- Joined
- Jun 27, 2019
- Messages
- 47
- Reaction score
- 123
- First Language
- English
- Primarily Uses
- RMMV
SECTION A: SYNOPSIS
- Beta Version: Currently a linear plotline. For the 2020 holidays, the complete version will be released with 108 randomized questions on a single map.
- Tactical Battle System: Not all fights leave physical wounds. MP is converted to "Spoons," and battlers only have so many spoons to give...
- Short Gameplay: No menu, and saved feature turned off, since the game can be completed within 15-30 minutes.
IMAGES/SCREENSHOTS
DOWNLOAD LINK
SECTION B: CHARACTERS
- Mana: She needs a friend's help. Fortunately, her imaginary slash best friend, Braelyn, is there to back her up.
- Braelyn: Braelyn tells one of the nightmares that she's Mana's sense of self. Perhaps, she's Mana's courage...
- Nightmarish Family and Friends: They aren't Mana's real family members; they're just nightmarish versions of her suppressed feelings, brought to life as people...
SECTION C: STORYLINE/PLOT
- Mana's Christmas is the first of three games about the internal world of an autistic young woman named Mana. In the first game, Mana has a dream, where her fears manifest as micro-aggressive family and friends; now Mana's imaginary buddy, Braelyn, has to wander through the darkness of the nightmarish Christmas party, facing fear in Mana's stead. After five awkward conversations, Mana thanks Braelyn by taking her to the masked women, who share stories about more dreams to come.
- This "end-game" room is temporary; in a future version of Mana's Christmas, the five family and friends will tap into a single common event of 108 questions, which means players will experience a different nightmare each time they play! A New Game+ mode will justify the battle system, as well as giving purpose to a save feature. At that point, I don't want to slow the player down with an ending sequence. Instead, I wanted the game to have this repeating-but-different feeling, to match my experiences living with complex post-traumatic stress disorder...and I thought it'd be fun to develop this idea within the confines of the one-map game challenge. But for now, Mana's Christmas is a linear story, traveling through a single nightmare, with a bonus room to celebrate the play-through.
- Mana's Christmas is designed to be short-and-sweet, but it's sequel, Mana's Dream, will have 11 battle maps and 2-3 hours of gameplay. I'm currently developing Mana's Dream in RPG Maker VX Ace. In the second chapter, Braelyn meets other aspects of Mana's personality. At first, these fragments of Mana's inner world fight one another; yet once they realize they all belong to the same persona, they work together to tackle the real enemy in Mana's body: Luisity, an electrically charged dragon responsible for self-destructive behaviors. The story's designed to explore my personal experiences with autism, depression, anxiety, and CPTSD.
SECTION D: SETTING AND/OR WORLD DEVELOPMENT
- Mana's dream connects to the Dream-time, a larger space responsible for the Collective Unconsciousness. The aspects of Mana's personality deeply revere the Dream-time; they see it as the godlike being that tangles all of life and death together. Spoiler alert: the electrically charged dragon entered Mana's inner world through the Dream-time.
- fey.earth's larger game, Worlds They Dream, takes place in the Dream-time, and Mana's one of the characters; so these smaller games lead to our future, larger title. The neat thing is, Mana's dream isn't the only one that paves a road to the Dream-time; other universes connect together in the Dream-time, like bubbles floating in a froth.
- Mana's dream has a lot more animals, and a lot less people, than the real world. Braelyn can tell if she's in Mana's dreams, or Mana's nightmares, based on the ratio of animals to humanoids.
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