We have a adult game based on visual novel and we are currently facing interesting challenge - how to move in-game time innovatively.
In most visual novels there are some forms of time changes which lead to character development, story branches and decision making. Simple example In the morning character goes to school, in the afternoon he can meet up with friends there and during the evening the school is closed and player leaves home.
The way how time can be forwarded through the day is usually made by 1 - player choice (has button to do it) or 2 - story based (story changes the time) The second option often leads to more straightforward experience with less freedom, (games camouflage this by adding more unique branches to keep the feeling the choices matter, but the freedom is pre-defined to given options, etc). And now back to the root of my question - In first case where player can decide what time it will be (in forward direction of course) in a world he can move anywhere and set time by his choice how to move it properly? (from our testing sessions we often experience people don't move time much and they simply do stuff in the morning, but not in the afternoon, despite game content is divided equally, they never reach it) So we would like to include a way how time is moved semi-automatically forward (it will be changed by player + if he don't do it for quite a while the game will do it).
There are many approaches to this problem, for example:
- Story contains milestones which forwards the time
- Time is forwarded automatically every 10th conversation (as an example)
- Player is motivated / forced to move time and make some action
- The change of time is non-existing - only specific conversations shows it as the part of the story (freedom to move time is not fully in players hands)
- And many others...
Our proposed solution:
We are considering option to forward the time when player returns to game map after he talked some specific number of conversations. This way player won't feel forced by the game time change but also drawback is this may not be always intended. What adds up complexity is that some conversations happen later on automatically in some locations. But maybe when player opens game map that's the right trigger to move time slightly (in case he of course had XY conversations) To clarify we have 4 day times to move (morning, afternoon,, evening and night) We fear that sudden time change can lead to confusion. (we can add option to turn it off in options for example for people who dislike it - not everyone plays the game the way we described)
If anyone wants to have full picture it's for our world of sisters game next update.
Anyone has some idea how to improve this functionality?
The more we think about this the more we argue, all have advantages but also disadvantages.