Encouraging Exploration: Flavor Text for Objects

When you build a world in an RPG, you try to put a lot of effort into building its lore as well as making players want to explore it. This series of articles delves into how to encourage exploration in your game. Since I'm building an RPG with Legends of Adrigal, we'll be focusing on that genre of game, but it's really available for anything with objects you can examine and exploration.

First, what is flavor text? Flavor text typically refers to text in a game that gives an item, a character, or whatnot added characterization to help build the game world. It's superfluous by design, but it adds so much in world-building and adding some realism to your game. I'll be discussing flavor text in my game Legends of Adrigal in the realm of flavor text that is read when examining an object in a given map of my game. (There are also plenty of other uses for flavor text in making an RPG, such as describing the use of an item or weapon, but that's a topic for another day.)

The important thing to consider when adding flavor text to your game, such as when examining a particular object, is that you're consistent and you make it clear that this is possible. What I mean by this is that if the first explore-able area or areas of your game doesn't have any objects that the player can engage with and the player tries to interact with multiple objects to no avail, then they're probably not going to waste their time interacting with later objects in later areas. 

When I say being consistent, don't just have one area full of objects you can examine and then next have an area with plenty of objects yet no flavor text to them. It's jarring to the player, and it's mighty frustrating to expect something (in this case, some text from examining an object), yet not get it.

Another thing to note is that you should give your flavor text personality. For Legends of Adrigal, I used to have just an omniscient narrator. However, that was just like every other RPG out there, and with using RPG Maker, you really need to do things to distinguish your project from the other 900,000 RPGs being made with the program. 

Look at this example of a before and after regarding Casey, Legends of Adrigal's primary protagonist, examining a well in the countryside village of Mabel:

BEFORE

AFTER

For Legends of Adrigal, instead of having some nebulous narrator explaining to the player what they're examining, I made it so Casey himself remarks about what he sees. Sometimes this is done for comedic effect, but it's always to add personality to investigating and exploring the in-game world. It can feel like a prize to uncover a fun revelation that Casey comes up with regarding a given object. Just make sure that your flavor text is fun to read, so it encourages the player to keep examining objects.

Here's some other examples that I particularly like most of Casey examining objects in-game.

To recap, DO be consistent with your flavor text and what objects can be examined by the player.. DO introduce the concept early to get players investigating objects as early as possible. DON'T lack personality in your flavor text. DON'T have some rooms being full of objects to read info on while having others being completely empty. I hope this article and sneak peek look at the development of Legends of Adrigal was entertaining and informative!