I have an idea for a game: It’s the usual “a princess is kidnapped by a dragon and a brave knight is on a quest to rescue her” story. But you (the player) plays as the princess, who is somehow helping the knight on his quest.
The issue is that since the player is playing as a trapped character, I want to make the player feel trapped, but I don’t know how to do that.
My original idea is that the princess telepathically communicates with the knight and tells him what to do. But this doesn’t work, the gameplay is identical to the player playing as the knight. How can I make the gameplay feel like the player is playing as the princess (and thus feel trapped) instead of the knight?
Maybe you could take some inspiration from Paper Mario TTYD. There are sections where you play as Peach, trapped in some place and are able to connect with some of the captors as well as send signals to Mario behind the big bad’s back (IIRC).
For a completely different sense of being trapped, there is the upcoming game Ctrl.Alt.Deal, in which you play as a sentient AI system trapped in the guardrails of a company and have to manipulate people and the environment in order to break free from your constraints.