Prithee, forsooth, verily, and yonder!
Now that we’ve exhausted our vocabulary of medieval sounding words, let’s talk about quests. As we teased in the previous blog, quests are one of the features we’re experimenting with for Walk of Life to increase the game’s replayability.
A recurring piece of feedback of No Time to Relax was that after a couple of playthroughs it was easy to figure out the optimal strategy of the game. The game could effectively be solved as players would follow the same strategy every game to get the maximum amount of points.
Let’s hope this is all part of his quest.
One way to prevent players from always following the same path is to present them with different choices every game, meaning that they can’t follow the same strategy every time but must instead adapt to what the game throws at them.
Quests are a new feature that are meant to serve as one of the main ways for players to earn points in Walk of Life. Each quest includes one or more objectives that players must complete within a specified timeframe to earn a score bonus.
A key aspect of quests is that they are random and players will not get the same quests every game. Some quests may line up with what you were going to do anyway, while others may force you to take a bit of a detour from your gameplan.
Golden riches await.
Quests are obviously not some revolutionary new design but a simple addition to the game that should feel intuitive to players while addressing what we felt was an issue with our game design. You don’t have to use nanobots in a situation where duct tape does the job.
So what kind of quests do you put into a life simulator?
Without slimes or dragons for our players to slay, quests will have players tackle mundane, everyday happenings. For example, “Lottoman Empire” will ask you to buy a bunch of lottery tickets, while “Suds all, folks” will require you to wash your hands at one of the game’s bathrooms.
Wait, did we just reveal that our game has bathrooms? That was supposed to be a whole devblog in and of itself.
Fine. Take this sneak preview of one of the many bathrooms in Walk of Life. See if we care.
Paying customers only!