Prism Circus — The Discovery System
An adventure based on curiosity
At this point, it’s quite apparent that I like to distribute the subjects that I talk about into parts, and it’s very clear with this one as well.
In continuation of the previous article, I’ll carry on with explaining how Prism Circus works. This time, I’m going to talk about what the characters are doing while they’re not fighting (known as the adventure mode), which mostly consists of the player roaming around a fantasy world. As with the previous articles, I will do my best to describe how discovery works in this grandiose game idea, and unless I’m asked a question such as “what the hell is that for”, I might forget a tidbit or two.
Anyways, this is how you’d discover stuff in Prism Circus…
Always ask around for a peculiar individual
As I mentioned in previous articles, Prism Circus primarily takes inspiration from Final Fantasy and its respective spinoffs (such as Kingdom Hearts, among others). One thing I neglected mentioning before is that Prism Circus would be an attempt at creating a “western JRPG”, if it even were to happen (which is, again, unrealistic). What does this mean exactly? It’s basically a game that’s designed like a JRPG, but isn’t actually designed by a Japanese studio, but rather by a western studio. Therefore, it’s basically a bunch of western game developers working on a game so that it looks like it came out of Japan. I don’t know if there’ll ever be a western JRPG in actuality, but that’s definitely not something in the scope of Prism Circus.
In any case, since the game is inspired by Final Fantasy, it’s only appropriate that the adventure mode would look like something from Final Fantasy, namely Final Fantasy XII, since it was around that time when I first realized Circus Legion, being the name for my imaginary project before Prism Circus.
Anyways, the player can assume a group of up to 3 playable characters, which in Prism Circus they are designed to be distinct. Regardless of how many playable characters the player has, they all roam around a giant map where they encounter enemies at random, as I’ve previously described, and virtually other elements that exist in Final Fantasy’s adventure mode.
However, where Prism Circus sets itself apart is with its feature that requires the player to search for many characters, amounting to a total of 200, by constantly snooping around and all over the game world. You go around and ask NPCs if they’ve seen anyone peculiar, because the playable characters are meant to stand out in the crowd of NPCs. Some NPCs will provide useful information; some will provide slightly less than useful information; and some will yield no useful information whatsoever. You can go around and literally ask any NPC about anyone peculiar or observe the environment and decide who has the information you’re looking for yourself. Basically, you can’t go all willy-nilly and ask everyone… well you can, but whatever works for you.
Also, there are various cities to visit and it’s not just a huge empty world like how I might have implied. Even better, there are unique interactions between the game’s many characters which are triggered depending on the situation (location, point in the story, etc.), so that’s also something to consider.
That it’s… and yes, I know this article is short, but I probably won’t continue to talk about Prism Circus since I’ve covered most of the essential details. I mean, I might have left out a system or two to describe, but I can’t put my finger on it now. I suppose I should’ve written everything down considering it’s been inside my head for quite a while. Anyways, when I come back from my vacation, I’ll be sure to return to my usual routine of playing games and then writing half-assed reviews about them.
Again, I’m sorry for the shortness, but until then, have a good one everyone.
