Hey everyone,
After much experimenting, we have finished prototyping our battle system!
Prototyping two ways to capture creatures
After studying some of our favorite inspirational games (Sekiro, Death's door, tunic, Elden Ring) and what made their battle systems unique, we started brainstorming how our battle system would work.
We knew that we didn't want the player to be aggressive - the premise of Atrio is that you are disposable. Giving you a shotgun, or a gigantic club that shoots gravitational lightning (looking at you Elden Ring), felt very out of place.
This is a challenge, because most battle systems are predicated on you "putting yourself at danger" when you go in for an attack. Striking with a weapon forces you to expose yourself to danger… but if you don't have to do that, there's no risk.
We had two very different ideas in mind
1. Find a way to fully automate creature capture (and skip doing battle altogether)
2. Add a traditional battle system that fits with a pacifist approach.
We prototyped both. Here's what happened:
Prototype 1: Automating Creature capture
We had this idea, what if the deer had to be released after 10 uses? It would be more environmentally friendly, and would force the player to need a consistent input of deer.
We thought it'd be kind of fun to capture a deer, have it work for a bit, and then it just wanders off.
With that in mind, here was our plan:
1. You need someway to bring the deer into the vicinity to either stun bomb, or to knock out
2. A way to automatically places these traps (without you being there)
3. A way to hold the deer you've captured
4. A way to automatically replace the deer after the last one walked off.
We managed to solve all of these problems with three items:
1. Deer caller
2. Trap Dropper
3. Deer pen
1. The Deer Caller
Kitted with a very "alluring" hologram deer, it would call out to other deer for a minute. Deer would slowly start to gather in the area to check out what was happening, and could easily be distracted by tempting "treats" (aka traps to capture the deer).
2. The Trap Dropper
This would drop a trap every 10 seconds in front of it. It was also smart enough to place traps on top of gravpipes, so if the deer got knocked out on top of a gravpipe, the gravpipe would automatically transport it directly into the deer pen!
3. The Deer Pen
The holding container for knocked out deer. You could manually replace factories where the deer had been let free, but we also wanted a way for the players to automatically replenish it. The deer pen has a specified radius and any factories that are empty will automatically have a deer sent to it!
Everything in action
Here are all the pieces in action. We ask our testers to try and make 1000 resin and observed what happened (results at the end).
With the prototype working, we moved onto the second prototype.....
Prototype 2: The Battle Circle
The rules
In the middle of the circle is a pod that you can request equipment from. If you can survive without leaving the circle, you get the package! If you leave the circle, or die, you have to start over.
Starting an order would attract lots of aggressive creatures. We added 10 levels, each with different creature spawns and as you progressed, the types of rewards got stronger (but so did the enemies).
The Stun Gun
We messed around with the idea of a stun-turret that would automatically attack creatures on your behalf.
You can see me abusing the heck out of :)
We weren't sure what would happen, but it ended up working quite well (and changes how you play into more of a tower defense style scenario, with some dodging).
10 levels
We added 10 levels, and each time you progressed you got more items to help you on your journey to survive.
Some of the players definitely found it more challenging than others....
but with that, the prototypes were done!
All that was left was to find testers, and have them evaluate each.
The Results
We found 10 play testers (2 couldn't make it in time) and had them play both.
We had all play testers fill out a form to evaluate how they played.
You can see that the battle prototype won by a landslide. It should be noted that the one person who didn't like the battle as much didn't know that you could dodge, making the battle prototype nearly impossible.
The automated deer sounded good in practice, but was too hard to understand, and had a lot more "waiting" around. The testers were vocal that the battle system is a breath of fresh air from other automation games.
What's next?
Now that we have evidence to prove which direction we should be heading, we'll be starting to do a proper implementation of this, and adding it into the main flow of the game!
Stay tuned to see how it turns out
Featured fan art of the month
Atrio Gif by Siede
Hope to see you soon,
Stephen + The Isto Team