Fabricated on sabotage - Part 2
With the core mechanics kind of sorted out. The next logical thing in my mind was to work out the types of garments to include. Oh dear, the first problem I encountered straight away was how do I come up with different white garments. All I own in my wardrobe is a white shirt and a pair of white pants, and maybe a couple of white t-shirts.
I thought to myself, who or what kind of occupations wear white clothes. Then it was rather simple, ballerinas, chefs, golf and tennis players came to my mind in a matter of seconds. Wouldn’t it be kind of cool to have players take these different occupations, and because these are occupations, their clothes will have a reason to stain 😁. I was in a much more confident position now. The different occupation really paid off because it gave me a mechanism to figure out a lot of white garments without having too many repeats. I think it’ll be a bit boring to give everyone the same set of clothes to wash, and it’ll also get a little confusing.
The next step was to figure out which garments to include and which ones required stain removers and fabric softeners. I originally set out to have 5 occupations with both male and female options. As you can see here in the table, I have included other laundry washing methods that didn’t quite make the cut. Cold water only - ruined by using hot water, iron - requires an iron, delicate garments - hand wash only. Maybe in an expansion? 😂 In the end we decide to not have both male and female characters with the same occupation. I added in a tradie (trades person) as the last occupation to make 6.
The last major decision concerning the gaming mechanics was how many garments for each player. We entertained the idea of having 3-5 garments (but it seemed like it was too little) or even upwards of 7-10 pieces of garments each. We settled quickly on half the garments requiring additional items to be washed while the other half does not require anything at all. Half of the garments need to be coloured and half of the garments need to be white. So, 6 seemed like the optimal number to balance our requirements.
Being an Aussie, I knew from the very beginning I wanted to include the Hills Hoist as the clothesline. Even though it’s almost unnecessary to include 😅.
Written by Quokka Jono