Natural 7

Designing Forest of Flutes

Recently, I released a small video game, Forest of Flutes, about exploring a magical forest and collecting pan flutes. The idea is simple, and it's reminiscent of my first video game, Lona's Fountain. In this post, we'll take a look at how I designed around a forest theme, what went into the quests, and how I feel about a few extra tools thrown in.

It may be worth noting that while I studied computer science in college, I didn't take any classes about video games. My experience in Unity (and previously Godot) is self-taught with the aid of online tutorials and documentation.

Design Concept

When I first began making the game, I knew I wanted to recreate the themes from Lona's Fountain with improved pixel art and a better understanding of narrative design. There are a lot of really nice pixel art sprites out there, so finding the ones that fit my game wasn't difficult.

With the Legend of Faune project from ansimuz I was immediately inspired to take a spin on the satyrs which appeared in my first game and create a new story about them in the Forest of Flutes, a place where they go to collect their instruments. The first game was about talking to NPCs and solving their problems by collecting items. I decided to stick with that gameplay loop with the second game, but with a different overarching goal: also collect as many pan flutes as possible in a given time limit.

The rest of the sprites came from pixel-boy and were themed after ninjas. Funny enough, they worked really well for a magic forest too because of the huge variety of vegetation and characters available.

I didn't want any additional mechanics aside from a way to collect items, talk to NPCs, and wander around a small map. I like when games are simple like this, because they can put an emphasis on how you as a player feel about your actions and usage of time.

Integrating a Timer

[[Timed Adventures]] are one of my favorite things to employ in tabletop roleplaying games, and so adding a timer to this game made it so I could add weight to the player's choices. You only have enough time to complete a few of the quests; which will you spend your precious time on? Of course, this is also a tactic to get people to replay my game. If you didn't finish all the quests in a single sitting, and are curious about what would happen if you did, you're likely to hit the play button again.

In playtesting, the timer worked really well! My first few playtesters all said they needed to "try again" after failing to complete all the quests in one go. "I think I have to try helping the Necromancer" was a constant piece of feedback.

Delivering on a reasonable time frame became a necessity, so I messed around with 10 minutes and 15 minutes, but eventually I settled on 20 minutes. It's enough time to do everything, if you know what you're doing and skip through a lot of the dialogue. For first time players, the 20 minute limit lets you take your time to explore the forest and complete most of the quests, but probably not all of them.

I'm really happy with how the timer worked out, and I'm glad I was able to implement it in this game.

Creating Quests

The game runs on a simple quest loop:

  1. Talk to an NPC to receive their quest
  2. Collect the items required for the quest
  3. Return to the NPC for the reward

You've seen this loop in a thousand other games and it always works.

One thing I especially like about the loop is that it encourages exploration. You can explore the NPCs dialogue options for additional hints about where to get the quest items, you can explore the nearby area for those items, and you can explore the wider region for places related to those items.

The Woodcutter

Here's an example of a quest that I think worked really well:

"The Woodcutter asks you to bring them a bunch of sticks in exchange for flutes."

Why does it work well?

In playtesting, the Woodcutter quest was a fan favorite. Everybody was ecstatic when they learned their sticks had a use-case. This was gratifying to hear, and helped me iterate on other quests to make them more exciting.

The Forest Spirits

I'm happy with how all of the quests in the game turned out, but one that I'm still questioning is the Forest Spirits quest:

"The Forest Spirits speak to the player when they walk into a triangle of stone pillars. They ask the player to collect four scrolls of nature in exchange for a bounty."

Why don't I love this quest?

On the other hand, this quest has some positives:

The Dialogue System

I used a plug-in called Dialogic for Lona's Fountain, but for Forest of Flutes the tutorial's I followed helped me make my own dialogue system. I'm mostly happy with the system, but it's complicated and probably not sustainable for larger projects than this. As it was, writing out longer dialogues (for the Necromancer) was a pain in the butt due to the implementation.

I learned a lot by testing this dialogue system on my own, sending it to playtesters for feedback, and by playing other games with dialogue systems. A big inspiration was the dialogue in Pokemon: Sword & Shield as well as Scarlet & Violet (games I played lots of during the making of Forest of Flutes). When I next make a game with a dialogue system I have plenty of ideas for improving the usability as both a player and in the game engine itself.

Things to improve upon:

Things I'm happy with:

Final Thoughts

Forest of Flutes is my latest video game release and I'm incredibly proud of it! If you have a free 20 minutes, I highly encourage you to give the game a try. The game is a wonderful example of my narration style and has lots of silly little jokes sprinkled throughout.

Thanks for reading!

Things on my radar: