Summary
Haunted Chocolatieris the highly anticipated followup toStardew Valley, ConcernedApe’s smash hit cozy game.Stardew Valleylets players live out the fantasy of moving to a small town and taking over their grandfather’s farm. On top of farming, the game lets players fish, mine, forage, and socialize with the town’s other residents. Making friends and romancing a partner is one of the game’s biggest draws, but the social interactions are fairly limited, especially by modern standards. ForHaunted Chocolatier, ConcernedApe could take some inspiration fromBaldur’s Gate 3to make interacting with and romancing villagers more engaging.
Baldur’s Gate 3is one of the biggest RPGs ever made. While there is a truly massive amount of content in the game,BG 3shines more because of how rich every situation the player encounters feels. There are, at times, dozens of ways to solve a problem, and dialogue trees play a big part in this. Talking to NPCs allows players to navigate situations in various ways. Furthermore, characters in the world often react to your choices dynamically, and knowledge uncovered by the player can grant them new dialog choices, allowing for complex relationships to play out in the game.Baldur’s Gate 3has the most intricate dialog and social interactions of any modern RPG, and that is a large part of what has set it apart from the competition.
Haunted Chocolatier’s Townspeople Need To Be a Step-Up
InStardew Valley, players can gift items to NPCs to improve their opinion of them. Once a character likes the player enough, it will trigger certain events. These events allow players to pursue a friendship with or try to romance various townspeople. What gifts each NPC enjoys is static, and other residents of the town are mostly oblivious to the player’s other relationships. Relationships andromance inStardew Valleyare functional, and each character’s story is well crafted, but the systems behind them are fairly bare bones. This approach was par for the course when the game came out, and its charming writing made it stand out from the crowd, butHaunted Chocolatierneeds to be more complex.
Stardew Valley’s limited social mechanics do very little to make its town feel alive. Villagers' ignorance of the player’s other relationships and actions can make the game feel robotic after a while, as does the simple mechanics behind romancing citizens. This is whereHaunted Chocolatiercould take some influence fromBG3.Baldur’s Gate 3’s partymembers react to the way the player treats other party members and NPCs. Additionally, characters in the world know about actions the player has taken when it makes sense, and players can learn about some NPCs beforehand too, opening new choices for the interaction. Introducing features like these inHaunted Chocolatierwould make its town feel alive.
How Could Haunted Chocolatier Include More Dynamic Social Interactions?
Haunted Chocolatiercould also introduce more dynamic social interactions to make its residents feel more lively. With more complex dialog trees, the game can let players develop both positive and negative relationships with different town members. These characters could react to the player’s other relationships, emulating the gossip that is common in small communities. NPCs could be more aware of the player’s various actions, andHaunted Chocolatier’s emphasis on combatcould play into social dynamics as well. Slaying a fearsome enemy could let the players achieve a degree of fame, and hunting certain creatures or foraging for certain items could draw different reactions from each resident.
The dynamic social mechanics ofBaldur’s Gate 3could work to make a lot of different types of games better, andcozy games likeStardew Valleyare no exception. More dynamic interactions with more reactivity to the player’s actions in the world would allow for the residents ofHaunted Chocolatier’s city tofeel alive. This would make the game more replayable and would make re-romancing the same characters more interesting.Haunted Chocolatieris still largely a mystery, but the addition of mechanics similar toBaldur’s Gate 3’s dialog trees would do a lot to improve the experience and set it apart fromStardew Valley.
