I'm seeking opinions and ideas on the design of a mini game that will be included on an upcoming "Princess Maker/Cute Knight" type of game. I'll just copy and paste what I wrote on my blog:
I have been designing the new battle system and I finally decided on how it is going to be, let me tell you about it.
The characters are going to remain the same like in the other battle system idea but adapted to the gameplay of this new one, they are going to be procedurally generated except yours, which are going to be customized to your own desires, choosing any weapon you like, any armor you like, and you’ll be able to see them fighting with other fighters in this mini game.
You won’t need to teach your characters lots of different attacks like in Pokemon or Final Fantasy, instead of that, each battle will change the attacks of all the characters in the field, you will have the choice to use the special attack given by the terrain in which the chosen character is at, so for example, if a character is in a “Swamp” it will recieve the “Poison” special attack only while he/she is at that terrain. So, each battle will give different terrain types and this ensures that each battle will be different from the last one, requiring a different tactic each time.
The play experience will be something like this: the battle is divided in two teams, a player team and enemy team, and it will be fought by turns. The player will analize the battle field to make decitions, and since each terrain has effectiveness against another terrain (example: swamps give attack bonus against deserts) the player will try to guess who is going to attack who and will act accordingly by choosing who to attack first, and who to defend, this decition will also be based on what enemies are the most powerfull.
There are two columns for each side (look at the screenshot below), the first column is for placing characters far from the battle field, this place is for archers (who can attack anyone they want in the battlefield no matter in which position they are) and for characters who want to momentarily stay away from the battle to replenish health or do other things. The second column is for close combat, all characters placed here can only attack the one who is in front of them, meaning that if an enemy is covering someone behind them, they have to first defeat him to get to the one who they are guarding.
The player will also have a chance to get defence and attack bonuses by pressing buttons at the right time.
There will be traps, items, and a retrat option. All the characters will apply the following stats which can be trained and increased in other parts of the game, besides using the stats bonuses given by the weapon used and armor: strength, accuracy, health, defence, sword proficiency, bow proficiency, trap placement, and maybe more.
The battles will take little time and the player will gain experience points, money, and maybe rare items and game story advancement.
The screenshot is just a mockup that shows how the battle will look like, I still have to program the prototype for it. The menu is from a screenshot of another game, it will be similar to that but not exactly the same. The colored boxes represent the terrain type and on top of them are the animated characters formed in teams facing eachother to fight.
Comments and ideas welcome.
Developer
