Gameplay Systems Around our Younger Parafolks

Heya everyone! Jérémie here for this week’s Patreon post, where I go into more details about gameplay mechanics around babies, toddlers and children. In this previous post, Richard showcased the animations, interactions and visual flourishes that are in the game, but I’m going to get into the nitty-gritty of the systems and how things will work when the game releases in early access. As usual, this post is for our Patreon subscribers only, so keep it to yourself! Thank you!

Progression

As we’ve talked about in the past, in Paralives, your personality levels up as you complete Wants, allowing you to unlock more personality traits, upgrade them and improve your character’s stats. When you create an adult in the Paramaker, they’ll start with the basics (7 stat points to allocate, one vibe, one talent, one social trait). When you create a younger Parafolk, or if you give birth, the new characters won’t have all of that and will need to unlock different parts of their personality as they age up.

It will more or less line up with the moments where gameplay content starts making sense for that lifestage; for instance, when children can start leveling up their skills, they’ll be able to unlock their talent.

Eli is still growing up, so he has less stats to spend than older Parafolks, and he has no Vibe or Social Skill yet. He’ll get there eventually!

Needs

No matter your age, everyone still has the same basic needs. Eating, sleeping, going to the bathroom and being clean are all fundamental parts of life. Things are different for the younger life stages in the finer details:

• Babies and toddlers have a lower need capacity than older life stages (you can see that in the screenshot below), this means they’ll get hungry and tired faster, among other things.

• Some needs act a bit differently for babies/toddler than older lifestages. Going into critical bathroom need for an adult might be an emergency, but for a baby it’s just a normal part of life (going into their diapers is their only option after all!)

• While toddlers get a bit of autonomy and can start working on their needs by themselves, babies need a responsible older Parafolk (teen and up) to feed them, clean them up and change their diapers.

The difference between the need levels of babies, toddlers and children. 

Daycare

Because babies and toddlers need another Parafolk, that is a teen or older, to take care of all their needs, they’ll be sent to the daycare if you ever leave them alone on a lot for a certain amount of time. If you’re a single parent and need to go to work (or if you just forget your young one at the park! That would never happen though... wouldn’t it?), they’ll automatically be taken there, their needs will be met, and they’ll have a chill time. When your character returns from work, they’ll be brought back home.

Things are slightly different if you leave them somewhere that isn’t your house (like the park in my previous example), they’ll still be taken to daycare, but they’ll only come back when you get back home, AND you’ll have a hefty transport fee tacked on to your daycare bill.

These numbers still need to be balanced (we’re currently looking at slashing them by 75%), but here’s the result of my leaving the kids alone at the park and then going to work. They had to be picked up and stayed there for a while. Keep that in mind when budgeting for children!

Social Services

For game rating reasons (and on moral grounds, on some levels), you cannot neglect the hunger need of your babies, toddlers and children indefinitely. They cannot die from any cause, of course, but if you leave the hunger need in the red too long, they’ll be taken away by social services for their own safety, removing them from your household.

While this is all a bit of a work in progress, I think the black background makes it clear something bad is going on.

They will also be taken away if your household doesn’t have any teen-or-older Parafolk present, so if a fire decimates the family, any babies, toddlers and children will also be taken away (it’s probably game over at that point). 

Lastly, children with too many (3 or more) failing grades at school will also have to go with the social services. While this might sound a bit excessive on first read, it’s something that won’t happen by mistake; you would have to be ignoring their needs, letting them go to school with a bunch of negative emotions and neglecting homework for a while before they get to that critical state. You’ll get a warning at 2 failing grades, so it really won’t be a surprise. We feel that this is an okay balance between realism and gameplay considerations at the moment!

Skills

Because babies and toddlers cannot do most interactions older Parafolks can, them having all the same skills wouldn’t make much sense, so they are limited in that capacity. 

We also didn’t want to have baby/toddler-specific skills if we couldn’t strongly feel that we could add enough content to make them meaningful before Early Access. We do understand that babies and toddlers improve in many different ways, but for now, we didn’t want to go down the road of making skills that you can improve, but don’t do anything, just for the sake of having them in the game. If we find this part to be lacking later on, we’ll be able to add more. That’s the beauty of game development!

The big thing we have at the moment for babies and toddlers is a language skill that they can improve in many ways. Using Together Cards, being in a group discussion with older Parafolks chatting amongst themselves, or reading books (for toddlers). Improving your language skill will give you access to more complex, different conversation options, and your baby will be able to say their first word or first sentence when they level it up enough!

Different cards you’ll get at different language levels

Hope this gives you a better idea of the direction we’re going with the younger Parafolks, and I very much hope you’ve enjoyed what you’ve seen here! Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you again!

Jérémie