Campain of Combat Systems

April passed and it's been a month since I published the New Steam Page of Farewell.

It was a very complicated month, because it meant starting the next stage: to have a demo ready. It doesn't have much left to finish, but what it needed to define was the combat system. So began the stage of experimentation and crisis of not knowing where to go.

Testing Campain

I did the design of dozens of combats, but finally I decided to develop 3. The idea was to test:

• How fun it was

• How hard it was to develop

• Players thoughts

• If it felt right for my kind of game.

Undertale-like

First, Undertale style combat with an emotion system like in Omori. I leave some images here of what I developed:

I liked the result, but there were two problems.

On the one hand, people didn't seem to be very interested, and on the other hand, I realized that the combat was going to have limitations on what I want to do in my game. So I moved to the following iteration

Octopath Travelers-like

The second test was to make a JRPG but in 2.5D in the style of Octopath traveler

I liked the way it looked, and I felt I could use a lot of my 3D experience, but it had two problems:

• I couldn't find the twist to make it feel unique. The aiming mechanics I had designed here did not feel good.

• With all the rest of the game in 2D, with the lighting and other settings it was going to be very complex just for me to maintain it and build on that, plus it was going to take a lot of time.

Maybe in the future it could work, I don't know, but for now I had to archive it.

The Aiming Mechanic

The third test was the one I'm currently developing: a JRPG with a aiming mechanic and with emotions that affect the gameplay.

The two core mechanics:

• Having to aim with 3 different attacks, where you have to choose who to hit, who you want to do more damage to, and that there are different levels of mastering in each one.

• Having an emotion system but that affects more on the gameplay and cooperative.

There are a couple of things that I haven't developed yet but are being worked on, like skills when everyone has the same emotion or combos when hitting the same enemies.

Everything has room for improvement, but I like the direction it is taking.

Summary

I can't tell you how much I struggled to get to the final combat system, because it seemed like every step I took was wrong and final, because if I didn't like the combat when the demo came out, it meant throwing away months of work and starting from scratch.

I was helped by many friends to be able to decide what I finally wanted. What helped me to define the direction of the combat system was the sum between what I would like as a player to have the game I am thinking about and the possibility of a demo soon.

I hope to reach a successful conclusion and at least be happy with the result.

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What about you?

Have you been in the situation of having multiple options and not knowing where to go?

What did you do in the end?

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