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[JoshuaFH]

Faerie Tale: A simple story of adventure and friendship

I've finally drummed up the right reason to finally return to writing down my little game ideas. And by 'the right reason' I mean I rolled it up with a dice in a cup.

This started out as just a cutesy daydream that spiraled into a touching story in my mind. To start you off with the setting, just imagine a low fantasy world that was previously occupied by all manner of magical creatures from elves, demons, imps, and faerie, but through a series of events that I'll delve into later, the vast majority of them have vanished off the face of the world, or Terra for just a nice generic name for the world, in a series of brutal mass extinction events or driven into endangerment by the one race that has managed to remain successful in the face of repeated global upheavals: humans. So successful that they span the entire world and quickly trample over the natural habitats of the only magical race that remains prevalent, the faerie, who staunchly and violently resist their expansion at every turn. However, through the years, with nature's splendor being damaged the forces of magic that originate from it have weakened, and the burgeoning of human technology that is independent of it places them at a growing advantage, while the Faerie society which has depended solely on magical forces as both a life source and their only means of defense is placed at an increasing disadvantage.

The fact that their society is mired in traditional values and thus are slow to adapt weapons, and due to their miniature size the ones that do attempt to adapt are rendered still impotent to the human sized counterparts. The last faerie of the world, still divided even among themselves as to how overcome this crisis their race faces, come to different solutions. Some hideaway in the furthest, most inhospitable corners of the world where human expansion is the least likely, but the tremendous difficulty of living in these places means they themselves may perish if they don't quickly adapt to their new lives. Another sect has chosen to try to negotiate and integrate into the ever growing human civilization, however due to the bad blood between the Human's and the Faerie's long history of conflict, as well as simple xenophobic racism towards the Faerie, they are not quickly or easily accepted into their society, and the ones that do are treated not even as third class citizens, being resented and treated with undue harshness by the general populace almost as the rule.

For those Faerie living in human society, they face not only discrimination, but common and egregious health issues due to the Faerie biology being more sensitive to pollution and being highly naturally adapted to only living in clean natural environments; furthermore, due to the fact that the natural forests and wildlife that magic power originates from have been all but exterminated, human cities have only a fraction of the magical energy they used to have as nature-filled areas, and the Faerie themselves live difficult and fatigue filled lives as that magical energy would ordinarily provide most of their life force is now much more scarce. That said, the integrated Faerie have all but abandoned the use of magic in day to day life, using only that much they can accrue out of the city environs to keep themselves and their family as healthy as they can manage, and the rare talented among them that can still manage to make some use of their natural magical talent are encouraged to keep very quiet and hushed about it, else they be forced into servitude and that magical talent exploited for the human's production of luxury items, or worse, for weapons that might be used against their own kind.

The last prevalent sect of Faerie make their stand on the forefront of human expansion, banding together in a final bastion of their kind to defend the last natural reserves or die trying. However, Mankind's avaricious desire to plunder every resource it can makes this a losing battle for the Faerie, because while they have the occasional victory, they are slowly but surely beaten back. The Faerie Elders face the grim reality of inevitable defeat every day, but still try to keep the lower order Faerie optimistic and happy as they desperately look for a solution, any possibility whatsoever where they can finally obtain that precious advantage they need so very much to take back what was originally theirs.

The story begins not on this front-line, but rather deep in a neighboring human city, a series of unexplainable murders take place that leave authorities baffled. Humans by the dozen either mysteriously disappear, or are found brutally murdered with nary a struggle, while maybe a hundred or more faerie are found in a state that can only be described as “spontaneously combusted” leaving only their charred figures while creating the occasional stray house fire. This doesn't seem intentional on any party though, the only evidence being that the few salvageable human corpses seem to convey that they died with smiles on their faces as if in the throes of ecstasy, while the Faeries seemingly died in a horrifying panic...

The royal regent of the city comes in to investigate, and by that I mean he sends his experienced personal soldier Wayll and his small crew to investigate. You play as Wayll (pronounced Whale) as you try to unravel this mystery.

I'll type more of this later, and maybe even elaborate on the game mechanics I have in mind!

[Brewster]

Interesting.

[JoshuaFH]

To have an idea of what I'm hooking at for gameplay, imagine something in the vein of Fortune Summoners:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

^{Btw I really love Fortune Summoners.}

Not the exact same style I'm picturing, but that's a close enough benchmark for what I'm trying to explain. It's a 2D action adventure type game in the same vein. One thing that I'm envisioning that's markedly different from Fortune Summoners though is that there's no leveling system, though your character improves from picking up items, equipment, and maybe health increases from bosses. You control Wayll in this style, jumping and sword swinging in dangerous areas, and conversing in peaceful areas.

When you take control of Wayll, you are in the partially burnt slums where the crime took place, the integrated Fey are in the middle of evacuating of their own volition. You also are being followed by his man and woman teammates, Osule the archer for support and Ari the chemist with an stock of healing items, they're AI controlled and can't be given orders, but perform their functions dutifully.

You start out in a peaceful area being able to move about and speak to the clearly distraught citizens and fey, some in the process of leaving by moving left. Speaking to the people living near the crime, you'll hear “How could this happen? I knew some of the victims,” “I didn't hear anything! I really didn't! How could that happen without a sound?! I lived right by.”. Speaking to the Fey that are fluttering by, you'll hear their perspective “This is a tragedy! I knew there was a bad feeling in the air.”, “I need to get out of here, there's a malevolent presence... somewhere, I just need to get away.”, “I can't imagine what my brothers and sisters must have experienced...”

Talking to a few, and you'll stumble across the clues you need to direct you in the right direction, these come when a person says “Who could've done this? I can't think of a single... Well, there was that odd homeless man that drifted into town. I last seen him crawl into the alleyway the day before the incident. Everyone here knows everyone else, I can't think of anyone else suspicious.”

Or if you talk to a certain Fey, “My instincts were right, the twisted aura coming from that alleyway was bad news! I'm glad I went to sleep at my relative's”.

Checking out the alley in question, you find that the street tiling has collapsed into an underground cavern, your party jumps in and you begin the first dungeon of the game.

Osule mentions that the place is littered with monsters uncharacteristic of the area, and that you should take a moment to practice against them before continuing on, and this would be where the quick in-game tutorial is.

Of there's the simple running, jumping, crouching, and sword swinging, and some rudimentary attacks that combine those, but also the ability to block, and blocking at the moment that an attack lands parries the attack and you can swing in with a counter for major damage or back away while they're staggered for the moment. Pretty simple stuff at the moment.

You can also map special skills to like four other buttons as hotkeys, in a Tales of Phantasia kind of way.  However, part of the game is how it emphasizes how humans aren't magical, and can't use anything resembling magic, so instead of mapping skills to these buttons you map items, weapons, and commands. For now, that's pretty much everything that needs to be mentioned at the moment. Ari gives you a fistful of fire bombs that you can use.

You fight your way down through the area. The music getting more oppressive, and the environment getting darker as you get further down.

At the bottom is a dark human-like silhouette figure, who encases himself in magical energy and you fight him briefly before being quickly overpowered and your party is gravely injured. Osule sacrifices himself to buy time as Ari helps to drag you to safety and uses her last healing potion on you before dying herself.

Then there'd be a huge, inexhaustible swell of strong monsters coming from the area the dark figure was, chasing you back up to the entrance. Escaping, Wayll manages his way back to Regent Marcurial (Just named him) and reports the disaster. Marcurial is very flippant though, almost disappointed, but assures that his other men will go to look into it and finish off the menacing figure. Unfortunately, while his comrade's bodies are found, the dark figure Wayll had described is nowhere to be found.

Some time passes, Wayll is very saddened at the loss of his comrades, his terrible failure, and spends time reflecting when Wayll's summoned again unexpectedly by Regent Marcurial, and sent on a mission up near the mountains to hunt down an abnormally strong monster of some sort. Wayll is bewildered though, in that he's being ordered to do it by himself with no team.

“It should be fine for your capabilities, how hard is it to play exterminator for some hick farmers? I'm trusting in you as always.”

And so he goes. This is meant to set the tone for Wayll's new mindset of solitude. (Note: I'd like to mention that even though Osule and Ari dying is meant to be a tragic event for Wayll, it isn't meant to be tragic for the player, there simply isn't enough time in the beginning of the game to characterize these characters thoroughly enough to make the player care, and the way I'm envisioning it, that's a necessary evil to enjoy two luxuries: 1. Starting the game off with a bang to catch the player's attention, which fits what I believe to be the kind of pacing the game needs; and 2. to make the first dungeon easy with his support teammates to give him or her time to ease into the controls and feel for the game).

He makes it there and finds the people the monster's been bothering.

“It's a real dastardly fiend, ha' no idea where it mighta sprung from,” the locals inform him, “25 foot long 'r more. Ya can find it roaming about just a northways up the hill.”

And find it he does, however it is actually a beast much more formidable than Wayll can possibly handle. He is chased up a mountainous path and manages to lose it with the help of several confusing circuitous paths. Before Wayll gets the opportunity to trek back down the path, he hears a distant call for help, and Wayll refuses to head back down without checking that out first. He finds that a young man had fallen and is clinging for life on the side of a cliff, but he's very high up and Wayll can't reach him, but shouts to him to see if he's OK. The man throws down a climbing hook so that Wayll can climb into the notches present in the cliffside, grab onto and hang from ledges that were just out of his jumping reach earlier. When Wayll is about to help him back up, the beast surprises him, and now has him cornered with his back to a perilous fall.

This boss fight is beatable, and it uses large swinging attacks with it's giant paws or claws (I don't have a definitive idea for the looks of the beast, just that it's really big and has some kind of front arms to attack with), but the most important thing is that this fight utilizes the newly acquired hook to allow Wayll to dodge a ramming attack that would ordinarily jettison him right off the cliff. If the player doesn't get react fast enough or doesn't get the purpose of the hook fast enough, it's ok, Wayll will land on the tree branch that's holding the young man, and he can jump back up to the fray, even being forced to utilize the hook to reinforce it's purpose. If the player doesn't get it after about 2 or 3 times though, the branch'll break and Wayll and the young man will die instantly.

I'd like to intend for it to be something of a pattern where the important item or power for an area to be picked up either very early in an area, or near the middle part at the very latest, and the rest of the area is a training ground for the new item, and the boss of that area is a 'final exam' that makes sure the player can apply what they've learned on the fly.

Furthermore, in this fight a skillful player will realize that timed parry blocks can stagger even massive opponents like the beast, and they can be countered/criticaled while staggered for impressive hunks of damage.

After beating it, Wayll helps the young man and learns that his name is Heathcliff the adventurer and that he was looking for secret treasure when the rumbling caused by the beast caused him to lose his balance and fall. He tells you that there's secrets hidden everywhere and it's the bold that will find them. He thanks Wayll for the help, says he can keep the hook, and then leaves abruptly.

The purpose of that scene is to hint at the player to maybe take the hook back to the first town and dungeon and to reach little areas that sat just out of reach before that have treasure chests or something with nice new equipment or something. These initial prizes serve to give diligent and observant players an advantage in upcoming areas, but more importantly teaches them to keep a lookout in future areas for these kinds of hidden caches and to plumb past areas when you acquire new skills or equipment. It's better to make this sort of thing really obvious than leaving it to the player to infer it from gaming intuition, it comes down to execution but it's something I'd like to make viscerally rewarding.

Reporting back to Regent Marcurial, Wayll tells him of his success, but still the Regent is looks unsatisfied and disappointed, and he thinks for a second before relieving Wayll. Here the player can peruse about town before retiring to his quarters for the night.

About the town, there's generic shops where you can buy whatever restorative items you might want Wayll to carry, you can even map items to his quickability buttons that I mentioned earlier for fast usage.

There's also a clothes shop. If you have extra money, or are just especially vain, you can buy new thing for Wayll to wear and change his appearance. It's just a fun thing I'd like to include.

Then there's weapon shops, but they sell offensive items like caltrops, fire bombs, things like that. It'll also sell arrows when you've acquired the bow.

You'll acquire more weapons as your quest continues, and I'm still internally finalizing how I'd like them all to behave, but they'll be mapped to the quick buttons or changed manually in your menu if you'd like.

I'll write up Wayll's next quest in a bit, which'll be the 'true' beginning of the game in a sense, if I'm envisioning it correctly.

I'm also looking into how to draw on youtube videos. I want to do more for my little daydreams than just write up a halfarsed design spec and then forget about them. I'll see if I can't churn out something that resembles concept art if I get better at it than elementary school scrawling.