Passage of Time - limited interactions in a game day

[saguaro]

I've been thinking about how adding a time element would impact a mystery VN and how players would respond to it.

For example, let's say that each day is divided into 4 time increments (morning, noon, afternoon, evening). So the player can perform 4 actions in any given day, and any one action, regardless of the type, takes up one of those time increments. After the 4th action it's bedtime or whatever, and you start the next chapter the next day. There are more than 4 possible actions in any given day, so the player can never do everything each day. They have to pick and choose.

This is a mystery, so if you don't talk to Jan about the missing pencil on Monday, you may not get another opportunity if Jan goes out of town Tuesday morning. The player has to pick what's important and what isn't and run with it. I don't have experience with dating sims, but I guess some have a similar idea (e.g. you can only do so many stat-building activities a day).

I was thinking that I wanted the player to have the option to slack off from solving the mystery (play mini-games, for example) but that there would be repercussions.

I remember reading an interview where an indie developer talked about how the player should never have "a point of no return" where they miss a game element and are forced to restart the game to reach the end. But VNs are different from, say, action games, which is a genre I think the point-of-no-return rule would apply to. It seems like most VN fans expect to replay the game several times and understand they can't get everything in the first play-through. Furthermore, VN fans accept a bad ending, and accept that some endings are better than others and it may take time to find the best ending.

Would this annoy players? Is this an element that you see in games? The mystery games I've played, like Phoenix Wright and Hotel Dusk, don't have this type of mechanism, so I'm really not sure how common it is.

[Auro-Cyanide]

You are right in that time increments are very common in dating sims. I would suggest checking out some demos and such to see what others have done.

As for the point of no return. The thing is, if you allow it to be possible for a player to 'screw up' you will still want them to be able to get an ending and a fulfilling ending. It may be bad but it should always be fulfilling. You will also have to make things reasonably easier for players to eventually figure out, or give them multiple chances to get to where they need to go. If I missed a single event that I wasn't even sure existed and played through the entire game to only get an unresolved or weak ending because I missed said event I would probably rage-quit.

[papillon]

To some extent it's better expected/understood within the VN/sim world than average games. However, it's still something to be careful with.

If you find reviews of the old hentai game 'Snow Drop' you'll find that people were VERY frustrated with it because you had to be in the right place at the right time and encounter scenes that you had no way to know were even there, and unless you achieved a specific sequence the game would just end, with no clear sign of what you'd done wrong. Most people had to resort to a walkthrough in order to get anywhere and they were quite cranky about it.

It's a lot more fun for the player to make meaningful choices between clear alternatives than to have to pick at random and be punished for getting it wrong. Especially if your bad endings are just 'you failed to solve the mystery, you suck' rather than interesting things happening instead of solving it.

Take a look at the scale of adventure game cruelty as listed here:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... leByDesign

It's not just a binary choice between "you can never fail" and "good luck solving this one!"

For example, if you have the person you need to talk to leave town, you could have a message sent to the player about it saying that Jan is gone and not coming back. It won't help them for that playthrough, but it will at least make it clear that a potential oops happened so that they know what they need to do differently next time. Or, if you're nicer, you could warn them up front that Jan _will_ be leaving town and let them decide whether or not to talk to Jan first.

[Applegate]

I was thinking that I wanted the player to have the option to slack off from solving the mystery (play mini-games, for example) but that there would be repercussions.

I'd recommend against punishing the player for having fun; those mini-games are played to have fun, and it doesn't make sense to give the player a bad ending for having fun. Unless your message is that "mystery is serious business so put your serious faces and business suits on".

[ThisIsNoName]

I think another good idea might be to have multiple ways to solve the mystery. Maybe talking to Jan might be the quickest path or easiest or most fun, but there at least one other path to solve the mystery, possibly going in a completely different direction.

Overall, however, I think it's a great idea, and one that I would definitely play.

[Greeny]

While in essence, time limit could add some interesting elements to your story, but I would advise against making it a solid number. Different actions take a different amount of time to do, so having every action take up exactly 1/4 of a day, it just doesn't sit right with me. If you give them different times to complete, you could face the player with meaningful decisions they'll actually need to think about: For example: The player knows Jan will leave tomorrow, but Jan lives in another town. Interviewing him will take at least until noon. On the other hand, you could use that time to both check the crime scene again for clues you overlooked the first time, and interview Bob, who lives nearby.

[sciencewarrior]

To reiterate what the others said, the only thing that is more frustrating than not having enough information to make a decision is not having enough information and not having enough feedback once the decision is made. You could show how many days the detective has left to investigate a crime scene or interrogate a suspect right there in the action selection screen, and your players will probably enjoy the added constraint instead of finding it arbitrary or punitive. You can even get away with killing a witness without warning, because they will know the consequence of not acting before (and they can hit Load Game, if they want to; or press on to the end, good or bad).

[saguaro]

You guys gave me a lot to think about. We can probably equate point-of-no-return with an unresolved ending--both are instances in which the player receives no real reward for playing and is punished by being forced to start over.

The consensus seems to be that if there is a time limit, it should not be punitive, and there should be multiple paths to fulfilling endings (so there is not a rage-quit scenario like Auro-Cyanide mentioned).

I guess we could make a checklist and say that if we have a time mechanism like this, the following should be true:
- Fulfilling endings are always achievable through multiple paths regardless of missed events.
- There is communication to the player as to WHY they received a certain type of ending so they will understand what to do differently next time. They shouldn't have to guess what variable/action needs to be tweaked to get a different result.
- Time limits are clearly explained within the game (be it, "Jan told me she was going to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory tomorrow, so if you want to talk to her you better see her before she leaves," or some sort of indicator like Greeny mentioned [a clock or a day countdown or whatever]).
- Choices should have clear alternatives in the narrative. No, "Let's see what happens!" type choices.

I'd recommend against punishing the player for having fun; those mini-games are played to have fun, and it doesn't make sense to give the player a bad ending for having fun. Unless your message is that "mystery is serious business so put your serious faces and business suits on".

Yeah, you're right, I don't think I worded that too well. I guess I meant I would like the player to have the option to not solve the mystery at all and goof around (I thought playing mini-games would be more fun than selecting, "Goof off," as a menu choice). But I think you have a good point that if they choose that path, and opt to play pong instead of go to work or whatever, they should still get an interesting plot path and ending instead of just, Day 3: You're fired, the end.

Basically, I don't want solving the mystery to be the end-all be-all. Maybe on one play-through the player will focus on building friendships/romances and an NPC solves the mystery behind the scenes based on the choices you've made NOT to investigate.

While in essence, time limit could add some interesting elements to your story, but I would advise against making it a solid number. Different actions take a different amount of time to do, so having every action take up exactly 1/4 of a day, it just doesn't sit right with me.

Excellent point. That would help add some real strategy to the decision-making process, too.

[SusanTheCat]

But I think you have a good point that if they choose that path, and opt to play pong instead of go to work or whatever, they should still get an interesting plot path and ending instead of just, Day 3: You're fired, the end.

I think that would be an acceptable path. Especially if after the second day the boss announces that he has his eye on you and you better shape up.

Susan

[Kura]

Remember that a fulfilling ending isn't necessarily a "good" ending--really, it just needs to be interesting. If you fail to solve the mystery but build up a strong relationship with another character, that could be fulfilling. If you fail to solve it but learn a piece of information that will make it much easier to solve next time, or that reveals a bigger picture of what's going on (especially if the only way to learn that information was to fail), that's fulfilling too.

On the option to play a mini-game instead of solving the mystery, I don't think it would add much to your game. What point would there be to deciding "slack off"? If the point is just the fun gameplay, well, I probably wouldn't be playing a VN at all if that was what I felt like doing, so I don't see any reason I'd ever try it. However, the choice between "solve the mystery or interact with my colleagues" sounds like a great one.

[saguaro]

On the option to play a mini-game instead of solving the mystery, I don't think it would add much to your game. What point would there be to deciding "slack off"? If the point is just the fun gameplay, well, I probably wouldn't be playing a VN at all if that was what I felt like doing, so I don't see any reason I'd ever try it.

Yeah, you have a point there, thanks for weighing in. I just realized that with the mini-game idea I was trying to cater to players that aren't as interested in the story. But players not interested in stories wouldn't play VNs! There are tons of great action/whatever games out there for them. I guess I forgot the age-old rule: know your audience.

I want to provide as many options as possible, but options that aren't meaningful or will terminate the game (and thus the story) prematurely should be skipped... the time spent to implement them would better be spent on more meaningful interactions.