The jumping off point when starting the combat design was to ask ourselves, how can we deliver the feeling of being thrown into a medieval apocalyptic land?
As we were trying to make a solid tactical gameplay, it was obvious that we needed a deep and challenging combat system, but this alone wouldn’t be enough - recklessly pushing forward and engaging in combat wouldn’t be a realistic response for survivors in this situation.
For this reason we’ve implemented the Fog of War and Line of Sight system.
The battle sessions mostly take place indoors. The main reason you confront with the Infested is to find supplies - food, weapons, bandages, etc. That means that you will have to visit places like a village, a tavern, and a monastery to scavenge the items, breaching doors all while running the risk of encountering the enemies.
You won’t know exactly what lurks in the battlefield - out of each player characters’ sight range, the maps are covered by darkness, the Fog of War (FoW). You will have to approach a location to see exactly how many enemies are there, and decide where and when to trigger the battle.
Each enemy has their own Line of Sight (LoS), and the player can check their direction and range in the grid-based game UI. Once one of the player characters is spotted...
...Every enemy nearby will be alerted, and will chase and grab your characters even if it’s not their turn.
These are the basics of the pre-combat gameplay system.
- To gather supplies or achieve the mission goal, you have to explore the darkness (FoW).
- Sometimes there will be a surprise encounter waiting behind doors or around the corner, so take caution.
- Before you are spotted by the enemy LoS, you need to prepare the formation you want.
- Find a zone where your characters won’t be outnumbered, but from where you can attack enemies effectively based on your weapon's range.
In our next post, we will show the actual combat features. Looking forward to seeing you then!