Meet Red!

I’d thought that all the programming was done, but a last-minute addition required a bit more - introducing red, your nanny pat friend that is also the game’s hint system.

We were already talking about putting him in - he’s part of the book Sara’s writing that this is based off of, and his omission would be weird. In the book, red is the one keeping an eye on you while Dad’s out, and so we decided that he would make a good hint system in the game.

The hint system for this game has been in flux for a while. For a few builds, a “?” icon appeared in the bottom right corner, and highlighted all interactive elements in a room when you hovered the mouse over it. That wasn’t awesome, though - it often drew your attention to irrelevant things, and the game doesn’t have any real pixel-hunting anyway. It didn’t solve the problem of “I’m stuck and don’t know what to do,” it just hightlighted things to click on and hoped the player would eventually click the right things.

Red now provides actual hints based on where you are in the game. Since you can have multiple quests going at once, I structed these as you asking red for advince on something, or maybe just complaining about a setback, with red responding with something helpful. Which quest is chosen for any individual interaction is random, maybe helping players stop persuing a quest they’re stuck on to try something new that they might have some success with (and hopefully figuring out something in their current quest while they’re at it).

I’m pretty sure that, past some minor work to get cutscenes fully finished, this is the last of the code.