- Nov 17, 2017
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First of all, let begin with stating that this post probably won't mean much to you if you aren't familiar with the Mistborn books series by Brandon Sanderson. Second of all, this is just a background concept I have right now. Sad as it may seem, that doesn't mean that it'll ever actually be made.
Anyone familiar with the Mistborn series will know that it has one of the most unique and overal best magic systems in it: Allomancy (the others are also great, but I'll focus on Allomancy here). People have tried creating games with allomancy before, but they usually seem to focus on the action based allomangic powers, while ignoring the more social based powers. But it is exactly these social powers that could add a very interesting gameplay mechanic to a plain story driven visual novel. As a player you'd have to careful think when you'd start using those precious metallic resources at your disposal with knowing when in the story you'll be back to safety to refill them.
When I think of a Mistborn visual novel, I imagine the main character obivously have certain allomantic powers that they could turn on and off (and perhaps even flare) at will. Each metal would have a variable assigned to it to show how much you have left of that metal. Here is how I think some of the powers could be implemented in a visual novel in an interesting way:
Rioting/Soothing: Rioting works a little bit better in this context than soothing I think as it's easier to implement correctly. How I image this is the player having a little UI icon on the side of the screen. When you click on in, you'll get to see 4 options: Fear, Calm, Courage and Hope. Each of those emotions have a value assigned to them from 0 to 3 (0 being off and 3 being 'flare that shit'). You can alter all these values at will. Character in the story can then starts responding slightly differently to you depending on which emotions you're encouraging with your allomancy. But each time you hit spacebar to see the next text message of the story, your metal reserve for Rioting will go down equal to the total amount of value you have assigned to the emotions. So if Calm is on 1 and Hope on 2, you'd lose 3 each time you go to the next text message. This means you'll have to be careful when and how to use it
Tin: Very similar to Rioting. On this time you'd simply have an on/off switch. Certain information you can only pick up if you've turned on your tin. You won't get to see those messages with extra information if your tin is off. So it's useful in investigation scenes, but once again you'll quickly lose your metallic resources if you keep it on for too long
Pewter: This one would need a health bar in the game. This isn't really a 'social' magic, but it's still cool to have. I imagine turning pewter on would give you a certain amount of tmp health to survive dangerous situations. But you'll immediately lose that when you run out of pewter. So turning it on can save your character and lead to different scenes where your character wins/loses a fight, but there is a risk of going game over because of it.
Copper: Obviously this is also just a simple on/off switch. It will have narrative concequenses in some scenes if you are hiding your allomancy or not.
Bronze: Similar to Tin, but this time you'll get a few secret messages when someone is using allomancy nearby or on you.
Steel/Iron: Can't do much interesting with this except for giving player dialogue choices about using it or not
Anyway, let me know what you think. Do you think it would be interesting to play a game like this with a rather unique form of player choice in it?
I don't know, this is just one of the many different visual novel ideas that are swimming around in my head. Let me know what you think and if you'd be interested in such a visual novel.
Anyone familiar with the Mistborn series will know that it has one of the most unique and overal best magic systems in it: Allomancy (the others are also great, but I'll focus on Allomancy here). People have tried creating games with allomancy before, but they usually seem to focus on the action based allomangic powers, while ignoring the more social based powers. But it is exactly these social powers that could add a very interesting gameplay mechanic to a plain story driven visual novel. As a player you'd have to careful think when you'd start using those precious metallic resources at your disposal with knowing when in the story you'll be back to safety to refill them.
When I think of a Mistborn visual novel, I imagine the main character obivously have certain allomantic powers that they could turn on and off (and perhaps even flare) at will. Each metal would have a variable assigned to it to show how much you have left of that metal. Here is how I think some of the powers could be implemented in a visual novel in an interesting way:
Rioting/Soothing: Rioting works a little bit better in this context than soothing I think as it's easier to implement correctly. How I image this is the player having a little UI icon on the side of the screen. When you click on in, you'll get to see 4 options: Fear, Calm, Courage and Hope. Each of those emotions have a value assigned to them from 0 to 3 (0 being off and 3 being 'flare that shit'). You can alter all these values at will. Character in the story can then starts responding slightly differently to you depending on which emotions you're encouraging with your allomancy. But each time you hit spacebar to see the next text message of the story, your metal reserve for Rioting will go down equal to the total amount of value you have assigned to the emotions. So if Calm is on 1 and Hope on 2, you'd lose 3 each time you go to the next text message. This means you'll have to be careful when and how to use it
Tin: Very similar to Rioting. On this time you'd simply have an on/off switch. Certain information you can only pick up if you've turned on your tin. You won't get to see those messages with extra information if your tin is off. So it's useful in investigation scenes, but once again you'll quickly lose your metallic resources if you keep it on for too long
Pewter: This one would need a health bar in the game. This isn't really a 'social' magic, but it's still cool to have. I imagine turning pewter on would give you a certain amount of tmp health to survive dangerous situations. But you'll immediately lose that when you run out of pewter. So turning it on can save your character and lead to different scenes where your character wins/loses a fight, but there is a risk of going game over because of it.
Copper: Obviously this is also just a simple on/off switch. It will have narrative concequenses in some scenes if you are hiding your allomancy or not.
Bronze: Similar to Tin, but this time you'll get a few secret messages when someone is using allomancy nearby or on you.
Steel/Iron: Can't do much interesting with this except for giving player dialogue choices about using it or not
Anyway, let me know what you think. Do you think it would be interesting to play a game like this with a rather unique form of player choice in it?
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I don't know, this is just one of the many different visual novel ideas that are swimming around in my head. Let me know what you think and if you'd be interested in such a visual novel.