Project Outcritters Week #1 - What is Outcritters?

Project Outcritters is the game I've started to plan since my last post. I promised that I was going to make a game between May and September, and gave a vague description of my idea for what this game is:

' {game name} is a game where you craft sentient clothes out of magical fabrics. Each piece has its own unique personality, as well as granting you powers to find even rarer materials to craft with'

Thematically i'm still very onboard with the idea! I think the idea of sentient, talking clothes is funny - although I might limit the 'clothes' to just hats and accesories since it could get weird fast. However, concept is still vague - I don't have any mechanics, story or any art direction yet. My goal for this week was to focus on the core gameplay loop specifically, the main overarching goals and milestones the player works towards to keep progressing through Outcrittters.

With a game about making (and ultimately collecting) creatures, its pretty natural to go the 'pit them against each other in a turn based battle' route a certain popular franchise takes. I had a few other ideas that I didn't see fit, however I ended up really liking and returning back to the first one I came up with. I first imagined a platformer game where each 'Outcritter' helped you traverse in a different way.

Each outcritter the player can make would have two main components, the silhouette and the fabric. The silhouette is the main component, and is what defines what power the outcritter gives: a dash, a double jump, x seconds of wall climbing etc. The fabric would be the secondary, supporting ingredient that modifies the silhouette slightly, such as making its ability stronger, last longer or have additional uses, with each fabrics upgrade also depending on what the silhouette grants.

Above is an example of when an Outcritter is needed. The player must cross a chasm, perhaps to unlock a new Silhouette/Fabric or to reach the next area of the game. Rather than the game having a single predetermined solution to this, there are a few combinations of Silhouette and Fabric the player can craft together that make an Outcritter capable of crossing the gap. In the GDD, I started calling this 'variance' as it lets players choose to a degree how they tackle challenges.

In this example, two solutions are shown. Firstly they could jump across by wearing a top hat silhouette critter to get a double jump with a starry fabric that modifies it to give a 3rd jump to . Alternatively, they could use a scarf outcritter that dashes horizontally, choosing the chevron fabric to extend the dash wide enough to reach the end.

I realised that fabrics would change slightly depending on what they are being applied to. Fabrics could stick to a theme / general change, so I made a grid to demonstrate some of these differences using the 4 possible combination of outcritter based off the first diagram

One of my first design considerations really nailing down how much customisation and progression overlapped. I wanted to encourage players to create unique outcritters as they play the game without forcing them into picking certain types, patterns etc. just for the stats alone. Think about how many times in RPGs you've seen a visually stunning armour set or a really cool companion but never used it because its stats are useless by the time you've found it. Or when you've had to slug on with something visually unappealin g because its defense or attack is just too good to pass up on.  It was about creative freedom whilst also encouraging players to try different combinations.

So, whats the solution? Many games have often beloved vanity systems, where any armour or sometimes even gear can be visually overlaid over the more functional pieces you want the numbers or bonuses from. This felt unnatural for this game however, as the pieces are more like companions with their own personalities.