels of pleasure
- The cult changeling is a pain wagon - a cluster of delirious cultists on a converted cart, raiding outlying dwellings and gathering up the occupants for torture
- End goals of the cult may be:
  - Summon a demon to grant their every desire - this would result in the demon tricking them and slaughtering the whole human race
  - Enacting a ritual to make the cultists immune to physical destruction effectively making them an immortal army that will subjugate the human race
  - Process a massive amount of the toxin from the rose and dump it into the water supply, affecting the entire berg and, eventually, the world
Brotherhood of the Bloody Tongue
- A cult based around the propagation of a parasite that inhabits the human brain stem, feeding off its host until they are dead
- Unlike the other cults, they do not need to convince followers to join them, merely infect them with a parasite
- Injured cultists will spontaneously decapitate, revealing a thrashing tongue from the stump of their neck and mindlessly attacking anyone nearby
- The cult changeling is a warped mass of flesh with tentacles for arms and a head that will go berserk, smashing dwellings and killing the occupants - fortunately it is short lived and will dissolve into a noisom mess after a few days
- End goals of the cult may be:
  - Cause mass breeding of the parasite in a group of prisoners and then send them to the furthest corners of the realm
  - Open a portal to an alternate realm from where the parasites originate
  - Gestate a changeling within a sealed coach and deliver it into the king's keep
Order of the Noctis Fellowship
- A collection of noblemen and ladies who see regular humans as inferior and one small step up from the Volgus livestock they breed in their underground lairs
- The Volgus are degenerate humans, downbred into docility and without much of their higher brain function
- The fellowship use these Volgus to feed on a secretion from their victims which, when properly prepared in a draught, grants visions and supernatural speed and strength
- Members of this cult typically hold positions of power and status within the berg
- They ingres new cult members by feeding them the draught without their knowledge until they are addicted and under their sway - typically this occurs at elegant swarays held in on of their large mansions
- The changeling for this cult is a herd of escaped and violent Volgus, driven berserk by their subjugation
- End goals of the cult may be:
  - Undermine and collapse the entire berg into a huge underground cavern for breeding more Volgus
  - Distil an even more potent form of the draught, transforming their high priest into an unstoppable fiend

Taps

The player is paid by the in game character of the head of the militant arm of the church for which they work in silver crowns: the soft currency. They can purchase gold crowns (hard currency) in the shop or got rewarded them for completing certain game milestones. First install is one of these.

Completing achievements, recurring play and defeating a cult all reward the player with soft and sometimes hard currency. The primary method for gaining hard currency is to purchase it.

Sinks

Cadre

These are the lieutenants, captain and specialists who accompany the player from the start of each new game. They must be hired for soft currency and can be killed, driven mad or otherwise retired during the line of duty and require a replacement.

Items

There are two types of item, passive and active. Passive items must be equipped by a member of the player's cadre to be used. They have a permanent effect on that particular character, typically making them better at performing certain actions or resistant to some of the risks the game events present. Each character can have two items equipped at once.

Active items are enabled by the player. Their effects are either instant or occur over a limited time. Either way, they are consumed once their effects are resolved.

Conclusion

I like this concept a lot because I don't believe there's anything quite like it currently on the market. The various game book options have some similarities, but typically they're all adapted, to a greater or lesser extent, from either the Fighting Fantasy series or less well known variants.

There's a lot of additional material to make this concept complete which I have written up but restrained myself to presenting the highlights here. A prototype for this one would be quite simple to build since the deck of cards logic design is relatively straight forward.

Suffice to say, it's on my list of future projects to build :)

Accuser

Introduction

The world will end soon; portents are dire and the people beg for your aid. A blood moon has risen in the night sky, casting its baleful glare across the land. The animals milk is soured and their young born dead with shocking aberrations. A foul wind blows, its poisonous influence making the people suspicious and scared.

All of this is centered around a small berg in the middle of nowhere. The mayor has called you there to cut out the heresy that has manifested this evil. Little does he know however, how grave and close the danger is. Through methods of scrying tolerated by the church, you have found that the dark power is building. This evil power is measurable and predictable. A cult to some foul deity is active and working towards some nefarious end within this unsuspecting place.

In a few scant days, it will be strong enough to accomplish any calamity those who are summoning it forth might desire.

Your job is to go forth to this berg. Flush out the cultists from wherever they are hiding. Which may be in plain sight, amongst their honest neighbours. Find their accomplices, disrupt their rituals and stop whatever it is they are trying to accomplish. You must fulfill your title and function - be the Accuser.