24-09-2021 These past weeks Journeys has undergone a few backend changes and additions. Because of this the application has been in ‘disarray’ for a while and is not quite in a demo state.

Upgrading characters
As mentioned in previous updates, in between battles the player will get the chance to upgrade their characters. Right now, this functionality is still bare bone, but as of now it is possible to increase a characters health by dragging a ‘page’ item over the character (as shown in the animated gif below).

Drag ‘n drop functionality

Each character of course has their own story, but at the beginning of the game this story is still unwritten. As the player wins battles they will be awarded special ‘pages’ for their character’s story. So, in practice, a player will receive loot in form of pages containing pieces of story that grant bonuses to the character the page is given. For instance, the player finds a page containing a piece of backstory about “growing up amongst a knightly order.” Because of this background a character would then receive bonus to their attack stat. Backstories will come in a variety of types, each with different bonuses provided to the character (backstory, flashback, motive, etc.).

It has not yet been determined how this mechanic is going to work exactly. Right now there are two ideas on the table. One idea is each character having an empty book with a set amount of slots for these page items. The player then has to ‘mix and match’ to utilize the available pages and their bonuses. The other idea is simply just stacking pages onto characters, with no limit to how many pages a character can get.

There’s also a separate concept of having several page qualities (novel, mundane, masterpiece, epic, saga, etc.) and being able to upgrade pages. For instance, ‘novel’ quality is quite low, but combining three novel pages creates an ‘epic’ page.

On top of that there could be page qualities that indicate pages have negative side effects. For instance, the player finds a page of masterpiece quality, but it’s also ‘convoluted.’ This could mean a page gives a bonus health of 100 but it lowers the attack stat by 10.

Save functionality expanded
The game will now save game progress and character stats. This was necessary to move forward, as upgrading characters and reaching higher stages is closely tied to how the storage of information should work as well as to the hardening of the application to prevent corruption of save files.

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

  • Save feature
    • Current chapter is saved, so the player can continue from there after closing the game
    • Character stats are saved
  • Upgrade items
    • A basic item has been created that allow the player to upgrade a character
    • These items can be dragged and dropped on top of player characters to increase corresponding statistics

Future changes

  • Extra phase in between battles where loot can be used to buff the player party
    • This phase has been implemented, but still needs streamlining and tweaking
  • Defeated enemies / enemy parties drop loot
  • More character abilities
  • More types of enemies
  • Overarching game shell
  • Extra on hit graphic effects
    • e.g. character is engulfed in flames when hit by the knight’s fire attack
  • Mana
    • Mana will be represented in the character UI
  • Sounds
    • Characters will be provided with unique on hit and on death sounds
  • More speech bubble events
    • Speech bubbles will be randomly shown on attack, hit, death, etc.
  • Victory and loss conditions