On some of the design of Tutetown
(cohost archive 04)
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Originally posted on cohost: 06/12/2023
Tutetown is the first area of Final Profit and as you may have guessed from the name it's designed to act as a tutorial to ease the player into the unusual concepts of the game, and do so in a natural way without walls of text explaining mechanics. Though there's still a fair few walls of expositional text, it's hard to get around that when setting up the stakes of the story, but even that serves a functional purpose in this game to teach players that it's important to pay attention and remember things that characters tell or ask of you.
I feel that it's very tightly put together, everything is very intentional with a well paced gradual build up. Though it's also a bit of a barrier to getting to the 'meat' of the game which is a problem. Modern marketing relies so heavily on influencers covering your game, many have played through a bit of Tutetown and stopped partway under the assumption that this is all the game is or will be because they're under time pressure. Even enjoying this section but totally missing that there is So - Much - More. The use of default graphics hurts here too though I've tried to spice them up with edits and additions as well as weather and visual effects, not to mention a bunch of custom music. Graphics aside I think the game itself is better for being constructed this way at the expense of making it harder to gain awareness.
The gradual progression and sense of discovery as the game keeps throwing things you don't expect is key to Final Profit. And Tutetown sets this up nicely, with most players having an unexpected "Oh. Oh that's cool." moment somewhere in here.
Now let's get granular!
Now let's get granular!
Our first major goal is to find 3 products and customers, this is an important mechanic and we learn it here in a simple setting before getting thrown into the big city. The amount of NPCs in Tutetown is restricted so we're almost definitely going to run into who we're supposed to quite quickly, though the lootbag salesman is placed outside of town so the player is forced to realise they can leave and explore. The world outside is limited at this stage but there's still apples to collect, secrets to find, the floor puzzle, and several things that we can see but can't reach yet. This is all about setting expectations and introducing mechanics. And as the plot progresses more keeps opening up, the town becomes more populated and scenarios start to play out. And the player can choose to engage with or ignore most of it.
The placement of Apple Treasures (the chests that require certain amounts of apples) is a particular good example of directing the player naturally, in Tutetown itself there are 3 of them. Right next to us as we exit the shop is one that says 14, this won't make sense at first glance but soon enough we'll figure out how the chests work and it'll become apparent that 14 is outside our reach, hinting that there will be more to come later. The ones on the far right of the screen requiring 3 and 4 are both achievable goals at this stage. As we start exploring we won't have enough Apples to open them yet, but we take note of the numbers. 4 is exactly how many Apples are accessible at this stage but the last one is very hidden, most players will encounter 3 fairly easily and get a very nice reward from that 3 chest, the first Trade Tool which lets us access Critical Sales, introducing another important mechanic.
Back to how we learn about Apples and the Apple Treasures. As we leave looking for that 3rd product we walk down a thin path and reach a crossroads, there's a sign telling us about the different directions and straight ahead we see the NPC we're looking for as we're hunting for products. But also there's a mysterious chest with a 1, it doesn't open hmm. As we step down to talk to the man we notice another smaller chest nearby, it has an Apple! There's fanfare, it tells us this is collectable, huh how strange. Oh! Maybe that chest? Yes! 30 coins! Heck yeah! (It's worth noting that some players think the numbers require a certain level rather than an Apple but incidentally have the Apple already, not to worry though as this illusion is swiftly cast off when they encounter more chests. This misassumption is actually pretty fun and cool, and adds to the discoverability element of the game. It's more fun for the player to figure something out on their own (and more fun for me to watch the cogs turn as people work through problems), but the game should still try and direct them towards these discoveries indirectly).
There's so much more to talk about on this topic, the balance of the shop economy, directing to the optional upgrades and automation, finding the horse dimension, golden goals, the timing of the Faeona cutaways, the pacing of the debt, the hidden resources, the HUGE amount of systems in tandem it took to finally convince players to go buy drinks for hats instead of sitting in the shop spamming 2 items and missing out on all the exploration... actually that last one is probably a whole post in itself. Will probably cover that next.
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