this post was submitted on 02 May 2025

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Game design question : how to make a "trapped" player character? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

50 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I have an idea for a game: It's the usual "a princess is kidnapped by a dragon and a brave knight is on a quest to rescue her" story. But you (the player) plays as the princess, who is somehow helping the knight on his quest.

The issue is that since the player is playing as a trapped character, I want to make the player feel trapped, but I don't know how to do that.

My original idea is that the princess telepathically communicates with the knight and tells him what to do. But this doesn't work, the gameplay is identical to the player playing as the knight. How can I make the gameplay feel like the player is playing as the princess (and thus feel trapped) instead of the knight?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I have in mind a puzzle game. Not a room escape, but more of a code golf-style game. For example, those programming puzzles that say "write a computer program that adds numbers, but you're not allowed to use the + sign anywhere in your code".

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Not sure if it would be puzzly enough but if the player can wonder the halls or get escorted through them having part of the knight's efficiency based on how well you mapped out the area you send as a note plus you could try to find info on guard rotations or over hear about other things that could help the knight

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

If that's the style of game you are looking for, I could see a structure of 'do code golf puzzles to:

program robots to help the knight directly'
'trick' henchmen or magical castle elements (abstracted coding) into doing things that help the Knight'
write the guard's 'daily action plan' so they patrol in a way that doesn't get the knight caught'
complete abstract 'magical haxors' that open the dragon's firewalls'
social engineer the dragon between runs to let you have more supplies'
give simple instructions to collections of small woodland creatures to do simple things that add up to a real goal (in the vein of Opus Magnum)'

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

That sounds really cool. If the princess' telepathy instructions are strangely like code because that is how telepathy works in your setting, and this is a nice frame story for a programming puzzle game… all sorts of whacko fantasy analogues and justifications for why you are not allowed to use the equivalent of the addition command. (Maybe the princess knows through her rich royalty education that the only reason her addition command could be not going through to the knight because his trip took him at a place full of this kind of magic rock with properties that somehow block the wavelength… so she has to work around that. Worldbuilding yay!)