Drink the coffee, Keiko. Wake up!
I've had Keiko do a lot of driving this week, hoping to ensure build stability for the December update. As she's been racking up the kilometres, I started to feel sorry for how tired she kept looking. Keiko can now travel quite far from her home, making getting a good night's sleep difficult. She's also likely to be burning the midnight oil just to stay on top of her debt repayments. To help her out, she can now consume the vending machine goods and replenish her energy levels.
Vending machine goods are grouped by category, with each category selling better or worse depending on the region and economic events. These categories will now also affect Keiko in different ways - should she choose to consume them.
Caffeine, for example, now replenishes Keiko's energy level. Keiko's energy level is displayed through how closed her eyes are, so drinking a coffee will perk her back up.
Mizunuma
I wasn't happy with how similar Mizunuma was looking to Wadashima, so I spent Sunday playing around with ideas on how to give it a more identifiable look. As Mizunuma in the future is likely to be the area that connects to the mountain region, I've ended up landing on a rocky appearance, to help give it that "bottom of the mountain" feel.
The more I'm play-testing, the more I'm realising that each of the "Inaka" areas in the game are going to need area specific tiles. Wadashima - the area in the current demo available - would use tile sets that contain a lot of farmland, lakes etc, whereas the Mizunuma tile set would need to draw from a more rocky tile set.
This is more work, but ideally I'd want players to be able to discern where they are by looking around themselves and not needing to open the map.
Thanks again for the interest and support.
Greg
Comments (4)
Just like in real life, coffee shouldn't be a substitute for a good night's sleep. Is the coffee going to be a quick pick me up or a permanent solution to Keiko not sleeping? Sleep wastes time but is needed, and if there's a mechanic that allows you to skip sleeping that'll make the game too easy imho. Is there a way to combine both - sleeping and drinking coffee? And what happens if a player relies on coffee alone?
I think a limit, or diminishing return, for drinking coffee would be a sensible idea. I'm still considering how to handle that, though. My ideal solution would be to implement a "buff" system, that grants temporary recovery but perhaps increased fatigue once it wears off. Players would then need to sleep to recover from this. There have been some fun suggestions with shaking when over consuming, but I'm reluctant to get too into the weeds with this stuff before getting the vending machine update out to backers.
Nah man being awake is overrated Real players drive full speed trough lakes and other off road environments while being half asleep
Opens up the door to a variety of fun - and also not so fun - effects from the consumables, interesting. (Now just have her catch a fine for that littering too, oof.) I also support the tile variety, give more to see and enjoy so the chance of seeing the "repetition" and tiring of it lessens, ye.