Friday Update 2024-02-16

Happy Friday! Lately I’ve been focused on features that improve the experience of playing the game (a.k.a. quality of life features). JRPGs are somewhat straightforward in that regard, and RPG Maker games especially so; in general you take what the engine gives you and that’s that. However, I’m making several adjustments to the game engine, so some aspects of the game won’t work in a familiar way. How do I communicate that?

At first I intended to communicate new concepts diagetically: Characters in the game explained concepts in character, as best they could. This is good for preserving immersion, but without referring to the abstract concepts the game actually uses (like hit points and guard points), there’s a limit to how comprehensible those explanations can be. I then tried using an “out of character” voice to explain new concepts, but what if you advance the text too quickly or forget what they said?

Behold, the game manual! I’ve written a new scene to act as a manual and made it accessible from the main menu, where it can be referenced at any time. Technical explanations go in the manual, where they’re always accessible. Likewise, I’ve added a quest journal to the menu so a player can refresh their memory of what to do next whenever they need to. Hopefully these two features make the game more accessible:

Now that a quest journal is accessible from the menu, there isn’t a whole lot for the archivist to do anymore. I suppose she’ll need a new job… 🤔 That’s all for this Friday Update. See you in a week or two!