As I was preparing last week’s blog post, which refers to The Pillars of Arcade Spirits, it brought to mind a topic I’ve been pondering lately — signposting success and failure.

One of the pillars of our game is clear signposting. We want you to make an informed choice. Maybe we won’t tell you EVERYTHING that lurks behind an option, but you should have a good sense about what will happen if you pick it. You’ll increase your Gutsey, Naomi will like you, you’ll pick one thing over another, etc. It’s never a vague mystery which then punishes you for not knowing you fell into a trap.

I liken it to LucasArts adventure games, versus Sierra On-Line. (90s kids will know this.) In Sierra games, you’d die constantly just for trying different things. The default method the game had of teaching you “No, that’s not the right way” is to kill you and force you to reload a save. But LucasArts did away with that — if you mess up, things simply don’t work, and you can keep trying until they do. It doesn’t punish you for experimenting.

I want Arcade Spirits to do the same thing — to have very, very few legitimately punishing choices, to allow you to experiment or run wild, and have the leeway to make a few mistakes without ruining everything.

But how do I signpost that…? How do I tell the player, “Hey, don’t fret so much about what you pick, you literally can’t fail this.”

For example, in our demo, there’s a point where QueenBee says “I hate seeing people get yelled at” and then looks sad. I have literally never seen anyone pick the option of telling her “Don’t you yell at people all the time?” which is a shame, because it’s got a funny response. They’re too scared of saying the wrong thing and ruining their chances with QueenBee, or think that you have to default to the nicest response because other games punish you for being even slightly jerky. As a result they get a fairly toss-off answer from QueenBee instead of a more interesting one.

Even if you do miss a “point” with QueenBee, the game is scored in such a way that when it comes time to choose your romance path, it’s VERY tolerant of failure. As long as you chose to spend time with a person and generally said things they agreed with, a few fumbles won’t wreck everything.

But again… how do I signpost that? How do I reassure the player that they can explore the game and not feel they have to take the safest, most cautious choices they possibly can out of fear of everything exploding as punishment? How do I do it without breaking fourth wall and telling them to just have fun with it and not worry?

Not sure. Not sure at all. If you’ve got any ideas, let me know. I’d love to hear your opinions on this. Thanks!