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[TeeGee]

Bonfire is a tactical roguelite about journey, failure, and heroes who care a little too much.



Website | Steam page

Bonfire started as a silly prototype that was supposed to prove I can code a functional RPG in 8 hours. Turns out I can. For a while it was my sanity hobby project during the troubled development of Solstice, to finally become a full-fledged tactical RPG with a Steam release coming very soon. All in all around 6 years of development. The longest I ever worked on a game.

The core idea was to take a jRPG battle system, boil it down to what actually matters tactically, drop the menu navigation and make it all very quick and clickety click. Somewhere along the way it became strangely personal, completely changed its looks, and got a story so depressing that it's cute how depressing it is. To be honest, it's the most fun I had developing a game since Magi (which was 12 years ago!!!)

Steam webpage (there's a demo!).

Feedback of course is very welcome!  

[TeeGee]

The heroes:

[moi]

I have no idea what a "battle system" is.
Does it play like the battles in HOMM?

[Udderdude]

Is this like Final Fantasy where units in front take more damage?  Could use some more positioning elements.

[TeeGee]

Battle system, as in: "Final Fantasy 6 had a cool battle system."

The game is basically that. A distilled battle system with very simple rules -- just enough to create strategic depth. It plays a bit like roguelikes, with permadeath, crazy difficulty, and random levels. Only, instead of exploring dungeons, you fight battles.

Each encounter works like a puzzle. Your party stands against a randomized set of monsters, where each enemy has some unique role and poses a different challenge. You need to figure out how to defeat them, while also preserving your resources for future battles.

The game is turn based. Your characters have three different actions available to them, depending on if you click the enemy, your ally, or yourself. For example, the Knight can either attack, protect an ally, or heal herself. More advanced characters have more specialized actions. You need to carefully decide what to use and when, as monsters are generally very powerful. You also gather items which can be used only once but produce very powerful effects.

Every "dungeon" consists of a certain number of battles and other encounters, with a boss at the end. If you manage to beat it, you get some gold. If you die, you die. Gold can be spent between dungeons to unlock more items or slightly increase your characters' stats. A single session takes around 15-45 minutes, depending on the length of the dungeon (there are several to pick).

That's basically it. So far I'm pretty happy with how it plays. Almost every move matters, and there are some cool combos hidden in different party setups. I think if someone liked Magi or Desktop Dungeons, they should like Bonfire too.

[Udderdude]

Is it possible to create a "crap" team which can't really complete the difficult content?  How random are the fights, are some random fights harder than others?

[TeeGee]

I'm trying to make each party setup relatively viable, but of course some combinations may be more risky than others. Or just better against a certain type of enemy. I'm avoiding creating irreplaceable characters by making sure that there are several different healers and supporters, and that almost every character can deal a lot of damage on their own. We tried some crazy teams with a friend, like all healers or no healers at all, and it worked surprisingly well.

Battles are semi-random. They vary in general difficulty -- it gets harder as you progress, with some opportunities to catch a breath here and there. I want every encounter to provide unique challenge, so enemy parties are not completely randomized. Each monster belongs to a category. Like: easy, challenging, strategic (can do something nasty if you let it), supporter, etc. An average difficulty encounter may include a common monster, a supporter, and a strategic one. Or two commons with a help of one supporter. Or a challenging one surrounded by easies. And so on. Then, the exact creature to fill each role is picked at random from the monster set available for that dungeon. Totally learned that trick from some old interview with Bill Roper about how Diablo monsters sets are picked for each level.

[Udderdude]

the exact creature to fill each role is picked at random from the monster set available for that dungeon. Totally learned that trick from some old interview with Bill Roper about how Diablo monsters sets are picked for each level.

Interesting, I'm doing the same with a current project of mine.  Good luck with this one, would like to test it at some point.

[Chris Pavia]

I'm liking the sound of this so far!

[TeeGee]

Changed the backdrop for a more simple and fitting one, and made the characters larger.



I think it already looks much better. I'm wondering if the backdrop shouldn't be a bit darker to make the HUD standout more, or maybe it should have a slight gradient -- darker around the edges. Thoughts?

[TeeGee]

My first attempts at cartoon-styled explosions and effects (totally pointless without seeing it in motion, I know).



It's a new challenge for me. I'm more used to making semi-realistic particles that rely heavily on glows and additive blend mode, like here:



While this has to use simple, flat shaded assets, and make them seem cool and dynamic through proper animation. I decided against using particles and instead coded all the effects manually, as if they were animations. This way I can have more control over how they move and transform, use cool tweening functions, and such.

[Moczan]

Yeah, tease us with 'postponed till ever' ArcMagi more 

[Chris Pavia]

Why does each character have a copy of their sprite in the UI behind them? Even if you're going to replace them with portraits, it seems like it adds unnecessary visual complexity to the scene as a whole, IMO.

[TeeGee]

They were going to get replaced with actual portraits, but you may be right. Though, I need something there that can be hovered over for a tooltip. I'll experiment with a simpler setup. Thanks.

[Uykered]

More Lurk graphics pls :D

[TeeGee]

Haha! I see I did Bonfire disservice by posting that AM screenie. I know it's not on Lurk's level of fidelity and awesomeness. But on the other hand, this game is actually going to come out soon . And I still need feedback.

[Chris Pavia]

They were going to get replaced with actual portraits, but you may be right. Though, I need something there that can be hovered over for a tooltip. I'll experiment with a simpler setup. Thanks.

Yeah I think it's good to have something simple there for tooltips and whatnot. Just wanted to point out that having something equally or more detailed than the battle sprites themselves will just draw attention away from them, since our eyes are drawn to detail and contrast. Which is why I think the Final Fantasy games save the detailed portraits for the text-heavy menu screens, to give a visual anchor and focus point for the characters among all those stats and menu items.

I think portraits would be cool if they came up at a time when they are meant to be the focus of the screen, like in the Marvel vs Capcom games the higher-res art comes out for the supers and what not.

[TeeGee]

And if it looked like this?



I need that tooltip space, so I tried to generally make it lighter and blend the hero's portrait with the backdrop. I also tried a version with the face removed altogether and the unit's name in the healthbar serving as the tooltip space, but it looked pretty awful.

[Chris Pavia]

That is an improvement, but what about some icon or banner that represents their class?

[TeeGee]

Not sure if it's a good idea. Monsters also need tooltips and it would require us to create a distinct and clear symbol for every creature we add.