Annd I just realized that I skipped the number 9 haha. Well told you it's just prototyping/work in progress, right?

Example of a mission reward:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C0rdj5WW8AA86mg.jpg" style="max-width:100%">

You'll get 1 water and 1 nature resource, which you can spend to improve water/nature creatures

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1Qc6a_XAAE-XWu.jpg" style="max-width:100%">

The "companion selection screen"

Initially I thought that the two selected characters would determine the available creatures to summon+spells. But this way, would mean that the Death creatures would ALWAYS be present (since both main protagonists are death avatars).

So the options are two:

1) allow to choose both the two characters, which means that Lily/Ace could not be present

2) the chosen ally would determine only the spells (the spells are cast by the avatars and are unique to each), but the creatures would be choosen in another screen



I went with option 2, since the first one was a bit weird (the main character not present in the fight). Besides I think is better if you can select the elements separately in another screen. I am even thinking if to just have a sort of "roster of available creatures", each one with a value (based on the level/power) and you can spend "Soul Points" to choose which creatures will take part to the battle.



As you can see, there's still a lot to brainstorm

And also there's not a right or wrong choices, all the various combinations could be interesting to play, but "sadly" I have to pick one

Are they paired up by element? Little hard to tell, but doesn't look like it because the first and fourth columns are one gender.

No right now no, in the final game they'll be

Haha voilà I just did it:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1UFEBNXEAAmDVq.jpg" style="max-width:100%">

the elements are displayed and the characters are all in order now

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1ZP8uJWIAESeJZ.jpg" style="max-width:100%">

some experiments with a sort of map-grid... the problem is that some enemies were designed for cards, and so looks cut-off when shown in a map. And there's no time (or money) to redo ALL the 72 enemies as mini-characters on the map.

I could just do this using the same engine as Loren's, but honestly I wanted to try doing something different.

It doesn't help that probably 99% of people will just play this game in VN mode already knowing this kills my motivation a bit. I am not sure, maybe I'm just burned out, but I can't find the right inspiration for this game.



Next years I'm going to do all fanservice visual novels and stop. At least you don't go crazy trying to find a gameplay

In my opinion ... The style and tone of the art makes me think that the game will have simple but addicting game mechanics, like Pokemon. The fun would be in exploring the world, learning the character's abilities and picking your favorites.



Sizing the art too small sucks the life out of it. This art screams big and bold and would benefit from treating it like a mobile game (again, just in my opinion).

Yeah the pokemon thing was an option. I am not an expert, and when I watched some videos the gameplay/rules seemed REALLY simple. But it's successful, so as you say it works.

Maybe as usual I'm overthinking it - not necessarily a RPG must have 150 skills to be fun

One thing you're 100% right: showing the art so small (even if it would be displayed bigger during the status screen and such) it's really a bad idea

OK I think I'm going with pokemon style for sure. I started doing some research, and it's fun. Besides there will be already 3-4 more RPGs using the classic formula of party vs enemies (PS2, Roger Steel, Loren 2, etc)

I was wondering why are there both Chaos and Order characters to chose from? I thought you could be/do only one or the other during one playthrough?



Also I hope you are joking about fanservice thing.

Yes but the choice is not immediate, you can initially play as "neutral". We're also thinking about a sort of "secret mode" that would mean the character remains neutral (but in that case you can't romance anyone, so I am not sure will be very popular ).

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1eyDbiXUAAqk7I.jpg" style="max-width:100%">

got rid of that mini-grid/map, and started designing a more pokemon style game. Of course, not exactly like pokemon, but 1 vs 1 battle with tag teams.

Obviously it's really NOT simple, since all the art was designed to work for a card game... and changing completely the genre... it's not simple.

If PSCD sales weren't so bad I'd be tempted to just make this another card game and stop worrying. Gameplay done in 1 month!

Well, I think you said people did generally enjoy the card game gameplay...

Haha, for sure they didn't like the art

For the same reason I think Undead Lily sells itself just on the art. I think the vast majority of players who didn't like the card, was the randomness. If that gets removed... mumble mumble. Maybe I got an idea, will do some experiments in next days

Forgot about the randomness issue. You could modify it a bit by giving each character a special hero power to use - Hearthstone style - in the event they don't have any good cards in hand. (Wait, that's custom coding again!) Or maybe make a pokemon-card game hybrid.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1eyDbiXUAAqk7I.jpg" style="max-width:100%">

If PSCD sales weren't so bad I'd be tempted to just make this another card game and stop worrying.

W/ art like this, I just might not care if it is made as a card game even though I'm not used to playing such!



The skeleton alone looks BADASS; reminds me of the movie "Jason and the Argonauts"!

Forgot about the randomness issue. You could modify it a bit by giving each character a special hero power to use - Hearthstone style - in the event they don't have any good cards in hand. (Wait, that's custom coding again!) Or maybe make a pokemon-card game hybrid.

Haha you read my mind. That's exactly what I'll try. Also the "cards" will have more HP, so they will behave like "RPG units". Hard to explain, I'll make some prototypes and tests of course.

But this sort of custom coding is fine. I mean, from Loren to SOTW I changed over 5,000 lines of code, not a small difference! And again, I changed a lot of things for QoT. It's doing something from scratch that's bad, also because honestly I wouldn't do it as well as Anima, clean code, etc. Mine is... a hack (but works!).

W/ art like this, I just might not care if it is made as a card game even though I'm not used to playing such!

Well it WON'T be a card game - it will only use the same system as PSCD, but modified in a way that you won't be able to recognize it. Well, almost The creatures art is great indeed, as are the backgrounds (the Loren's GUI artist did them... 5 years ago! ) and are fully animated.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C2Hg646W8AAMAlD.jpg" style="max-width:100%">

I made some coding using the GUI sketch as base. It's coming out well I think. I will probably ask artist to swap the end turn with the summoning icon (the blue thing on bottom-right).

I was thinking that if you click in the button, a vertical column will appear on the right border of the screen with the various creatures you can summon during the battle

So the small card row at the bottom will be eliminated (also because you won't have "cards" but you can summon creatures on the battlefield). I am thinking that a solution to avoid battles dragging too long could be that you need to "build your army" and each unit costs X mana to add to the army.

This way not only you need to have the mana in the battle to summon the creature, avoiding to summon a Bone Dragon (one of the top creatures for Death) at turn 1, but you'll also need to have enough resources when you build up the army.



I'll still have limits depending on the creature rarity: you can have 3 skeleton/zombies, but max 1 bone dragon each "army" (Bone Dragon has 10 attack and 50 HP... ).



I'm not sure yet how/if I'll allow the big image on the left (the card zoomed in to read the description) or if I just will let player "examine" the card by right clicking on them.



I'm also trying with 5 vs 5 battles, but I might go down to 3 vs 3. Both system have advantages/disadvantages, so need to do some tests. I definitely want to make this game more accessible to everyone



Still brainstorming everything as you see

I will say the right-click to read the card was kinda annoying on PSCD (being on a laptop), where mouseover explanation would be nicer. But then again, that doesn't lend itself well to touch interfaces.



Also, what's the difference between "End Turn" and "End"?