Gameplay Loop: A Day in the Life of a Keeper

I wanted to describe the day to day loop in a bit more detail. Hopefully, this helps give a feel for what it's like to play the game.

Keeper's Goal

The player is the Keeper of the Sanctuary. The keeper's main goal in the game is to rebuild the sanctuary. Of course that means buildings to construct, but more importantly, it means bringing the Forest Spirits back to the Sanctuary. This will be the high-level narrative arc over the day to day loop.

Generally, the Keeper's day has two parts: explore the forest in the morning, then return to the Sanctuary to tend to its needs and invest resources found in the forest.

Forest

The forest is set on a grid and at each new cell the player can choose which paths to place based on the paths they have collected in their Tarot deck. Every day, the player can choose a new forest layout based on what resources they seek or what forest spirits they wish to summon or learn more about.

Every forest path, or area, has different resources to collect through familiar cozy game mechanics like fishing, flower-gathering, and bug-catching. Each gathering task has a unique cozy mini-game. As you collect resources, you also have a chance to collect critters. These are creatures (mostly) based on real life forest animals with some creative liberties taken for fun.

While the forest's day to day function is a place to gather resources, the beating heart of it is interacting with forest spirits.

• Every spirit besides the starters has unique map layouts required to summon them. As players venture into the forest, they will find hidden caches with rare resources and occasionally clues as to how to summon creatures or find their rare memories.

• Every spirit has rare memories and unique dialogue that can only be revealed by bringing their token to one of their favored areas.

Sanctuary

On returning to the Sanctuary each day, tending tasks appear. Little tasks to take care of the Sanctuary like scooping leaves out of the reflection pool or sorting your inventory. Similar to the gathering tasks, each tending task has a quick and cozy mini-game.

Tending to the Sanctuary provides a currency that when combined with resources can be traded in for various upgrades.

• Build habitats for critters

• Upgrade your tools so you can more easily gather rare resources and can gather more times per node

• Buy furniture for your house

• Buy equipment and creature tokens that change your forest adventures (e.g., more stamina, more redraws)

• Unlock new forest paths for your tarot deck

• Buy creature tokens to collect rare memories and dialogue

Here is a gameplay-focused video I made recently. It focuses on the simple actions you take, not all the bells and whistles from discovery and puzzles.

Thanks for reading! Please wishlist if this game sounds like something you would enjoy!