Slartboz: Sandbox PLUS Plots, Challenges & Events

wanted to talk about some high level game design choices made for my game Slartboz. What players can expect. 

Context: 

There are games with a great plot and an awesome setting and cool characters. But... some are very restrictive. Like you're a train passenger or on an amusement park ride. 

In my opinion Final Fantasy 7 (FF7) was in this league. I loved FF7. Concluded that its a masterpiece of game design. And human art. To this day. But when playing it I always felt very... restricted, in terms of where I was allowed to go and what I was allowed to do, once there. I do say this as a Great Fren of FF7. Not a hater. I twuly luvved it. Still wuv it. But it puts the player in manacles. It just wows you with its sheer magical artistry so often, and so intensely, you (usually) dont mind it. 

And then... there are the Sandboxes. 

Games that are a sandbox  full of total toys. You can do *anything*. Which is great! But precisely because you can you may not feel compelled to do any given thing in it, at all, ever. You could cobble together your own imagined story or scenario but that gets tiring to do and some folks dont enjoy it. They'd rather get a taste of a crafted experience. Exciting, dramatic, creative and fresh. Yet also emotional and compelling and something which really pushes their buttons. 

I am hoping to avoid the anti-patterns of the two opposite extremes described above in Slartboz. 

To be clear, I am giving it *some* sandbox features. Because that freedom is Fun (TM). But I don't want just a sandbox. So there are various plots, challenges and special events, too. The player has some flexibility to ignore these or delay them, as they wish. Like in GTA and Fallout. 

But there are also always all these cool exciting plots and events and stuff avail for when the player wants those instead. Both are good, imo. Especially in balance. And I want each player to be able to play in their own personal style and strike the balance that's right for *them*. 

Mike 

ps. do you want to see Slartboz finished? do you want to play it? would you like me to invest the hard work into making a downloadable game executable for you to play on your own machine, to your heart's content? PLEASE toss a FEW bucks at me. It will go a long way to proving to me that there ARE fans AND potential players out there, and therefore is worth it for me to keep putting so much care and yet more unpaid work hours into it. Heck, it would perk up my morale too! :-) Honestly I do get depressed at times worrying that nobody out there shares my tastes or really wants Slartboz. Donate/tip today -- RIGHT NOW -- to vote I continue. My CashApp identity for receiving donations is:    https://cash.app/$mk2022akmar/ 

THANK YOU