Well, here's the prototype I've got. It has the framework right, and even some promising behaviour, but it's more like a toy than a game right now. A few obvious graphics bugs, and some objects do nothing when interacted with.
I feel sick thinking of having to explain it, but looks like my fingers are already typing.
QuickstartYou're the "@" sign, and always go first; click on the words on the left to make spells, then on a hex to move there and end your turn. The right side of the screen holds spells that creatures have casted. Everything affects the current "head space" that creatures are in (which you can tell by the color-coding; creatures and words in your current space use blinking characters).
A spell beginning with the word "aet" transports the caster into one of those spaces, designated by the second word. If there is none, the caster returns to the global space. If the designated space doesn't exist yet, it's created. This word is common and generated by Crawlers ("k"). The beauty of subspaces is that they're essentially psychological defenses: words inside don't vanish after turns, and you're protected from the butterfly effects of having everything affecting everyone. Remember, you don't target individual creatures in this game (apart from yourself on some occasions), you have to think of enemies as groups.
Beholders ("b") generate "midrikki" that obligates everyone in a space to successfully cast a spell on that turn, otherwise they'll die. Exhausting the word cloud in one's space seals the deal for the next in line.
"Ekson" is created by Angels ("a") and can be used to ban the words specified by it. Thus, it can't be casted individually (that simply skips a turn). When someone casts a spell beginning with a banned word, the spell is discarded - a way to remove words from a space.
"Ison" results when a creature dies. You can think of it as the idea of the creature that still lingers in the cavern's telepathic memory. However, since words in the global space vanish after every turn, the only way to currently use it in your spells is to destroy monsters inside subspaces. It changes the type of the words generated by creatures within a space.
There's also two queues. The left one just shows the order in which creatures act. This is decided during the spell casting phase: the more words one uses in a spell, the later they'll go next turn. The right queue shows what creatures are summoned as the tiles marked with a question mark are explored (the topmost one is next). Bump into enemies to drop them down in the queue. You can do this regardless of whether you're in the same space, as the game board is a distinct location. However, summoned creatures are automatically associated with your current space.
Skip comments with right-click, restart with R. There isn't a win condition yet as the boss is inactive, just play around with things based on the feedback you get.
What's next:-Needs more content
-Mainly, more words that allow you to manipulate the flow of the game better
-Like using their spells against themselves in creative ways
-Or changing the summon queue by using actual spells, not walking into monsters
-The player shouldn't get special treatment
-Some form of AI, right now everyone just combines spells randomly (which can have fun results, though)
-The words of casted spells should be drawn next to each other
-Code cleanup
-Halibut
Community
