A few weeks ago, I announced the upcoming release of my next game : Forward: Escape The Fold. I highly encourage everyone to add the game to their wishlist so you don’t miss the release!

In Forward: Escape the Fold, there will be a number of characters to unlock (I have around 8 at the moment) who will offer very different ways to play the game. The main objective will be for the player to progressively unlock these characters to explore these new gameplay mechanics. I have many ideas on how to unlock the characters but none seem perfect yet. So, by talking about them today, maybe you can help me choose :)

An important point relates to the sense of progression. It’s very important that the first few characters are easy to unlock (to create some motivation to continue playing the game!) but make it harder to unlock the last characters.

Idea 1: Purchasing the characters

My first idea was to spend gold found in-game (no real money obviously, the game will NOT have microtransactions). It’s simple but there are two major inconveniences:

• The player might find it hard to understand what he is purchasing using the gold coins as the description might not give that excitement.
• The unlocking curve is tilted. The player could purchase a very expensive character (but would find the grind frustrating and exhausting) or if I were to block the purchases in order then using gold would simply be an illusion of choice.

Idea 2: Narrative integration

I thought about associating the unlocking of characters with the game’s story. It could be really cool because it would increase immersion and the game’s variety (the happiness of discovering a new card with some cool power). The biggest problem with this approach is its linearity, the player does not have a role to play and is ‘passive’ towards unlocking the characters.

Idea 3: Achievements

The current beta version uses an achievement system. Each character is associated with 3 objectives that need to be completed to unlock him. This allows the player to have mini-objectives and choose what characters he wants to unlock first by adapting his playing style. I developed this idea in the game and I’ve come across one major problem. Most objectives are unlocked by mistake by the player. In other words, he will unlock characters unknowingly simply by playing the game which is not what I intended!

Idea 4: Mission

For this reason, I think I will go towards a system that fuses the two last ideas. I am thinking of associating a “mission” to each character in order to unlock him. This mission will have an objective that will guide the player on how to play and what objects to use. This will reinforce the strategic aspect of the game whilst allowing the player to follow objectives as he sees fit. The complexity of these missions will naturally determine an interesting difficulty curve.

Conclusion

This is not a definitive choice and I’d really be interested in getting your feedback on this game design challenge (PS: I have never followed a training on the subject).

What do you think ? :)

Friendly reminder that you can find the game on Steam here. Wishlisting really helps when it comes to visibility <3