Well, this is one of the most odd mechanics we have for Poltergeist, but we think this will enable us to make more levels with more variety. We don't have it really pinned down just yet, but we are still evaluating some details (we'll explain them after the basic explanation).
In some levels of Poltergeist characters can get "distracted". The character as of this moment can go to:
- Sleep
- Sit down and read a book
- Listen/dance to music
- Watch TV
- Eat something
When they are in this "state", they become relaxed, and will earn on additional point of the their scared status. Even more, they will "occupy" the objects used for distraction. The occupied objects then cannot be used to scare people. For example, a character can decide to go to sleep on a bed. That bed would become unusable for scaring. However, if you scare her enough, she will stop being distracted and stop using the object required for the "distraction".
Lets look at an example here, someone feels tired and goes to sleep:
Notice that you cannot use the objects anymore. This can make rooms more difficult to scare, and even worse, they got an extra point for getting "distracted". Lets try to scare them once.
You see that the characters got scared and are alerted. They also lost one scare point. They haven't left the bed though, you will need to scare again for that.
There you go! The are up and running and terrified! Now you can use the previously occupied beds to scare them once more!
We are still evaluating things for this mechanic in the game, we have some doubts still with:
- Giving the character one extra point when distracted. Seems to be a lot of punish in addition to losing the ability to use the object for powers. They can even get more points than the normal 3 (at most is 5). We are still thinking a lot about his to make the game levels easier to understand.
- We still don't know if the ability can be triggered randomly in a level, or if the character triggers it after a scare, of if it just happens randomly, or even if we just let some characters "already distracted" from the beginning of a level. We want to make it as less obtuse as possible, having clear rules, so probably the "already distracted" option will end being the one.
I guess we could use many of these variations and not necessarily stick to one. But then I think we will need to have a very clear way to point how these interactions work. Maybe using some sort fo GUI for it? Probably, but it fells obvious that we need a good GUI presentation to expose these rules clearly.
We will keep updating with new for our game here and in our main Glitchy Pixel website, and our Facebook page as well!
We also tend to put in our twitter feed the #screenshotsaturday hash tag. We usually post various pictures of our progress in the game. If you want to check those out go here:
Well, that's it for now! See you later!
