Hello everybody! Hope everyone enjoyed the springtime holidays. We’re back to give you an update on some more Play Pretend news. As promised last month, this time we’ll be giving you the inside scoop on Toys and Ideas; some of the core systems that you will interact with in Play Pretend.
A Look Into The Toybox
First up, we have Toys! Toys are the new name for what were Ideas in the playtest — this will get confusing if I’m not careful. They are the tetris-like pieces that you place into your notebook that give you cool stat boosts and sometimes even interesting abilities. Each Toy has a different effect and can work well with other Toys — such as having a bowling ball, basketball, and ping pong ball encircling you!
Toys can also be upgraded by surrounding them with other toys in your notebook or by visiting the gymnasium. Each time you upgrade a Toy, you increase the power of its effect and every Toy can be upgraded four times!
Also, Toys come in three different levels of rarity: Common, Rare, and Legendary. Naturally, the higher the rarity of the Toy, the more powerful it is. However, rarer Toys tend to be larger than more common ones so you may have to choose between a few very powerful Toys or lots of different ones.
Toys can be gained in two ways. The first way is that you can gain them as a reward from beating a combat room. When you view the map, combat rooms that give toys will be marked by a skull and one of the tetris-like pieces. The other way is to buy them from your classmates when you find a classroom. The price of each Toy depends on its rarity, with the rarer Toys costing more.
I Have An Idea!
Ideas are new since the last playtest — even if their name was stolen from what are now Toys. They are passive effects that take the form of classic roguelike items. Their purpose is primarily to unlock synergies with the various Toys that you have. An example of this could be ‘your projectiles are homing’ which would make any projectiles that you fire lock onto an enemy and pathfind to them.
You can gain Ideas through two methods. Firstly, you can purchase them, like Toys, from your classmates when you find a classroom. The second way is to stumble across them by encountering an event. When you are travelling across the map, you can run into an event which will sometimes give you an Idea. Because you cannot earn them from combat rooms, Ideas are much less common than Toys are.
There is also a special type of Idea called a Boss Idea. These are earned by beating the boss of a world, such as Gracie in the fantasy world. Boss Ideas are used to upgrade your Toys in a different way; generally through how they are arranged and placed in your notebook. An example of this would be a Boss Idea that upgrades every Toy that touches the edge of your notebooks grid. However, these Boss Ideas are obviously very rare since they can only be gained by defeating a boss.
Coming Up Next Time…
That’s all we have for now about Toys and Ideas. There are loads of them that all work in different ways and I’m sure you’ll enjoy messing around with them when you get your hands on Play Pretend. So with it all said and done, I will see you all again next month where we should be discussing the different enemies you will encounter. See you then!
— Will
