Game design advise

I wasn’t sure where else I’d post this question…

I’m developing a game that is top down click to move. You play a child stuck in his randomly generated dream/nightmare world, avoiding figments of his nightmares while counting sheep. There is one monster however that follows him wherever he goes. This monster represents the turned-real manifestation of his fears. This is not a combat based game, and you are playing a defenseless scared child. However I did want to be able to “subdue” the monster in the end.

I thought up a number of ways this could happen

  1. it’s magical component could be destroyed
  2. it could be convinced that it is actually a manifestation
  3. it could be warded off with some sort of bane
  4. physical environment damage

I could use help however with advice for specific gameplay or other innovative solutions

Thanks.

  1. The child learns to overcome the monster which causes it to become smaller and weaker each time the child becomes better at overcoming it

So you want to “brainstorm” the ideas of the game play?

I think this strongly depends on what you want to achieve. When the monster represents the fears I think you need to give the player something that represents according actions to fight the fears. Is that the goal?

Physical damage on an imaginary monster sounds a little bit strange. Wouldn’t it be better to allow actions that change the mind of the character?

There might be different solutions with different effects. While switching on light reduces Fear of darkness, going into a real dark small box might reduce it a lot (and maybe for longer time).

So it is a question what you want to tell, how to deal with fears. Please keep in mind that fears are nothing bad. They help us survive. The goal should not be to get rid of fears, but to deal with them and use them to your advantage.

How about that:

As long as the fear of darkness aspect has a certain size, the character will not go into certain unlit areas. This areas contain elements to solve other riddles. To go there the player needs to reduce that part of the fear or change the situation (switch on light). So there are several paths to a goal.

This “quests” can fit together.

E.g. the character does not go into a certain part of the room, because it is dark. So the player switches on light. Unfortunately this makes the clown there visible. As the character fears clowns, you need to deal with that. When the player did not switch on light, the character does not even know about the clown and this fear will not prevent him to go there.

Just something to think about (might be a bit too complicated)