KOKORO WISH INTERFACE LAYOUT

Here is the basic structure of the most common components that make up the interface for Kokoro Wish. Although these elements are displayed at the same time here, they do not actually appear all at once in the actual game. For instance, the 'Enemy Panel' only appears during conflict situations, and the Inventory Panel only slides up when Inventory Mode is selected (as it currently is) via the Mode Buttons. 
 

 
In this mock-up, Inventory Mode is selected, and within the Inventory Panel, 'ITEMS' is currently active. This has caused the Inventory Panel to appear from beneath the screen, where it would normally be invisible. Most of the time no status information is displayed, and the screen is open and free of distraction. Choosing 'SKILLS' would display all the available abilities of the character, choosing 'STATS' would, oddly enough, display the character's stats, and selecting 'GAME' accesses load, save, and game control functions.

Each character in KOKORO WISH has four stats (which I shall explore later), has one of four elemental alignments, and also curiously enough, can carry exactly four items in the available four-slot item inventory shown above. the number 'four' seems to dominate Kokoro Wish, another curiosity that will be explored later as well.

The reader will note that the Happy Hand Cursor has altered its action from 'pointing' to 'grabbing' mode while within the item inventory. Simply hovering the cursor hand over any item causes a description of the item to be displayed to the left of the items, just above the 'Til' counter, the funds which the player currently has collected.

The interface has a simple rule to it: golden and raised means selected, hollow stone means not currently selected.

Items can be manipulated using the left mouse button, with simple click and point operations. For example, to give an item to another character, one would first left click the item (after bringing up the Inventory Panel / ITEM section) which would cause the hand cursor to change to a 'Carry Item' appearance. A second left click of the burdened hand cursor on any character (or for that matter any other logical choice, such as a cabinet, a table, or whatever) would result in the active character transferring the chosen item to the destination and returning to a waiting state.

The goal of this design is to make item manipulation utterly simple and intuitive.

Of concern to some might be the fact that each character can only carry four items normally, but it is to be understood that KOKORO WISH is first and formost a story-telling game, and it breaks completely with the RPG cliché of puttering about with thousands of essentially useless and similar doodads, armors, weapons, magical whatzits and mystical weapon and anally-insertable gems. The characters will carry what is needed, and everything they carry will -- generally -- actually matter to the plot. If a character picks up an item, unless it is just a bit of food or somesuch, it will have real value.

The same applies to the existance of only four statistics to describe a character, and of note is the fact that there are no hit points, damage points, or life points at all in Kokoro Wish! I will get into the why and wherefore of that in another article, fear not.

If nothing else, Kokoro Wish promises to have some unique and unusual qualities.

Now then, the reader may have some insight into the basic interface of Kokoro Wish, and some of the thought that went into the why of the current design. As the reader can see, everything has been chosen for careful reasons, and following a set of codified laws of interface design. With Kokoro Wish I do not merely want to design a diddling mere game, rather my dearest wish is for the player to come away with the unmistakable conclusion that a heartfelt and carefully minded work of art has been created.
 
 

Jennifer Reitz (lupa@otakuworld.com)

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