I have invented a thing! I believe this is an entirely new feature in video games, and I'm really happy with the concept (it's not fully implemented, so who knows, maybe it is terrible, but I like it so far).
One of the arguments game players have with developers is about how creating alts (secondary characters) goes. As a simple example, in Diablo IV, there are altars to find, hidden around the world map, and each one gives you a little benefit (not anymore, though - that game just keeps changing all the time!). Originally, each character you created began with all of those altars unfound, and had to find them again. That was pretty annoying, because they were always in the same place, and there's no challenge attached to them, so after the first time, there wasn't anything interesting about finding them. It was just a chore. So players wanted their progress on finding those to carry over between characters, and thus it was done to placate the masses.
But there's also the other side of it - if too much of your progress is shared, creating extra characters is no fun, because there's no gameplay left! Diablo III is actually a good example of this. When you make a secondary character in that game, you can play the campaign again, but you can also play in Adventure Mode, which basically means "grind yourself to max level, there are no objectives". It's pretty boring and feels very aimless. But even I choose it over running the campaign again because the campaign just slows your leveling down so badly. I actually prefer the games that force you to re-run the campaign, like Last Epoch (my favorite!), because from moment to moment, there is something driving you forward, even if it's the same thing it was the last 100 times. Better than having nothing to motivate you!
So this issue of what does and doesn't carry over between runs is a complex one that requires balance and thought. Thusly have I invented Villages to give the player a level of control over this issue!
Behold the (still in progress, even the title is subject to change) title screen for this game. When you start the game for the first time, it asks you to name the village you are creating, which in this case is of course Frob (ignore that it's 204% complete...). If I were to click Play, I'd create a new character, named whatever I want, who is playing in the village of Frob. Then later, I can make another new character in Frob, or I can start a new village and start a new character there.
Some things are tracked on a per-character basis (like your level, the skills and talents you've unlocked, and your gear), while others are tracked on a per-village basis (like what quests you've completed, a shared item storage, and which exploration abilities -
roidvanes - you have access to). This puts the power to the player - if you want to complete the quests again, make a new village. Or you can make a super-boosted alt in an existing village, who can grab powerful items from the shared storage and just level up and zoom to the bottom of the dungeon. Winning the game is a village-level activity, so it's like your collection of Woodies in the village is working together to defeat the titans. But you can certainly make new characters in the same village after you've won, if you want to play endgame activities like Madcap Mode.
This picture is less exciting, but it's the Char Select screen, where you can make and delete new villages and characters, and swap between them to decide what you want to play right now.
So that's the core idea of the Village. I think it adds a fun element of freedom that other games don't have, though I obviously still have to determine which things are on the village-level and which are on the player-level, so you don't have full control over what resets between characters. There are also a few things that are game-level - you earn achievements game-wide, and just like in Loonyland 2, you earn new Modifiers by earning Achievements. You may also earn playable classes the same way, I'm not sure yet.
But speaking of what resets, another interesting element is that the random dungeon generation is based on the name of the village. So if you and I both name our village Woodville, we will both encounter the exact same dungeon and can share tips about where things are, or compete to speedrun it first. There is however a mechanism to reroll a specific floor of the dungeon - which is also predetermined. So if you reroll level 5 of your dungeon three times, and I do too (assuming we both named our villages the same), we will still have a matching level 5. Or I can reroll once, and you reroll twice, and now it's different. Does that make sense? It does to me, so get with the program.
You can also use the same name for two different villages (if you look closely, you can see a second Woodville in this picture, which says "#001" next to its name), if you like a certain layout, but want to start it from scratch.
And one last bit of fun - you know that in Loonyland 2, there were Modifiers you could enable on your character. You can still do that, and we'll have a bunch of the same ones and a bunch of new ones. But those are character-specific. We now also have Village Mods (see the first picture I shared, where it says "Lonely, Small"), which allow you to create a very different world you are playing in. Player mods are things like "spawn twice as many monsters" or "easy difficulty", while Village mods are things that necessarily affect everyone in the village, like "dungeon levels are smaller than normal" (which might be called "Small", don't you think?). "Lonely" is a crazy modifier for crazy people.
The goal of all of this is to make the game a sort of playground, where you can set the parameters and then just play in that space however you like. I probably should do a separate blog about how convenient and amazing it was that Diablo II (I've now name-checked 3 different Diablos in this post!) released a new update this month, after 25 years. Loonyland 2 is my take on Diablo II, so diving into that has really been an inspiration. This village feature is in fact something I thought of while grinding on one of my five Warlocks. Maybe we shall discuss that later!
