[BLOG] October 11th, 2019

Moshi moshi!

In today's blog we'll talk about GAMEPLAY INFLUENCES to give you all an idea of what kind of game experience we're aiming to craft for you. When setting out to create Crestpeack gameplay, the first step was to think about what kind of gameplay we wanted, and then take a look at the landscape and see if there were any successful games that incorporated similar elements to see if there can be any lessons drawn from them: How well does it work? How can these concepts be improved? To be clear, we never set out to create a clone of any of the games below, we're just referencing their gameplay in the same way an artist would reference other art to enhance their own. The goal is to experience as much as possible, learn from it, and try to take it a step further.

The first games that really stood out as a good model were Shin Megami Tensei Persona 3/4/5. If you take out the combat half of the game and flesh out the daily life aspect, you get something pretty close to the gameplay of Crestpeak. What the persona series does well is make a compelling gameplay loop from day-to-day. There are many areas of progression, from personal stats to social links to finances, that all tickle the reward center of the brain at a nice leisurely pace. The individual social link arcs echoes our relationship and event system, though from a writing perspective, our dialogue philosophy will be different (there's also the matter of Persona being a Japanese product which means some things get lost in translation).

Then there is the Harvest Moon (and by extension Stardew Valley) series, which has a daily life sim element as well, with some social aspects, with the main difference here being an open-ended sandbox-y approach, which is more how Crestpeak operates. These games have a much larger emphasis on maximizing monies, whereas Crestpeak will be more about gains and social ties.

There are many sports titles with a career mode, such as NBA 2K and Madden, that have some of those elements baked in. However, given that simulating the sport itself is the centerpiece, a lot of the accoutrements of "story" or "characters" definitely falls to the wayside. The positives of these modes is that they can sometimes come with "drills" or other mini-games that provide some nice gameplay variety. Crestpeak will have mini-games attached to several activities. The player can always opt to skip them for base gains, but performing well in the mini-game can lead to greater rewards.

One game that none of us have gotten a chance to play yet but will given its high standing in the social sim arena is the Animal Crossing series. There will be another blog breaking that down in the future, so stay tuned!

As always, thanks for reading! Make sure to drop by our Discord community! https://discord.gg/3a9Z4dn
And join the Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/crestpeakbay
And track our latest builds on itch! https://crestpeak-bay.itch.io/crestpeak-bay