Happy June everyone, the blog is back.
It's good to see you guys again, by which I mean stare blankly at the text entry field while I hurriedly compile the important things that have happened since my last update. It's been a few months and the game has had an increase in followers and fans since then, alongside some design changes! For those reasons and more I will be restating the core pitch of the game, and give an update in what's changed, what's new, and what to expect from the game. With that out of the way...
Overview:Vernal Edge is a 2d pixel art sidescroller with deep combat mechanics, an open world to explore by airship, and a character focused story to drive it all! You play as Vernal, a punk young woman who has set off to a mysterious land that has been fractured and uplifted from the earth floating high in the sky, in search for the father she's never met to beat the hell out of him. Along the way you'll meet lots of characters, explore islands, discover there's more to your journey than there first seemed, and discover dark places not meant to be seen.
The combat aspect of the game is inspired by action games such as Devil May Cry, God Hand, and Kingdom Hearts 2. You will be juggling enemies, managing resources mid combat, and obtaining new moves for your character to increase your capabilities. With special attacks, spells, items, and environmental mechanics, each combat encounter should feel fresh and like an opportunity to express yourself through gameplay. Vernal fights brutally, throwing in punches and kicks alongside sword slashes, spells, and special attacks using the power of her sword. To top off all this decision making, you can carry a limited supply of consumable items to augment yourself during combat. These are expensive, so don't expect to just fill out your inventory with healing potions and heal your way through every encounter.
Exploration will not play out like your typical metroidvania, although it will share in some of it's design philosophies. You explore the world via a top down map of the world and several islands that you are given the option to land at. There will be several available at a time to explore, so try and keep your goals in mind when setting off. As you progress through the game you gain the ability to travel higher and higher into the atmosphere, allowing new islands to be discovered and discovering information that may lead to useful discoveries on old islands. You always have a goal in mind to progress the story, but the requirements to reach that goal are laid out non-linearly to grant you the freedom to approach the situation any way you want.
Alongside the islands to explore there is another aspect to exploration to tie the world together that is being kept a secret for now.
On islands themselves, the layouts will be left mostly open, with the occasional locked door and ledge you just can't quite reach yet. You will rarely find an island that is just a linear set of maps to charge through. I love secrets and hidden goodies, so expect to be rewarded for exploring areas that seem weirdly accessible and revisiting old areas with new abilities. Expect things to get weird.
You will also discover new abilities by exploring and making purchases with your money collected from enemies and hidden locations. Take advantage of the time in-between upgrades to learn how to best use your tools before you obtain even more to expand your capabilities. By the end of the game you may find your ability to move and fight a little crazy.
The goal for now is to develop a nice vertical slice for a crowd funding campaign to fund production of this game. Art and animation at the quality I make isn't cheap, and having to code on top of it makes this a lot of work. While I've gotten assistance on this project with certain things, for the most part right now I am the sole developer. In the future that may (hopefully) change, but for now The boost from that will be a necessity to complete production.
What's changed?
Combat:Alright so if you're caught up on the previous blog entries, then there has been some big ol' changes to the combat system to promote freedom in combat. The first aspect of that is the removal of the 5th hit combo finisher. Time spent testing the concept proved it was far too restrictive and incredibly difficult to teach to players. It ended up making any action that wasn't leading to a combo finisher feel inefficient and locked up decision making.
Now your combos are all focused around your normal moves, with the ability to weave other action in-between. Your normal combo is just 3 hits long, with the third hit being considered a finisher (all finishers are unarmed attacks using Vernal's punches and kicks to make them more recognizable). You can still freely manipulate your combo by selecting different directional inputs in the middle of the combo, allowing you to perform whichever combo finisher you want. However, there are rewards for weaving pulse attacks and spells in-between your normal attacks.
Vernal now has a new gauge tied to her performance in combat, and filling this gauge up rewards you with a boost in power. This gauge is tied into combat pretty heavily, so lets break down how it works.
As you hit enemies with attacks, a grey meter fills out above Vernal's head (ui placement subject to change). The grey meter however, only shows your potential gains. In order to turn that grey meter white, Vernal most perform a combo finisher. These are the unarmed attacks I mentioned earlier, and unarmed attacks should consistently fill the grey section of your meter.
At the top left you can see a counter as well, this counter increases with every move you perform before a combo finisher or dropping your combo. The higher the meter, the more the grey bar will fill per hit. This means that weaving other actions in-between your attacks will increase how much potential meter you get per hit. This creates a risk reward scenario where you can try to extend your combo as long as possible before cashing in with a finisher, but risk getting hit and losing that progress. This new system means that contextual attacks such as the slide attack or dash attack feel more relevant since they also increase the grey on your meter, but don't become the best options for dealing damage since regular combos are required to fill this meter out.
Once this meter is filled out, Vernal enters an empowered state where her stats increase and her moves gain new properties to empower them, this is now the cause of Vernal's hair turning white. Keeping your momentum in a fight is important to maintaining this state, and taking damage will cost you a significant amount of the meter you've gained, so be sure to dodge and counter attacks to keep your battle momentum going. The specifics of this buff are still being determined.
As for juggling, that system is mostly the same, but in the near future I will be working on mechanics for launching enemies into each other to break their poise more easily. An option to break enemy poise with counter hits is also being considered. The goal is making the act of stunning an enemy differ depending on the situation, rather than always being about just wacking them until it breaks.
And lastly, items are another method of self expression during an encounter. While they aren't used to attack enemies (currently) they allow you a chance to shore up your shortcomings while learning encounters and the combat system. A more experienced player can use items to perform more difficult tasks early or increase the rewards of good play. Items will be fairly expensive, you will only be able to hold 10 at a time, and the player's money will be set to a low cap (having maxed out money won't be enough to fill your entire inventory with healing items). making sure you usually leave a shopping spree broke, and are cycling through your money often instead of hoarding it all.
Exploration:I've mentioned that exploration of the world will be fairly open, but objective driven. This is fairly simple in concept, but does open up the possibilities of what how your combat style will come to form. For example, say your goal during on of the game's arcs is to collect 3 mcguffins; you will be able to obtain them in any order you choose, and multiple steps would be required to obtain each one. This means the spells and attacks you find along the way will vary depending on your order of operations. On a subsequent playthrough you may have to learn to fight a boss without one of your moves unlocked, or steam roll a fight that gave you trouble your first time with knowledge of upgrade locations and better knowledge of how to play the game.
When exploring individual locales the layout will be very open. I want to capture the feeling that you're exploring a real place rather than a linear level, keeping more open floor plans and maintaining player agency. Finding hidden spots and collecting items from obscure places in the environment will be a big factor. Poking around an environment is fun, and following threads to reach secrets is fun, like "Can I climb up there?" or "Can I make my way under that bridge?" should be rewarding questions to try and answer.
Level design work hasn't really started yet since combat systems are being created still, but these plans should hold solid going forward.
What's being worked on?Right now I'm wrapping up the player moveset to capture all the basic elements. The design for combat is finally satisfying and I'm loving playing with the new options and combo system. There are still a few more features to be fleshed out for combat and a new player ability I need to work on. After that it's going to be the infrastructure for enemies. It's been a long time coming, but now that combat is so much more enjoyable it's safe to start the work for creating does to fight. I'll be adding depth and functionality to enemies throughout development, so it won't be a big stopping point for several months, but it is important work to get started on! I'll determine what to do next afterwords.
Questions:Q: What mechanic gave you the most trouble to implement?
A: Most likely sliding. Aside from the interactions with slopes being a nightmare to work out, it's not a real common mechanci so I've had to program little systems and make little tweaks to make it feel nice. To be honest I'm still not 100% satisfied with sliding so it will see more tweaking and work in the future.
Q: What part of the game that you've worked on do you think was the best investment? The best bang for your buck?
A: At this point in time I'd have to say it was probably the character action system. It's incredibly easy to create new actions with unique behaviors for the player and enemies. Aside from variables I can change on a per action basis, the system is also set up to easily allow custom behaviors like attacks that move you in a certain way or end at an irregular time.
Q: What is the name of Vernal's sword?
A: It currently does not have a name, I don't think she's particularly care what it's name was either...
Q: What is Vernal's talent tree? What spec did she roll?
A: Well her personality may lead her to be seen as a typical berserker, but combat has such a unique gameplay loop that I kinda struggle to find a good archetype to classify her under.
Other news and information:Just a week ago I actually finished another game, you can find it here for free (or you can donate money please).
https://noxid.itch.io/2hdAs well as the discord server for the project has been verified! You can check that out if you want to keep up to date with the game, catch development streams, and read my mad ramblings about the game while I'm working through problems.
https://discord.gg/TgdZcyYAs always, thanks for your support everyone, if you have any questions about the project please ask! Whether it's here on tigsource, a dm on discord, or a private message on twitter. Just don't ask what the game's name is I'm working on it okay?
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