One of the main goals when the project was first conceptualized was to move away from the popular omnipotent POV from other city builders and have the player feel more involved with the community that they are influencing.
Here, I will walk you through our initial design process. To test our designs ideas, we made a paper prototype—soon to be prototypes. Initially, the prototype tried to incorporate all the different systems and it ended up being very DM heavy. However, it was very useful in figuring out the beginning stages of the game, like the narrative and the tutorial steps.
For a more accurate representation of the different systems and from advice from a mentor, we separated the prototype into three smaller ones to test:
resource gathering and building
NPC interaction and events
end-game
Now for the resource gathering aspect of the game, the areas were initially separated into three different enclosed spaces (almost like a shop). We had approached it with scope in mind and felt that open world might lead to bigger things. One of the advantages of this was that throughout the game, the NPCs would be assigned to gather so having specific areas would help the player keep track of them. This was also a less important part of the game in regards to the player because they were less likely to go out gathering themselves after getting more NPCs to do it for them.
Our mentors mentioned that maybe we should weigh the disadvantages and advantages of the enclosed areas versus the open area, or maybe find a way to make the gathering more engaging. This is how our second prototype came to be.
In this version, the NPC relationships were removed and their needs were improvised for a more fluid experience. The focus was on the open area resource gathering and building, and we wanted to answer a couple questions:
which did the player prefer, open or closed? and why?
did the player do what we want them to do?
what does it change for the NPCs and their roles?
We design tested with two people (three including a team member). In all three cases they preferred the open area over the smaller one due to the added exploration bonus, but they also said that wasn't the part that was interesting to them.
Tester 1 went about the prototype very casually. They mentioned that the gathering was "whatever", it's something they know and have done in other games but it was the relationships and assigning roles that really interested them.
Tester 2 took the prototype quite seriously and felt stressed by the end. They too mentioned that they know how RTS games work so the gathering wasn't something they cared about—just the numbers. Instead, they focused on keeping all NPCs busy and resources filled at all times. They felt that once the NPC events/relationships come in, it might be a lot for the player to manage.
This is the problem with having prototypes of two different systems because it made it hard for the testers to fully experience everything. On another hand, it did answer our questions and it did play out (mostly) properly. The one thing that confused tester 2 at the beginning was the 'plotting' of the structures first before gathering resources to build so that is something that has to be improved on. Otherwise, both players did fine.
The second prototype we worked on was the NPC relationships and events. This actually became our endgame prototype since we designed for a switch in management focus from resources and building to more heavily community management as the player progresses. Basic dialogue was written for this prototype which will be reworked later when production starts.
This prototype was quite a hurtle since it had so many attributes for the DM to keep track of. Building and some of the resources were completely excluded to focus on the NPC interactions. It was pretty much a failure within the first thirty minutes of in-team testing.
As the DM, I had to keep track of all these things: NPC relationships, their needs, events, and checking specific dialogue which made long pauses between each player action. Our tester got bored quickly and it was not very engaging at all. After brainstorming and discussing it some more, we found that maybe it just did not translate well as a paper prototype and are currently considering a technical prototype—after we flesh out the NPC events. Currently our team is playing RimWorld as a reference because of how eventful their NPC interactions are.