Prototype 3 - Monster Watcher

Fullscreen mode recommended!

Top-down 2D "monster-watcher" where you research creatures and collect data for your journal by using your trusty camera and various other tools to record their silly behaviors!

Core loop: Watch creatures interact, collect data based on what your bestiary asks for, use that data to fill out your bestiary and unlock new information and tools, use the new tools gained from unlocking new information to gather more data, repeat.

Controls:
- WASD/arrow keys: move the camera
- Left Click/Space: Take photo
- Right Click: Interact (changes based on "Interaction mode")
- Q: Change interaction mode
- E: Open/close journal (A/D: change journal pages)
- R: Open/close quest log

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This concept is actively being worked on as part of a class! My process journal can be seen here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11ruhahUD-TdIsNAFElaBuV6bcxAytYA2/edit?usp=sh...

This general concept of a "monster-watcher" is one that I've been wondering about for a long time, and it's been a bit of a burning question in my mind whether a game built around research and observation could really be fun. In my head this was a much larger concept, involving a full ecosystem and a "living" environment with more direct player interaction (like allowing players to catch and use monsters to get around), but I pared it down substantially to make it fit into a prototype, and then pared it down again to make it something I could complete alone in only two weeks. The development for this game was significantly troubled, more so than any of my other prototypes, since I was busy and ultimately needed to take time to rest that sapped away a lot of development time (and I had to settle on a much less efficient state machine style than what I wanted in order to ensure I had anything to show off at all), so I was honestly afraid that I wouldn't have a functional game at all. However, I feel like I managed to wrangle things into a decently interesting form at the end, even if I wanted to do a whole lot more.

I think that, while I obviously had much grander ambitions, this game is pretty solidly reflective of my core game loop. The game gives you research to collect, it gives you a couple of tools to help you on your way, and it gives you new tools as you capture more data. That being said, I do think I could have added more ways to interact, or at the very least, I could have added interaction modes that were more useful for gathering data. Placing food isn't very helpful right now since food spawns anyways and it takes a long time for creatures to get hungry, so it's not especially good for unlocking new states. Petting also only really gives you access to one new state, while actively making it harder to view creatures fighting and playing. Poking is the last interaction mode, and it's much more useful for discovering states, but it requires a lot of waiting around to capture enough states to unlock it. I think I should consider reordering the interaction modes or attaching more states to placing food and petting, as well as more interaction modes that help find new states or help collect new kinds of data altogether, to help reinforce the core loop.

With this project, I really just wanted to answer the question of whether a game/mechanic focused on gathering research could be fun. Honestly, up until a couple of days before finishing the project, I was ready to say that the answer was "no" - the game felt too simplistic, and there wasn't enough player agency or interesting behavior to make the game feel engaging. However, I feel like after implementing behaviors that involved creatures interacting with each other, as well as implementing more unique traits between creatures (and after getting a fairly positive reception when showing the game off), I think there might be some promise to this concept, after all. Players and viewers alike seemed to enjoy just watching the creatures go about their lives, so I feel like every addition to the complexity would improve it exponentially.

I'd love to add a LOT of new things to this prototype, since I feel like it has a lot of potential for expansion. More interactions and states for the creature, a more varied environment for creatures to interact with, and an "ecosystem" of multiple creature types would all help increase the amount of things to find. I'd also love to add a player character, as well as the ability to both "capture" creatures and use them to navigate the environment or induce new states, or perhaps even a proper battle system (with NPCs that can both be fought and talked to in order to get hints/new research requests). In terms of the changes to what I have now, though, my most pressing concern is remaking the state machine system so that it's more modular and more efficient. I had a state machine system that ALMOST worked but needed some refactoring to avoid recursion, and I'd love to get it to work if I had more time. I'd also rearrange and rebalance the interaction modes, as I said, and maybe rework the food system so that placing food near creatures makes them eat.

In terms of what I'd want to do next, aside from refactoring the state machine code and polishing everything, I'd definitely want to add another couple of creatures, as well as a couple of new environmental features like bushes, trees, ledges, and water. I suppose I'd also want a simple pathfinding system to ensure that creatures don't get stuck if their movement is blocked by a ledge. After that, I'd probably want to allow the player to catch and use monsters to add a new dimension to the research tools, but I'm not certain - and after that, perhaps I'd add a player character able to actually move around in the overworld. Oh, and I'd love to add dynamic z-changing to allow the game to take on a sort of isometric perspective! There's a whole lot of places I think this project could be taken, with a really high potential ceiling, and so I'm grateful I had the opportunity to build out a first prototype here.