Learning Modules
What are achievements?
Achievements are milestones that players unlock by collecting points with Love Interests.
Achievements exist within your game’s timeline.
They are tied to specific nodes: once players miss the episode they’re in, the only way to unlock it is to replay and collect enough character points by that point in time.
They are tied to a specific character or point system.
All players can see the full list and requirements of all available achievements at any point in the game.
What are bonus episodes?
Bonus episodes are exclusive episodes players unlock by collecting points with Love Interests.
Bonus episodes exist outside of your game’s timeline.
They are not tied to specific nodes or episodes, and can be unlocked, played, and replayed at any point of the game, whenever a player collects enough points.
They are tied to a specific characters or point system.
All players can see the full list and requirements of all available achievements at any point in the game.
Add Achievements to your Game
Follows Dorian’s best practices and write bonus scenes players can unlock by collecting points with the Love Interests.
This is what a bonus scene checkpoint looks like.
To make this bonus scene visible in players’ Achievements, you need to add it to your achievements bank. Click on the Achievements button.
You can fill in these fields:
Achievement Name: this is for your own record, and how the achievement will be listed when you add it to the game.
Memory: which set of points (which LI) unlocks this achievement.
Value: to unlock this achievement, players should have at least X points.
Reward Content: Leave this as None if it’s for a bonus scene, but for a Bonus Episode, set it to the Bonus Episode’s title.
Display Name: this is what players will see in their list of upcoming achievements.
Icon: you can customize the image your players will see when they unlock the achievement.
Description: This is what players will see under the achievement title. We recommend using this to tell players where and how they can access this scene, like this:
Find it in ep X. Are you after ep X? You need X [Character name] points IN ep X to get the scene.
Once your achievement is set up in the library, add it to your game. Make sure the Achieve step is at the start of a node!
Add Bonus Episodes to Your Game
Just like an achievement, set up a Bonus Episode from the Achievements tab. The only difference is that you’ll need to select the Reward content to be the name of the Bonus Episode. See below, the Reward Content is named “Ghost’s Torture”.
And if we look at the episode we want to serve as the Bonus Episode, it’s named “Ghost’s Torture” and it’s checked off to be a bonus episode. Unlike in mid-game bonus scenes, you don’t need to add an Achieve step anywhere— because it happens outside the story, players will unlock it when they meet the memory requirement you set, and they’ll see it in the Achievements timeline.
How hard should Achievements and Bonus Episodes be to unlock?
We recommend a mix of easy to achieve and hard to achieve! Make early episodes’ achievements easy, and increase difficulty as the game continues.
Keep an eye on your data: how many players on average unlock your achievements?
If only 10% of your players unlock the achievements in your first 3 episodes, they may feel discourage and quit!
However, keeping later achievements as special rewards for super fans who collected high affinity scores with their favorite love interest will make them feel valued!