Since the game I’m building is primarily a trivia game, it was always going to be the case that the first mobs I build were going to be biased toward stuff I like.
Meet Gregor. He’s in a bit of a predicament. He woke up as a bug, AND NOBODY WILL TELL HIM ANYTHING ABOUT RUSSIAN LITERATURE.
Since the game can be educational as well as silly and fun, I’m going to make mobs for certain countries that are full of that country’s trivia.
Gotta be careful with this idea, though. Nobody wants to play a trivia game that constantly asks you questions you don’t know the answer to, and Russian literature isn’t exactly common knowledge.
What I want is to capture the feeling of solving fairly easy crossword puzzle clues. That “aha!” feeling when an answer just clicks. I want players to feel that over and over.
The issue is that what’s “fairly easy” for one player might be a “complete slog” for another.
What I’m doing is building a mix into the game. Mobs like Gregor and Einstone (a bridge troll who studies engineering and has questions that would kick even my ass) have tricky clues, where as the Blue Bit, who asks about blue objects, is much simpler.
There’ll be endgame modes for people who like a challenge. I’m thinking of a daily puzzle, perhaps hosted by a different mob each day?
We’ll see.