Ideas for AEWVS: Animosity-Blighted Curriculum

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!

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

Now for a paragraph on the actual subjects!

New features

• Tripping: stepping on an item or knocking an object like a pot-plant/trash bin while running or walking backward will make you trip over. This makes the game slightly more challenging and justifies the no-running rule
• No climbing: being on desks and window frames is prohibited
• 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.
• 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
  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
• More advanced education: notebooks with a much broader variety of topics and more interface features, and explanations for wrong answers

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.
• 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?
• 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.

Back to my ideas