"Reserve Energy" System
By Sile Keenan
The game I’ve designed a system for is Lobotomy Corporation by Project Moon, a management simulator/roguelike where the player is the manager of the titular energy company, Lobotomy Corporation. The manager must meet an energy quota each day by sending employees to work with dangerous monsters called Abnormalities, which produce a form of energy called Enkephalin.
Enkephalin comes in two forms: PE (standing for ‘Positive Enkephalin’) Boxes, which are used to fill the energy quota, and Unique PE Boxes, of which there is a store for each Abnormality that can be used to buy their E.G.O (the main weapons and armour of the game, which are based on Abnormalities).
Design Goals
Lobotomy Corporation is a famously tedious game among those familiar with it. In order to get the true ending, you have to play the game multiple times with the only changes being the Abnormalities you add to your facility. Each day has an energy quota which the player must reach to progress to the next day. They fill the quota by sending employees to work with Abnormalities (a process which can easily kill said employees if the player isn’t careful). By the end of the game, the energy quotas become so high that playing 1 day takes over an hour, and leaving the game in the middle of a day forces you to replay it from the beginning.
The system I’m proposing is essentially a quality of life feature to stop players from having to repeat gameplay for the sake of busywork. The intention is for the system to only be applicable to gameplay sections the player has shown mastery over, to keep the difficulty of the game while removing the boredom.
Overall, the design goal with this system is to reduce tedium by providing a way to skip over content that will no longer challenge the player, but requiring them to demonstrate mastery beforehand.
Resources
The system revolves around just 1 resource: Unique Positive Enkephalin Boxes (referred to from now on as Unique PE Boxes).
Each in-game day, the player must meet an energy quota to progress. They do this by working with Abnormalities, producing PE Boxes.
When PE Boxes are generated by working with an Abnormality, an equal number of Unique PE Boxes are added to that Abnormality's cache. Each Abnormality can only have 999 Unique PE Boxes at a time, with extra boxes disappearing. Unique PE Boxes carry over between runs.
Number of PE Boxes earned from most recent work session
Current number of Unique PE Boxes for this Abnormality
In my system, Unique PE Boxes generated for Abnormalities with 999 of them will go into a cache called "Reserve Energy". This cache will carry over between runs of the game.
Excess Unique PE Boxes earned this day, which will be added to Reserve Energy at the end of the day
Reserve Energy can be used to skip days that were completed on earlier runs. If you start a day you've cleared in a previous run, the Fast Forward button will appear.
If you have enough PE Boxes in Reserve Energy to meet a day's energy quota, you can spend those PE Boxes to skip that day.
500
Skipping a day will count as an S Rank and award the maximum number of LOB points (points earned based on game performance that can be used to improve employee stats) for that day.
No Unique PE Boxes, stat increases from working with Abnormalities, E.G.O. gifts or reserve energy will be earned, and of course missions cannot be completed.
Inspiration – Converting Enkephalin to Modules (Limbus Company)
Remove the feeling of waste if enkephalin isn't spent every day
Encourage daily log-ins
Limbus Company lets players convert unused enkephalin to a permanent and useful resource, Enkephalin Modules. This replaces daily level grinding to "not waste enkephalin" with a much less time-consuming daily routine
Within the Limbus community, converting Enkephalin to Modules before going to bed is an accepted part of the daily routine.
Inspiration – The Wretched Broker (Hades)
Give a use to obsolete/overabun-dant resources
Provide an alternate way to get finite resources
The Wretched Broker provides a use for Cthonic Keys after every weapon and Mirror of Night ability is unlocked, but its other resources are often more useful elsewhere.
In both the regular offers and limited deals, the Wretched Broker offers items like Ambrosia and Titan's Blood- which have a limited supply elsewhere, removing the pressure to reserve them but not removing their rarity
Retaining Difficulty - The actual gameplay is still necessary to advance the story, and players cannot skip the entire game using this system.
How to evaluate success:
Reducing Tedium – Players don't have to do things they've already shown mastery over if they don't have a purpose (i.e. learning, progress, etc.)
CRITERIA:
HOW TO MEASURE:
Give use to unused resources – remove feeling of waste when working with maxed out Abnormalities, and continue providing a reward for working with those Abnormalities.