Annotation for a Blurry screenshot

Explanations
I uploaded this piccy a few days ago, and received some nice comments about it so I thought I'd explain exactly what is going on.

1) Heart - this is your life. You only have one to start with. Some 'bad' things remove hearts permanently. Eating fruit tops up any hearts that have been diminished, but not those hearts that have been devou... Oops. Said too much.

2) Wishes - wishes are the overall currency in the game. You use them at the White Demon (looks a bit like a bunny) and it starts to build the world up a bit for you. Note that things can be taken away if you perform a ritual incorrectly.

3) Debug map - this currently shows how regions are connected. As the game progresses in development and I actually get people playing it, the number of room-types will grow. The first web version will start with just six.

4) Home - this is where you sleep. It's a safe place to go when the day is over. I've not decided whether you HAVE to go to sleep or not, yet - it would make the repopulation of the zones tidier, and give a nice overall rhythm to the game. On the other hand it's possibly a bit heavy-handed. I'll leave you guys to decide that.

5) Tree - there will be various types of tree. This particular tree grows apples. Others are perches for birds. Small trees like this can be shaken.

6) Bell - this is a glass bell - one of the item types in the game. Each item has several uses. Two of those uses are defined in the game itself. The other two are down to the rituals present in the world.

7) You - yup, another small child with a little hat. Clearly something went wrong in my childhood.

8) Exit - this is the way out to the area to the north. They aren't signposted very well at the moment, so the world becomes a bit of a weird maze quite quickly. Add to the fact that losing your memory will reorganise which regions lead where and it's all a bit discombobulating.

9) Sacrificial Flame - you can burn stuff here. Anything you like. Poof! It's gone. Did it have an effect? Who knows?

10) Henge - this is one of the many weird little focal points present in the various levels. Focal points like this move around when the world is reset.

11) Time Marker - this shows what stage of day or night you are at. The sun and moon do that, too, but some of the regions will be internal and I realised you wouldn't always be able to see the heavenly bodies.

12) Major Demon - This is just a stand-in at the moment, as the final 'Major Demon' types haven't been designed yet. I'm not going to do that for a little while so I can concentrate on gameplay and get something out to those of you who have been waiting.

Overall, most of the things that need to go into the game for a first draft are there, but horribly broken and buggy. Once I've fixed all that up and the randomisation stuff is working correctly I'll try and get a version out there.

Contemplations
Here are my current issues (beyond the bugs).

1) There's nothing trivial the player can do. There's no jumping. No digging. No buying or selling. Nothing to keep those who just want to zone out to some thumb-candy occupied. Everything is geared toward interacting with things, preparing for rituals and performing the right ones. I'm tempted to say: "So what?" But on the other hand, every part of my designer head is screaming: "For God's sake! Give them something to smack with a stick!" I'm going to resist this.

2) Clues. There are only so many ways a Demon can tell you that something is in a moonbeam, or that you should consider waiting for rainfall before performing the ritual. This is slightly problematic in a game of this sort, as it'll quickly get to a point where people 'in the know' get the clues instantly. Everyone else will be at a loss, and *may* give up. There are two solutions to this:

• Find non-word ways to give clues. This is all well and good, but try finding a non-word way of telling the player 'The Demon wants a sacrifice of a silver bell and a holy book'. The more pictorial I make it, the weirder it'll get. Time will tell.
• Represent the things that are *not* correct, and leave the player to make a deduction (Cluedo style). I haven't thought this though yet, so it may be a stupid idea.

3) This entire project is based on the idea that adventure-games are weirdly ritualistic in nature (take the BLUE bottle - not the red one - and fill it from the only working tap, then take that to the only plant that can be watered and grow the plant until it sprouts... a key!). I'm hoping that, by making a game that embraces weird ritual behaviour, and uses that to allow procedurally generated adventures, the result will be endlessly interesting rather than the most odd and arbitrary adventure game ever. Gulp.

Conclusion
So - that's it. I hope that was slightly intriguing rather than... I don't know... a massive chicken crushing you as it strides menacingly across the land. I'm sure it won't have been that, at any rate. As for why the picture is blurry - I think weird things like this are going to happen during development. Spooky.