This month, I want to highlight some of the bigger changes coming to Fractal Odyssey. Specifically, I'll be showing off the rework that progression and teambuilding are receiving. One of the consistent points of positive feedback on the demo was that teambuilding, by the time you reached the boss fights, felt quite satisfying. My aim with these changes is to expand that feeling in a way that will cover the length of the entire game.
To start, here's a video previewing some of what's changing:
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Note that all UI is very WIP
As you can see, there are now Skill Trees in Fractal Odyssey. Each of the six playable characters will have 3 dedicated Skill Trees. As you progress through the game, individual units will earn Levels. These can be spent to unlock an ability, or upgrade, in the Skill Tree.
Unlocking an ability adds it to the pool of abilities you can choose from. Only a certain number of abilities can be equipped at once, increasing based on Level.
Each character has 3 'Intrinsic' abilities, which are always equipped and do not consume an equip slot.
Some node of a Skill Tree are 'upgrades'. These improve or alter an existing ability without consuming any additional equip slots. For example, Caithe's "Snakebite Thrust" can be upgraded into "Chain Thrust". This version of the ability gains an extra Damage Die, but is still an Intrinsic (and thus does not need to be equipped).
Sparks are still present as well. Each Spark has a single Intrinsic (usually, but not always, a passive) and a Skill Tree. These trees generally contain around 10 Abilities, but will have more or less where appropriate.
Instead of using Level, Sparks have their own ability-unlocked resource - Ember.
Each Spark has its own pool of Ember equal to the amount of Ember you've unlocked. Think of it as a 'Spark Level', shared across all Sparks.
Spark abilities may cost multiple Ember to unlock. More powerful Sparks may be much more expensive to max out, for example.
When an ability is unlocked, it becomes selectable for any unit that equips the Spark.
You may notice that you'll end up unlocking more abilities than you have equip slots. In order to keep every node on the skill tree meaningful, each also confers a constant stat bonus. This bonus applies even when you don't have the unlocked ability equipped. Some of these are minor (I.E. +3HP), and others are more significant (I.E. +1 Starting AP, or +1 Defense Dice Power).
The consequence of all of these new systems is that there are a lot more abilities in the game. Each character has 30 total (so 150 across the demo), and each Spark has about 10 (so about 60 in the demo). This is over 200 abilities, nearly quintuple the ~40 that were present before.
Implementing this many abilities in a reasonable amount of time is the first true test of the systems I've built. I'm confident that this can be pulled off.
Last post, I committed to releasing a development video every week. I wasn't quite able to hold to that promise, missing (technically) the last two weeks. I won't be re-making the "every week" commitment, but I will absolutely keep making development update videos. I only have about a month of 'Full Steam' development left before I'll have to return to my prior working speed, and I'm very much hoping to make the most of it.
On that note, I'm beginning to worry that the demo update won't quite make the Summer release plan. This has scope creeped into being, essentially, a full rework of the game itself. Said rework is mostly complete now, but I'm re-approaching the original goal of the update - Polish. I'm confident this will be the last major demo version before working on the rest of the games content, so i want to get it right.
I'll close off by linking the two videos released between now and the last devblog. If you've read this far and haven't seen them yet, you should check them out!
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