Random Events

In the feedback I’ve gotten for IEI so far, a lot of people have
expressed concerns about the random events, so I thought I’d try
addressing them here.

I feel like part of these concerns stem from expectations of the game,
due to its engine and format. I’m using Ren’Py to build the game, and,
thus far, it most closely resembles a standard visual novel. There’s a
very tried and true way to make visual novel, which allows the player to
see all of the content by playing a number of times until they’ve
chosen all of the available options. While I’m not adverse to such
games, when I set out to make my own game, one of my hopes was to create
something that I could play through myself (as the creator), yet still
be surprised by the experience. Including random elements is the only
way for me to make this possible.

Plenty of other games include these sort of elements. Fenoxo’s
Corruption of Champions is probably the most popular example I can think
of. For anyone who hasn’t played it, in CoC, the player is given the
very basic option to “Explore.” When they choose it, the events they see
are picked randomly. Some events are enemy encounters. Others unlock
“Explore” options with different sets of events (treated as new
locations by the story), and some are just bits of text explaining how
nothing happened that time.

There are still linear story threads to encounter in CoC, but the player
isn’t always in complete control over when or how they’ll come across
them, or even what kind of state their character is in at the time. This
helps to make the experience a little bit different each time they
play.

I’m looking to reproduce some of that with IEI. As a general overview,
the structure I’m working towards right now looks like this:

The player character (PC) will be assigned a task for a few days to a
week of in-game time. The task will be assigned semi-randomly,
influenced by things like previous choices and performance at previous
tasks. (As this is an island resort setting, these tasks will be things
like checking guests in, serving drinks at the bar, cleaning rooms for
housekeeping, and the like.)

Like CoC’s “Explore” option, those tasks will have a pool of different
events to draw from, one of which will be pulled at random for each day
that the PC works at that task. Some will be uneventful, some will be
standalone events, and others will begin story threads that will be
continued elsewhere. (These can be encounters with guests, conversations
with coworkers, or job-related situations.)

To make things even more interesting, I intend for the PC to have a
number of stats that can influence what happens during these events. For
instance, if the PC chooses to stay up too late, or gets assigned a
night shift and a morning shift back to back, the lack of sleep might
cause them to make a mistake that they could have avoided, had they been
well-rested. I’m hoping to include events that can change based on
whether the PC is tired, drunk, horny, stressed, and the like, as well
as random events that will make adjustments to those stats themselves.

All that being said, it’s not my plan to completely strip the player of
their agency. Choices will still matter, but unlike a typical visual
novel, where each choice will ALWAYS lead to the same consequence, in
IEI, the outcomes won’t always be certain. Just like real life, they’re
going to be a bit of a gamble. This means that players may want to
carefully consider the PC’s current situation before deciding hedging
their bets on which choice is most likely to lead to their desired
outcome.

I also understand that this will make the game a bit frustrating for any
completionist who desire to see every possible version of every event.
I’m afraid that’s just going to be a side-effect of the design. In
attempting to create a game with the possibility to still surprise you,
even after multiple play sessions, there is always going to be the
chance that the RNG just didn’t work out for you, and there will be
something you missed. I’m hoping players can share the best way to find
certain scenes, however, as I still think most everything should be
discoverable if you know what choices typically lead up to them.