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[Matt Anderson]

Heya guys,

I have been working enormously hard on an RPG for maybe a year and a half now, and it's about at the point where I really want to start showing it off and maybe getting some feedback. I would describe it as a blend of Shin Megami Tensei with a little MTG, Pokemon, and some choose-your-own adventure elements thrown in. It's definitely my own special blend of spices and mechanics.

I posted about it before, but it was mostly art. It's much further along now. Over the next few weeks I'm going to try and hash out some of the design struggles I go through here while I highlight various features. Those are the interesting bits. I'm aiming to do a post every day or two.

To start, what do you think of the below? Is your interest piqued?

Features:

• Dozens of characters (Subroutines) to use and do battle with, each with their own unique combo-able abilities and animations.
• Utilize hacks (passive skills) from a diverse pool that tweak and modify your Subroutines' skills or expand your narrative options.
• Hundreds of items all illustrated. Equip your character with branded clothes to get style bonuses, and put patches on your Subroutines to enhance their skills.
• Dive into areas twisted by the mysterious Glitch as you restore and repopulate a corrupted universe.
• Sweet science fiction narrative set in a culturally rich, fully digital world.
• Engaging narrative decisions to be made at every turn.
• Fully server operated for dynamic content updates and coming PvP / trading action.

Screenies:



UPDATE Oct. 10 - More Screenies:

[happymonster]

Wow, the art is stunning!

[ashtonmorris]

Yeah, great artwork there!

[oodavid]

Gorgeous art

[EDarkness]

Game looks great.  Love the art.

[Matt Anderson]

Thanks for the complements. Our artists are incredible.

We are now about a month away from a strong vertical slice and demo. There is an enormous amount of choice-driven narrative in this game, close to a novel's worth -- excited to see how people respond to it.

[Matt Anderson]

Updated the top with new screens and content.

[Kinaetron]

Wow this game looks amazing, the detail in the sprites alone is astounding

[matriax]

YOu say the game is for mobile, but also for iPad/tablets?

[ephoete]

Wow it's great. Doing all this on your own only? 

[Matt Anderson]

Heya guys -- thanks. Yeah, this is a mobile game, and will eventually see both Android/iOs tablets and phones. It's built in Unity, so it's possible that it will see other platforms, but as you can see, the aspect ratio doesn't make that super easy to do. When I decided to make it mobile, I wanted the best tactile experience for playing on the go -- that ended up being a vertical orientation.

As for building it solo, not quite. I am doing the design, art direction, UI, and about 80% of the programming. There are two other part-time team mates (my brother and a friend) that I'm grateful to have. The artwork is outsourced for pay to some talented freelance artists and friends (couldn't imagine doing all that , although I do make the art lists, review art, specify tweaks, etc.)

For the design log, I implemented this guy last night.



This is a Subroutine called Memolock, a bomb unit. It comes with two abilities, one that adds charge counters, and another that detonates it, dealing more damage for every charge counter it has.

Memolock is great in defense buffing parties (or other stall parties) that can keep it alive long enough to gear up for a wipe. Conversely, detonating him turn one can make a great opener for a rushdown party if you want to live dangerously.

I also implemented a Hack you can find that makes all your Memolocks start combat with one charge. It takes up a valuable hack slot, but worth it if you want to make them a core part of your strategy.

A bit worried about balancing this dude -- I'm always wary of units that have possibility to wipe out a whole team... I'm making him very weak defensively so you really have to work to pull it off.

[Matt Anderson]

Spent an enormous amount of time over the past week reworking the item drop system. I wanted to get more play out of each asset, and the artwork is so beautiful that I wanted even items that you find very early to have potential use late game.

Now the game has an item leveling system somewhat like Diablo's. Items are given a level roughly equivalent to your character's power when they are purchased from a shop. All item drops (schematics) are pushed into shops when they are found, you purchase gear directly into equipment slots, and you can't equip gear without destroying what was in the slot previously. This generates some constant excitement around almost always having better options to upgrade into, and lets players hold on to pieces of gear they want to save for later levels. It also keeps early gear that the player likes potentially viable late game.

Unfortunately, items touch nearly every aspect of the game. I had to rework the character UI, shop UI, item UI, subroutine UI, as well as many server communications, how items are stored on characters and subroutines in the database, etc etc etc. Took a week. Lots and lots of time for a tweak.

[Matt Anderson]

Wrote a ton of story over the last few days -- primarily around the area Scrapland and the nearby dungeon, the Broken Heap.

The Broken Heap is an endless junkyard of all the corrupted and broken memory on the network, and Scrapland is a staging area for reclaiming and salvaging some of that broken code.

[ephoete]

A picture's worth thousand words!

[Matt Anderson]

Heya guys,

I posted six more screens at the top of the thread!

-Matt