Citadel WiP (Updated: 6/29/2024 PUBLIC DEMO) - A Medical Drama with Romance

Medieval? Cool!
Medical based game? Sign me up!
Hotel? Trivago :eye::lips::eye:

I’m loving this especially that I’m so interested in medicine. I hope I can learn something from this game! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: Good luck!

3 Likes

Thanks so much for the lovely comment! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

Haha, I guess I’m a sucker for not getting a real, real salary until I’m in my thirties (resident’s salary doesn’t count), so I wonder who’s the masochist here… :sweat_smile:

1 Like

Luckily most medical schools are pass/fail during the pre-clinical years, so people aren’t too gung-ho about competing with each other (at least at my school). During clinicals, it’s actually graded, but usually people work together to make the work easier. Better to be loved than feared, for sure. :laughing:

2 Likes

I think there’s actually a Choice of Game called Choice of the Deathless where you work in a (supernatural) law firm. It’s probably a far cry from a real law firm (although, admittedly, my only experience of a law firm is from Suits lol), but you should give it a try! I thought it was super fun haha! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

1 Like

You’re the second person to mention “medieval” in this thread. For that, you get a cookie :cookie:

Thanks for the lovely comment! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

4 Likes

Oh, actually, I have played that one! Definitely not a “lawyer simulator” by any stretch of the imagination, but I think I liked it? Lol.

1 Like

Currently procrastinating on my medical work, so please enjoy this (very) sparse Tumblr I created for the WiP! Feel free to ask me anything about the WiP, including characters, world-building, suggestions on how to make coding stats less painful, whatever. Of course, no solicitations for medical advice haha!

11 Likes

Just finished chapter 2. I’m living out the alternate universe where I end up going to medical school from the comfort of my computer, thanks!

1 Like

GUESS WHAT! THERE’S A STATS PAGE NOW!

That’s the update, haha :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

But in all seriousness, let me know what you think of the stats I’ve coded. Do you prefer to see the relationships stats or have it as a hidden value?

I also made a small character summary and glossary in the stats page, but let me know if you’d like more (or less) information. Is it helpful to have a description of what each character looks like, or do you prefer to imagine them yourself?

Link to the updated demo here: https://dashingdon.com/go/7635

20 Likes

Relationship stats are a tough call. I think it’s better to leave them hidden but occasionally alter dialogue from them to demonstrate how they feel.

As for stats, I was disappointed to see that there were no objective skills, just sliders that take from one thing as another increases. Technically, by this system, you are as good a doctor on day one as you will ever be. Think about how that affects choices like getting extra sleep or studying? If knowledge were a real skill that choice would mean something, because you’d be sacrificing mental health for ability, a real trade-off. Now, you sacrifice mental health AND intuition by doing it, which is a no-brainer.

2 Likes

Ah, I see what you mean! That actually makes a lot of sense.

For objective skills, do mean instead of opposite pairs (which is what it’s currently set at) you’d prefer if they were their own category?

Good things people can see stats now…this is good feedback! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

@bouncyball thank you so much for your hard work! I can already tell I’m going to have a blast with this. What role in healthcare are you pursuing as a “healthcare professional-in-training”?
I’m glad you decided to post this WIP and brave Choice Script coding, all the luck to working out the kinks!
Also, I’m sorry I’m tacking onto this comment but when I wanted to create a general reply, I have the option to edit the post instead, don’t know how that happened. Anyways, just wanted to wish you well and tell you you have another person looking forward to future posts!

3 Likes

I did mean own category in reference to knowledge. However, I’m not saying there shouldn’t be ANY sliders. Finesse/Direct and Traditionalist/Reformer are great examples of sliders to represent tendencies. Similarly, Textbook/Intuition or Cautious/Bold could be great sliders as well, with both of those pairs affecting how they treat patients in positive and negative ways. Knowledge, however, is not a tendency, but a skill. Players should invest in their chars improving their tradecraft (just not so much that mental health suffers).

1 Like

I know it’s a work in progress, so I assume this will be added over time, but the glossary should include terms like “code”, or “tracheotomy”, and more than just positional terms. Perhaps at the start of each chapter you could increase a “glossary_state” variable, that expands the Glossary, to represent the players expanding knowledge, and describe procedures relevant to the chapter, perhaps tie it to a players ‘knowledge’ though that may not be the best idea.

As for the stats proper, I would used unopposed stats to represent the characters skills, and use opposed pairs for personality.

3 Likes

Aww, thanks so much for the kind comment! The ventricles of my heart are warmed :laughing:

I’m currently a medical student! Got to say, sometimes I feel like studying Choice Script coding is harder than studying for medical school… :shushing_face:

Ahh, I see! Thank you @apple and @kckolbe for being my stats wizards (seriously, I feel like this is such a thankless job because I’m such a beginner :sweat_smile:)

As for a more comprehensive glossary, my initial concern is that it might become overburdened by medical jargon. I wonder if I can get away with doing most of the medical explanations in the game itself? I suppose we’ll see once we get back to the patients…

1 Like

Shy of making an actual medical textbook, all terms used may need to be read a few times for some readers before they have it memorized.

If each glossary term is longer than a couple of really basic descriptor lines, and you want to avoid making a dense skyscraper of text to make the mother of all info-dumps proud, you can divide all the terms up individually, with a navigation key to pick, and choose what, and how many things to read before returning to either the stat screen¹, or back to the game. This means making something potentially really bulky with not a lot of reward for doing so, but if it helps players reduce stress while reading, there’s at least some benefit to it existing.

¹ It is really important to avoid the clunkiness of being booted back to the game after each term read by keeping the glossary navigation menu available on all selected pages in that part of the stat screen, because a reader may want to review more than one at once (possibly to compare differences), and they may want to go back to the stats to look at their MC’s skill levels one last time before continuing to read the story.

Having said all that… If each term only comes up “once and never again”, then you can probably get away with not including a glossary at all.

2 Likes

“Mother of all info-dumps” lol :joy:

Yeah, I’m not really enthused by the idea of writing an extremely comprehensive glossary (it’s reminding me of all the textbooks, internet sources, etc. that I already refer to/study from)…

Guess we’ll forge forward bravely haha! :rofl:

2 Likes

Very interesting demo! The story was interesting :stuck_out_tongue:
Wonder if there’d be a save?

When I tried to show stats, this happened-

1 Like

Hmm…Did you try the most recent demo link?

And, yes, once I figure out how to make a save system that will definitely go into the next update! :grin: