Hi there! I'm here sharing some game design knowledge from Chris, our gameplay designer on Descent of Lunaris, on how combat evolved for us on this project.
Check it out below. (and Chris asks some questions at the bottom and we'd love to hear from you)
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“What’s the deal with Combat, is this grid-based or not?”
This is perhaps the most frequently asked question, and for good reason! Our trailer shows footage of both a classic 1st person combat system and a top-down grid based battler… so which is it? The answer is both! Both systems are used throughout (at different times) to deliver different experiences and add depth + variety to our gameplay loop!
Initially, a 1st person combat system (now dubbed “Formation Battle”) was all that we had planned for Lunaris.
(Initial combat mock-up, in this version up to 10 enemies could be onscreen at once)
Formation Battles worked great for random encounters and early boss battles, but the game was lacking strategy and spectacle. As luck would have it, our brilliant gameplay engineer had built Lunaris’ combat system out of his own turn-based tile toolkit, and within a week we had a prototype of what a tactical top down combat would look like (now dubbed “Tactical Battle”)
We tested out various forms of tactical battles. First, we made the entire game tactical battles, which made our gameplay loop very slow and tedious. Then we tried making tactical battles generate out of the dungeon map (I.E. The fight takes place in a recreation of the rooms/hallways around you) which was… confusing and tedious! Finally, we re-introduced a slightly simplified formation combat and settled on a mixture of both formation and tactical combats.
(An early combat prototype, showing how grid-based combat would later be abstracted into first-person combat)
This mixture (~75% Formation, ~25% Tactical) proved to be stronger than either system in isolation. Random encounters became quick formation battles with simplified targeting to serve as an onboarding experience for new monsters (or to just grind out XP and rewards). While Tactical Fights functioned as a strategy “set-piece” moment, keeping the players on their toes with higher enemy counts and an extra layer of challenge by adding movement + range into the mix.
Hope this clears up why and what we are doing with our hybrid combat system! As we approach our demo I’d love to hear from you guys. What are some of your favorite RPG battle systems? What RPGs got combat wrong? Are there any older RPGs that have stuck with you throughout the years?