Design Goals - Where are we going?

[Oafkad]

When you need to design a character for a story there is a simple pair of questions that'll help you out. The first questions is what does this character want? The second question is how far would they go to achieve that goal? I think you can take that same sort of logic and use it to layout design plans for a game as well. With that in mind lets talk about my plans for Moosecats in three phases. The short term, the mid term, and the long term. Some of these things should be accomplished within the next six months, some things within years, and others may never happen.

The Goal

I would like to create a game that marries a few concepts. The first is a sense of irreverence. Tell a story that has twists and turns but ultimately doesn't involve a lot of extremely dark narrative. Life is complicated, and sometimes life is deeply sad, I think it is nice to occasionally have outs from that.

The next concept is of the importance of fitness and being active. So I would like to have some sort of integration that allows people to advance their gameplay by being physically active. This will obviously be limited by the APIs I have access too and my own capacity to learn.

The final concept is of community interaction. I want to have close connections with the players of the game. Part of that will be through the Chatty Moosecatty (Twitch Cats) program. Which will be another vector for advancing the state of your cats and also add to your collection.

These are the three prongs of my plans. So now we know what we want. But how do we achieve this goal?

Short Term

These are all of the things that I'd like to complete for each project within the next year or so. I'm going to try and list everything out so that we can strike through things as they are completed.

Chatty Moosecatty - Twitch Game

• Viewers are gifted a randomized Moosecat.
• The cats will say what the viewer is saying.
  • This includes emoting whatever the player emotes.
• Cats will respond to a series of commands.
  • These commands can be located with the !help command.
  • Should add things like dance, sleep etc.
• Players can swap between their cats, or activate a new cat while others are on adventures.
• Cats appear and disappear depending on viewer activity.
  • If someone stops talking for long enough their kitty goes to sleep and poofs.
    • Obviously is fine, will return when they chat again.

Fitty Moosekitty - Fitness Game

• The goal of this project is to enhance both mental and physical fitness.
• Players will get a Moosecat upon loading the game.
  • They can also utilize the cats they've collected from Chatty Moosecatty.
• Walking will earn your cat experience.
• Occasionally your cat will find treasure while out on the walk.
• You can send your cats on quests.
  • They will finish them faster if you are walking.
• Be able to track your weight, body measurements, water intake, etc.
  • None of this will be sent back to me. Everyone will be free to check their network traffic to confirm.
    • Ya boy don't care about your measurements. Just happy you are getting healthy.
• Timer/Stopwatch functionality.
  • Auto-Rest functionality when doing workouts.
• Wii Fit distance/height tracking.
  • Find out when you've climbed higher than Mt. Everest or walked longer than the Great Wall.

Moosecat Manor - Roleplaying Game

• You've received a letter from your grandfather mentioning that he's having a bit of trouble and would love it if you could come around to his Manor and help him sort it out.
  • Users will explore 12 different islands, and their Grandfather's manor to try and uncover the mystery of...just where did his manor go?
    • This adventure will require the help of magical creatures known as Moosecats to uncover the secrets of the missing Manor and the world in general.
• You will rebuild the manor through magical seeds that grow to become the rooms that had once stood there.
  • Rooms will vary wildly, from volcanic rooms, to rainforest rooms, to a simple run of the mill kitchen! Or so it seems.
• You will collect pages from your Grandfathers adventure journal that tell of new places to visit and have a chance to experience the adventures you never even knew happened.
• Individual rooms will unlock new cat habitats.
  • They will also unlock new game features

Mid Term

At this point all of my projects are at least "started" and in a state where we can move onto enhancements. Some of them might be completed in this phase or before this phase.

Chatty Moosecatty - Twitch Game

• Bot accepts whispers to allow people to check stats without spamming chat.
• Players can send their cats out on adventures to bring back loot.
  • This loot can later be used in Moosecat Manor.
  • This loot may also be new eggs to add to their roster.
• Cats interact with one another while I'm streaming.
• A GUI stream screen that I can swap to to show player progress in adventures.
  • This would also show recent achievements, stats, and other fun stuff.
• An "AFK" stream play area, so when I'm away people can still enjoy their cats together.

Fitty Moosekitty - Fitness Game

• Weight/Plate calculator.
• Exercise suggestions.
  • Yoga, Walking plans, weight training.
  • Circuits, programs, that sorta stuff.
• Workout sharing.
  • Show your friends what you did. Inspire them to get at it too.
• Walking also earns you points towards any active quests for your Chatty Moosecatty team.

Moosecat Manor - Roleplaying Game

• Minigames
  • Certain rooms will unlock fun minigames. A means to earn more rewards, finish adventures faster, and frankly give me a chance to experiment with miniature game ideas without abandoning this one!
• Adventure system.
  • Send Moosecats (and yourself) out on adventures to uncover treasure, new areas to explore, and hints towards the mystery of the missing manor.
• Trust system.
  • Moosecat horns are actually always invisible to people they don't trust. As your moosecats come to trust you more and more you'll see them. Some never seem to show...do they just wot have them?

Long Term

We've now hit the point where all three projects are either finished or released as early access titles. From here on out we are looking for ways to expand on the games and to provide people with an experience that evolves. At this point is probably where I'd like to look into ways to create artist collaborations and to help small time creators.

 

Chatty Moosecatty - Twitch Game

• Bot sees conversations across all services, not simply twitch.
• Giveaways of some kind based on whatever metrics. Like randomly picking subscribers, or picking a random person with a certain amount of activity. Fun community stuff.

Fitty Moosekitty - Fitness Game

• *Whales*
  • The idea here is one I used before. As you lift we will tell you when you've lifted as much cumulatively as a kind of whale. Then once you reach the biggest whale we'll either move onto combining them or other even bigger things for fun.
  • Achievements from this will show up as items in Moosecat Manor.
• PB tracking, potentially with an OPT IN leaderboard.
  • Would likely need to have it linked to YT videos (unlisted is fine) or something to keep things nice and fair.
    • Or just have people make friends groups and not worry about it.

Moosecat Manor - Roleplaying Game

• Artist DLC packs.
  • We'll pay artists to make collections of new pets and they'll get the lion's share of the revenue from the collection. Either for at least a year or forever. All depends on if I'm making enough to keep the lights on. It'll always err on the side of them getting more than me in the revenue share though.

 

 

In Conclusion

This will be a living document that will over time branch out into tracking posts and other content. The basic idea was to give myself some inspirational bullet points to move forward with. Suggestions are also welcome.