Devlog #13- Buildings

As promised last time, this week’s devlog is about buildings in my game so let's jump right in-

-Houses-

First up I'll show some of the houses I’ve made so far.

You will be able to enter all of these buildings, and I’ll do my best to fill them with interesting things. Buildings will be tied in some way to one of the party members, or will be abandoned and taken over by a special ghost or two.

I’d like to avoid buildings being static empty spaces where you only visit once, and my main idea at the moment is to have a few events for each household that are only triggered as you progress through the game. These will be tied to less important quests, so skipping them won’t make you miss out on anything major but you’ll be rewarded if you come across them.

For example, enter the house of a ‘mother and son’ ghost pair every now and then to see the son getting fatter and lazier until the day it tips over and you have to do something about it. I think this is a good space for quests that have multiple endings, e.g. in this case, side with the angry mom or the lazy son. These decisions can have a permanent impact on the world based on player decisions, without any consequences that would make things difficult for me to create. (I don’t want the main story to have multiple endings)

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-Interior visuals-

I spent the day working on a first draft of a house interior. I decided to go with a gamedev staple and take from something existing that I know works instead of trying to invent something new, and I went with Mother 3.

Example here-

First of all I love the atmosphere change of entering a house and anywhere beyond the walls being black void, and that’s pretty common across lots of games.

The specific ‘inspiration’ from Mother 3 is the angle of the walls and furniture. The side walls are very slightly angular, but the furniture mostly ignores that and stays head on (much easier for me to draw long-term).

So here is my version- (still needs some work)

I’m not going to add a lot of interactivity to the furniture inside, I’ve never been a fan of having little quips for every item in a room. Just feels like padding when none of it actually matters. I might make some objects destructible though, because entering a ghost’s house and smashing it all up will definitely appeal to some players.

Just like in the overworld, there will sometimes be ghosts hiding as objects within a house but I’ll make their trigger range much smaller. I plan to split most houses into multiple connecting rooms so they might function a bit more like mini dungeons sometimes, filled with hidden ghosts (or other objectives) .

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-Shoes Off Household!-

Lastly I added a feature that takes character’s shoes off at the entrance. I always thought this was funny in the Yokai Watch series and since I am going for a modern Japanese-style with a genkan in all of my houses I figure I may as well add it to my game too. Took a bit of work to add and draw sock sprites, but I like it.

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-Lighthouse-

Also bonus lighthouse! Buildings like this function mostly as waypoints to help the player remember their way around (my game has no minimap), but I'll work them into quests and storylines too.

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Thanks for reading, back next week :)