Part of the idea of the Companion App, is to enable players to be still be involved in the game even when they're not in front of their PC / console.
Features like, reading in-game texts, crafting and frequenting the Auction House are all things that can be done outside of the main game. Meaning when players are travelling about in RL - on a bus, or wherever, they can prepare for the next time they're ready and able to play.
I for one, despite being a fan of well-written fantasy, often find the act of reading quest descriptions and other narrative elements of RPGs a bit boring.
The Companion App goes a little way to solve this. The idea here is to present the players with an option to revisit or read up on narrative outside of the actual game. And prepare them for future adventuring.
With Underline we want to create a rich and immersive world where clues on how to defeat certain monsters or specific entities can be gleaned from myriad places. But you don't really want to force the player to read stuff unless they want to. So we intend to provide alternative options for surfacing this information.
Furthermore we want to build this notion into gameplay. So what you read in the Companion App, and maybe what you highlight within that text actually become features identifiable on your map or radar. For example, you find an ancient text which describes the weaknesses of some creatures, you learn that Trolls are allergic to a certain type of mushroom. This mushroom - once mere background decoration subsequently becomes something you can track on your radar (as if you're looking out for it / actively searching for it) and becomes something you can harvest from the environment.
Going forward we'll obviously going to create a whole section on features for the Companion App. But right now its just about capturing the ideas.
As always let us know what you think. What features would you make available in a Companion App, or offline?
No comments:
Post a Comment