Stoneshard Update #37 – Psyche System, Part 2

Back during Ink Stains Games’ crowdfunding campaign for their roguelike RPG Stoneshard, one of the updates talked about the game’s psyche system and its two mental indicators – sanity and morale. And now the latest one picks up where that earlier update left off and describes a number of dangerous conditions your characters can develop in Stoneshard if their morale or sanity drop too low.

Here’s an overview:

Hello!

In this devlog we will continue to discuss Stoneshard’s psyche system . In the Prologue the psyche system was limited only to positive effects such as Optimism, Heroism, Second Wind and Prudence. You can read more about their mechanic in this devlog. However, these are only the tip of the iceberg – a reward for keeping one’s mind in good shape. The rest of the mental states arent’t that nice, and this devdiary will be dedicated to them.

I think it’s worth to recall how psyche works in our game in general. Your character has two scales: Sanity and Morale. Sanity is responsible for how adequately your character perceives the world around. Morale show the willingness to perceive the world as it is. The psyche of the character in Stoneshard is based on the interconnection of these two scales, which determine the general pool of possible moods and states, and the various triggers that activate these states.

High Morale + Low Sanity

This combination gives states that are generally harmful, but can be useful and even powerful in some situations. They simulate various conditions in which a person loses control, letting outside his inner beast.

Sadism

This state increases the survivability of the character in battle, but severely cripples your recovery speed when not in combat.

Trigger: the activation chance can be increased with damaging and killing enemies.[…]

Masochism

This state allows the character to draw strength from his own suffering – but it lowers his survivability.

Trigger: the activation chance increases depending on how low your health is, and how high your pain level is.[…]

Frenzy

Your character throws a tantrum. It causes him to destroy everything in its path, paying very little attention to any resistance he may face.

Trigger: requires active Sadism / Masochism / Megalomania. High pain level, as well as taking and dealing damage, increases the activation chance.[…]

Megalomania

At low Sanity your character tends to pay way too much attention to his own successes. Sometimes it takes morbid forms.

Trigger: the activation chance increases due to successful hits (especially critical ones), killings of multiple enemies and leveling up. Misses and fumbled attacks reduce the chance.[…]

Low Morale + High Sanity

Now we can turn to the next set of states, caused by a combination of low Morale and high Reason. This is reflected by the mood cycle: the longer your character stays depressed, the more disheartened he becomes.

Apathy

The beginning of a long journey right into the abyss. The character loses the motivation to move on.

Trigger: skipping turns, Rest Mode overuse, no challenges (like enemies in sight) increase the activation chance. The fastest way to shake a character a bit is continuous fights. Don’t let your character to be idle![…]

Anxiety

Anxiety is reinforced where apathy has taken root.

Trigger: requires Apathy. The lower your health and the lower your morality – the more worrying your character is and the higher the activation chance of this state.[…]

Despair

A character who has succumbed to despair no longer believes in his own success and just wishes to bring the inevitable end even closer.

Trigger: requires Anxiety. The activation chance depends both on the health and morale levels, as well as hunger, pain, thirst and toxicity levels. The worse your character feels in general, the faster he will fall into despair.[…]

Hypochondria

Hypochondria is an obsession with one’s own health. When hypochondriac receives even the slightest reason to worry, he starts to think he got gravely sick with every possible disease ever. With the exception of prenatal fever maybe.

Trigger: every untreated disease and every undiagnosed symptom increase the activation chance.[…]

The effects of the most terrible combination, low Sanity and low Morale, shall remain a secret so far – because of their complexity, they still require some more work and polish. In the meantime, you can turn on your imagination and try to guess how they will work in our game by their names.