game concepts Opinions on Concept for a Life Management/Virtual Pet Game

[CuddlySpider]

Woah what a title! I was surprised I could fit all that in the title.

This is going to be a long post. I'm going to break it down into spoilers for things you don't really have to read if you don't want to, but could be helpful in understanding what is going on. I apologize for any grammatical or spelling mistakes. They are not my forte.

The basic features of this project is and has always been Life Management, Virtual Pet Collecting, and Avatar Building.

Some background on why i am making this, and how i plan of going about the early stages:

Spoiler

I struggle with finding motivation to do things I should be doing. I always have.
I would spend hours looking for something that could help motivate me to get work done and have tried many different types of calendars, reminder systems, notes, etc. Both digital and physical methods. But nothing seemed to work.

Eventually I came across Habitica. The concept was fascinating to me, turning life management into a game. It worked for a while and wonderfully. However I get forgetful or too tired to even login sometimes. It didn't take long for me to find out that dying in the game means you not only loose a level, but also all your gold and a random item. It was way too much pressure and I lost motivation and even felt scared to open my account if I forgot to log in one day. It was no longer helping and just ended up making me feel even worse.

I continued my tireless on and off again search for something that can help me feel that motivation i felt again. Trying anything I could that was free to use.

All the while I kept thinking about what I wanted in a Life Development Game.
Over time I decided that I should probably develop my own if no one else would.

It has been in on and off development for years now and I feel terribly stuck and indecisive. I am much closer to a final concept than I was a few years ago, but it is still mainly in text and has only a few image concepts that I drew for pets and layouts. I have asked for volunteer help many time, but I just could seem to find the energy to keep a consistent flow of publicity on social media sites on my own.

I have done a lot of self improvement over those years though. And I found that being in a comfortable environment helps me feel a more consistent energy which I need to keep up a flow of production and advertising as well as save up to hire some others to help me design and draw parts of the game to show people to gain interest to eventually have enough to start a kickstarter to fund alpha and then beta development.

I currently am not in good living conditions and my stress levels are way too high to develop at a reasonable rate or consistently. However, I'm willing to accept that and just work on it piece by piece when I can till I can get to a place where i can make and request graphics and come up with financial breakdowns, and everything else I need before starting a kickstarter.

Right now I am just tweaking the concept and features along with the layout and some graphics ideas. Also, going around looking at guides and tips as well as asking for feedback opinions to help this slow stage develop to where all i need to worry about next is getting the resources to help gather public interest and have finalized graphics and page layouts. (This stage also include planning proper ways to find helpers for that)

Ok so with that out of the way, here is what I have so far:

I have all my ideas written in OneNote (because I love it's automatic collapsible intended lists feature, as well as it's other features)

At first the project was called ChorePets. I thought this was kinda cute and clever, but also just never really felt like it sounded right. I drew a logo for it where the r was a bird and it ended like a leafy vine. It was cute, but still didn't sit well with me.

Recently I decided to rename the project Projia. I feel like that word exists for something already but can't find it on google. I named it Projia as short for project, since it involves life management projects, and the ending ia sounded best and kinda make me think of gaia for earth. Plus the whole name makes me think of the word prodigy and that seems cute and funny to me. Also, it's short, relatively easy to remember, and sounds nice to say in my opinion.
I have not made a logo for this new name yet, but I'm sure something will come to mind.

Some main parts of Projia's concept notes are feature detail ideas, stretch goals, link tree, and e general black page for brain storm rambling that a clear out once I transfer it over to the right section.

To start I plan on making the game relatively simple and add more details and feature depending on funding/interest.
So at a minimum It will have a detailed life management system, static pet species with preset color variations, basic avatar dressing system, and a basic skills/stats counter, four game difficulty modes to select from.
And at possibly the max be the detailed life management system, highly customizable pets and avatars, a house/rooms feature, and a walker app to track your steps and translate it into rewards depending on your average steps, and customizable username colors, maybe do some more with the skills/stats counter, difficulty modes will be the same, maybe add a customization mode.

The main focus is the life management and pets are secondary, avatars are just for aesthetics.
Since life management is the focus I hope to make it default stress free with only rewards for completing your goals. The difficulty settings are if you work better under pressure and determine how much and what it lost if you do not complete a goal in time or fail it. (For Fun is the default no loss mode; Easy is you get an hp bar and loose hp throughout the day, but is regained each day or with completed goals, this is simply aesthetics and does not actually effect your account; Medium where complete loss of hp lowers your level, levels are just for aesthetics, but they are a part of your account and profile; Hard where loss of hp also means you loose some currency; and then finally Really Hard where you loose all your on hand currency and a random item/pet from your inventory. I might add item protection options to it too so rare items/pets cannot be lost and items/pets in storage cannot be lost, but they can be toggled off if you really need to feel the pressure.)
I am not sure if accounts with different modes should be separated for sake of fairness or not.

Here are the details of how the Life Management part works currently:

Spoiler

Currently I call the things you wish to do "Goals" as a general term. Each goal can be one of four types, Mission, Quest, Task, or Checklist Item. Each type can stand alone and does not need to be under a parent goal. Missions are for very long term large goals, these can take a month or more to complete, they can contain Quests as sub-goals. Quests are for long term goals, these can take about a week or so to complete, they can contain Tasks as sub-goals. Tasks are sort term goals, they take a several hours to complete, they can have Checklist Items as sub-goals. Checklist Items are very short term goals, they just take a second to a couple hours to complete.

When creating a goal, you can toggle it's reward system. You can select if the reward comes from completing each sub-goal, or only when it is fully completed. Reward chances are determined by a goal's stats, which also serve the purpose of organizing goals. A goals stats are very simple, there is Difficulty (how much energy or effort the goal takes to complete) and Urgency (how important is this goal to complete, do you need to get it done as soon as possible, or can it be done whenever, how important is it to you). Each stat has six levels; None, Low, Medium, High, Very High, Extreme. Each stat's level will have a numerical value that add points to the over all goal to place it at a higher or lower challenge to you and effect it's reward chances (number of exp, currency, and rarity/number of items/pets you can find). You can set the stats manually or you can say you want it to be the average of the sub-goals or the highest of the sub-goals.

Creating goals has the standard expected information data entry point too. For example, due/complete by date, repetition (how often it is to be done), Name Description, Tags, (possibly effected skill/stat). But what good is a Life Manager if you doesn't have a reminders feature. I plan on putting this in the goals themselves instead of having a generic "check your today's do list" notification. That way you can also be reminded of something that is coming up. You do not need to have a remember on, it's not recommended to set one for every or even most goals, just for the ones you need it for. Now I struggles with reminders that always start at the same time, so I plan on including a dynamic option. You can set the reminder to start after a condition is met like another goal being completed (like a waking up goal (possibly also be able to tell when you log in for the day), or eating breakfast goal). I feel this lowers pressures from the very thing that's supposed to help you manage it. Say you wake up late, a reminder set to a time will be telling you to take a shower when you are just rolling out of bed and still need to eat, but a dynamic reminder won't bother you about that until you are ready. You can also set if you want a one time reminder or if you want it to keep bothering you at various times  until you start the goal. Personally I would love a "Don't let me just hit close and forget to draw my promised commissions" type of reminders. Possibly even a toggle for checking in on you notifications for reminding you to take breaks and asking you how it's going where you can say if you are still working, done, or just tired of working and want to stop (making it remind you to start again either the next day or in a few hours). I am not sure if I can make the browser notification or phone app popups not have a traditional x button, but other options might still help distract from the easy 'leave me alone/let me forget about you' x button. But that's just my thought on how I would love the possibility of reminders that don't let you forget or ignore them.

There is the possibility of people just making empty high stated goals just to quickly gain rewards with no effort irl. Which completely defeats the purpose. I am thinking about adding either or both of a limit on how frequently you can check off types of goals and/or a reward from goals cap. I'd have the cap be realistic to represent some one completed about 8 hours of hard work in one day.

I am also thinking of possibly having an alert system set up to let you know if you have overlapping reminders or an overly busy day set up. So if the goals you with to complete on a given day total something like 12+ hours or more than 3 high difficulty goals it warns you that you might over work yourself. You can edit the goals on the alert or select an "I can do it" button. I might include an unrealistic alerts too for it it is something like about 18+ hours of goals or 5-6 high difficulty goals in one day.

And of course I have some shop ideas like the basic equips, usable items, pound, recycle shop, etc.

I do hope to make Pet appearances highly customization, but am currently unsure how to go about that exactly. I am thinking of having traits that can be added on or replace existing parts of a pet's base. And possibly a way to custom color the over all pet/it's traits with a color picker on site. (or via skins?) Skins seems more difficult to have work with added traits. I would also like to have a equip system, but with so many base variations possibilities it will need to be a drag and drop like equipment system.

I am thinking I want the art style to be in gradient vector shadings since that is my own shading style. However I am unsure if a more painted style would be more calming and fit the game concept better. I cannot shade that way confidently so would definitely need to hire some one to make all the art for me then.

I am open to suggestions. Nothing here is written in stone. Even nitpicking is fine like the name of some part bothers you or doesn't seem to fit. As long as you have alternative ideas to suggest with it I'll listen and consider them. I know it is is a bit sloppy on some details, but i'm still playing around with platform location ideas and such. Mostly still thinking about what the steps I should take to start are. I do have a list of things I know I'll need either some help or all the help with doing (like official writing is something I can't confidently do on my own)

Thank you for your time! I look forward to hearing our input!
(keep in mind a large chunk of this is not the full details of what i have thought up, this is just to show my core thoughts and things I am considering or feel mostly sure of)

[Anoua]

Sounds like a pretty interesting concept that could be pretty cool. I think Projia is a good name for this idea. It incorporates project element and then the jia ending works for the more gaming aspect.

I think personally the monetary aspects should just be single player. There could still be community and bragging rights with profiles and such. But if the project management is the focus being able to make whatever goals you want and however you want seems pretty important so people can be in control of their own management without after to feel disadvantages from using things correctly OR just doing things differently as I think some people will probably naturally consider things smaller goals and others may naturally consider things higher goals.

Also to keep balance elements like consistency and such could be showcased, as that will remain static based on progress versus just how they score their goals, or even how many goals they have. Some might prefer many smaller goals (even tracking things like showering as you mentioned) and others may just want to score work related things for example. It's really pretty personal I would say. So having a consistency element may help balance that out.

Anyway just some thoughts. Good luck finding time and motivation. 

[SingSong]

This is one type of game I've been looking to play (and also considered making myself in the past). I can relate to this:

4 hours ago, CuddlySpider said:

I struggle with finding motivation to do things I should be doing. I always have.
I would spend hours looking for something that could help motivate me to get work done and have tried many different types of calendars, reminder systems, notes, etc. Both digital and physical methods. But nothing seemed to work.

Previously, I have tried two different websites to do this. One was 750words.com which is a writing site with the goal to write 750 words a day. You write your words on their website, or you can post writing you wrote elsewhere into their writing editor to complete your writing for the day. It records how long you took to write the piece (which doesn't work well if you just post your already completed writing). My problem with that site is that they have streaks for finishing your writing during consecutive days and you earn badges for having a long streak, so I would feel pressured to write even when I didn't want to. After 100 days, almost all my writing ended up being junk I wrote just to finish the task. I would also change my time (California PST) to Hawaii time to give myself an extra hour because I usually could not find time to write until the late hours of the night. All in all, this set-up didn't work for me because it didn't make me more productive with my goals, and I was just stressed out about it. On this site, the only reward is the badges you earn.

I also tried habitrpg.com a few years ago which I suppose is now Habitica. There were a couple things I liked about their system, such as being about to create goals of not doing things (e.g. don't eat candy, don't smoke), and I liked being able to edit that I completed goal when I didn't have the time to previously log in the day before to check that I did it. However, there were quite a few things that turned me off that system. 1. I would find myself wasting time trying to log in and check off my goals, and I felt less productive because of that. 2. Many of the avatar customizations were premium content, and I didn't like that I couldn't earn an avatar that was much better looking than the default one (I'm not sure if they have added more free clothing since then). 3. Because the system was so editable (you could raise your health yourself if you lost some by not checking off something the day before), you could easily cheat the system. Or, if you were like me, you'd have a backlog of things you'd have to remember to check off and fix when you logged in three days later. Again, this just made it more of a waste of time for me, and I quickly lost interest.

 

If a new game like this came out, I'd only use it for long-term "missions" with check off quests and goals along the way. I find that check-off lists of daily tasks just make me less productive. I would like visible rewards, such as nice pets and colorations/markings for them. I'd also like for them to have a purpose, if possible, such as the ability to level up your pet and explore new terrains. There would have to be something unique like that to make me feel like it was worth using a site for recording goals instead of just recording my progress myself. If the game is single-player, there isn't an issue with people "cheating".

If the game was fun enough and helped me complete goals, I would consider buying skins or markings. You can have the option for both the way Flight Rising sets it up. If your character has a skin, the markings aren't shown and are not an issue. 

I like the idea of difficulty modes. I would personally use the medium or hard modes. I don't mind the limit of time between check offs for large goals. That seems reasonable enough.

I'm not sure if a walker app or housing system should be priorities. Not everyone would have walking/exercise goals. A housing system is just another customization feature, and you already have avatars and pets. If the housing feature allowed visitors and chatting in the room, that would be another story, but that's a lot of work for a side feature, and it would also take away from the productive aspect of the site.

I would love to see reminders/alerts on a side-panel when I logged in. If there was a quick check-off button attached to the alert so I could click it right there, that would be even better.

Mostly, with a site like this, I would like the check-off process to be as quick and hassle-free as possible, and it would have to offer some kind of reward to make me feel like it was worth logging in.

One thing you may also consider is having site events. Occasionally, there would be special days or weeks when you can log in and complete a task (such as 5 quests that week or one mission, or do 10 tasks in one day) and doing that task would reward the player with something rare or a bonus of points/exp.

Note to self: I must try OneNote.

Edited October 2, 2017 by SingSong

[CuddlySpider]

I making it single player is a good idea. It would also avoid broken economy. Thank you c: Thinking back on it It did like hoe Habitica was just earn for yourself and you could view what others have earned, but there was no player to player trading or selling of in game stuff.

2 hours ago, Anoua said:

Sounds like a pretty interesting concept that could be pretty cool. I think Projia is a good name for this idea. It incorporates project element and then the jia ending works for the more gaming aspect....

I was definitely planning a progress feature to see how consistent you are in general or for each goal and non-repeating types. So like average mission completion rate, or even this specific mission's rate to show how often you are checking off it's sub-goals. Thank you c:

1 hour ago, SingSong said:

This is one type of game I've been looking to play (and also considered making myself in the past)....

I was thinking of trying 750words when I had a writing idea, but as you said the punishments turned me away. I figured I would feel too pressured to write that much in that short time span, on top of being a slow typer, it just sounded like a nightmare.

When I first started their logo said HabitRPG but the site domain was habitica. I found that a bit confusing but ignored it.

I honestly didn't know flight rising had skins? They don't have much outline altering features though, but Thinking about it I could have skins be like an image over lay vs an actual full image replacement. So the features can still be seen. The skins would just add a texture or over all pattern or gradient? I'll think on it and play around with some of the grey scale pet bases I have made to see what works universally and consider how sites can and can't overlay images.

Yeah they might, and walker app can always be replaced easily with just a regular step tracker and saying if you reach the goal amount or not if walking is one of your goals. And puzzles mini games are fun, but again players can always use on off site mind game of their choice and check off if they completed their goal of either beating their high score or doing x amount of puzzles.

Housing did feel like just extra aesthetic that not many would use or want. I guess if more than needed is donated I'll add something simple as a feature you can add to your profile if you want to, but don't have to. I was going to have it so you can place your pets in the rooms, but all it would act as is like an extra pet storage vs an interaction thing.

Reminders would definitely have a check off option. I would just eliminate the 'close to ignore forever' type button. you can edit or delete the whole goal if it is no longer relevant.

I do plan on having most content and items be 'free' to earn. But of course I would need some inflow to keep the site up and updated. So was thinking of having some cash only items, mostly things that in crease storage space, increase clothing limits or reward limits, increase pet added features and skins limits, etc. Just like little "I am ready for more items" expansion items that don't expire. Possibly a monthly item/s in there. But nothing that asks for a lot of irl money. Maybe tops 5 or 7 usd. Might add having a housing feature in there if the idea gets some interest. I know what you mean about feeling like you can't have a good looking character with out the monthly premium of cash items it defeats the purpose of earning a good looking character or pets through the life management and becomes a "buy to win" like game play.

I definitely would love to have site wide events. Maybe may site bosses, or npcs with lore and stories that you can follow throughout the events. I would have a way for players just joining to be able to accept past site wide events and single a player event so they can follow the story on their own as well later on if they missed it. Might have it be something that can be bought with the in game currency depending how old the event is.

It would be cool to have lands that people can unlock though activity. I am not sure what purpose they would serve. Maybe you can only find certain pets or items when those lands are unlocked. And can find npc in them that offer little npc goals.

Oh that gave me an idea. I was thinking of having goals with rewards have the option to attach a pet (or more with a limit breaker item) so that they gain exp too for their own little lvls and stats. I might think of a use for lvls and stats later, maybe they help boost rewards from goals with a correlated stat to it. So accepting a npc quest you can attach them to a goal with the type they requested (preferably with a similar idea behind it). Like an npc asking you to drink a glass of water 3 days in a row in the morning, it would be best to attach them to a goal with just that in mind. I would have it so they add their own goal list, but it might be something you already do or have. (maybe i'll have it so you can select if you already had that as a goal or if you want them to add it for you). I'll play around with this to see how it sounds in different scenarios.

I think that would be cute tho. So you could complete goals with your pets and with a npc. (possibly have little circle icons of their head shots in the corner of the goal)

Might make all goal private automatically and players can choose to make certain ones public if they want to. Not sure if the consistency or progress graphs should be public or not, might make that optional too. So if someone wants to show their progress on completing a commission they can.

Might still need an app version, if anything at least so it can offer interactive phone reminders and notifications too if you want that.

EDIT: and you OneNote is great. It has more options on PC then the Mac version. But it saves onto your google account so you can login and see your stuff anywhere. And you can share your notebooks, sections or pages with others if you want to. I haven't done that yet but it's pretty cool that i can.

Edited October 2, 2017 by CuddlySpider