YEAR 2 - BA2b - Darkest Dungeon and Negative Effects on Characters

Darkest Dungeon is a Roguelike which has some relevance to Doll House because of the way it incorporates multiple characters psychology into the core gameplay. I watched Mark Browns Analysis of the game and he states that "Darkest Dungeon ultimately makes you the bad guy but it doesn't tell you that in the premise or as a twist in the story. You explore your morality organically simply by engaging with the mechanics on offer.". Doll House doesn't want the player to be the 'bad guy' but I do want players to be able to explore immorality should they please and I'm supporting that by allowing murder, cannibalism, thievery, sacrifices to the devil etc as mechanics that the player can incorporate into their stories should they please.

Darkest Dungeon makes the player feel the results of negative effects on the characters by giving the player lower chances of success and therefor leading to more negative effects on the characters. This 'snowball' effect is something I've been thinking about for Doll House. I feel like I can make the mechanics more interesting and more realistic by making one lead into another, which is why the interplay between variables (emotions) is so important. Seeing our characters fall into desperation and potentially go against their beliefs will make the dolls in doll house much more life-like than characters in other games even though they follow their own slightly skewed sense of logic. Looking at the effects of Stress, Sadness, Jealousy, etc is something that many games don't tackle so I think it would be something at least worth trying.