A friend and I have this small game we love called Shadows of Doubt where you’re a detective solving procedurally generated crimes in a procedurally generated world. I think the game’s pretty fun and very unique, but I also acknowledge that once you get a feel for how the game works then it starts to get pretty same-y as there’s not a large variety of ways to figure out what’s going on and there are quite a few ways to kinda cheat your way through some mysteries.
The idea we had was a procedurally generated detective game but set in a fantasy world. I’m talking trying to figure out who sent poisoned food offerings to the dragon lording over the area, taking down the local death cult sacrificing people to some god of chaos, tracking down dangerous wizards who broke out of jail right before being executed, and whatever other silly, absurd, or creative ideas they come up with for crimes to be committed or be solved in a high fantasy setting.
I think the game should have enough variety in the types of crimes to be solved that it shouldn’t really run into the issue of getting into a routine of how things work, but I also feel like this could be addressed by having it so if you start getting into a routine of mechanics you engage with then it starts nerfing those mechanics. Keep using mana sensing to find the people at the crime scene? New crime scenes will start to have more muddled mana so it’s harder to detect or isolate exact matches of people. Keep using eye witness testimonies? People start having trouble remembering exactly what they saw. Keep using company/government logs to track who could have been involved? They become less cooperative as time goes on as they start to think you’re leaking that info OR the next criminal heard you did that so they specifically damaged those logs so you can’t use them.
I can’t remember which game it is but I’m thinking in the same vein as that game which adapts to how the player disposes of enemies by identifying you’re doing a lot of head shots so giving enemies helmets, or body shots so body armor, etc.
A friend and I have this small game we love called Shadows of Doubt where you’re a detective solving procedurally generated crimes in a procedurally generated world. I think the game’s pretty fun and very unique, but I also acknowledge that once you get a feel for how the game works then it starts to get pretty same-y as there’s not a large variety of ways to figure out what’s going on and there are quite a few ways to kinda cheat your way through some mysteries.
The idea we had was a procedurally generated detective game but set in a fantasy world. I’m talking trying to figure out who sent poisoned food offerings to the dragon lording over the area, taking down the local death cult sacrificing people to some god of chaos, tracking down dangerous wizards who broke out of jail right before being executed, and whatever other silly, absurd, or creative ideas they come up with for crimes to be committed or be solved in a high fantasy setting.
I think the game should have enough variety in the types of crimes to be solved that it shouldn’t really run into the issue of getting into a routine of how things work, but I also feel like this could be addressed by having it so if you start getting into a routine of mechanics you engage with then it starts nerfing those mechanics. Keep using mana sensing to find the people at the crime scene? New crime scenes will start to have more muddled mana so it’s harder to detect or isolate exact matches of people. Keep using eye witness testimonies? People start having trouble remembering exactly what they saw. Keep using company/government logs to track who could have been involved? They become less cooperative as time goes on as they start to think you’re leaking that info OR the next criminal heard you did that so they specifically damaged those logs so you can’t use them.
I can’t remember which game it is but I’m thinking in the same vein as that game which adapts to how the player disposes of enemies by identifying you’re doing a lot of head shots so giving enemies helmets, or body shots so body armor, etc.