Week Seven: Act 1 Refinement

<- Back Home

Lots of great *assorted* progress this week! It feels like I'm working a bunch of different small things, but each is important and is pushing the game forward.

Selling Equips

You can sell equips in the shop now! This was the last major scaling-related mechanic I needed to add, so hopefully I can get an accurate sense of how players scale now.

Character Quests

You can finally recruit characters during your run! So if a party member dies, or you want to get up to 3 party members, it's possible! A couple of these spawn from town notice board quests, then the wind dancer quest is from a random encounter. These also have special alternative rewards if your party is full, or you don't want a new member.

Multi-Part Enemy Moves

I improved the display for enemy moves consist of multiple steps. Here the automaton is attacking everyone for 1, then the front player for 3. Having good multi-part attacks is critical for balancing Dodge.

Playtesting & Balance

Made an invigorate deck work! Also prismatic hat is really good with Pounce, since there's double the chance it buffs a useful stat.

Otherwise I've made a lot of balance changes; certainly too many to list here. The most notable is that I've reduced the sell price of equips below that I originally had, and I also reduced the equip drop rate. Players were simply getting too many equips then becoming rich.

Looking Forward: New Characters

It's not quite time to implement all these, but I've been ideating on what characters to add to the game next. Here's a quick preview of what might be to come!

Artificer

The artificer is based around upgrading cards; a lot of their cards have upgraded versions, and one of their starter cards allows them to upgrade cards during battle. Unlike other deckbuilders, cards only get upgraded for the current battle; there's no way to upgrade cards in your deck outside of combat.

Enhance: Upgrade an ⬦upgradable card.
Medkit: Heal ⬦[1/3/pre]. Exhaust.
Arcane Generator: Gain ⬦[1/2/3] Mana.

Shade Tail

This is the "assassin" class. I'm thinking about a couple ideas for the mechanics here:

0-cost cards. Make the starting kit a bunch of exhausting 0/0 "throwing knife" cards, and a card to "retrieve" exhausted 0/0s.
Setup. Cards that set you up for a big attack later. Something like:
- Assassin's Dagger: Attack n, or, double n and discard.
- Blade Oil: Gain pre precision until after your next attack.

Ranger/Druid (name tbd)

I want a class that has animal companions. Currently I'm thinking that the companions are equips mechanically, and you get them by defeating that creature in combat.

Starting item: Druid's Staff: Can recruit defeated animals as companions

Possible companion equips:

Wolf: +1 str, +1 voi
Scorpion: Turn ability (1): poison pre
Shark: Only active if in water. +1 pre. Turn ability (1): Bleed pre

Companions can only be equipped by this class, and usually live in your armor slot. (Also plays into the unarmored druid trope).

Maybe there's a special companion (eg hawk) that goes in your hat slot?

I also want some cards that interact with your companion, but idk how that works yet.

Progress Checklist

Quest Events, Town Notice Boards, and Character Quests
- Mechanically this is there, but there are currently only 3 available quests. Need to add more.
More Fights & Enemy Variety: 14 distinct fights, ~20 enemies.
- Currently 16 enemies, across 13 fights.
Wandering merchant events (shops outside of towns)
Add more common items
- Good progress here; up to 30 total items. I'd like to have 4 common, 4 rare, and 2 legendary of each slot type.
Finish enemy art - Mainly done; still missing golem, troll, and (the new enemy) scorpion.
Allow selling unused equips
Balance gold costs, equip drop rates
Lots of playtesting and balance changes

Next Week

I think I've finally reached the end of the "adding systems" phase, and an going to be focusing a lot on content going forward. Shops was the last big system and now it's complete. The todo list for next week reflects that.

Implement bold text & outline text
- Because I'm using text in 3d instead of Godot's built in 2d text, I still need to implement some added formatting. Hopefully this isn't too hard 😅
Show hp number by health bar
Draw location backgrounds
Make the map larger; allow scrolling the map view.
Make town taverns a source of lore, via rumors.
Reach 10 total town notice board quests (currently 3)
Reach 40 equips (current 30)
Add lore-focused events, and fill in placeholder event text with real events.
- A couple of big categories include: Royal Army, Druids
Modify roll chances so you're more likely to encounter location-specific events.
Make sure every random, non-battle event has at least one special option
Either: add act 2 fights, or add a new character.

Reading this list it seems pretty ambitious; hopefully I can find some shortcuts in here.