This post was written by Will, our VFX artist.
Hi everyone.
In The Hand of Merlin there are a great number of status effects, (over 200 in fact) which grant the player various different boons and banes that players will have to manage to effectively beat the evil monstrosities they are presented with. The task of visually representing these needed to be broken down so that players could quickly and effectively see what type of status currently affects the units on the skirmish map.
The gameplay implications needed to be represented were decided as follows;
Status effect VFX categories
Buffs:
- Increased damage dealt
- Reduced damage taken
- Increased speed, evasion, accuracy or AP gain
- Healing over time
Debuffs:
- Reduced damage dealt
- Increased damage taken
- Decreased speed, evasion, accuracy or AP gain
- Damage over time (burning / poisoned / bleeding)
- Immobilized (unable to move)
- Incapacitated (unable to take any action, stunned)
So I designed some quick concept sketches which the team helped me to refine. Then it was time to test and check them in the engine.
This is how they all look overlapping and while there's a lot going on it's much more readable than it was.
We here at Room-C hope this will make the game easier to play and make it more obvious that a status effect is affecting a unit and indicate its type.
You can share your opinions with us on our Discord server!
Will