"Cozy Game" Design Notes: Themes
It's been a busy month, what with The Holiday Season happening and having to troubleshoot my computer issues, but nothing can stop me from working on game design stuff - even if it's just the thinky bits. And I've been doing a lot of thinky bits! Specifically, I've been thinking about what I want to do with the overall setting, theme... let's call it "vibe" for this cozy browser game.
I'm a fan of what I would call "medium-low" fantasy, for these sorts of things. I have this personal terminology rubric for fantasy genres, beyond just the subgenre (or as I like to put it, "flavor") of the fantasy. For flavors, you might have medieval fantasy, or contemporary fantasy, space fantasy, epic fantasy, that sort of thing. But then there's also the, how do I put it... the magicalness of the fantasy.
At the one end of the spectrum, low fantasy is when you've got a definitely fantastical setting, but there's very little actual magical-type things involved. An alt-earth romantic fantasy in a made-up setting with its own rules of society and languages and so on - but no magical powers - would be the very lowest low edge of low fantasy. Animal Crossing, too, is definitely low fantasy.
On the other end, high fantasy is when there is super definitely magic. Wizards and sorcerers, elves, dwarves, spell-slingers all over the place. Dungeons & Dragons is very much high fantasy. Sword & Sorcery is usually high fantasy, for the same reason D&D is high fantasy, but it isn't always because it's not uncommon for the "sorcery" side to be That One Evil Sorcerer Antagonist We Have To Beat Up, and the main cast to have little to know access to magic.
Roughly in the middle, then, is "medium" - this is when you've got magic, it's widely known to exist, but either it's not very common, not very strong, or not very straightforward. You might have magic be a highly specialized skill-set like training to be a doctor, or maybe you need to have a rare magical artifact, or maybe you just have vampires and werewolves with their very specific sets of skills.
As is probably obvious, there is a whole lot of room between those two ends, and that room has a lot of... wiggle to it. So instead of trying to nail it down in some kind of painfully strict quantification, I treat it like turning on the stove. You've got "high", "low", and "medium"; just "how hot" that is varies between types of stoves and even types of elements; the idea of "medium-low" is vague and you adjust based on what you're making and how your stove works.
And that finally brings us back around to the main topic! What does "medium-low fantasy" mean in the context of this Cozy Game™️? It boils down to two specific things, really:
- The game should be set in an entirely fictional setting, allowing for non-humans as NPCs and PCs alike.
- We can have a little magic, as a treat.
This is a useful place to start from, but it still leaves a huge range of flavors! Fortunately, the game itself helps narrow it down a lot - I'm definitely not going to be doing an urban fantasy game, after all! ... I mean....... I could make a cozy urban fantasy game. I actually was considering that for a little bit - specifically doing it in my low-key dystopian cyberpunk fantasy setting, which is a pretty fun idea, but it's a very different idea from what I've come up with here, so uh. Yeah, I'm going to stay focused. Shhh, I said, I'm going to stay focused.
So I've decided that for starters, I've got a medium-low rural fantasy vibe going on right now, with what I'm calling "vaguely post-Industrial" tech levels. Which really just means that I can have things like trains and not have to worry about things like phones and computers and the internet.
The main thing is... I do want a little bit of magic. But I'm having trouble figuring out how to work it in, in a way that makes sense and fits with the mechanics and the core design concept. The two main examples I know of that I can use as case studies are Stardew Valley and Palia. Stardew Valley has the woodland spirits and the weird totem things and the dungeon and I guess that wizard in the tower - basically Ghibli-type stuff as a backdrop. Palia, on the other hand, has the whole post-apocalyptic ruin-dungeon puzzles with a dash of magical resource gathering.
Personally, I like the vibe of the post-apocalyptic angle better. That was my favorite part of the Shannara books that I read, way back when. It was one of my favorite parts of Pern as a setting, as well. And puzzle dungeons are pretty awesome. But I am not super into the ~magical resource~ angle, which means I need another way to integrate that low-key magic into the game itself.
So, at the moment, I'm tentatively thinking that I might do a sort of way-far-post-apoc vibe, and that: magic is actually ancient technology, magic is a lost art, or magic is a byproduct of whatever created the apocalypse way back when. And then... integrate some sort of "magic" skill alongside the crafting/gathering skills, maybe? I'd want it to have some kind of unique interplay with the mechanics-- THAT'S IT! HORIZONTAL PROGRESSION!
Oh boy, that's going to be a whole blog post of its own! Something for you all to look forward to for next time.