- 01Learn a need
- 02Commit and act
- 03Receive a specific response
- 04Open a new cooperation opportunity
Trust through actions
Characters update relationships from witnessed or reported actions. Keeping commitments and meeting needs makes trust causally grounded.
The player's decision
Take a lucrative job or keep a low-paying promise to a friend with limited time?
Original scenario
Original setup: a carpenter needs a roof fixed before rain while your crops need harvesting. Helping costs some yield but later opens a tool loan, acknowledged in dialogue.
Start with this prototype
Build two characters over three days with two actions per day. Requests show deadlines and opportunity costs; keeping or breaking promises gets specific feedback. End with different cooperation options and a replayable action log.
Change one variable
Tune the cost of one broken promise and opportunities to repair it instead of permanently locking a relationship.
What to observe in a playtest
Can players explain relationship changes, and does repair affect later interaction rather than only a number?
Take the full design card
Includes rules, scope, tuning questions and sources for further planning. It does not create a project automatically.
Original analysis · version 1
Common pitfall
Characters knowing unwitnessed actions breaks causal credibility. Track how they learned about an action.
Observations and sources
Cases refer to public documentation. Developers and community wikis are credited separately; document review is not a claim of hands-on testing.
- Stardew Valley
Talking, delivery quests and some event choices affect friendship beyond gifting alone.
- My Time at Portia
The developer links requests, crafting commissions and befriending residents, connecting production to social play.
Brief for the studio
Opens the AI studio with the brief below in the input. You can edit it. Nothing starts automatically.
Build two characters over three days with two actions per day. Requests show deadlines and opportunity costs; keeping or breaking promises gets specific feedback. End with different cooperation options and a replayable action log.
Covers are original AI-generated style illustrations. Game names reference publicly visible design choices and remain the property of their owners. This atlas does not supply screenshots or assets from those games. Prompts and combinations are original drafts for new games.