Hi! I have recently started working on adding the "more rescuable characters" thing to the game, and I would like to share some of my game design thoughts on this topic.
(before I continue, I wanted to mention that the next game update will include improved gamepad support, localization fixes, and hopefully, Polish language support. It should be released in a few days!)
Anyways, back to the game design talk: one of the things I wanted to change, based on your feedback was making sure that you can encounter more rescuable characters along your way.
Currently, if your party is not at full strength (meaning less than four characters plus an automaton), there is a chance of finding a survivor. If you manage to reach and revive them, they will join your party. However, once your party is at full strength, you will no longer encounter any more survivors.
To make the runs even more enjoyable and diverse, I wanted to modify this system. The change seemed simple: survivors would appear during combat even if your squad is at full strength, and players would be able to choose who stays in the squad. However, this raised several design questions:
When should the players be allowed to change the squad composition?
Should it be right after reviving the fifth member? At the end of a mission? After the shelter phase?
The game's UI was not able to display six character portraits in the top-left. While it seemed like it could handle it:
the game also needs to work with 16:10 aspect ratios:
and it needs to look good in gamepad mode:
Requiring the player to reorganize their party immediately after reviving an additional member would solve the UI issue (as there'd never be more than five characters in total), but it didn't feel right. The player might be in the heat of battle after rushing to revive the survivor. Introducing a "reorganize your party NOW" dialog window in such a moment would be off-putting.
So, I ended up cleaning up the UI:
And the player will be able to reorganize the squad at the end of the mission, just before the shelter phase.
I could allow the dispatched character to still be present during the shelter phase, but the player wouldn't care about that character as they would be dispatching them anyway.
Should the difficulty change when you have five characters plus an automaton?
After you revive the extra survivor, you might be slightly overpowered - after all, you're running around with one extra character. Should the game try to be tougher during that time? I think that it shouldn't - after all, if you've decided to take a chance and dash to revive that survivor, here's your short OP moment for the remainder of this encounter.
What should happen to the upgrades?
Ah, yes. After finishing a mission with one extra squad member, you need to dispatch someone. The thing is, characters can have their weapons upgraded. A player wouldn't want to let go of a squad member if it meant losing all of their weapon upgrades, especially since it's possible to remove upgrades during the shelter phase.
I've decided that a character being let go will have their weapon upgrades automatically removed. It may seem unfair for that character, but I couldn't see any other way to handle it. The player really doesn't want to lose their weapon upgrade points.
What should happen to the dispatched character?
So the player has reorganized their squad, and let one of the characters go. Should that character somehow reappear again? If that's the case, should they have the same skills the player picked previously? If that's the case (and I think it is the correct approach), the save system needs to be expanded to take care of this.
As you can see, even a relatively minor change in gameplay rules can trigger a multitude of smaller decisions that need to be made. And I suppose that's one of the reasons why I love game design so much!
Thanks for reading and for playing my game! You all rock, take care!