Conversation Focused Game · 9:26pm Dec 23rd, 2017
While trying to finish a novel (>95% of the way through draft 2) I've been fooling around with game design in Unity.
http://kschnee.xepher.net/code/unity/Ethos/ , more commentary at https://kschnee.deviantart.com/art/Unity-Game-Experiment-Ethos-720259792
"Ethos" is a game inspired by my being annoyed at "Fallout 4" because you have no ability to persuade the robot-enslaving Institute to quit being jerks. Using this terrible interface you try to have a conversation that drifts between topics and raises your skills as you listen. I would like to develop the idea further but am not sure quite how. I can have a system where you spend time points each day to scavenge or converse or work, but the key to it is having a "conversation system" that is at least as engaging as a typical "battle system". One of the questions raised by this idea is how much to model conversation abstractly as "he talks about mutants" versus having an actual data structure storing a list of connected facts like "mutants are immune to radiation" and tracking which related topics have been mentioned recently.
What conversation games have you played? Only one I've played was "Last Word":
http://store.steampowered.com/app/355530
Played for 13 or so hours. Fun little system combat system.