Potions and Memories

In my last post I was writing that I wasn’t sure what to do with Pathos, but that was not completely true. I has some ideas I was musing in the background but none of them were really hitting home for me. However I think writing that previous devlog helped me get the primary one I was musing unstuck.

The main concept I had in mind was a continuous way to use us released pathos. A kind of “gold sink” if you will, that gives the player some standard way to use their currency for a short-term benefit. A lot of other games in this genre go with consumables like potions, food and so on, as a way to give the player something to use when their deck has become efficient enough.

However, I am am one of those players for whom the typical puchasable potion mechanic does not work. In any game which uses such consumables, I just hoard them, waiting for the “perfect moment” to use them, which of course never comes, even up to the final boss sometimes. In Slay The Spire for example, I typically end up always having 3 potions and always remembering I could have used them, when I find a new one and I now I have to discard one. And every time this happens, it frustrates me. In games like Griftlands on the other hand, where you have to actively buy consumables, I just never do so, unless it’s part of my build.

I remember reading a long time ago somewhere an article praising how Tales of Maj’Eyal, AKA T.O.M.E. handles potions and it stuck with me. This was before it was even called Tales of Maj’Eyal, and I honestly cannot locate it anymore. But basically it was explaining how a better approach to giving the player potions they need to stockpile and quaff all the time, is to give them potion slots which refill by themselves like skills.

Since this kind of approach made a lot of sense to me, I wanted to build something like that for Hypnagonia. But potions make little sense in dreams, and I didn’t really have a good mechanical way to handle them. I knew I wanted to do something with released Pathos, but wasn’t sure what. And so this idea kept hanging around in my subconscious for a while.

Until yesterday that is, where something clicked and I feverishly wrote the whole mechanics for my own version of “consumables” in an all-nigher session.

I call them, Memories.

The thematic concept is that you unlock memories in the provisionally called “shop” using your release Pathos as usual. But unlike other games, they’re not one-use. What happens instead is that Memories act more like usable items. They stick to your GUI and any time you need them, you can use them for their effect. But once you use them, they simply become inactive and they refill themselves slowly, as you release the specific Pathos tied to them.

Is memory is tied to a Pathos type, like frustration and loneliness and tends to have a theme that fits it. So the Memory “Mother’s Comfort” reduces your anxiety by 5 when you use it and uses lethargy to reffill, while “Childhood Curiosity” naturally uses curiosity, and does one big interpretation to a Torment.

Memories also refill on their own accord. Any time you release Pathos, a part of it will go to refilling forgotten memories. But they do not refill all at once, but rather need a couple of encounters of their type to do so. This creates an interesting dynamic, where if you do not use your memories (or don’t acquire some), you have more released Pathos for the shop, but if you do use them, you get some significant tactical advantages, but you do not have the option to spare your Pathos until they’re refilled again.

Also, Memories are permanent. Once you have a Memory for a certain pathos, you cannot get rid of it (as they’re not items to throw away). From that point on, during this dream, you will never find another memory for that Pathos type. What will happen instead, is that any time you would get a memory for that type, you will instead get a chance to upgrade your existing memory, making it more powerful, or making it simply refill faster, or cost less to refill.

In the end, playing with Memories will create a more dynamic use for Pathos instead of using it just for the shop. Acting more like countdown abilities and less like consumables. But the way they burn your released Pathos, still can make the player take choices they might not have otherwise chosen, such as going for a non-combat-encounter which will release some Pathos, in order to recall their memories faster and so on.

You can already play with the first 6 memories that have been added to the game in 0.22.x, so do let me know what you think. More, of course, will be coming soon.