Goblin Basics

When designing Gob Boss, we were heavily influenced by Dungeon Keeper (and others in the genre like Dungeons) and the Pirate Software stream.  We wanted a game that had some of the feel of a Pirate Software steam.  The theme of the game jam was it's spreading, so what better way to fit the theme than to spread our appreciation for Thor and the Pirate Software community?  The game starts with Goblins appearing in the dungeon through the portal, along with ferrets and rats.  Today's post will focus on goblins.

We chose goblins to represent the community and even picked hundreds of random names from commenters in streams to be the goblin's names.  Goblins will spawn and spread out throughout the game, just like people are joining a steam.  Goblins have a few traits that influence how react in the game, intelligence, obedience, and frustration level.  

Goblins initially start with an intelligence score between 3-12 (brain cells), and the player can increase new goblin's brain cells by up to 6 though using the class room upgrades.  The way a goblin talks is directly correlated to how many brain cells they have.  For every thought type a goblin can have, it is expressed based on brain cell count.  Chat is filled with goblin thoughts and at a certain point it's too much to keep up with, just like a Pirate Software stream.  We even have special names for some of the goblins that get are spawned with a brain cell count greater than 13.  

Obedience is a trait that may cause the goblin to tell you no if you tell them to do something you don't want them to do.  They also will get frustrated if they get told to do too much and their frustration level will rise.  When you click on a goblin you can see what they are thinking, so sometimes what you want them to do and what they want to do will be aligned.  The player will have to balance focusing too much on a specific goblin because they may get to the point where they want to unionize and spread their dissatisfaction with you to the other goblins.  We built an ending were if enough want to unionize they will, and at that point they flood the portal and goblins spread out of control.   

If goblins are content, they will throw bits at you.  Each goblin starts with a certain amount of bits, and can collect more by finding bits on the map.  Any bits they pick up are theirs, and only if they want will they eventually throw them to you.  Since bits are a digital currency we made them so once a goblin dies, the bits die with them as well.  This design choice was to encourage the player to keep their goblins alive and content and to symbolize that an engaged and happy community will give their hard earned bits to the creator.  Unhappy and dead goblins throw no bits, and without bits, it limits how the player can spread their influence.

Being a game jam we could only get so much in, so we had to leave a lot on the table for future enhancements.  We were very close to making the goblins with 13 or more brain cells fully autonomous.  If they had a thought that more space was needed in the dungeon, they would break walls on their own. If they were strong in mycology, they would let nearby goblins know which mushrooms were safe to eat.  They would also try to stay near ferrets if there were rats around, knowing that ferrets would take out the rats.