One of the key elements in Avalon Code is the Book of Prophecy. This item starts the quest and it’s your job to mark items worth saving into the books pages for the new world. The book is also used as a weapon since you can hit monsters with it and rearrange their weaknesses. Players do this by switching code fragments with the stylus.
In the early stages of development Avalon Code’s Book of Prophecy was a virtual book. “The inspiration [for the Book of Prophecy] actually came from the DS game system itself,” Yoshifumi Hashimoto, Scenario Writer and Producer at Marvelous Entertainment, explains. “When you hold the DS sideways it looks like a notebook, so I thought it’d be fun to write things in there. From that concept I thought of making a game that you can rewrite what happens in the game.”
Unlike the final game Hashimoto envisioned players would actually write and edit text in the book. “I thought it would be fun to see an enemy that read ‘Fire resistant monster’ and erase the ‘Fire’ to make it an ordinary monster.”
What do you think of the theoretical system Hashimoto described? Would you want a book you could write in or is flipping codes more efficient?
On Monday we’ll have more about Avalon Code where Hashimoto shares his thoughts about the combat system and details the game’s romance system.