Redesigning Gameplay and Companion App

Although the original RPG Turn-Based battle system would work as intended on a personal network (as I have freedom over Firewall control), there'd be no sure way that the design for "Playing solo externally then coming together to link data" would remain intact at the ExpoTees environment.

To counter this, over the week of tests, I went into thinking about alternative battle systems and social aspects to a Travellers-style game, slowly phasing out the direct necessity for a Mobile Controller but instead the functionality of a Companion App to enhance an already rich but simple game loop that runs without network dependency.

Ideas from current designs

The critical thought remained constant: a light Dungeon-crawl feel.

Regardless of the battle system, the feeling of player agency mattered meaning selecting routes (encounters) during a session remained a core focus in the loop.

This was similar to the Labyrinth in Dissidia 012: Final Fantasy (Square Enix, 2011): win a battle, chose the next battle for a prize of your choice and reach an exit to claim your spoils.

The loop however needed to be downscaled, where Dissidia could afford each room having choices within choices (due to their overall content size), where I would aim for a shorter game loop for Players to wish to dive back in at their leisure.

More freedom from the traditional turn-based?

Moving away from a hard-networking game means latency becomes less of an issue, so I was able to consider more active-gameplay content.

The concept of a pseudo-XCOM game arose where you can move dynamically before being locked into a combat phase for free fire, acting like Brawl Stars (Supercell, 2017) meets Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle (Ubisoft, 2017).

It was a fun idea that allowed the title to act independently of any mobile hardware allowing more than 4 Players to take part if included, but seemed to still close to the previous idea.

Friendly as a Solo Session, but rewarding with Friends?

Thinking more of a good-feeling Battle environment to showcase on my portfolio, I considered a simple room-to-room combat session with an Archer (as a practice on range combat this time).

The idea was to focus on a single character short-session experience (as expected in the Expo environment), allowing possible mobile users to posses weapons to support the main player similar to Cappy in Super Mario Odyssey (Nintendo, 2017). This allowed a Multiplayer game to have Solo capabilities (ExpoTees) without separating the 2 modes too much.

Thoughts

With my project adjust for Expo showcasing, I opted for the Action mechanics over Turn-Based due to short Expo sessions.

With this, I thought to keep combat simple as seen in many Rougelikes (Hit, Dodge, and Special) so Player movesets can be easy to learn but rewarding when mastered even when placed in a small environment. Instead, I'd like to use this polish time to focus on the Player actions for dodging enemy attack-tells to collect quick kills whilst under a clock to push the feeling of battle-competency, as expected from the genre.

With combat being more focused, it would essentially be a Battle Gauntlet with multiplayer to balance the limited solo-special attacks.

Rogue Legacy: Simple "pick-up" mechanics, rich replay value through challenge.

Finally, with Mobile Tech taking the back-burner as a lighter submission goal, I've aimed to make the Companion App primarily a storage for Player unlocks/records to demonstrate the link since we're unable to guarantee network use, including the controller as an add-on.

It'd be functional but simple since it won't be able to be showcased but available should people wish to give the prototype a try outside of the event as part of the submission hand-in.

Until then, I'll continue down this avenue for a richer small Action title with the optional light side app to maintain my submission goals but also have something strong to show (and play!) on the Portfolio page.

Next up, I'll be ensuring it feels good to take part in combat!