I wrote a lot of ideas on Discord, particularly on a channel Noli made about AEWVS ABC on the fanon wiki server, and Itch too a while back
NOTE: This page will probably have spoilers for Advanced Education with Viktor Strobovski
Also it isn't done
General idea
AEWVS: ABC is an RPG-style AU of AEWVS that includes proper advanced education, more mechanics, more levels, more teachers, more characters, more content, and more. It will include a comprehensive curricular framework, as well as a bunch of beloved old characters such as VILE, Corvus Slaughtmanson, Mr. Jaxbot and some others
Lol.
Oh man, I wish I knew how to write game design documents! Then all of this info would be a blast!
General design
Not much to say here (yes I still think that even after typing such long paragraphs, because I think Noli's right - my points would probably hit harder if I said them in half as many words - not that I've figured out how to do that, of course), but I probably should mention a few things about it
The game should be simultaneously cruel and empowering, in the sense that you will be harshly challenged and punished, often dealing with things that are difficult or unexpected, but you will also get a lot of assistance and support to make all sorts of things easy and intuitive for you by themselves. Accessibility should not be the main issue; it's the inherent challenges in the scenarios as well as the psychological framing that should. The game should do everything it can to inherently optimise the player's academic, cognitive and practical abilities.
The game should feel mostly fresh and vivid (- some staleness can be acceptable, but not as the main atmosphere), but also dreadful and harrowing on every level, between all sorts of things like instinctive primal threats, uncertain ambiguous ones, overarching power structures and deep existential dread. (Wow, I am not very good at this but I'll have to keep going to get the point across anyway...) Every negative emotion and reaction that can be appealed to should be, as far as it is reasonable. The Panacea PAP Station especially should be scary, unlike in the original game. One thing it could start with is exuding a near-impenetrable sense of insurmountability and security that gets you killed every few seconds when you restart the level and try to infiltrate it. (Like come on, you can't just make everything out of anperfysium and then go lax on all the rest of it...) The rozitals should speak Greek in a customised dialect (suggesting that they branched off a while ago) that has a similar sense of foreignness to what Shakespeare's dialogue, or old/middle English in general, has compared to modern English, and feel unnerving in that sense even if you realise their conversational content is casual small-talk, and they should be comparable to military armies in how deadly they are.
Every localisation of the game should be abbreviated by the first three letters of the target language's writing-system (where such ordinals would be applicable) because yes
Levels
There's going to be a lot more levels in AEWVS ABC than there were originally, so I've started thinking about some of the gimmicks of each level. The layout of each level in AEWVS has at least some sort of distinct theme: the Math Level is mostly a windy path with a few minor dead-ends and loops, the Language Level is a big interconnected complex with some dead-ends, and the History Level is sort of a large-scale multi-storey complex, but a bit more simple and straightforward to navigate around.
Here are my ideas for new level layouts:
A maze with lots of dead-ends
A level with lots of big wide open sprawling areas
A small and secluded level with everything very close to each other
A loop, where you'll have to be careful and make sure you're a reasonable distance away from the teacher, because if you go past the opposite side from the teacher, they'd turn around and chase you the other way, and you'd lose track of which side they're coming toward you from
A simple path or loop, but with lots of shortcuts through staff-only rooms (many of which are locked up) that the teacher can just go through all the time
A straight line for the most part, which would probably be for a subject where the examples take a long time to solve and you're mostly at the notebooks, and a teacher that's super dangerous at close range and nearly impossible to duke, with a transition door at the end so you can skip the first half of the notebooks, collect the second half before the teacher gets to you, and then go back and solve the first half back toward the entrance
A big interconnected complex like the Language Level, but way too easy to get lost in unless you notice some small details because there are a lot of repeated structures - and other reasons, if there can be to get lost
And with that, we have gotten to a total of 10 ideas for levels
I've also considered making the levels slowly increase in complexity and introduce new mechanics related to things such as strategy, sight, sound, scent, stealth, parkour, hydraulics, machinery, chemicals, biohazards and some problem-solving (a tiny bit like the maintenance levels in Baldi's Basics Plus), as well as new elements to go along with them.
Now for a paragraph on the actual subjects!
Yeah I still haven't written it yet \(-_-)/
New features
Tripping: stepping on an item or knocking over an object like a pot-plant/trash bin while running or walking backward will make you trip over. You can also try to throw items at various characters, and if you use a decent item and time it just right, they will trip over as well. Perhaps for Viktor, this would temporarily stun him and then increment his anger. This also makes the game slightly more challenging and justifies the no-running and no-littering rules
No climbing: being on desks and window-frames is prohibited
No vandalism: drawing graffiti (outside of chalkboards) and damaging/destroying school property is prohibited. Also, Mr. Cleany-Clean will also clean up any vandalism and general mess that he sees or smells (besides litter)
Phonetic transcription: for Mr. Mix and some other subtitles. Each difficulty will have a different transcription method for Mr. Mix: for example, Boi Mode might have respelling and syllabic notation, Regular Mode might use phonemic transcription and Brainiac Mode might use precise phonetic transcription.
Backward collision: walking backward into a wall will make you nauseous a bit
Expanded inventory: you probably saw it already in some mockup screenshots and the released versions. The inventory now contains a head, neck, body, shoulders, arms, hands and legs all on the right side, with any equipped containers having extended storage displays that can be revealed by pressing Alt/Tab. (I forget which one they're using. They changed it.) Originally, it had four slots on the right side, a fifth slot for storing an item in the left hand and a bunch of slots to equip various gear items in the Alt/Tab menu. There would be no theoretical limit to how many containers and contained items you could carry, although this would be compensated by three things: the higher the total weight of the baggage you're carrying is, {the slower you'll move, the harder it will be to change velocity and/or the more quickly you'll lose stamina}; certain containers like suitcases would be finnicky to use, to put down, open up, {take items out and/or put in} and close (not to mention littering risks if you move too far from your baggage and items); and some items might attract certain characters who can see, hear or smell certain things. You can put containers on top of lockers as well, although that would take a while, more so with heavier ones, and also be unviable if the containers are too big
Dynamic subtitles: subtitles will pan alignment from left to right and change opacity depending on the amplitude, direction and distance of the source, as well as appear graphemically in real-time. I actually made a mock-up Scratch project demonstrating this feature one time
Dizzy spinning: Angell will have a voluntary rotation speed limit (unless something else is making her spin), and if you spin her around too much she'll get nauseous as well. Also she might trip if you make her do a sharp turn while running (unlike Marzia)
Anatomical systems: different parts of your body can be affected or lost, which also affects the inventory
Branching timelines: every time you complete a level, you can continue from there or beat the level again and make another timeline, which will also save your status which includes things like items, body status and different endings/pathways. You can play from any node in the branching timeline-tree. Eventually the levels will get so tricky that players will typically start to beat them without coming out unscathed, taking permanent or long-term damage and debuffs, and later levels might become almost impossible to beat in that condition unless players create new timelines by replaying and performing better in previous levels
I have no idea if Angell will get a temporary dormitory or something after each level
Ranked achievements: instead of having different achievements for beating levels on different difficulties, you'll get a bronze/silver/gold/platinum one based on the highest difficulty you beat it on
Soundtrack muting: an awfully convenient setting for video editors and highlighters which automatically mutes a soundtrack if you've gotten through whatever situation it plays in before. Probably with some exceptions
Violation inference: Laura will figure out if you broke other rules while being caught violating a school rule and stack punishments
Quiet movement: you can step without making a loud noise if you press Ctrl when your foot hits the ground if you time it just right, although your stamina will also deplete slightly each time if you're running
Fast crawling: you can crawl at your walking speed if you hold Shift, which will also consume stamina like when you run
More advanced education: notebooks with a much broader variety of topics and more interface features, and explanations for wrong answers
Reworked features
Breathing: your air meter will increase and decrease automatically, and holding C will make you hold your breath in the same way as before, but quickly pressing C will make you take a deep breath
Handiwork(?): pressing E will make you extend your selected arm(s), and pressing R will make you open your selected hand(s)
Stamina: most consumable items will not immediately raise it so easily, and will instead gradually contribute to stamina capacity (along with other things like physical activity) positively or negatively based on their nutritional value as the timeline progresses
Curricular system
A large part of AEWVS ABC's focus will be the actual education and it's aspects, perhaps on a 1:1 to 1:3 ratio with the rest of the gameplay.
Here are my current intentions on some changes in how the notebook interactions will flow:
The notebook will be stuck to the surface it's on, in some way. I mean... you're not supposed to collect it until you're done with it. You can't just collect them all and then hide out somewhere solving all the examples by yourself
Each example will focus on a different aspect/branch of the overarching subject.
Since the notebooks are touchscreen-based, any keyboard/mouse/controller inputs will be converted into gestures and hand motions by Angell. There will probably be secret achievements for solving every example with only a mouse, or only a controller plugged into a touchscreen-based device.
When you use a notebook, you will see a list of examples on the left side. You will be able to select any examples that have been unlocked. If the notebook has not been completed, the last unlocked example will be active, and any previous examples that have not been solved correctly will display an explanation of the user solutions' errors and the examples' correct solutions.
Pausing the game will automatically corrupt any active examples when unpaused. If you want to pause, you will have to time it between load-times.
You should be able to return any incomplete notebook while using it...but, I haven't really thought about what this would entail. Would there be an alarm or a corruption of the example or an increase of 1 in the teacher's anger for leaving?
Okay it seems like examples that require knowledge and not problem-solving (like most STEM topics) should be returnable
Actually it doesn't seem like a necessarily bad idea to be able to just leave a notebook in the middle of a problem. You'll still be spending time anyways
If you submit an incorrect answer on an example, the subject's teacher will become angrier by a factor of 1, and you can choose to submit another answer on that example before moving onto the next example, which will reduce the teacher's anger by a factor of 1. This will allow you to either quickly rectify a typo or gamble on trying to see if you can fix your mistake, or manage to solve the example correctly in general.
Once all examples have been solved, the notebook will detach itself and become collectable.
Now here are some specialised aspects of the notebooks:
The math notebooks act as keys to unlock the double doors at the start of the Math Level. There might be deposit slots for the notebooks that you can put them in.
For the language notebooks, you will only get the respective elevator code when the notebook has been collected. It will appear onscreen.