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The Road to Quantum Dragon - Gameplay

 Hello. C J here. I have some further progress notes about planning Quantum Dragon. This new video game project of mine is designed to be attainable in a way that the main trilogy isn’t. The main trilogy takes years of planning for each mechanic in it because it is designed to rely on real life mysticism and spirituality for its inspiration. The new video game doesn’t. It therefore doesn’t have rules about what will work and what won’t work in its story or setting. It’s going quickly and I’m hoping to have some test runs of the level maps within a week of today.

Here’s what I’m thinking. The game might not need quests at all but I’m thinking most of the gameplay will be NPCs requesting you to craft items for them in exchange for a reward. Do five of these requests and you level up. Wilderness exploration and combat are a way of getting resources in the early game and also rarer resources from stronger monsters in the later game. Nothing in the setting can die permanently so the monsters will come back and this is part of the plot.

The crafting locations are all on your ship. As you unlock and build more ships for your fleet you will be able to travel directly between them while in space to craft using the locations on each ship. Each ship can be unlocked and built once and then a ship is never made out of date. I’m also planning some ships that generate resources and that can be upgraded to generate more of them at higher levels. You can recruit new named team members and map them to one of your four combat options to call or dismiss in combat. They might actually all have a unique skill tree to upgrade them.

Other ideas I have. Magic can be misused easily in this setting so learning certain skills means you gain permanent points of corruption. This meter decreases how effective healing magic is on you and makes you more susceptible to some spell effects. You can go into a ship’s galley or kitchen for dialogue with the NPCs you’ve recruited into it to learn more about them and their lives. I’m also planning some plot based characters who show up on multiple planets for their own reasons. These stories are not seen in order by the player and that’s a script writing challenge that I’m going to enjoy typing.

I’ve named the starting city as well Cirrus Prime. I want it to be a colony that contains members of multiple species there on missions of diplomacy. I’m planning the planet around it to be plains, lakes and cliffs. The rule for this kind of bulk imagination is that anything goes. I have to trust my instincts here. If the name sounds nice and the concept works then run with it. Take the first instinct, the first gut reaction, to what a thing should be and it’ll work. Second guess yourself and you’ll ruin the entire project no matter what. There aren’t rules. That’s script writing for a video game.

C J Mcpherson

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