The Fog rolls in and The City calls once more...
Welcome back, everyone!
The last year did its best to keep me busy fighting for heat, a place to live, and even up to and including bankruptcy (never-mind the pandemic) -- but I'm back! I've resumed work on To Ash and Ember now that my situation has stabilized and am revving it up for an Early Access launch and a possible Kickstarter for extra content.
As I pick the dark pen back up I'll be making a few changes to help speed this project along. First, I'd like to set expectations. My current goal is to get a full gameloop ready to go as soon as possible, even if not all the systems of the game are included and detailed by the time that's done.
Here's what I'm expecting a full gameloop should look like:
- Downtime (Build your guild, do research on the coming God, try to undo what's been done to the world, gain allies or shut down foes, and fight the coming world distortions)
- Mystery Investigation (try to solve what's presently plaguing the city while gathering Clues on the identity of the resurrecting Fallen God)
- Mystery Confrontation/Dungeon (confront the threat to try and secure the City's safety -- and the aftereffects of how you did so)
- Ritual/Research on the resurrecting Fallen God (This is where you use Clues gained during a mystery to unveil the identity of the Fallen God, their weaknesses, and where they can be found)
- 2 More Mysteries with their associated Downtime, Investigations, Confrontations, and Rituals
- Final Ritual/Research on the resurrecting Fallen God (their resurrection is nigh, regardless of the Doom Tracker the player must proceed to attempt to confront the God)
- Final Dungeon/Confrontation against the Slain God
- The Afterglow (Permanent change(s) to the world, acquisition of a new Rite, and Something Changes with your Investigator)
- Long Downtime (As Downtime but with significantly more time than usual before the next God stirs)
- A Slain God awakens...
That gameloop should continue until the Deck of Fallen Gods is exhausted. At that time the Final Fallen God/Mastermind is revealed and a fast-paced investigation/final confrontation occurs in a race against the clock to preserve what you've done. That's the broad gameplan.
What I'm hoping to do now is make that full gameloop available but put it on either an 'infinite' mode where Gods can only be temporarily banished or a 'limited' mode where the game ends on the third god's banishment. Once I have that full loop in working order, I'll be pushing the game to Early Access.
To get there, I'll be changing a few things as well and expect to change a few things further.
- 3D Dungeons are being replaced with a multi-deck-based exploration system for the time being. They might get reintroduced if the game gets really popular, the Kickstarter I'm considering is megasuccessful, or in a limited fashion for the Final Confrontation against a Fallen God.
- Possibly simplifying the combat system to remove skill upgrades and/or simplifying them to a path-based tree/node-based leveling system (ala Skyrim, PoE, etc)
- Possibly changing combat from point-allocation-based to 'hand and deck based' combat with perfect enemy turn information (ala Slay the Spire) and a 'combat deck' the player builds (if I go this route Card Unlocks would be expanded as a mechanic to also unlock cards in the Player's Deck).
I've already made a few huge strides on all this already. The first 'Simple Dungeon' successfully completed its test last night, which would also allow me to start working on the Ritual and Final Confrontation portions of the game.
Despite fighting an injury on my knuckles (probably carpal tunnel) I've increased the total number of events and cards in the game to 50 and 181 respectively; that's about a third of the total game's content before I started.
As for the future, here's my master plan as it presently stands.
- Phase 1: Mysteries can be completed and new ones chosen
- Phase 2: (We are here) Dungeons, Rituals, Research, and God Confrontation implemented in limited fashion.
- Phase 3: Onboarding Focus. A limited and on-rails first-time introduction sequence for the game which establishes necessary lore, walks the player through a short mystery, and exposes and explains the general flow of the game. Also contains a tightening up on the Investigator Select screen.
- Phase 4: Player Development expansion. Focus on sharpening up Combat, Skills, and Progress and the hopeful introduction of a Save and Load System.
- Phase 5: Map Rework. I'm hoping to investigate removing some of the Random Encounter feature and retooling it so that monsters and enemies appear on the map and move around or stay put, slowly increasing the Danger Level of locations. You should also get more feedback on the time it takes to get to places, how much it'll cost in Terror, and what things are (broadly) available in your destination location. Short explanations of menu options through tooltips will also be put in here (e.g. mousing over the Street Bard lets you know that you can convert XP to Funds with a Mystique check there)
- Phase 6: Player Organization and Party Expansion. Foundational layout and mechanics for the player building their Guild and establishing cross-run elements.
- Phase 7: First Polish Pass. Focus on enhancing the game's look, feel, and ease-of-play across the entire game. Possible introduction of the in-game Encyclopedia.
- Phase 8: Lockdown and Trust. City districts can be locked down once the Danger Level increases too much. Danger Level increases also include the possibility of adding Warps to the District from the Warp deck, adding more challenging and hostile encounters to the Location while they're present. Trust can be gained or lost through play and affects prices of equipment, access to areas, and whether or not a Warrant is issued for your arrest (shuffling adventurers, the local watch, and other do-gooders into the encounter deck to defeat you).
- Phase 9: Blessings and Spells. Blessings can be sought at the Church and Spells can be sought for those desperate moments where you're willing to trade some of the world's security or your own sanity for a moment of safety or security. Spells are planned to be used both in and out of combat (e.g. using a spell to push the doom tracker up to add two dice to a roll).
- Phase 10: Final Confrontation. Focus on developing the later-mid and end-game of To Ash and Ember.
- Phase 11: Second Polish Pass.
- Phase 12 and Beyond... yet to be determined.
Thank you all for your patience: To Ash and Ember is back!