Slumber – The food loop!

Hi!

Time for another blogpost! This time, I wanted to openly discuss a design area of Slumber (yes, it’s called Slumber now!) that is not entirely defined yet. Mostly to process my own thoughts but also to involve you guys in the process!  

So let me talk about the food loop.

The original system

The food loop serves both the retention side and the calm side of Slumber. The original food loop plan was pretty simple, it was as follows;

There’s also a food combination system involved and fishes actually enjoy different types of food, but for what I’m writing about today you can just focus on the above graph.  

Algae is important for the explore game mode, as it gives the player something to do beyond just swimming around. Swimming to new bits of algae is the core gameplay of Slumber.

Food components are important because it’s the tool players use to grind in Slumber. Food components are used to build relationships with fish over a longer period of time, giving the player a long term goal and encouraging them to play over multiple nights.

The algae were converted and fed to fishes by sleeping. The main reason we do this is because we do not want players to get stuck playing Slumber all night. Considering it’s a game designed to get the user sleeping, we were worried players would get stuck in an endless collect algae -> feed fish -> collect algae loop.

The new system

However! As it turns out, collecting algae, composing the components on the spot, and giving them to fish is pretty engaging. Players are encouraged to collect algae by the fishes around them. The player is given a clear reason for collecting algae.

With the original system, the player thinks ”I am collecting algae because tomorrow I will be able to feed whatever fish I encounter!”. Without the sleep hurdle, the player thinks ”I am collecting these algae to become friends with Charlie the Butterfly Fish!”.

The goal becomes very clear rather than diffuse and longterm, the gameplay becomes more varied ( (collect algae -> feed fish-> back to start) rather than (feed fish until out of componenets -> collect algae forever) ) and the system becomes clearer. It’s great!

Problems with the new system

But then comes the question..what stops the player from doing the loop forever? Without the sleep hurdle it’s going to be easier to get stuck and grind instead of going to bed. One could argue that the old system had this problem as well, but it becomes more visible when one makes the food loop so accessible. Basically, I’m afraid we’ve made the game too engaging so that we need to give the player clear exit points.

What we need is a food system that encourages the player to stop playing. However, if the player can’t sleep we do not want to lock them out. The player needs to be able to continue playing forever if they need to.

How do other games solve this?

Next step in the process is to cut open some other games and steal their power! How do they solve this problem? Thankfully, there’s lots of games that forces the player out of the game to come back later!

Timewall approach

There are lots of games that forces the player to stop playing by putting up a wall of time between the player and new content. In Farmville you wait for crops to grow, in Kim Kardashian you wait for your energy to be restored, the list goes on. The good things about this system is that you can have relatively little content that is drawn out over a huge amount of time. However, we cannot actively lock the player out so this is not for Slumber.

The chapter approach

Looking at games with a set amount of hand crafted content such as puzzles, a lot of them encourage the player to take a break by simply cutting the game out in sections. In lots of platformers there are different worlds concluded by bosses. In The Witness there are sections with lots of puzzles leading up to lazers. After activating a lazer you need to walk a while before getting to the next one and the puzzle rules also change, encouraging the player to take a break before playing again.

I am more invested in this second approach. It’s like reading a book with chapters. After each chapter the reader is encouraged to take a break, as reading another chapter is ”another step” in the process. Finishing a chapter involves the following;

A sense of progression, as the reader can clearly see that they’ve finished a section.

A clear pause where the reader can breathe out and decide whether they wish to read on or quit. The book dosen’t throw the next chapter at the reader like Netflix!

Those sounds great for Slumber! How do we get them into the game? How do we get a game with an endless food loop to provide the player with clear exit points and a clear sense of progression chunked up in manegable pieces?

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That is..a really good question!  This is the kind of design rabbit holes I delve into whenever we change an aspect of the game. It’s lots of fun, but it’s also pretty hard as there’s not much time left for designing, and the design itself is pretty challenging!

I’ll make another post once I figure out a potential solution. Sorry for the unsatisfying ending, but I need to get to work!

Until next time!

/Sebastian

About Sebastian Larsson

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