I have an idea for a game: It's the usual "a princess is kidnapped by a dragon and a brave knight is on a quest to rescue her" story. But you (the player) plays as the princess, who is somehow helping the knight on his quest.

The issue is that since the player is playing as a trapped character, I want to make the player feel trapped, but I don't know how to do that.

My original idea is that the princess telepathically communicates with the knight and tells him what to do. But this doesn't work, the gameplay is identical to the player playing as the knight. How can I make the gameplay feel like the player is playing as the princess (and thus feel trapped) instead of the knight?

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[–] owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca 6 points 3 days ago (4 children)

What kind of gameplay do you have in mind? I'm guessing a puzzle-type game (like a room escape), but you could honestly do a number of different things (tower defense? Platformer?).

I think the answer to your original question largely depends on this. Did you have anything else in mind about the experience?

[–] jannaultheal@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I have in mind a puzzle game. Not a room escape, but more of a code golf-style game. For example, those programming puzzles that say "write a computer program that adds numbers, but you're not allowed to use the + sign anywhere in your code".

[–] Sunsofold 2 points 3 days ago

If that's the style of game you are looking for, I could see a structure of 'do code golf puzzles to:

program robots to help the knight directly'
'trick' henchmen or magical castle elements (abstracted coding) into doing things that help the Knight'
write the guard's 'daily action plan' so they patrol in a way that doesn't get the knight caught'
complete abstract 'magical haxors' that open the dragon's firewalls'
social engineer the dragon between runs to let you have more supplies'
give simple instructions to collections of small woodland creatures to do simple things that add up to a real goal (in the vein of Opus Magnum)'

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