Greetings fellow Kindred! As summer waltzes in full force and warms the blood, we thought you’d like to see what we’ve been cooking behind closed doors. In terms of long-term game mechanics, there’s not really a lot we’ve talked about since we wanted to put something playable out there first for all of you who were patient with us: we’ve been giving breadcrumbs here and there, but there’s nothing better than giving a full big picture, erm… picture of what we want to go for moving on towards full release. As always, please remember that none of these design choices are FINAL AND ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE, but we’re excited to show them off regardless ;)

Haven and the Night System

Our core cycle in Sunset Chronicles: Blood and Vice revolves around 2 types of gameplay: non-timed, while you’re in Haven and other specific areas, and timed, when you’re out there prowling in the night. There will be a real time “clock” of course, but most of the stuff we do in the city is handled by just consuming time directly: for example, interactions like climbing a crate for 30 minutes would be a little ridiculous, but a normal conversation with a vital NPC might take that long off your clock. We’ll keep an eye on things so players don’t feel like they don’t have enough information to plan their Night out and are left with 5 minutes to complete their Night after a rather tedious conversation.

So what happens when you take too long? We have several ideas floating at the moment, but the short answer is… it’s not good. Debuffs on party members get progressively worse, all the way from being a little sleepy and having trouble with conversation rolls and combat, to that particular party member being unable to leave Haven until those wounds heal. We have some ways planned around it, however… As a quick example, investing points in Drive would give you the necessary knowledge to shield your ride against that pesky sun for one Night, meaning you can use that buffer to plan for a long route where you want to do a bunch of stuff. Play it prude and get home on time, or stay out longer for a noche loca.

Maps and Missions

Once you’ve decided on your route based on the time you want to spend, visiting an area in your city map will take you to that specific level. These areas will change as you progress through the story, so your very first visit to the Suburbs will probably involve combat whereas your second visit will allow you to talk to people you weren’t able to talk to before. Different shops and important NPCs are also spread out through the city, so if you need to restock on ammo you’ll probably have to tailor your route accordingly.

Notoriety and Humanity

These 2 systems are still in their baby stages, but we can at least give you a little sample. Notoriety is how you’re perceived around the world: you can think of it as a more flexible Masquerade. Neglecting to hide bodies or revealing yourself to an NPC will increase your Notoriety, making things work differently within the game. A high Notoriety in the city will make you more prone to road ambushes for example, while a lower one can perhaps give you access to special vendors that don’t deal with high profile clients. The Presence tree, for example, currently gives you overworld benefits like hosting parties in Haven at the cost of your Notoriety bar.

As for Humanity, this is exclusive to your player character. Upon character creation, you will choose what your PC’s convictions are, such as being Altruistic or Selfish. Your “morality” starts right in the middle of both, and actions later in the game (such as swindling an NPC for money) will deduct points from your Humanity bar. If it reaches zero, it’s all over: we all have internal conflicts, but ignoring them compromises our human nature and makes us little more than beasts. Players who wish to engage in low Humanity runs for special dialogue and game perks are free to do so at their own risk ;)

Attributes, Specialties and Disciplines

Ah, Attributes… These are not changing much from what you already know. Spend your dots on your 9 core attributes (in the Physical, Mental and Social categories) up to 5, and go crazy. These dots have combat properties as well, such as making you score more critical hits or endure violence better, but you’ll need to get gear if you really want to expand your combat capabilities.

Specialties are a little more spicy. Rather than have you fill out dots in 27 more categories, we’ve decided to group these up in “bundles” that you can choose in character creation: the Hustler pack, for example, includes the Melee, Intimidation and Streetwise categories. Through investing experience points in Hustler you will unlock passives and abilities that complement your rolls, like increasing financial quest rewards by 15% or learning how to identify counterfeit money. There’s some combat goodness in there too, but it’s mostly passive increases so as to not overshadow your…

Disciplines. These are your big bangers ranging from being able to endure environmental hazards through Protean to blasting an enemy into a wall through Potence. For each Discipline you’ll have access to a fully fledged skill tree that you can invest points in, although we don’t know yet if we want to share experience points between all three systems or have each one have its individual currency.

We hope these three systems will allow you to customize the hell out of your squad members and play the game the way you want to!

Case System

All our quests will be managed through what we call Cases (our first iteration of the protagonist is a P. I. after all).. For now, Cases come in 3 varieties: Main (advances the main storyline), Secondary (side quests related to different stuff that you can do around the city), and Personal (usually short errands that you can get from unremarkable NPCs). The idea here is that Main and Secondary Cases are radial rather than linear, meaning they branch out and you’ll get Clues along the way that tell you what outcome (Combat, Conversation, etc.) you can expect from that particular branch. The idea is to let the player decide how they want to approach a specific problem, since not everyone likes to fight things and prefers talking stuff out, or vice versa.

As for Clues, they come in different flavors like Cloth, Document, and Blood and can be skipped through certain Disciplines and Specialties. For example, someone invested in Animalism can solve Clues related to smells instantly (for a Blood cost of course), effectively skipping that part of the questline and talking to the next person if you choose to do so. Cases offer you a visual representation of what exactly is happening rather than give you a step by step guide on what to do, so we think you’ll enjoy them!

Closing Thoughts

That’s quite a lot! As stated before, expect these systems to change over time and be cut down/trimmed/repurposed as our development moves forward. Any feedback is also welcome (you can do that on our Discord server!), as we’re committed to keeping a steady line of communication with you this year. Happy hunting!