Doing an impromptu update! I almost said "small" update but then it turned out not to be small. I wanted to get a snapshot of this in progress before I do more of it and start filling it in with prose.
This'll probably be very basic and dull to anyone who's seasoned with making their own games, but it's fun for me to talk about after only being into game design as an observer for so long, and I've been sharing my devlog around to my non-dev friends and various discord channels. :)
I'm employing what I've learned to call a 'bottom up' approach to designing this combat encounter, whereas the rest of the game up to this point has largely been 'top down'. What I mean by that is this: when I go into a scene top-down, I write the narrative first. I have the movie playing in my head. The first combat encounter was written around the grisly scene of Jessica having her arm shot off, and the player's choice to either regenerate the arm or strengthen her remaining limb. That set the tone and influenced completely the scenario going forward. I decided choosing to regenerate the arm would lead to slaying one enemy right away, and then wrote off of that, trying to maintain the tension while leading the story down to two eventualities--one where both enemies are killed and one where the remaining enemy gets away. I also threw in the possibility of a game over, to keep things feeling exciting and meaningful.
(You probably noticed I still had some gameplay goals in mind; I find you're rarely working purely in one direction!)
In this scenario above, I have to design a considerably larger encounter based on the various eventualities that can come from the player's *first* encounter with the Veese enemies; how many survived her previous skirmish, and also which direction the player is approaching the camp from. As a novice designer I felt a bit overwhelmed by all of the moving parts that would need to be addressed in the narrative, all the possibilities available to different players coming into this battle. So I decided I'd start by outlining, and then write the story into the panels when I had everything mapped out and coded.
You can see how the encounter starts you in one of two places based on how Jessie performed in the first combat. (Balcony-- Jessica advantage, or Veese advantage.) You see the basic shape of the encounter and its choices, and how they all converge into the "Jump off the balcony" panel, where they will then branch outward again based on how many enemies were left. In two of the panels you can see I don't even know what Jessica is *doing* yet; I have simply called them options one and two because I want Jessie to have two choices, one that leads to a game over and one that succeeds.
This particular encounter will probably double in size by the time it's done, and then I need to approach it from a different angle, that of coming down the big stairs instead of from the balcony. Some of it may get reused or I may have the fuel for two entirely different scenes. So I think coming at this encounter bottom-up was the best decision. Whereas the first combat's intention was more to introduce the player to the rules of the symbiote suit and the Veese, this one is aimed to provide excitement, challenge and show the impact previous decisions can have on the future.
Gosh! These are all a lot of words that could have gone into Twine. Thanks for reading!