The basic view in Kokoro Wish has no interface elements at all. Just the scene and its inhabitants and objects. As clean and simple as a scene from a movie.

 
Everything in Kokoro Wish is controlled by the mouse alone, simply because the mouse is the most intuitive, immersive, and easy to use PC interface ever created. it is, as I have noted earlier, the Goddess Queen of the PC interfaces. The standard mouse has a minimum of two buttons and both are used in Kokoro Wish.

The LEFT mouse button is used for any active behavior in the game. Left for selection, manipulation, control, choosing, moving, opening, closing, anything that actually does anything. Left mouse is used to make choices, to actually play the game. Left is the Yang button, the action button.

The RIGHT mouse button is used to bring up one thing, and that one thing is three iconic devices, the three most basic and primal functions of any Role Playing Game. The right mouse button is the passive Yin button, and it provides the ability to select among three basic modalities, the modes of play in an RPG. Here they are, being selected:

These three icons define the basic RPG experience. All RPGs have a certain generalistic set of things that must be possible to do, a set of common possibilities. These possibilities, these modalities, are the same for all RPGs, and they, I have determined, are Three in number.

Choosing the icons and thus modes, is simple, a left click of the mouse. Right mouse brings up the three modes, left click chooses one to be currently active. Right button can make the mode display vanish again, if desired, but the mode remains active.

The icons follow a simple, consistent rule: hollow and stone is inactive, golden and raised is selected and thus active.

First, one must be able to  take action within the game universe. One must be able to make decisions, make choices, move to a location, activate a device, choose who is doing what, give orders, and select things. This is what our first icon represents.

The hand icon, when selected, allows a Happy Hand Cursor to be used to do everything material in the world. This is the icon of of the modality of Material Interaction. Whether choosing an active character, pulling a switch, claiming an item, or walking to a location, this is the ACTION MODE. Clicking on a character makes the character dominant, clicking on the ground makes them walk to that location, clicking on an object makes the character examine, manipulate, remark upon, and if possible even pick up the object, and so forth.

No, this is not Pac-Man, nor is it a severed Squirtle head. This is the talk icon, and it represents all social interaction. It is the SOCIAL MODE. In an RPG, when one is not grabbing loot or kicking ass, then the next, even more important activity, is to communicate with everyone and everything. In point of fact, this is the most important mode of any RPG, because the one thing that truly sets an RPG apart from any other game genre is not -- as some simpleminded folk have loudly proclaimed -- the ability to change stats or to grow or weaken over time...no the one thing that puts the 'ROLE' in a Role Playing Game is STORY. Dialogue. In short, if you really examine the RPG, the role playing game is theatre. It is a story, and the only way the player knows what role they are playing is by what is said, who says it, and why. An action game has plenty of fighting and collecting, and a simulation game has changing statistics aplenty, but only the RPG makes storytelling the focus, the heart, the reason for playing the game. An RPG is a work of theatre, a play, a novel, with some game mechanics wrapped around it. You want the perfect definition of an RPG, you have it now.

When this icon is golden, left mouse clicks now engage the characters not in picking up things, or in pulling a switch, but instead in social activities. Clicking left on a party member will still make that character dominant, and clicking on the ground will still cause the character to move to a location, but clicking on a second character after the first will initiate dialogue between them! Yes, that's right, any party member can actually dialogue with any other party member. No more silent heroes. No more mute parties of heroes. No more lonely choices. Now the entire party acts as a real family, and can argue, question, object, and complain to each other. The player can comfort a sad party member, and indeed must at times. In short, Kokoro Wish is about people, about characters, and those characters spend as much time -- or more -- talking amongst themselves as they do to strange townspeople. Isn't that kind of what has been missing from RPGs, since the beginning of computer games? I think so.

Since there is no official 'party leader' in Kokoro Wish, at least in terms of play mechanics (the characters may make someone their leader, but it does not affect the controls of the game if this occurs), then the dominant character is always the last party character the player has clicked upon. This makes a round robin discussion simple, and dialogue with outsiders even simpler still. Any social interaction is accessed with this mode.

Should the player, in this mode, click on an object, item, device, or whatever that would normally be manupulated or acquired in ACTION MODE, you may wonder what would happen. The answer is that the character(s) will discuss the item in question. The characters will remark on things, give their opinions, and otherwise provide informational and emotional feedback to the player.

Why, you may wonder, is this not rolled into the ACTION MODE? Why not simply have the first click on any thing be a bit of dialogue, and the second time the thing is clicked action functions apply? I considered this. Imagine trying to check the inventory, stats, or other properties of an entire party, or attempting to transfer items, or pick up or put down a number of items, or activate a set of controls in turn....pretty soon the only wish would be for the characters to just shut up. It would become utterly annoying. Thus a seperate modality for social interaction, so that the player can choose exactly how much discussion is going on, and when it is going on.

The chest. The very symbol, the ultimate RPG cliché representation of ITEMS. Yes, this is the last of the eternal triad of the RPG, the INVENTORY MODE. Inventory mode brings up a panel from the bottom of the screen, and that panel permits four vital functions to be controlled. The use of specialized skills, the use of collected items, the study of character statistics, and lastly, the ability to control the game itself...saving, loading, and such computer-related matters as game options.

That's it. That is all there need be to make an RPG function. The minimalist deconstruction of the RPG as a game archetype. Three modes, no waiting. 

Now, let's see a mock-up of the full screen effect of the interface for Kokoro Wish....

ONWARD WE GO......       

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