The Way of Wrath Updates, $20,950 and Counting

With 19 days still to go, Animmal Studio’s Kickstarter campaign for their shamanistic turn-based RPG The Way of Wrath is currently sitting at $20,950 pledged. And with the game roughly $7,000 away from hitting its initial goal, you might want to check out some campaign updates and learn more about this project.

Update #7 shares some info regarding the game’s choices and consequences. Update #8 tells us more about our home base. Update #9 is dedicated to crafting. And update #10 is all about the game’s Shamans.

Here are a few paragraphs on the game’s approach to player choices:

Choices and Consequences

Choices and Consequences in interactive stories can be very exciting when done right, and they can be very frustrating and disappointing when they don’t quite work or matter in games.

Without some sort of futuristic storyteller AI’s, that can spin the tales in real-time and populate the game with cinematics, simulated voice acting and build new game maps in an instant. The C&C of video games will be a limited experience. There is only so much handcrafted content you can have in a game, and there is a limit to how long procedural stories can keep their impact.

But within these limitations, it’s possible to create engaging C&C stories that add to replay value and make your experience more personal.

So, what makes choices good and interesting? We believe the choices work best when they let you achieve your overarching plans and explore the personality of your character. Help to build relationships with other characters and challenge you with interesting dilemmas.

And they are at their worst when you are ambushed by unexpected choices with vague implications on their outcomes. That leave you confused and frustrated over being forced into picking between good old “bad & worse”.

We try to include what we believe to be good values of C&C into the choices we design.

When we iterate over our quest we ask ourselves.

Are you able to have agency over your story? Can you make your own plans and follow your own goals?

We try to design quests and gameplay in a way that clearly introduces you to the dilemmas and problems at hand. And after that gives you freedom and options to solve those dilemmas the way you see fit.

Almost every problem the player faces will have multiple solutions. Some tied to players’ reputation or skills, some to previous choices, and others can be discovered through deeper exploration. There are many degrees to failure or success and there are no “wrong” choices.

Are you already invested enough into the world to care about the choice you make?

With our day passage system and personal stories for each NPC, you will get to know each character and faction very well over the course of the game. Choices you make will affect them deeply, and you will get to experience many consequences during your playthrough rather than only at the end of the story.

Does the dilemma make sense? Does it resonate with you?

We chose to focus the story on character conflicts and make their problems grounded in the reality of the setting. This way we get more opportunities to focus dilemma on things that feel relevant and real to the world you are exploring. Things that have more chances to make you really think about how you and your RP character would approach such problems.

Are you able to make an impact on and share meaningful experiences with characters you care about?

Listening to exciting character backgrounds can be fun, but if you don’t get to experience similar stories with those characters during gameplay it sometimes can feel like their best stories happened without you. We focused on exploring characters through shared experiences with players, rather than their past.

There are many more considerations that go into C&C, and we’ll explore them in future updates and quest design live-streams.

Tell us what you love or hate in C&C in the comments. We’d love to hear what you think!