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[WarriorGeneral]

It's Saturday, time for a screenshot of something recent! Recently we've set up some handlers for battle-mode backgrounds, and we've been working on some more character animation and effects for skills. Below is the Dark Knight class getting ready to use one of his dark magic spells, finally with a background for the battle scene to match the grassy tile set.

I've been working on a new tile set as well (snow/ice) to start showing some variety, since we want a lot more than just a grassy environment. More on that later, though.

[WGCorndog]

Character of the Week


Yukiko the Assassin:
Striking with great skill and guile, Yukiko excels at quickly eliminating her target.

Sample Skills
Being an assassin, Yukiko has a wide array of skills
that help her quickly take out a single target

Ambush Passive: Gain increased damage every round that you are not targeted	Hide Prevents enemies from targeting you and decreases damage taken until next turn.
Kill Attack that deals bonus physical damage to a near death enemy	Throw Knife     Attack that can hit the back row     and is guaranteed to hit

[RujiK]

This looks like balancing is going to be a nightmare. Cool idea though. But dang, lots of art is needed.

[WGCorndog]

This looks like balancing is going to be a nightmare. Cool idea though. But dang, lots of art is needed.

Oh yes, balancing is definitely one of my concerns, and always has been. With so many moving parts it will be difficult to balance correctly.

However, the design/format of the game kind of alleviates a lot of the burden of balancing. There's a great deal of randomness during every journey through a time rift. A good portion of your party will consist of whichever survivors you find, whether they be combat powerhouses or more support oriented. If you happen to find the perfect party, that run may turn out to be easy. However, the next run you might find a handful of weaklings and struggle to get out alive.

A lot of that design philosophy is coming from playing lots of Binding of Issac. It's far from balanced, sometimes you'll find combinations of items that just make the game laughable, but at the same time, there's a lot of combinations that make that particular run more difficult than it should be. Finding the broken combinations of items ends up being just as fun as struggling through with no speed or damage.

I have a general template on "where to aim for" with characters when designing them, and spend a lot of time compiling and going through a floor or two with every skill of every character, at both level 1 and max level.

[WarriorGeneral]

From this week's Screenshot Saturday, I recently worked on a snow tileset. Here I am testing it out, after adding some code to generate footsteps as you walk:

[WGCorndog]

Character of the Week


Zeke Stunning the Wrestler:
Shiny and sunglassy, Zeke is a high adrenaline fighter
who can taunt enemies into attacking him.

Sample Skills
Zeke is a glutton for punishment, being able to dish out as much of a beating as he takes.

Taunt Taunts an enemy to target you and reduces their damage	Anger    Passive: Gain increased damage    every time you take damage
Adrenaline Rush Staggers taken damage and increases damage dealt	Shake Off     Remove negative effects and     gain health for each removed

[WGCorndog]

Character of the Week


Caleb the Dark Knight:
Dark knight with heavy armor, Caleb overwhelms enemies with debuffs.

Sample Skills
As a heavy armor class, Caleb excels at taking a beating. However,
he also has an array of debuffs that help weaken his enemies.

Provoke Taunts all enemies to target you	Dark Bond Redirects a portion of taken damage to an enemy as Dark damage
Eclipse Spell that deals Dark damage to all enemies and lowers their HP	Crush Soul     Attack that damages the MP of the target    and lowers their spell resistance

[Gunlap]

Ooooo. I love me a good Roguelike. I'll definitely be following this one.

From an audio standpoint - is each class going to have a unique kind of sound/musicy bit to represent them?

[Dub J]

Ooooo. I love me a good Roguelike. I'll definitely be following this one.

From an audio standpoint - is each class going to have a unique kind of sound/musicy bit to represent them?

I'm with ya, brother.

I like the wrestler class but am really interested in a troll class.  Is this going to be available?

[WarriorGeneral]

Recently I worked on an update to the grass tile set, because I wasn't fully happy with my original base grass "texture." I also added some trees and more variations, and started to design the game's first real map sections, as opposed to the basic stand ins we had been testing with.  Here is a still and a lowish-frame-rate (to keep the image size small) animated walkthrough:






Also, to answer your question:

Ooooo. I love me a good Roguelike. I'll definitely be following this one.

From an audio standpoint - is each class going to have a unique kind of sound/musicy bit to represent them?

There will certainly be plenty of unique sounds for the various skills and spells and whatnot of each class, but I'm not sure it would be feasible or even really fit to have over 100 different music themes for each character. You can have up to six characters in your party at a time, so it might be kind of weird to pick a tune for just one of them.

As of now, we the plan is just having a general chiptune style soundtrack, with some unique themes for battles, boss fights, and certain special encounters.

[WGCorndog]

Character of the Week


Gabrielle the Spellblade:
Swirling with mystical energy, Gabrielle weaves both sword and spell.

Sample Skills
Being able to use both spells and attacks, Gabrielle has skills to always get the upper hand.

Enchanted Blade Passive: Attacks cause your next Spell to grant a free turn	Mirage Prevents enemies from being able to target an ally
Soul Burn Burns a portion of target's MP, dealing Arcane damage	Spell Absorb     All Spell damage taken for     the next turn is converted into MP

[mzn528]

Holy shit that's a lot of classes, your artist did a great job.

However my only concern is that with this many classes you will lose focus and resulted in too many repeatable classes. Personally I would like to see a medium number of unique, balanced classes instead of many different classes with similar skills.

I can see great potential from this game, good luck and keep up the great work!

[WarriorGeneral]

Holy shit that's a lot of classes, your artist did a great job.

However my only concern is that with this many classes you will lose focus and resulted in too many repeatable classes. Personally I would like to see a medium number of unique, balanced classes instead of many different classes with similar skills.

I can see great potential from this game, good luck and keep up the great work!

Yeah, I could see that being a concern. However, a good chunk of the characters to find are non-combat related characters, more designed around building up your survivors' town, so they are sort of a different part of the game. The town allows you to unlock power ups, items, and special events. These are characters such as a farmer, a banker, a blacksmith, a scientist, etc. I haven't gotten around to the art for many of those yet, simply because the combat-related classes are a lot more fun and interesting to show off.

Thanks for the comment!

[WarriorGeneral]

Last week I finished seven new character designs, for a total of 47 so far (which can be seen in the OP). Here are the new ones:

Gabrielle, the Spellblade, was outlined by Corndog a few days ago; she was a new design.

[xix]

Really excited to see 100+ classes of stereotypes. Please include a feisty woman, someone from Brooklyn that likes pizza, and a stingy Chinese person.

edit: That was kinda mean. Depth and nuance and specificity really help make your characters. Nobody likes playing a stereotype unless its a specific stereotype. Also accidentally objectifying someone is like one step away from intentionally objectifying someone.

[WarriorGeneral]

Really excited to see 100+ classes of stereotypes. Please include a feisty woman, someone from Brooklyn that likes pizza, and a stingy Chinese person.

edit: That was kinda mean. Depth and nuance and specificity really help make your characters. Nobody likes playing a stereotype unless its a specific stereotype. Also accidentally objectifying someone is like one step away from intentionally objectifying someone.

Hm, I guess I am confused on how you think I am objectifying anyone? I mean, yeah, a lot of our characters are based on certain real-life jobs or classic RPG tropes, but with limited pixel art, of course I'm going to highlight certain elements that "define" those things. How else am I going to show that X character is a knight or a doctor, in a way that is easy to comprehend for a player on first glance? Nothing there says the Chinese guy is stingy or the woman is feisty...unless you're reading into things from your own ideas.

Each character in Time Break will have custom dialogue for certain situations and interactions, to help flesh them out some, but it isn't "*insert stereotyped accented language here*" type stuff or anything like that. We are also attempting to a do a bit of lampshading on some of those classic JRPG tropes, with a bit of self-referential humor here and there.

However, a good roguelike game lets the player create his or her own narrative. It's not about pushing a heavy-handed story on the player, or injecting too much of your own voice into too many things. The player needs to have enough freedom to invent their own story, because the role-playing is what makes the whole genre fun. We're definitely trying to keep that in mind, and let the player do a lot of exploration without a forced storyline constantly injecting itself and dragging you away from what you want to do.

[WarriorGeneral]

Recently I've been working on skill/spell animations and FX. This week's Screenshot Saturday shows the Viking's Lightning Hammer skill, cropped to show the relevant parts. I've also updated the battle background generator to use the new grass tile set.

[WGCorndog]

Character of the Week


Ralf the Jester:
Dressed like a buffoon, Ralf distracts enemies and entertains allies.

Sample Skills
Ralf tends to be a mixed bag, with some support, some offense, some defense, and some just...weird.

Erractic Passive: At the beginning of every round you gain bonus to random attributes	Throw Knife Attack that can hit the back row and is guaranteed to hit
Anthem     Increases Power and Toughness     for all allies for three rounds.	Acrobatics     Passive: Gain increased Agility     every time you get hit.

[flipswitchx]

That's an awesome concept. The way the terrain floats in space reminds me of toejam & earl, though I doubt there is much inspiration from that its a fun (and sort of awe inspiring) scenery nonetheless.

[thecolonygame]

Reminds me of Secret of Mana! Cheers to the sudden nostalgia!