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👨👩👧 Togetherness: Developing Complex Relationships in Paralives
🕑 Added 2023-10-20 17:18:04 +0000 UTCHello, Alex here!
In previous posts, we have told you how relationships in Paralives will be defined by a variety of labels that will be unlocked as you develop your links with other characters. We have also explained how doing interactions as a group will be pretty easy in our game. Today’s post is all about the gameplay that will make your characters develop relationships when doing interactions together. This post is for Patrons only so please don’t share it, thank you! 🔒
👩🏫 The Basics
- 👨👩👧 Togetherness: As long as they are spending time together, the relationship between characters can develop
- 🃏 Together cards: When characters spend time together, you can periodically select a development for their conversation and their relationship as a whole
🤝 Togetherness
To develop a relationship, instead of queuing many social interactions like you would do in other life simulation games, you can make two or more characters do any interaction together and during that time they spend together, their relationship can slowly evolve.
Our character Sebastian is hanging out with two townies, Jason and Maggie. They are doing push-ups.
⭐ Why we like this gameplay mechanic:
- You can develop relationships with a whole group of people at once, not just with one-on-one interactions (thanks to Paralives’ mechanic that allow you to quickly select many characters and make them easily do something as a group)
- Characters will stick together and do interactions as a group instead of the player having to queue many interactions or else the characters will stop interacting together
🃏 Together Cards
When characters do interactions together, from time to time, you can choose developments for the conversation and how the relationship evolves. This is what we call the Together Cards.
When spending time together, the Together Bar fills up (it currently is set to take 1 in-game hour).
Every time the Together Bar has filled up, the player can click it and is then offered a choice of 3 Together Cards that can evolve the conversation and relationship in different directions. In this image, you can see that our character Sebastian can ask the townies Maggie and Jason what their job is because they don’t know each other a lot yet. Sebastian can also share tips about push-ups because that’s what they are currently doing. This will give a small gain to the fitness skill of all 3 Paras in the group.
⭐ Why we like this gameplay mechanic:
- The game can smartly suggest relationship developments that are appropriate for the current context and throw curve balls that will create interesting events that will impact the relationship.
- You don’t have to navigate an overcharged interaction menu to choose a specific social interaction and repeat that many times in a row if you want to develop a relationship between characters.
- Evolving a relationship will be done somewhat slower, over multiple days. Flirting with someone and marrying them all in under 30 in-game minutes will be a lot more rare in Paralives.
🎮 More Examples
After Maggie left for work, Sebastian kept doing some workout with Jason and started to get a bit flirty. On the right, you can see that the conversation became romantic as well as being focused on their common interest for fitness. Some Together Cards have a success chance, like the ones for flirting. The more romantic the conversation is and the higher compatibility two characters have, the better the odds. Also, notice how the second card has a blue border and the label “Energetic”. This Together Card is tied to one of Sebastian’s personality traits (see last week’s post for more info about personalities in Paralives).
What we really like about this system is that from time to time, townie characters that you do not control can take an initiative that you can react to in different ways. For instance, here, Jason wants to kiss our character, Sebastian and we can choose a Together Card as a reaction.
As discussed in a previous Patreon post, labels that describe the relationship between two characters can be unlocked and upgraded to a higher level. This is done through Together Cards. The blue rectangle represents relationship labels that will be unlocked or upgraded if you select this card.
I chose to unlock the “Fitness buddy” label! When looking at the social menu, we can see that this label has been added alongside the other labels that already defined Sebastian’s relationship with Jason.
I hope you enjoyed this first glimpse at the gameplay to develop relationships in Paralives. We’re eager to share more about all the situations you will be able to experience with this system!
Bye!
Alex
Edit - February 7, 2024: This post is now public, feel free to share it!
Comments
Heather Beck
I was wondering that too!
Morgan V
I’m so happy noncontrolled paras can react to the player character without player interference! Is there a chemistry system? What decides if a para has a crush or becomes flirty?
Nathan Carpenter
I love this system so much!
Leaf
I'm really happy that paras we aren't playing or in control of can take initiative in relationships, since this way there will be more surprises in gameplay. And I feel like this will help make paras feel more 'alive' since relationship gameplay doesn't have to be solely player chosen.
Kayleigh
A pop up telling you the autonomous choices a Para has made from their cards would also help keep the player in the loop about what is developing.
Kayleigh
As others have pointed out, if you are playing multiple Paras in one household you would get right back to the micromanaging we’re trying to avoid if you were clicking between cards all the time. Having a simple toggle on the UI per character indicating whether you want to have control over the card choice for that Para could be a good solution. Perhaps for an in game day or two, you really want to focus on the life of one particular Para in the household, and let the others do what they want (autonomous card choices could be weighted based on their personalities and relationships with the other Para for some realism?). Then you can toggle the choice control back on when you’re ready to pay closer attention to the others again!
Takaya
Good point.
I think it would be a good idea for labels to be in different colors (for exemple: "friend" in green, "fitness buddy" in blue, "Romantic interest" in pink or red). It might be a difficult to read when you have a lot of labels with a para. (Excuse my english, it's not my first language)
Wow!! This is such a good idea.
