Eldritch 2 is coming to Steam! Please wishlist it here.
Today I finally tackled the Anxiety system. I wrote about it two years ago, and the basic concept has existed in the game for a long time, but it hadn’t actually done anything yet.
I’m keeping it pretty simple. Anxiety is a gameplay resource which the player needs to manage. It increases whenever the player takes damage or does certain stressful actions. When the player’s Anxiety reaches a threshold, NPCs who would normally be neutral will now aggro on sight. Anxiety can be reduced by smoking cigarettes, at the expense of health. (Incidentally, I had to update the content survey on Steam because of the inclusion of tobacco, pushing the game to a 12+ rating in Brazil. Oh well!)
Later, when I build out the “main quest” for the game’s “true ending”, I intend to add another stricter Anxiety threshold check, requiring the player to not only complete all the required main quest goals, but do it expertly, without accumulating Anxiety.
Since I was already working on this, I also decided to finally add all the food items that interact with the same Health/Anxiety space: meat and fruit (+1 HP), rotten meat and toxic fruit (random chance of +/-1 HP), and coffee (+1 HP and +1 Anxiety). I haven’t done any of the art or audio for those items yet, but the dungeons and shops are now populated with a lot more items, and Eldritch 2 is feeling closer and closer to the target experience.