The Castle Doctrine Forums

zed

Member

Registered: 2013-04-16

Posts: 171

A use for children

How about this:

If you manage to keep a child alive for (say) a week, they reach adulthood. They are then able to work, bringing in a salary.

That should be fairly easy to implement and enough to make children worth keeping alive (assuming the economy is set up such that extra income is more a benefit than a robber-luring liability, which I think it ought to be).

Optionally, as suggested previously, grown-up children colud also act as extra lives. Or, to keep up the sexism, only sons.

jasonrohrer

Administrator

Registered: 2013-04-01

Posts: 1,235

Re: A use for children

Ahem, jere....

If you fail to keep children alive (assuming that the wife is alive still), there is already a cost.

If the wife is already dead, then indeed there is no gameplay reason to keep them around.  I made this design choice intentionally.

Initially in the design, the family had no gameplay purpose at all, they were just thematic.... this thing that you'd care about anyway, irrationally.  That seemed a little too loose for my taste (a little too Little Sisters), so I added a gameplay dimension to the wife (and it seemed like a very sensible one).  I could have added direct gameplay dimensions for the kids, but I decided to keep one last piece of the game as something you might care about irrationally.  Of course, there is the indirect way the kids matter if the wife is still alive.  But if she's not, then they're there for you to care about irrationally.

Re: permadeath

You know that feeling, where you're careless and make a really stupid mistake in your own house?  Where you should have left a back door for one final test, but you got cocky and impatient.  And then you find yourself trapped, and then your mind starts racing for a solution to the trap, some way out, some hail-Mary pass, some fourth-quarter save.  And of course there is no way out.  This is it.  And you don't just push the Suicide button right away.  You sit there and stare at the screen for a while, soaking in the smiling face of your own folly.

You know that feeling?  That terrible feeling?  The worst feeling that you've ever experienced in your entire life of playing video games? 

"Oh wait, I have two lives left!  Whew!" is an analgesic that I don't want your racing, desperate mind to have within reach.

ukuko

Member

Registered: 2013-04-06

Posts: 334

Re: A use for children

No mercy, Jason. No Mercy.

bey bey

Member

Registered: 2013-04-20

Posts: 386

Re: A use for children

Haha, I do really like the idea of the player turning into the son/daughter to finish daddy's business. I know it's not going to happen since it's basically extra lives, I just like the idea of having the little daughter go out on a robbery to avenge daddy.

---

In fact you can be batman.
(if he robbed houses and murdered families.) - Dalleck

largestherb

Member

From: england

Registered: 2013-05-27

Posts: 381

Re: A use for children

children are ever so useful for increasing efficiency of my quest to rid the neighbourhood of all dogges!

Last edited by largestherb (2013-06-03 12:41:33)

jasonrohrer

Administrator

Registered: 2013-04-01

Posts: 1,235

Re: A use for children

Hmmm... felt like doing that myself back when I lived in New Mexico....