Departments: The Plan.

IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO RECEIVE SPOILERS FOR ANOMALIES, DO NOT READ PAST THIS POINT. YOU MAY SEE SOMETHING YOU FIND DIFFICULT TO FORGET!

My buddy avacado proposed a fantastic idea for my game Anomalies: What if you could pick which department to go to next after completing a department? Immediately, I was like, "Damn. That's a great idea." Now I'm doing it!

Below I have a photo of "the plan" currently, where the lines connecting from a department upwards are the choices of which department to go to next. I've also listed the RNEs to go with each department (a question mark just means I haven't figured out what to put there). A big green checkmark means the department has been completed, 3 orange dots means the department is in development, and if a department has no cool symbol then I just haven't started working on it.

"Damn. This guy's really cool for being so ambitious with his project. It's already taken him a while to make departments A, B, and X, and now he's planning out a bunch more? I love this guy."

And I wouldn't disagree with you! I love me too.

This is definitely quite an ambitious endeavour. Not only do I have to make a unique and nice color palette for each department, for each department I also have to make at least 5 cards, write a bunch of dialogue that tells about the lore without being too obvious, figure out which RNEs to include (or make new ones), figure out how to keep the player interested, and deal with my own shitty code. But hey, what is fun without a challenge? I've had a lot of fun making departments A, B, and X, so I'll continue for as long as I please and get to work on fulfilling endings for when I feel my motivation slipping. Then I'll go ahead and work on some new project!

The most pressing issue would probably be the RNEs. Each RNE needs to be well thought-out and simple enough to explain with just one page and no real demonstration. RNEs also need to be engaging, rewarding, challenging (but not too challenging!), and stay in-line with the lore. It's a real challenge, but I have some ideas for new RNEs to put together. Feel free to let me know if you have an idea yourself, buddy.

I'm sure this will be a hell of a fun journey. I look forward to it.

I'm also be thinking about putting together a trailer— that could be cool, right?