Gamedev Diary: Hobbies Evolving
My work schedule with the game goes something like “fix bugs; ship something players have asked for; ship something I want.”
Usually, the things I want feel random, but they’re almost always in service to making the game feel more convincing as a simulation.
This week, in addition to a bunch of features and bug fixes, I made characters able to evolve their interests as they go through life. The first version of the Interest System picked some hobbies for characters when they reached adulthood, based on their aptitudes (or just random chance)… so maybe your Jokkad, on maturation, is now interested in making candy and collecting pebbles, or collecting riddles, or planning caravan schedules (some people’s interests are more practical than others!).
But I love modeling behavior, and it was always my plan for interests to evolve over time.
I put Phase 2 of this feature in this week, and now adults sometimes get bored of stuff they were interested in and develop new interests, particularly if they have more mercurial personalities. Sometimes, they become more devoted to those interests and it starts defining them as a person. And sometimes, now, they develop bad habits!
Every day, the game runs a check to see if your characters have gotten some wild hair to learn basketweaving or meditation, or if they’ve started gambling or delighting in jumpscaring clan-members. Some characters, who have a more staid personality, will stick with multiple interests for months until they have expertise; others, who are more flighty, will eventually have lists of 11, 15, 20 interests they’ve dabbled in and moved on from. Eventually, this will feed into other systems: quests to allow you to stage interventions for your misbehaving Jokka, friendships that form based on shared interests, flavor text, even events.
And of course, interests show up in speech bubbles, as pictured!
We’re up to 57 players, and I can’t wait to see what wild things people’s characters get up to!
Also, yesterday I was going through my notebooks and I found the first pages of notes from when I was starting the game and it’s astonishing how far it’s come. A great testament to just showing up and doing a little something, every day. I guess, in game terms, “making games” has always been one of my interests… and only recently has it evolved into something I’m more focused on…! Somewhere, someone is getting an alert about me on their dashboard. 😂
As usual, if you’re interested in playing, shoot me a message!
Next time, I think I'll have to talk about accidentally creating the Jokku zodiac system, because that was a ridiculous and fun example of how game mechanics leads you to think about worldbuilding in a new way.
