16-07-21 Development in these last 10 days have been quite fruitful. The game is coming along nicely. Therefore it seemed like a good time for another update. At the end of this article there’s a short video of the current state of the game.

Development changes
Disclaimer: everything stated below is susceptible to changes in the future.

  • Knight character attack graphic improved
  • 2 new character abilites: flanker, area of effect
    • Flanker ability: character attacks a random unit that isn’t at the front (unless there’s one opponent left)
    • Area of effect: pretty straightforward, the character attacks all units simultaneously
  • 3 new characters: wizard, rogue and cleric
    • Wizard: low health, low attack but has an area of effect attack
    • Rogue: medium health, medium attack, attacks the backline of your opponent’s party by flanking
    • Cleric: low health, low attack but will be able to heal the party (when the healing ability has been implemented)
  • UI elements displaying character attack, health, damage taken and death
  • Game can now be paused
  • Placeholder background with a few animated assets

The knight’s attack graphic was changed as his high aim made it look like he would completely miss the tuskrat unit (because of its short height). With this change, a flaming sword attack was added which also better conveys the actual motion of his sweeping attack.

With this came the idea to give all (player) characters a cool looking attack graphic and right now these might be used for mana-fueled ‘skill’ attacks. In other words, a unit will use this more powerful attack that costs mana until mana is depleted, then switches to normal attacks.

Mana can then also be used for the cleric’s healing ability. They will heal the party for a small amount each round at the cost of mana. Though, with this mechanic it might be possible to have a stalemate situation. If it’s just the cleric left and one opponent and that opponent has less or equal attack to the healing ability of the cleric, the battle will obviously go on forever. Therefore healing will cost resources and these resources will be finite.

Upcoming changes:

  • Healing
    • As previously stated the healing ability will be implemented next and accompanying that mana or a similar finite source of power
  • Thorns ability
    • In the last development update this was mentioned. It seemed quite complex to add this ability in the current gameplay loop so implementation was postponed in favour of the flanker ability. It’s still on the agenda though.
  • Character creation / random enemy party creation
    • Currently, the creation of all characters is hard-coded. This will be improved so the player can actually create their own (main) character and the opposing party will be randomly generated.
  • Overarching game shell
    • Right now the game consists of a single battle. Of course you’d expect to have many battles in a game like this and these battles should be tied together by an overarching system. Earlier there was mention of a world map. This idea is still on the table, but to keep things simple, at this stage battles will first be chained together sequentially. On the iteration after that the player will then be able to choose a path