March has been a struggle, not only for us as developers but for the entire world as well. It's definitely a challenge developing a game with this theme given all the suffering that's been happening all around us. We are from Manila, Philippines and we've been under lockdown since mid-March. We've seen a lot of heartwarming kindness coming out from the community, but there is also some mindbogglingly insidious/inept behavior displayed by some of our public officials, some of which might probably make even a Ruinarch demon blush. Unlike in games, it's never fun to see evil in real life, especially during a crisis like this.
Despite the stress and anxiety brought about by the pandemic, we continue to keep pushing through and we're using all our willpower to keep trudging on. Please see below what we have accomplished so far this month.
New Elements
We added two new elemental damage to the game: Wind and Earth.
Wind
Wind damage transforms water into vapor, and liquid poison into poison cloud.
Earth
Earth damage is basically a neutralizer. It can remove the other elemental status effects like Burning, Poisoned, Zapped and Frozen.
Poison Clouds, Vapors and Frosty Fog
We've expanded how Poison Clouds work now. It has a hidden stack value that determines how large it is. Multiple colliding Poison Clouds can merge into one bigger cloud. Certain elements interact with Poison Cloud in various ways. We'll let you guys experiment to discover these.
In addition to Poison Clouds, we now also have Vapor and Frosty Fog. As mentioned previously, Vapor is produced when water is hit by Wind damage. Frosty Fog can be produced when a Vapor receives Ice damage. Both also have interesting interactions with some elements so have fun experimenting with these!
Mental Break: Loss of Control
We made some unique mental breaks for magical-based classes. We call it Loss of Control. Basically, when a magic user have a mental breakdown, they lose control of their powers, causing some sort of magical disaster in the area. Druids trigger Electric Storms, Shamans trigger Poison Blooms, and Mages trigger Brimstones.
More Spells
Iceteroids
Similar to Brimstones, but the asteroids coming down from the sky are frozen and applies Ice damage instead.
Wind Blast
Deals a moderate amount of Wind damage on a small area.
Terrifying Howl
Causes characters within range to flee in fear.
Fire Ball
A slowly moving ball of fire that applies Fire damage on contact.
Ball Lightning
A slowly moving electric ball that applies Electric damage on contact.
Heat Wave
Increases the temperature of the area (outside structures), and randomly applies Overheating status effect on characters.
Rain
Applies Wet to the entire area (outside structures).
Landmine
The player can place this trap on an empty tile. It explodes and deals huge Fire damage when a character triggers it.
Snare Trap
The player can place this trap on an empty tile. It ensnares the character that triggers it, preventing it from moving for a duration.
Freezing Trap
The player can place this trap on an empty tile. It applies Frozen to the character that triggers it, preventing it from moving for a duration.
More Monsters
New and Revised Objects
- Elemental Crystals - When destroyed, they apply elemental damage to a small radius around them.
- Ankh of Anubis - The player can activate this artifact to spawn a Quicksand.
- Heart of the Wind - The player can activate this artifact to spawn a Tornado.
- Necronomicon - The player can activate this artifact to spawn hostile skeletons. They won't become minions of the player but they will still be hostile to the defending villagers.
- Berserk Orb - The player can activate this artifact to turn nearby characters Berserk.
- Gorgon Eyes - The player can activate this artifact to Paralyze nearby characters.
- Winter Rose/Desert Rose - We'll keep what these objects do a surprise for now, as well as how to trigger them.
- Herb Plant - Used to produce Healing Potions
- Ember - Obtained from burning objects. Can be used to quickly remove Freezing or Frozen statuses.
- Antidote - Used to remove Poisoned from characters.
- Ice - Obtained from Frozen objects. Used to quickly clean up Poison from objects.
Revised Village Structures
We've reworked how all of the village structures look like. They look much more detailed now:
Family Relationships
This has actually been already in the game for a while but we forgot to take note of it on the previous DevLog. Previously, we just had familial relationship represented as Relative and the game doesn't really identify what type of relationship it is (mother/father/sibling/etc) and it has always been considered a Positive relationship which in reality, could sometimes not be the case. So we've updated it by generating family trees prior to world generation. When we spawn the characters, all their familial relationship based on their family tree will be visible and their Opinion towards their family members will also be generated, based on hidden compatibility values. Here's an example:
Skill Trees
Instead of locking players into one Archetype, we've decided to turn the Archetypes into Skill Trees instead and allow players to unlock abilities from all three branches as they progress through the game. All players now start with the same set of abilities, and they can then spend Experience Points to unlock new abilities from the three skill trees. This will provide a more flexible progression for players, and allow them to develop their own playstyle as they see fit.
This is still a work in progress and will be finished this April.
Win/Lose Condition
Even though we're leaning more heavily towards the sandbox side of the game, we still need to implement some sort of goal that the player will aim for. There are three ways for a playthrough to end:
1. WIN - wipe out all defending villagers
2. LOSE - portal gets destroyed
3. NEUTRAL - abandon world
Depending on what happens, and how many villagers have been killed, the player will then gain Experience Points which he can then spend to unlock more abilities from the Skill Trees. This loop provides the game's long term progression.
With the recent changes to how spells work, the player still has more options to experiment or just fool around with a world. After all, there's no punishment regardless of what happens in a playthrough other than not gaining much Experience Points.
Threat Meter
As mentioned above, a playthrough ends in a Loss if the player's Portal is destroyed in any way. One of the primary means that this will occur is from counterattacks of defending villagers. We trigger this through a Threat Meter system. Basically, most of your damaging spells will increase your Threat Meter, depending on how many villagers witnessed it.
Once your Threat Meter is full, it triggers a counterattack and resets to zero. A counterattack is basically a group of villagers that will target one of your demonic structures. This already exists in the current build but still pretty rudimentary. We think it needs some improvements over the coming weeks.
As we design and expand our skill trees, we envision the Puppetmaster skill tree as the one that would have "weak" and "subtle" powers, but the upside is that they normally do not increase the Threat Meter that much, if at all. Meanwhile, the Ravager skill tree will have some of the most powerful spells, but they should also generate high amounts of Threat.