In Development: TERMINAL and Zephrys

So I'm gonna try something. Unless I go into a lyric frenzy and make a microgame, the next game I'll release will be a little thing called TERMINAL. It's not gonna be ready for a hot minute (my fault for making a game that needs playtesting, of all things) but I thought it might interest folks to get a little sneak peek at the game!

I'll talk about the game, but it'll inevitably touch upon broader theory-- so even if you aren't remotely interested in TERMINAL, this is still for you.

Obvious disclaimer that anything I discuss here are subject to change, blablabla.

What's it about?

Thematically, TERMINAL is about a bunch of weird creatures, like a murder of crows in a trenchcoat or a blathering sphinx named Blessica, standing around in an airport chit-chatting. It's absurd and slightly pretentious, and despite the colorful cast it's very much a game about the mundane and disconnected.

Mechanically, TERMINAL is a play-by-post game where you speak mostly in pre-made sentences or structures. Literally, the game can end when someone gets tired of sticking to the pre-made moves.

Personality

All the characters in TERMINAL are a little obtuse. Some might say "cringy".

To show you what I mean, here are some moves from Moonly, a fairy that lives in a ship in a bottle and has her own alternate tarot set. The moves are simple: You just say them at the appropriate time.

At the first possible opportunity: I made my own divination deck. I call it "pigeon tarot". It's not just for pigeons, though.

When you want to be a bit rude: You're a real [made-up arcana], you know that... sorry, you don't know what that means, do you?

I love these moves, because it's how I introduced my projects when I was a kid (and sometimes now)-- shoehorn it into the conversation, often at the cost of whatever other message I was trying to convey. Honestly, it's sort of satisfying that I get to make a game where these are valid moves-- it's a sort of middle finger to every adult who was ever tired of me.

The thing is, all the characters are like this. Myrd, a knight with a quilt for armor and a broom for a spear, will play a variant of the sandwich debate game when there's a lull in the conversation-- not at all bad (in fact, lots of potential to be interesting), just not the way I would go in what broader society considers "conversation". None of the characters really respect social mores.

And that's good, I think, for two reasons. The first is that a lot of small-talk etiquette is boring and incomprehensible to me, and if I had to listen to my playtesters play a game that faithfully replicates "normal" conversation I'd probably lose blood to my ears as a self-defense mechanism. These are weird people, and it's also a game, so it's okay if the way they talk isn't boring.

Wishes

The second reason it's good that these characters don't really have the tools to have a normal conversation brings me to Hearthstone.

See, in Hearthstone there's a card called Zephrys the Great.

Zephrys's effect allows you to "wish for the perfect card". That means that the computer will look at the board state, generate a list of Hearthstone cards that could be useful, and present you with three of them. You put one of them into your hand.

It's sort of like "Put any card that's ever been printed into your hand". As a variant of that card, though, it sort of fails. Remember, the computer has to choose the cards. It's pretty good at the basics (opponent has 6 health? How about a fireball that deals 6 damage?) but, like computers tend to be, it's imperfect. Zephrys doesn't know what cards are in your hand, and often misses non-attack damage already on the board. It certainly won't notice combos based around, for example, returning itself to your hand and playing itself again ad infinitum to turn any card that does something when you play a guy into a win condition. The dude's just not terribly observant.

Because of that, though, the way players interact with Zephrys is very funny-- they treat him sort of like a person! Players will ask "How do I make sure that Zephrys gives me a good card here?". They'll make moves to simplify the board, sometimes making bad trades, to make sure he doesn't get sidetracked by some complicated board state. I've heard of  more than one instance of "It's technically correct to play this first, but that might make Zephrys give me the wrong cards".

Essentially, the player has to enter dialogue with an inanimate object. What could have been frustrating ("Why doesn't the computer find lethal?") becomes a personality quirk ("Oh, silly Zephrys doesn't see that I have 6 damage on the board!"

TERMINAL is like that too. If I presented it as a way to generate a completely natural flow of polite conversation you'd be super disappointed. Thus, the best course of action is to signal that hey, it's okay that this is an unnatural flow of conversation.

The best possible scenario is that a player looks at their playbook and occasionally goes "Well, I may not be able to respond normally... but, oh goodness, I can say that."

Disconnect

Honestly, TERMINAL is going to be a game about disconnect.

You're given these sort of awkward characters with sort of awkward dialogue, stuff that flows into itself enough that the game is fun and playable but not enough that you're like "Ah, this resembles a normal conversation". And while you're supposed to take on these roles, you have an imperfect tool-- so you do the Zephrys thing and enter dialogue with an inanimate object, thoroughly cementing it as something that's not you. Not even something you're embodying or that represents you, like your face on a Zoom call, just something that you're pretending is you for the duration of this social event.

...Oh, sounds queer!