To re-iterate, Kemoverse Online is a game that's mainly composed out of two sides: Kemoverse, being the exploration of the worldbuilding project, and Online, being the online socialization aspect, with the resulting marriage of those two sides to create an earnest, immersive virtual home with the purpose of making you feel like a Kemonae - with the use of cinematic storytelling, meaningful interactions with characters and systems, while sharing the experience with others. I have described the story side in depth in the previous post, so for this post, I'll describe the Online side - as you can see, it's composed out of many smaller systems that are meant to encourage social play.

Gameplay overview

At first glance, the stacked boxes may seem like a lot, with only half of the labels understood if you are a regular player. They are divided in to four layers, which I call Basic[s], Rewards, Adventures and Specials.

Basics represents the core basic gameplay actions that you, as a new or old player can take in order to get things in return. This is split in to two sides, with the left side representing early game with simpler goals and resource gathering, and the right side representing late game of crafting your own rewards, thus skipping the token exchange.

These two are on top of a small underlying layer for Hunger, Energy and Health. While the three stats may bring up images of MMO-style HP, MP, TP stats, they do not matter most of the time (they only create social side effects like sickness or needing to sit down). However, in specific circumstances, namely in the Adventures layer, I would like them to affect you with consequences. I'll speak about that later.

Rewards represents the personal rewards that you can get from your efforts in Basics and only requires tokens. This means unique unlockables, being able to use a unique dorm room, getting resources to use various tools. This is personal to you and can not be traded; these are rewarded to you because you played the game. For new players in Basics, this means contributing to the foodraise, a weekly goal to contribute resources you've gathered in return for tokens, that you can then exchange. For late-game players, I would imagine it involves them personally crafting certain products. I'm not entirely sure how it would work, but it would be a varied task than the usual gathering.

Adventures represents collective efforts and team-work journeys to challenging areas. Challenging meaning that your stats, your team communication, and your preparedness plays a big role in whether you will succeed or fail this task. This is split in to two sides, the left side designed to force a challenging task upon you and your team mates at a risky area and with a tangible reward at the end, and the right side designed to be a more playful or even emotional exploration of fantastical worlds less bound by the rules. The reward of the left side would be social, as in, it would provide a benefit for all players, while the right side would be centered more on emotional fulfillment.

Finally, Specials represents the "out of character" stuff, such as music events, purchasable e-shop items, or funder status and features. I would imagine this would be for the type of people who are really interested in social or roleplaying aspects, simple stuff like cosmetics or advanced stuff like being able to appear in-game while offline. It does not need to be strictly tied to the worldbuilding, however, it must not be immersion breaking.

Gameplay philosophy

In fact, all of the actions, ideas, structures and layers have three strong cohesive goals: that they are meant to encourage positive socialization, that they are strictly abiding to the worldbuilding for immersion, and that they are optional. They are only split up in to these layers as that's how I designed it in my head, but obviously, they interconnect in various ways, and not just with gameplay - the story is also meant to be involved. To be honest, this structure likens to MMO designs, so perhaps it's an "MMO-lite" design. But as I previously mentioned, I want nothing to do with the typical grind, rewards, numbers game that's commonly found in MMOs. It's terrible, corporate, and sometimes even exploitative design. You will not find it here.

Instead, the focus here in on emotional and social fulfillment, with the casual optional paths that you can take if you want. Therefore, the basic game will always be free; because the base of the game is about basic socialization and exploration. Now, if you want to go further and take on more challenges and more emotional and social rewards, sure - but that means involving emotionally and socially, the more you commit to the game. If you can't or don't want to, that's okay. This game will not be for everyone. It can just be a 3d chatroom. But if you want, you will be rewarded, and that reward won't just be another token in the pocket. That will mean detailed, meaningful, and immersive parts of the world will be handed over to you to enjoy.

Plans ahead

Sounds like a lot of fluff. So what do I have to change in the game? Well, you're all familiar with the foodraise already - the basic gameplay loop of catching food stuff to make food. The kitchen was originally added as more of an afterthought, and I intend to limit it to the later part of the game in the future. But for now, I have to focus on simpler things, both for the players but also for it do be doable for a solo developer to do.

For example, my desire is to finish up the early game mechanics and make them "complete" by expanding on the complexity and rewards. Which means more types of bugs, fishes, mushrooms and plants - and for them to matter in more ways than just tokens. I want them to interconnect, in the way that resources can help one another - Plants benefiting from fishbone, Fishing benefiting from bug lures, and so on. The ideal would be to depend on other players as well for these, for each player to take on a small "role" of being a mushroomer, planter, bugcatcher - but I'll see how far I get.

As for the rewards, besides adding more of them, I'd want to diversify them a bit - getting different amount of tokens based on the type of resource, or add rewards that benefits you in the social setting. For example, I recently modified the creative tools in the game to require materials to use them, so for example, ink for drawing and typing, and the benefit is that you can use these tools to decorate the world for others. Similarly, tokens can be used to get dorm rooms, and the benefit is that you get to have a private space.

And as a visual way to show you of the long-term plans, such as adventures and story telling, I'd like to introduce lighter versions of Dream Worlds - as a preview so you can see what it means to go on an adventures together with others. Dream worlds will be accessible, just like I described, as a group effort - and that could be like making a specific procedure in the game, splitting up a task between your friends and you, and finally ending up in those worlds. What dream worlds exist, you may ask? They're mostly relics of around the world with sunken buildings and reclaimed nature, but they can also take on more abstract environments. If you were in MushZrave, you've been to one.

And besides dream worlds, the lessons (which are like tutorials, which will introduce each of the four resource types in detail) will have to be done, or at least the first five since they will explain the food resources. This will force me to expand and settle on an interconnected design of the resource gameplay. The lessons themselves are pretty simple, I can script them very easily using the scripting system I've done. But the challenge is to shape up the gameplay loop and make it feel rewarding enough so that new players can easily get in to the complex part of resource gathering without feeling too challenged. And, of course, making the rest of the story.

Conclusion

So anyways, this is the other side of the game that's meant to complement the storytelling, with the intention of putting you through actions and gameplay that makes sense in the world they live in. The story can claim that you are a Kemonae, but this is how you start to feel like one. And obviously, tying it together with the story is crucial, and done in a good way - fluently meshed together with respect for both sides, but with the most important point of all: that it follows the world and its rules. 

However, despite all of these ambitious plans, all of these goals to craft a unique experience... there is always a risk that it will fail. That I will be frequently burned out, that people won't like the final design, that the game isn't addicting enough to live off of. How will I deal with that? Can I even deal with that? I want to say yes, but at the same time, it's a challenge. I want to give this an earnest try. I will write more on my thoughts about the production technicalities in the next part of this roadmap, which will be the last part - about the work effort, the  practical limitations in mind, the parts of the game that might be cut out. What direction Kemoverse Online can take if it doesn't work out.

But for now, I hope you understand better of what my future intentions are, what sort of themes I want to cultivate and aim for, and what I would consider a "finished" Kemoverse Online. All of this just describes the laborous effort that needs to be done - but hopefully, you can see from my continued developments that I really believe in this. I hope you believe in it too and will consider supporting me on the way by becoming a funder. It helps me out, and I really mean it - my life situation is far from ideal, and so this project has become my beacon of hope. It's my purpose, and I am okay with this.

Thank you for playing, an see you in the Kemoverse.