Greetings Marked Ones
I figured I would start a devlog on here to let you all know how the development for Fincester Tower is going and what exactly I am working on as to not worry anyone that the game may be dead.
Unfortunately is Fincester Tower not only a rather big game developed by one person, but it is also my first "real" solodev project. So while progress is being made constantly, it is also still a learning experience for me. Originally I come from GameAudio, Level Design and to some degree Pixel Art so things like 3D Modelling, Coding and Writing are all things I have been slowly picking up on. I am personally okay with the 3D art being imperfect, but the atmopshere and gameplay are extremely important to me, so often times things that are already done are being rewritten. So please be patient with me!
Enough with introductions! What has changed since I opened up the Steam Store page?
Status Effects
Status Effects make up a lot of the games' mechanics, as I like to keep the gameplay as modular as possible. So for example if you are burning, walking through water will cure you of that status effect, walking through an oil puddle will set it on fire, walking next to an explodable cannister may make it explode, walking past a torch would light it, etc.
As weird as it may sound but when it comes to Status Effects, especially the ones mostly seen as negative one of my main inspirations have been Wario Land 2 and 3, where one could make the best of negative situations. Obviously not every Status Effect is going to be this complex and modular, but I'm trying my best to make a lot of them like this.
Another challenge Status Effects have shown me is that there are multiple Status Effects that are treated the same in conventional RPGs, like poisoned, bleeding and burning for example. I don't want these "damage over time" status effects to feel too similar. How burning feels differently I've already described but what is the difference between bleeding and poisoning? For one both bleeding and poisoning can be cured by drinking a healing potion (unlike burning), both will be automatically cured after a while based on player stats but bleeding will do more damage if the player character is currently moving as I thought it would add an extra layer of strategy on top.
Of course there are positive Status Effects as well and I've also decided to hide this games' hunger system within these Status Effects as I felt it would be a fitting place.
Food
Food has been added to the game! Food comes in many different flavours and two quality levels: Fresh and rotten. the inclusion of rotten food was also the main reason why the entire food system finds itself under the Status Effect system.
Eating fresh food will give you the Well-Fed status effect, slowly regaining health over time:
How long this Status effect lasts depends on the food you've eaten and your player stats. If you've longer not eaten any food, it will revert to the Hungry status effect:
This status effect is neutral because it is only there to remind you to eat before things are too late! If you still ignore your grumbling tummy you will eventually gain the Starving status effect:
Once you're starving you are slowly losing health over time. However eating at any time will set you back to the Well-Fed status effect from a bit higher up... unless what you've eatin was rotten.
Rotten food only differs from their fresh counterpart by looks. Often times being moldy and a little more colourless. However gameplay-wise they differ a lot as they can give you (food) poisoning which will slowly remove health over time (but can be curable by a health potion). It will reset the food status to Hungry instead of Well-Fed because if need be, the devil eats flies. Still: Watch out what you'll eat or it might be the end of you!
Potion and Potion allocation
Whoever of you has playes a Soulslike game will probably feel somewhat at home with the potion system I've implemented. There are two types of potions: Health and Mana. At the start of every venture into the Tower the player gets to decide how to allocate their available potion flasks. If your character was born under the Golem Birthsign and thus doesn't have any magical powers, mana potions would be literally useless to you, whereas more magic-affine characters might make better use of these potions. You can allocate potions and upgrade your total maximum at the alchemy bench in the Hub area.
If during your ventures into the Tower your flasks will ever find themselves empty, you can simply try and gather plants to fill them back up. There are two types of plants: Those of the healing and those of the mana variety. Due to the magical properties of the flasks you simply have to put the ingredients into the flasks to process them, no mortar or pestle needed! However make sure you don't pick your ingredients to roughly or they may break in the process and be rendered useless.
Other new features, fixed bugs or overhauled systems
The Lockpicking system has been overhauled a bit. Previously the combination of "left" and "right" you would have to guess to successfully crack a lock was completely randomly generated. Now randomness is still a big part of it, however the full combination will always have the same amount of "left" as it will have "right", making the minigame more of a "process of elimination" than a pure guessing game.
The HUD and the UI is being overhauled almost constantly and has changed about three or four times ever since the Store page has been uploaded. I'm not much of an artists, definitely not a UI artist so I doubt it will ever be a peak example of how UI should look and feel like, but it is slowly and surely coming closer to something I personally am happy with. I am putting extra effort into making the UI colourblind-friendly by removing colour-only indicators of things. I've already started with it as you can see with the potion icons having different bottle caps based on whether or not they're health potions or mana potions. But especially the character screen is still a huge offender regarding this (red number = bad/worse, green number = good, better).
Adding Controller Support originally was something I wanted to add to the game later in development but as I am growing older I enjoy controller support in games a lot more as I did back in the day. Nothing beats laying about in bed for an hour playing your favourite game with a controller over TV, and when I reach the first big testing stage of the game this is something I really want so testing it becomes less of a hassle.
That's it for this Devlog!
I am planning on making more of these although I don't have a specific rhythm for them in mind. As I am working on this game almost completely by myself (shoutout to my friends and family you rock and I wouldn't be here without you) some things will take a while before they're even close to being in a showable state. Currently the main priorities are finishing the magic system and then rethinking it as each class currently can only cast one of two spells based on which level they are, which just doesn't seem extensive enough to build an entire build around it, but I'm already brainstorming and will let you know more once I'm getting there. I am also slowly getting to the point where I can start filling the game with more and more content, which I will definitely show off.
If you want more consistent updates feel free to check out our games' Twitter and if you got any questions you're always welcome in our games' (still rather empty) Discord Server