Rootopia's Curve,Chance and Control

Learning Curve

Your avatar searches the world for lost Ephemerals, adding them to their stable. When first encountering them, the player is presented with a startled group. To gather one, the player must calm all of the ephemerals on screen. To do this will require a combination of angled swipes and activated powers. Once all the animals are docile, one will bind itself to the player’s avatar. From there, the player must care for/evolve and help the ephemeral acclimate to its new environment.

Only one animal of any given type will bond to an avatar. To walk new players through this, there will be a series of mentor cut scenes to explain the elements of play. When the player begins the first capture attempt, on screen prompts will guide them through the first encounter. Whenever there is a new element of gameplay, a short tutorial from a mentor reinforced with onscreen prompts will aid the player in mastering the technique/element. Ultimately, the gameplay is simple to allow early proficiency, but mastery will only come through experience. 

Chance/Control

Player control begins with the avatar customization and the decision on where to play. Each player will be able to decide what their avatar looks like in a manner similar to the Mii system for the Wii. In addition the player will be given the ability to customize their stable environments for their ephemerals. Early on this will be in an apartment or house, based on real world location. Eventually they will be able to create an extra-dimensional space within these areas.

They can chose to play in a static map of their home town with an occasional trip to Serra Kor, or they can travel through the real world. In the static game mode, character movement will either be based on an arrow/tap interface or through orientation of the game device. In the dynamic mode, character movement will be tracked through the google maps api with connections occurring through wifi/gps/cell service. Though encounters with ephemerals will be somewhat randomly determined, travelling to real world locations opens up access to rare or custom ephemerals. Mountain locations would have mountain ephemerals. Beaches would have surf ephemerals and the like.

In the capture and maintenance modes, the ephemerals will respond to certain swipes and powers favorably and others negatively. Each of the ephemerals on screen will behave in a predetermined manner. However the ephemeral’s location and orientation will be decided randomly. The number of ephemerals present will depend on the proficiency level of the player.