Mercerenies
Member
Hello,
I'm working on a haunted house exploration game, and I'd like to have a sort of "tattle log" to keep track of which enemy types the player has met, to encourage finding them all and to give lore about the different obstacles and things. Now the question is: When do I make an enemy appear in the log? Obviously, you should be able to see the enemy in the log when you've interacted with that enemy in some way, and you shouldn't be able to read about the ones you've never met. So I had a few ideas.
I'm working on a haunted house exploration game, and I'd like to have a sort of "tattle log" to keep track of which enemy types the player has met, to encourage finding them all and to give lore about the different obstacles and things. Now the question is: When do I make an enemy appear in the log? Obviously, you should be able to see the enemy in the log when you've interacted with that enemy in some way, and you shouldn't be able to read about the ones you've never met. So I had a few ideas.
- Enemies could be logged when you kill them once. This would be a good idea for a lot of game types, but it doesn't really work all that well for me. This is an exploration game, with a focus on exploring nooks and crannies and dodging obstacles, not combat or weapons. As such, many enemies are very difficult or even outright impossible to kill.
- Enemies could be logged when they appear on screen. This would work, I suppose. But it would also get a lot of false positives, as it's very easy for an enemy to appear on screen just barely without the player noticing. Then random entries start appearing in the log and the player doesn't know why.
- Enemies could be logged when they enter your flashlight's light. This is basically a better version of the above idea, with the same problems. And it may also be somewhat frustrating to players who see an enemy behind them but never think to shine their light on the enemy.
- Enemies could be logged when they deal damage to you. This would also work, I guess. If an enemy deals damage to you, you've definitely encountered it. I'm just not a huge fan of the idea of rewarding the player for taking damage.
- I could give the player a special "tattle" ability. So you press a button, and enemies directly in front of you are logged if they aren't already. Cons are: it adds complexity to the control scheme, and a lot of players simply won't bother, resulting in sad, empty tattle logs for many players. Also, there's a lot of potential for "directly in front of you" to end up being pretty janky and annoying, if an enemy is slightly out of bounds of the attack.
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