How Needs and Wants Work in Paralives (Patreon)

Hi, Alex here!

Today’s post is all about the needs and wants in Paralives which I’m pretty glad to finally give you more details about. But first, congratulations to Alejandro who has completed his internship and will keep working on the project as a game programmer and game designer! You might have already seen some of his work on Paralives in past Patreon posts and he is currently working on important live mode features. Exciting!

Parafolks Expressing their Thoughts

In other life simulation games, you might be used to seeing bars indicating the status of a character’s needs like hunger, sleep and hygiene. In Paralives, we wanted to do something more dynamic. Instead of showing a list of need bars for your characters in addition to a list of wants and emotions, we thought it would be great to show a single list of the current thoughts of your Parafolks.

The thoughts of the selected Parafolk are displayed on the left of the screen. The style of the interface and icons is not final.

This list of thoughts is dynamic so it only shows the current wants and the needs that, well, *need* to be addressed. The needs that are fully met and that are currently not a problem will not be shown in the interface.

What we like about this concept is:

💗 Flexibility: We could have more than just the 5 or 6 traditional needs. A character with some specific personality traits, for instance, could have whole new needs tailored for them.

💗 Simplicity of the interface: Instead of having a complicated and cluttered interface with a section for needs, another for wants, another for emotions and so on, we display everything as thoughts and it’s in the same section of the interface.

💗 More personal: You get a more personal connection with your own characters, like you could read their thoughts and then it’s up to you to decide how you can react to them.

Needs Criticality Levels

With needs being shown as thoughts instead of bars, it could be difficult for the player to evaluate if a need has to be addressed now or if they could still wait for a bit. That’s why we display needs differently depending on the urgency.

Various needs at different criticality levels. The more space they take, the more critical they are.

For instance, the bathroom need is displayed as such in the thought list:

For large chunks of time, when the character doesn’t need to use the bathroom:the need is not displayed at all in the thought list.

When it’s moderately critical: 💭 “I’ll need to use the bathroom soon”

When it’s somewhat more critical: 💭 “I need to use the bathroom”

When it’s critical: 💭 “Bathroom, NOW”

Needs on a Schedule

In real life, some needs like hunger and sleep manifest themselves on a schedule. People are hungry when getting close to typical meal times.

The hunger need has 3 periods in a day and the sleep need has one.

With this system, a need manifests itself at specific times each day. For instance, here’s what will happen around dinner time:

🕔 At 5pm, this thought would appear: 💭”I’m starting to get a bit hungry”

🕖 At 7pm, it would turn into: 💭”I’m hungry”

🕘 At 9pm, it would become: 💭”I’m STARVING!”

💀 Sadly, if the player still doesn’t let their character eat, the thought will eventually turn into: 💭”I don’t have much time left. I need food…”

Interesting notes:

📝 In the future, we will make it so various elements like personality traits or the current life stage can affect the schedule. A night owl would go to bed later and babies would need to sleep more often, for instance.

📝 Because days quickly go by and we don’t want needs to feel like a constant chore in Paralives, we made it so characters can skip a meal before getting hungry. So if you ate breakfast, your characters won’t be hungry until dinner, for instance.

📝 Everything shared in this post is easily customizable using the modding tools of the game.

What we like about the concept of needs on a schedule:

💗 Clear expectations: Easier for the player to know when to expect their characters to be hungry or sleepy.

💗 Group communion: The different characters of your households are more likely to get hungry at the same time which is very convenient when you want them to have a group meal.

Wants

Wants are things that your character wishes for. In Paralives, we dynamically give different wants to your characters. They serve as small objectives that you can fulfill and they are displayed in the thought list, just like needs.

This Parafolks currently has a few wants alongside a need that has to be addressed. The consequences of not taking care of a want are less dramatic though!

An idea that we are testing is making it so if a character really wants something and is obsessed with it, their needs might be put on hold for a while. Anyone else here has been so in love that they forget to eat?

We hope you liked this first look at the needs and wants in Paralives and we’re looking forward to sharing more about this and other live mode features that we are currently working on! ✨

Cheers,AlexEdit - February 7, 2024: This post is now public, feel free to share it!