Compassion & Violence - But how?

Is there a way  we could capture the magic of this concept promoting compassion  rather than violence?

A simple, yet complex idea.

While the original inspiration is from a  game beating enemies and collecting their loot, the episode also explores much more. Finn is heart-broken and emotionally withdrawn from his breakup with Flame Princess.  Jake's compassion and support for   Finn as he is going through an emotional and hard time is a key part of the show.  While Finn is    dealing with his problems with mindless  fighting, Jake is there to support him.

I don't think it will be the best idea to remove the combat aspect from the game. It is  true to the games origins    and seems to be   why so many of you love it.  My intention is to make this game the best I can, and work with the community to do so.

Defeating enemies  is fun.

It seems like so many popular virtual reality games centralize around some kind of combat. This is true for traditional games in general, even outside of VR. However it feels like VR ha adopted this  even stronger than traditional games.   The Guitar Hero of VR, is inherently sword fighting. But VR has so much potential for empathy and compassion.

What if there was a way to make a game even better by promoting compassion? What if the user had a choice: Mindless combat, or doing something different?

I giving the user choice will be a key part to the success of this! If you just need to let something out and defeat some virtual slimes, you should still have the freedom to do that.   I don't want the compassion aspect to take away from that experience.

Some ideas I have gathered 

from talks with a few of you already:

A Buddies System

An idea I have had for a while, that was brought back to life through conversations with   Nick Oddson.

What if the game was about keeping a pet/buddy alive or  happy. A little creature inspired by Finn or Jake. Somewhat akin to Tamagotchi. 

A buddy inspired  by   Finn, the buddy would    be    tormented by    his own issues, and it is your job to look after him. Feeding him, keeping him out of trouble.

A buddy inspired by    Jake, the buddy would be  there because you are, he does not necessarily enjoy it and just wants to make sure you are okay.  Perhaps the goal could be to make it something you both enjoy.

I'm figuring out a way to get started on this that doesn't take to much work is my initial blocker. Namely, building friendly AI that can navigate the dungeon with you when it's procedural generated. The real time generated means   typical navigation systems become a little   more difficult.

Minimizing Violence

Humanizing the creatures in the game. Similar to Minecraft, when I kill a horse, I feel like I'm a bad person.

Edward Piper has pointed out,   "The Legend of Zelda series handles combat quite well, esp the 3D games. LOADS of combat but it doesn't feel violent. You are defeating enemies rather than killing them."

These solution do not directly address compassion, its more like a band-aid for the violence- which is still helpful to think about!

A story

I have a story framework    in mind, I don't want to ruin it for you by telling you just yet. I think it is something that will work really well with the infinite concept and be played out largely in your head so it can still be explored with every restart or even different game modes.  Something that answers the questions "Why am  I here on this train? What is it? Can I get off?"

Perhaps this can  promote compassion, and I think it will. But I don't want to rely on this alone.

Puzzles instead of combat

Sure this could be a puzzle game, and I think it will be, at least in part. But I am talk about making a mechanic or game-mode around compassion.

As    Nick Oddison also suggested "Or make the monsters an incentive to solve puzzles faster -- monsters are idling around, the goal isn't to kill them"

Or perhaps, not killing the creatures is the puzzle as suggested by  Rile on a previous post.  "like Slime Rancher, where you just have to understand and identify the dangers of the individual enemies and that way you can avoid them without harming them."

What input am I looking for?

1 - Is this worth pursing? 

What do you think about the idea of promoting compassion? 

I want to make sure I focus on building things that people will enjoy.

2 - Ideas

How could I make game-play that works with compassion?

Do you have different ideas than the buddy system?    Or can you build on the existing ideas?

3 - Examples

What are your favorite dungeon crawls or games that promote compassion? What makes them so good?

Thanks for listening, I am looking forward to your thoughts.

Brennan Hatton