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Sloane

[DevLog] Human Behavior

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So this is somewhat based on an idea I originally had while watching Westworld, specifically the scene in which whoeveritwas (Hopkins? Can't remember!) tells Mauve that she's a robot and where they show this dialogue-tree-style interface that's supposed to explain how she creates language. I'm not sure if it would actually work similar to that in reality but it led me to consider how a (very simple) robot might perceive the world, identify objects, and learn how to interact with them. What we came up with, is, I don't know, something between Creatures, if anyone remembers that series, and yet another puzzle game.

 

I'm probably explaining this in the worst way possible so here's an example:

 

- You've got yourself a robot!

- Robot can scan items and perceive adjectives, like colors and basic shapes.

- Robot finds berries of different colors, probes them, and learns they are harmless.

- Robot has to solve a puzzle in which it is confronted with a fire.

- Robot scans fire, learns of fluid shape and recognizes the color, which it remembers from the berries to be safe.

- Robot considers fire to be a safe item, interacts with it, and "dies".

- Player has to find a way to show robot that fire is not safe, by weakening the robot's trust in the adjective "orange", for example.

 

The game is kind of split in two parts:

 

- The world which the player can interact with, in which he / she crafts and shows items to the robot for it to learn something.

- The levels / puzzles which the robot is sent into all by itself and in which it has to reach some kind of target for the player to progress.

 

In the long run, the player could upgrade the robot with new body parts / software which let it perceive new adjectives (aggregate states, temperature, noises) and take out new actions (at the beginning Robot can just move and touch, so maybe it could learn to chop, or hack, or push). Maybe the player could even somehow teach it simple puzzle solutions like lighting a fire or pushing a box onto a button, stuff like that.

 

At first, we wanted to give this a more Thumbsian twist by making the robot evil and you actually having to build levels to trick / kill it, but we felt like going with the nicer option, although the other concept might be a bit more straigth-forward.

 

Like with Cheatin' Hitman last time, my wife and I will be working together on this one, and hopefully get something done. We'll go on vacation next week, so I'm not sure what we will end up with, but we'll try!

 

Thanks for creating the jam and good luck to everyone!

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Wow, this is a great concept!

Btw, if you need to weaken somebody's trust in the color yellow, just show them Dot Gobbler.

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