Hey I've been checking this out periodically - all sounds good with how you've described the game. You might also take some inspiration from some of Dragon Crown's progression systems - specifically their loot multipliers where, the longer you stay in, the better the loot gets.

Thanks. I will look into Dragon Crown, I haven't played it.

Each level in will have one or more locked rooms with treasures.



You can unlock the rooms with keys or blast the doors open with bombs. Or you can use magic scrolls that open doors magically.



Unlocked doors are not controlled by monsters, so you can use them to escape from tight battles.

Every game has some elements that are boring and unexcited to make but still important for player experience. Here are the boxes and barrels.



You can break barrels and boxes and find some items inside. Usually it's food and coins, but sometimes you may find keys, bombs, arrows, potions and other consumable items.



This was the first time I made animation of stuff breaking like this, so it was an interesting experience.

Here are some other mysterious-potion effects. Some are positive, some negative, and some balanced. For example, this one reduces your hit points but increases magic. Magic skill determines the damage and size of magic projectiles, and effectiveness of magic caused effects like using magic to buff weapons with poison. The game will also feature magic scrolls and the player would need to have a certain magic skill threshold to be able to understand what the scroll does before using it. Of course, if you are a warrior, you could still read the scroll and activate its magic, but some of the scrolls have really bad effects.



Potions can also increase your base skills, even to the point where it would make sense to switch class. For example, if you buffed up archery skill and range a lot, it would be a good strategy to start using bows and arrows.

On your adventure, you will find different magic potions. These potions are colored differently on each playthrough. For example, blue potion can mean stronger magic in one game, and faster speed in the next game. You can discover their effect with an Identify scroll, or you can take a chance, drink and see what happens.



This one allows you to see the enemies in adjacent areas. (1B) means that the effect will wear of after one battle.

Enemies (and barrels, boxes, etc.) can drop food when destroyed:



Eating food heals you. There will also be a Hunger debuff if you drink some suspicious potion, and you will need to eat to stop losing health.

Here are some images from the past week:







The full topic is here: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=54100.0

Every melee weapon in the game has a special rage attack. Swords mostly have some kind of dashing, axes can be thrown, hammers will be able to call on help from the gods and clubs become 3 times bigger than usual and smash down the enemies:



Here's the animation:

Most swords will have dashing as special rage attack:

Here's the final version of the stomp animation:

When enemies are knocked down, you can stomp them or smash your weapon to the ground to hit them real hard. Of course, when an enemy is on the ground, the hitbox is different, so I'm fine tuning that now.



You will be able to run and jump from a short distance. Unlike the knight, the mage jumps because he's too light to do ground smashing attack.



This looks so cool, I might add a long-jump competition to the game.

Goblins with shields cannot be attacked when they raise the shield, so you have to go around and attack from back:



When you defeat them, you can pick up their sword and use it:

It's hack&slash time:

I just made this nice swoosh in Gimp for the sword swing attack.




It can also be used partially (on the first strike frame):




If you press attack button during the up-swing, the hero also does the return-swing to get back to initial position:

Here's an improved potion drinking animation:



and a nice particle effect for healing.

Poison buff animation is complete:



Hope you like the bubbles.

It's kind of strange how his mouth fills up before the potion even reaches his lips. o-o

Yes. It's still WIP.

While toying with a nice pose to drink potions...



...I figured I need to remove the cork (plug) from the vial. Looks pretty good now:



Added a small emotional touch to it

You can find various potions in the world. Some are dropped from fallen enemies, some are found in chests, some are stored in barrels and boxes, some even hidden under the rocks which you will be able to destroy with bombs. And you will be able to buy some in shops as well.

Here's a small health potion. At the top, you can see what it looks like in player's inventory, and underneath is how you pick it up.



It heals 20 hit points, which is equal to one red bar. You can stack multiple potions of the same kind, so they only take one inventory slot.



I made a spearate magic particle effect animation for smaller items like this one.

[Special Magic Powers]

Special Magic Powers

One of the characters available at the start of the game is a mage who has a Snake Staff as the primary weapon. The Snake Staff fires basic blue magic orbs and has a special ability to imbue poison to weapons. It can imbue poison to itself as well, so you get to fire poisoned orbs.



The amount of poison damage depends on the player's magic proficiency. At 100% it's going to be 3 poison damage every 1.5 seconds (it only shows 2 in the screenshot, because I messed around with player stats and it wasn't at 100%). If a player is not very good with magic (say, a knight has only 30%), it will only do one poison damage in the same interval.

The poison does not kill, but it can completely drain the health points, and then it only takes one hit to finish off the enemy. The same goes for player characters.

It can be also used to make swords poisonous, or even some more deadly combinations: for example, if you find a fireball staff, you can make it poisonous as well, and it will shoot fireballs that set enemy on fire and poison him at the same time.