The Yawhg

Last post basicly contained a lot of questions. Most of them still remain unanswered.
But let's begin by explaining some pros and cons about games that deal with tough choices and interaction.

Basicly what I wanted to do was, to let players interact with eachother while playing a game together. Where they have to make choices that will have heavy concequenses on either the game or the players themselves.

And how can I conjure up a world that pulls players in and presents them with tough choices.
There are some games that really inspired me.

The first game would be: The Yawhg 

A game with a lovely art direction that's about a certain calamity. A storm? An earthquake? A horde of ravenous goblins that'll steal your underwear and trade it for candy? The game doesn't explain what the Yawhg is. Only that it's coming. I am not going to spoil all the secrets. It's defenitely worth checking out!






4 players take control of 4 characters who are leading their lives in fear of this Yawhg. What will the characters be doing? Every week, each player decides how to spend that week. You can visit the gardens, the forest, the slums, the alchemy tower, the arena and so on. Your stats will increase or decrease based on how you deal with these situations. For example. When you enter the arena you can choose either to compete, or to bet on one of the fighters. So when you compete you have a chance to win depending on the huge sweating brute you are fighting. So your stats will change based on how you spend your weeks before the Yawhg arrives.  So without spoiling too much of the game. It's about choices, and facing the concequences of that particular choice. Every time you play the game it's entirely different. I played it with people and we ended up laughing and yelling about the choices made by the whole group.




None of the choices we made seemed to affect the other players though. We were all just interacting with the game, and not with eachother.
So in the end their individual choices would have an impact on their individual game characters. But wouldn't affect their teamplayers.
But who wants to see their character die in the beginning of the game because one of the other players accidently shot a magic beam at his/her head? No one probably.

Players are able to prevent people entering areas in the game by either accidentally destroying those locations or occupy them for that week.


So wouldn't it be cool if the choices we made would affect your friends? 

The art direction and the music of this game makes it a lot more immersive. We all ended up having goosebumps by the time the game came to an end.

So they do a great job with confronting players with tough choices. Supporting the situations with simple but great visuals and beautifull ambient music.

But does the game need those visuals and sound? or will just text suffice?  I will be asking my collegues who also played this game about their opinions on this matter. And I hope to have an answer very soon. It's important for me to have an answer regarding this. Because I am mainly a guy who deals with visuals to tell stories.

So does my game need visuals?

For more information about the game (if you're not afraid of spoilers that is), this let's play video is worth checking out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_673jQUibI

So how can I let people make choices that have a great impact on their teammembers?
About the Yawhg's art style
 This game deals with a very serious problem. A potentially catastrophic life-threatening calamity is on the way. But the art style gives the world a comical and colourful mood. What happens when the art style is changed to more realistic and dark visuals. Would that change the player's behaviour?

My next post will be about a game called this war of mine. Which deals with those dark and moody visuals.