At its core, the Psycho Engine is a kind of artificial intelligence that is highly specialized on the requirements of our game. It weighs and prioritizes things in the game, just like a human being would, and there are certain responses that are instinctive, reflexive or subconscious while others are more defined by a character’s actual personalities and the way the player has been defining these companions in his play.

While playing the game, this means situations will lead to other situations. When two characters argue a lot, the player has to pay attention to that in order to prevent bigger problems down the line. There will be various ways to deal with it, and each situation will probably be different. Sometimes a bit of diplomacy might help, sometimes authority may work and at other times, it may simply be the best to send away one of the characters to make sure peace returns to the group. Perhaps recruiting a different NPC, one that fits in better with the group dynamics, would be advisable. Since you will run into recruitable characters throughout the game, it may turn out to be a very interesting change in pace, as a matter of fact. The decision is up to the player.

This is just one example, but I think you get the idea and can see how something like this can very quickly result in a game that is much more challenging and involving, and resemble a classic tabletop game where the player has to take charge and really role play his characters.

And then there are the negative attributes, called Disadvantages. Everyone of us has lost his cool before, so why should our game characters be any different? In my opinion, negative attributes bring zest to the game. They give heroes personality and, from a design standpoint, open up an endless array of opportunities for great character interaction and mishaps.

What we are looking at here runs the gamut from ordinary Temper tantrums, to a person’s Fear of Height, or Arachnophobia. But it also includes values such as Greed, Superstition and Pessimism. As you can undoubtedly tell, there is a lot to allow us to color characters and create interesting gameplay moments, but it can also feel overwhelming to the player. Therefore we will also have an optional game mode that will hide away many of these attributes and let the computer control them for you.