Keys of Naand - An isometric 2D RPG

Keys of Naand is a single player fantasy mini-rpg involving great amount of puzzles. There are no classes or levels. The player will buy the skills (both active and passive) and spells he wants with the experience points earned not only from killing but from wide variety of things. Player will also be able to buy health, mana, attack rating and defence rating with the experience points.

The game is supped to have something around 10 hours of gameplay. In the end a scoreboard is set in descending order of experience points earned during the whole game. The catch is to find the best character build-storyline –combo to earn maximum amount of xp. If the player character dies during the game, he is resurrected and helped trough the situation in hand (with some appropriate explanation) but his xp amount is reduced. This will allow us to have nearly impossible situations to survive with some character builds. Choosing the way to solve a dialog, encounter or any other problem according to his character build’s (and the player’s combat) capabilities is critical. Thus these situations are ‘handled’ as puzzles.

Although short, the game is supposed to be highly story driven. There will be multiple storylines to go through but it’s not possible to do them all in one game from start to finish. Also the player is not allowed to ‘go hunting’ or adventuring outside the story events. Storylines will branch fluently via player actions. For example death in certain battle might open up a different way to go. The need for loading a game to be able to go on with the story should be minimized and the story is not supposed to have any dead ends. During the campaign player might have a NPC or two assisting him. He can highly affect the composition of his party via right choices in dialogs.

Special attention should be focused into the writing of dialogs. It must be clear to the player what will happen by choosing a certain option. This doesn’t mean that dishonest NPC couldn’t say something else and then act differently.