I got a Switch 2 for “Homework”
I want to be very clear that this was a professional decision. 😂
I just picked up a Nintendo Switch 2 with Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
For… work. 😂
The one-line idea for Students Against Spooky Stuff (SASS) is “Think Scooby-Doo meets Animal Crossing, but spookier.” So, I figured I should probably understand the Animal Crossing half a little better, especially since I haven’t played since the beginning of the pandemic.
And honestly, it blew me away.
Not the 4K, though it’s gorgeous. The feel after years of polish.
Shaking a tree. Pulling a weed. Catching yet another sea bass. Every tiny action has a sound, a little bounce, a bit of feedback that makes it feel exactly right.
And as a game designer, I’m starting to appreciate just how much invisible work goes into making something feel this effortless.
What it’s teaching me so far
The town is the main character.
SASS isn’t really about four kids, although they are in the forefront. It’s about Tombstone.
Animal Crossing makes you care about a place because of the people who live there. That means Tombstone’s residents need to exist before their case and continue existing after it. When their story finally comes up, I don’t want it to feel like another monster-of-the-week episode.
I want it to feel like something that was always happening in this town.
“Haunt a little, hug a lot” is my motto for this game.
Animal Crossing doesn’t really have a failure state. Its little loops consistently give you something back.
SASS needs some teeth. The scare is the spike, but the hug is everything surrounding it.
Animal Crossing is almost entirely hug. My job is figuring out how much haunt SASS can hold before it stops feeling like home. I’m working on this.
Collecting should mean something.
A case ends, the mystery is set right, and a memento goes into the jar.
Then I met Blathers, who takes a tent full of bugs and turns it into a whole museum of things you personally discovered.
That feeling? That’s what I’m after.
Teach with a job, not a pop-up.
Tom Nook gives you a tent and a small job, and pretty quickly you understand how the world works.
Nobody forced a tutorial on me. That’s the bar I plan to have for my game too.
So, those are all the little design tidbits I’ve learned so far. Time to head back to the island. I have trees to shake. Purely for research, of course. 😅
I’m also working on a Kickstarter to help bring human voice acting to SASS and give each of the characters more of their own unique personality.
If you’d like to get notified when it launches, click below!
More spooky stuff soon. 👻
- Mikey