March has been an interesting month, for sure.
First of all, it was my first month as a game design intern. That’s not the kind of things I want to write about in this blog, but let’s just say that the team is very nice and I’m feeling very welcome. Pretty great! Now, let’s move on to…
Personal project, yay!
I’m very happy to say that I was able to work on personal project pretty consistently during this month. I pretty much work every day (except when I have things to do, usually going to the theatre and watch a movie). I usually work around 1-2 hours every day after work, and about 5-8 hours per day during the weekend. Nice.
But what have I worked on?
Bugs Eat Bugs
I did what I said I would do, which is: trying to reconnect with Bugs Eat Bugs and see what kind of work I can do to better see its potential. At first, it was very difficult to reconnect with the project: I did not remember my code, and realised it was 5 months ago that I had to stop all my side-projects to work on my student game, and then find an internship…
With Godot 4.4 just out, I decided to start with a clean sheet. I know, seems like a bad idea. Actually, it was not. I made very good progress, and I think that was a good call.
I basically reprogrammed a bunch of things I did before, except in a more managable way. The prototype currently features:
- A very simple booster object that randomly generate 4 cards.
- A deck/hand system allowing you to place up to 7 cards slots.
- Basic battle features: turns, attacks, lifebars…
- And a bunch of other things I’m too lazy to explain.
After that, I took some more time to think about design. I was under the impression that my basic concept was not that promising (for a change), and I tried to spice things up a little bit while keeping it very simple.
The main issue was that players did not have a single action to accomplish during the battle phase, and, even worse, not a single decision to make. I figured that was too much auto for an autobattler, yet I wanted to be very careful not betraying my vision of making it the most minimalist game I possibly can.
My idea currently is to seperate a battle in rounds. Now, what’s a round? Very simple: it’s the number of turns before the next anemy attack. Let me explain: an enemy has between 2-4 attacks it can choose from. First, it will randomly select an attack from its movepool and announce it to the player. Each attack has its own unique efefct and damages and all the good stuff, but it also has a number of turns it takes to prepare.
Next, players will be able to change their cards order (the main action of the game, really), maybe use some kind of items, and then click a “attack” button that will trigger the autobattler moves of the cards. At the end of each turn, the turn counter before the enemy attack will go down. When it reaches zero, the enemy will attack, then it will randomly choose its next attack to come, and finally the player will again be able to change their card order before a new round begin.
Let’s look at a step by step overview of a battle sequence.
Battle sequence: step by step
Pre-battle (shop)
- Before the battle begins, the player can pay gold to “read the future” and either discover the next enemy (attacks, HP, etc.) or all the enemies (including bosses) of the current level.
- Players can also buy or resell cards and items, change the order of their cards and upgrade cards by stacking two identical cards on top of each other.
- Each level consists of two basic battles and one boss battle.
- When the player is ready, they can trigger the next battle that awaits them.
Battle
- Combat begins: any card or item effects that are triggered at the start of a combat are triggered.
- Reveal next enemy attack: the enemy draws its next attack and displays it, along with the number of turns it’ll take before attacking.
- Pre-round preparation: the player can move cards or use items. Once they are ready, they start their round (a button must be clicked).
- Start of round: start-of-round effects are triggered.
- Player’s turn(s): during a number of turns defined by the next enemy attack, the player’s cards will trigger their attacks or effects one by one, from left to right, if possible (costs, conditions…).
- Enemy’s turn: the enemy launches the planned attack.
- End of round : end-of-round effects are triggered.
- Reveal next enemy attack : see above.
- Pre-round preparation : see above.
- End of combat : when one of the two opponents has no more HP, or if the maximum number of rounds has been reached, the combat ends. If the player has lost: game over. If the player has won: they can continue their run.
After combat
- End-of-combat effects are triggered, if any.
- The player can move their cards again if they wishes.
- The player can sell mana cards directly from a slot that appears at the end of combat.
I believe this is enough for now, and I need to try that design before changing things. Especially because I don’t want to make things more complicated than what they need to be.
What’s next?
I only have a limite time (right now, I’m about to eat chicken), but my goal is to come up as quickly as I can with a prototype to try out. I don’t think the concept is that much fun, but I’ll give it a spin, and see what I can (or cannot) do with it.
Bugs Eat Bugs has been renamed Bug Feast, but I kind of suspect I won’t stick to that bug theme for long (I kind of already diverted from it), so chances are I’ll rename it soon enough. I may want to go for something very Tarot-inspired. We’ll see.