What are pointcrawl based games, and the story I'm preparing

On the weekend I've polished the outline of the main story of Caverns and Dryads till now, at least the first episode in which you have to go to Emerald City and find an old magic book that has the key to cure Tamzyn's mother, Cassandra.

But for now our heroes roam the land, because the Emerald City is closed by a magical key. They just kill time adventuring into the unknown! But sudden events will change this, you'll see, soon! ;)

I am not going to ruin your fun revealing the story, so you have to trust for now. There's actually a bigger story, and that one will only be the beginning.

The difficulty here is that I have to prepare the texts, images, and logic. I will try to put some other feature updates in the middle, as I will not be able to activate this story until everything is ready.

WHAT WILL WE HAVE ONCE THE FIRST MAIN CHAPTERS ARE READY TO PLAY?

Alongside with the main story, there are some more things coming:

• Some good and bad events that had a simple screen will become stories to interact with, for example the encounters with beggars, the bars, the hotel, and so on. Like the shop recently, that had an upgrade to commerce, these others will become chapters of story and maybe some will become mini games.
• There will be secondary random quests and encounters added. So stories will be: the main ones, that I design carefully, and the secondary more standard and procedural (random+logic) ones.

I am very excited to implement all this in Caverns and Dryads! The more I imagine and realize, the more immersive I feel it is, and by your feedback I know you are loving it! :) Thanks a lot for supporting my work!

POINTCRAWLS

I think it may be interesting for you to know about a concept that is key to Caverns and Dryads. It's pointcrawls. 

In a tabletop or computer game, a pointcrawl based game is one that represents locations in a symbolic way. Contrary to a grid based one, there are locations represented by something. Then you go there, and most of the action runs in the story and your imagination.

So instead of 1 portion of the map representing a finite space (for example 2 meters), each position represents a place.

In Caverns and Dryads, this is everywhere:

• In the worldmap. Places represent locations in the Chasm. You don't travel exactly seeing all the journey to each one, but your imagination does. So this is a way to immerse you in the story. Unconsciously, I'm sure you imagine our heroes walking into a mysterious dungeon or a beautiful underground city :)
• In the places, through the boxes in the exploration screen. Each movement, with the images, suggest the atmosphere and what you are living. 
• The battles, through music, graphics, and sounds, represent the fight in a symbolic way, just enough to trigger your imagination.
• The loot, and all the different events, are focused to excite imagination.

I think the pointcrawl approach is the best one, and not hyper-realism, to make us dream and want to explore. That is the philosophy behing Caverns and Dryads, to be a game to dream, relax, have adventures, and enjoy.

Another reason is that it lets me unlimited space to add features. I believe that a  game with many features (simple to play, but complex) is what creates a sensation of immersion. We were born with imagination, and the purpose of a game is to use it. Nothing can compete with your own imagination.

Hope you liked this! :) 

Here's an illustration I made that I wanted to share. And some wallpaper.

To download the wallpapers click on it, then right click and "save image as" or similar to your hard drive. Enjoy!