"Dozens of rivers have been used up in paint, and yet, this mad artist has never completed a single work. Every time a near-perfect masterpiece was about to be completed, it met its fate drowned in an ocean of white colour, soon to be covered by yet another ephemeral creation."

• Flavour text of Purpizug, Painter of Blank Canvasses, a Legendary Artistic Soul

The Games Foxes Play

(github | view all previous posts | play 0.3 online in browser on itch.io!)

I am hitting a bit of a roadblock, and I only have Onei's Random Idea Generator™ to blame.

The version 0.2 of my game that I had previously uploaded on itch.io was a short and fun experience - according to my esteemed playtester and composer friend, that is. He mentioned his appreciation of the slider-puzzle-like design, and how he really enjoyed using his brain and thinking through each step of my deterministic combat system. A simple but interesting gameplay loop.

Now, because I can't ever stand still or conform to a plan when it comes to personal projects, I then proceeded to pull out of my metaphorical hat an entire map generation system, and then also the new knockback-based combat that I showed off last week. I find these very interesting on their own, but they have both mangled the basic game system that I had in place.

This week, I started work on a tutorial (in my own style, with zero text!). The structure is simple: start with the absolute basics. Immobile target, essential controls displayed on the screen, elementary objective: slurp up his soul. Should that be done, the challenge intensifies: the target is now (slowly) moving and trying to attack you back. And so on, progressively introducing mechanics with increasingly difficult puzzles. While I find much promise in it, I couldn't help but notice a mildly significant problem:

I don't know how to play my own game.

By this, I mean, there are so many design parts crunching upon each other that I struggle to find the "core loop" once again. What should the penalty be if the player gets hit? Should encounters be composed of multiple weak and simple enemies, or few strong and complex ones? The knockback combat pretty much makes any room with more than 4 enemies extremely difficult to defeat, so I am inclined towards the latter, but then, with so few entities on the screen, that "slider-puzzle" experience that made the original game fun is lost.

I was tempted a few times to scrap my latest additions and restart from 0.2, but this isn't the Onei way. I have faith in myself, I trust that I will find some adjustment that will make my new features click together. There were many times this week where I just stared into the window, thinking up of all the game mechanics I have ever observed, and letting my mind dance to the song of a thousand "What if?"s.

Maybe I will have to backtrack my steps a little bit. However, I have one very central idea first and foremost - I want this game to be about mind over matter, and thus, the classic concept of HP points, wounds and physical death simply doesn't cut it.

They say that ideas are a dime a dozen in game development, but I'd gladly buy a batch or two right now...

"All contenders of the Saints' Arena feared Gyvji's mythical tail slap, supposedly so strong it could knock your soul out of your body and into the crowd, leaving the body untouched. Thankfully, it wasn't long until reality caught up, causing the victim's flesh to charge into the hopefully empty seats of the stadium, where it would be rejoined with its distraught spirit."

• Flavour text of Gyvji, Soul-Severer, a Legendary Artistic Soul

The Games Foxes Play

(github | view all previous posts | play 0.3 online in browser on itch.io!)

This week, I removed health, damage and killing from my game.

Yes.

Slurpi-Souls, Now Available in 6 Flavours!

The fact that living beings were able to slay each other didn't make sense in the game's lore. And besides, suffering, agony and death are overdone tropes. I trust this new system should deepen strategic options significantly, and make even basic bump combat much more interesting...

It is inspired from the Serene Spire mechanic I showed off exactly a month ago, but applied to the entire game because it was just so fun. As I don't expect anyone to remember, here is how it works in a nutshell:

• All damage points are converted to knockback points.
• When striking a foe, they are knocked back for a number of tiles equal to the number of accumulated knockback points.
• If the foe is knocked back for more than 2 tiles, their Soul is severed from their body, stunning them.
• The Soul rejoins their body one turn later.
• If the foe is knocked into a wall, the hit crits, and the stun duration is much longer.
• In this case, the Soul remains vulnerable for a couple of extra turns.
• The player can take this opportunity to slurp up the Soul, and permanently disable the enemy it is attached to. The newly acquired Soul can immediately be used to cast spells.
• The soulless husk left behind becomes a simple obstacle, and can be pushed and pulled around.

Of course, a demonstration is worth much more than a mere bullet point explanation.

As there is so much more to take into account, even slaying 3 basic enemies in one room is now much harder. This is exactly what I wanted - I don't have to spam enemy spawns absolutely everywhere to challenge the player anymore, and the power growth curve can afford to be stretched out for much longer.

Not the most productive week ever, but it is temporary. Those who know where my Reddit/Github profile picture is from will understand.