William Willing

I’ve been working on prototypes for mixing potions in Jayden for a bit and surprisingly, mixing potions is a lot tougher than running scenarios. The main problem isn’t the mixing itself; adding ingredients to a potion isn’t that hard. The hardest part is making it fun.

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When I saw a game titled The Alchemist’s Apprentice on Jay is Games, I thought: uh-oh. And yes, it’s a game about mixing ingredients and creating, well, stuff… strange stuff and no, it’s nothing like Jayden will be. The Alchemist’s Apprentice has some funny ingredients and recipes. It’s also very hard to turn the ingredients into the proper recipes. I did manage to create a codfish, but I forgot how.

For almost a month now, I haven’t done any work on Jayden. That’s according to plan, so it’s okay, but lately I’m noticing that the game is hardly on my mind at all and that’s not good. Furthermore, I might just have to accept the fact that, more often than not, game development will not be my main activity, so I decided to try and work on Jayden in the evenings, starting today.

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I finished my first scenario for Jayden today. It goes something like this. Mary comes into your shop and tells you that her daughter is ill. She’s afraid her little girl will die and she asks for your help. You can turn her away immediately, but she won’t like that. Besides, it’s bad for business. So, you ask her a bit about the disease, you figure out what it is and you tell Mary that you have a cure. Unfortunately, she can’t afford your potion. At this point you can send her away, reduce the price or give her the potion for free. That last option leads to scene two of this little scenario.

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In the new game I’m working on you play a healer. You mix up and sell potions to the locals and to adventurers wondering through the village. I decided the working title of the game will be Jayden. Bonus points if you know what that’s a reference to.

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