Devlog #2 - DM Dalliance's Design Challenge
Finishing my first solo journaling game!
It is complete!
Being my first solo journaling game and game jam submission, having the finished product up and published does feel like a comfortable achievement. It does help counter the imposter syndrome lurking menacingly in a trench coat in favour of furthering my enthusiasm to keep at the game writing!
As you probably surmised from the above image, my submission to DM Dalliance’s game jam is titled Divine Mirrors, which is derived from the below quote:
“I call my horses ‘divine mirrors’—they reflect back the emotions you put in. If you put in love and respect and kindness and curiosity, the horse will return that.”
— Dr Allan Hamilton
Hamilton’s words perfectly captured the driving narrative of my game: the player’s treatment towards the young creature will be reflected back to them.
This is also the reason for the inclusion of the accumulative bonus points; I did not want the results of the opposing roll to be in the hands of pure chance. Borrowing from the ability checks from Dungeon’s & Dragons, the player’s initial decision to treat the egg with kindness or callousness grants them a bonus that will be added to all future dice rolls. It allows some small advantage to honour the choice of the player without removing the element of chance that make narrative dice games so enthralling.
In the game’s final stage of play, the perspective is flipped for the last opposing dice roll; the player is now rolling to determine how the fully grown divine beast regards the player character. I wanted to ensure that the player character’s behaviour over the course of the game had a narrative and mechanical consequence. I also wanted the resolution table prompts to be applicable to a wide range of tones—be they sombre, joyful or bittersweet. In this way, each playthrough of Divine Mirrors can offer a unique and different storytelling experience.
I learnt a lot from this game jam. Working within restrictions certainly helped crystalize the game concept into something that was compact, but nonetheless evocative. Perhaps in the future I will try to expand Divine Mirrors into a more involved, comprehensive game, but for the moment I am very happy with the result.
Divine Mirrors - download here
Download for free on itch.io!