This portion tells a lot of the plot of the game (which influences how I design the game) so it’s VERY spoiler ridden. I’ve tried my best to give fair warning but I honestly am not sure how to post this part. So, if you don’t want spoilers BEWARE.
While future parts may mention the plot and have spoilers, I’m going to try and keep the entire plot scribble with the most spoilers for the two posts this week.
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BACK TO PART TWO: Story
So we have the King/Queen, and we’ll use the Guild or Quest Master as someone who gives you your quests. I don’t know, maybe that fancy fat cat in pack two will be the quest master.
So there is a Princess character too. Why is there no prince?! Oh well, I don’t feel like making one of the other characters a prince, so we’ll consider it one of our limitations of our resources.
Who is the player? I’d like them to be like, the player, so we need a boy and girl character. But I’d want them to act/look the same in battle so that they use the same armor/weapon types? Wait, does that exist? Lemme look…
Okay, forget gendering. We’ll just never have anyone reference your gender, and just let the player choose between some of the heroes from the first and third pack.
Hm. Now I’m still going to want to use those characters in game…aren’t I? So like, the character the player is, will just have a different sprite? But then couldn’t that change how the character is interpreted in game? Maybe use some color swaps for the player…cringe….too much work. How ‘bout we just choose 3 or 4 characters from the packs to be potential player characters, and then make whatever ones they don’t —
[sorry for that intermission, Hubby needed help putting new line on a fishing reel]
SPOILERS ABOUND BEYOND THIS POINT
Heavy spoilers will be tagged with –SPOILER– beforehand and end with –END SPOILER–
Anyway we have 3 or 4 player characters where the ones we don’t use will be generic background characters maybe used in cutscenes or whatever, any important storyline charries will have something set.
Now, I’ll say I haven’t bought the packs yet, so this is still all ideas. When I get the packs and flesh out the story more, I’ll do more concrete casting.
There’s some villain characters included, such as the Dark Lord in pack one, so lets start thinking antagonist.
Your player goes to do the Hero Test, and all is going swell, except for this guy who decides to pick you as their rival, when SOMETHING BAD HAPPENS and the Hero Test is turned into a…save the princess/kingdom/stop bad guy thing.
There is an assassin in pack 3 that can be like the second-hand man of the Dark Lord, who you encounter most in the game (they do the Dark Lord’s dirty work)
Now I’m wondering if the assassin goes good. I love a good redemption storyline, but only if done right.
Now I’m wondering who dies. Do we kill your rival? Do we kill anyone? I know the ‘Kill your favorite charrie’ trope is done a lot but, eh.
–SPOILER–
Maybe the assassin is actually being mind controled by the Dark Lord and is actually the princess, or your rival.
YES. I like that. And then the question comes into play: how are they reprimanded for their actions, if at all?
I think the assassin is the princess.
And yes, I’m not afraid to play with tropes, ‘specially with short games that I don’t plan to be too serious on.
–END SPOILER–
So who’s the Dark Lord, and why are they evil?
King’s brother? Queen’s ex-boyfriend? Princess’s ex-boyfriend? Just some random guy?
Looking at the Dark Lord’s design, being he’s not a cat, I’d say he’s not blood related to the royal family.
–SPOILER–
Maybe he’s someone who used to dream of being a hero, but failed the Hero Test and was told by someone they’d never be a powerful hero?
So he wants revenge on the Hero Test system and is proving his power by being a villian?
Yeah, that’s a little less trope-y. I’m going to go with that.
So, who told him he’d never be a powerful hero? The Dark Lord should either have them killed, or try to kill them.
It was the King, the King is a big jerk (but not the Queen and Princess, they kool.). So the Dark Lord wants the King dead and wants to ruin the Hero Test this year.
And he’s using the King’s daughter to do it.
–END SPOILER–
BATTLE SYSTEM PLANS
Now, I’m not always big into traditional magic systems, but I do have this natural-nature ability…kinda Star Wars midiclorians type power giving micro-organisms type system that I reuse in a lot of my stories (which I can do that because the concept of the world these organisms live in and help maintain allows for many alternate realities.)
So it’s not magic, but a technology that powers the villian’s mind control for the [assassin].
And this can go back to the Crafting System, as the ‘Energies’ as I tend to call them, can live in organic things such as rocks, plants, and yes even animals and people. So you can say, lightsaber style, put a gem in a stick and create a fire stick.
Or drugs. Drugs are controlling the [assassin].
And the world is powered by elemental gem stones or something. IDK
MORE SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT
I like the drugs controlling [assassin], kinda like an evil witch poisoning someone except it’s the Dark Lord poisoning the [assassin].
SO [the princess] hasn’t been acting right, so originally the King (whos a jerk) by the Queen’s request (cause she’s not a jerk) makes the Hero Test that year be about finding Repunzel’s Flower, a rare flower known to heal all diseases, hidden way up at the top of a mountain.
Okay, our third dungeon just became a mountain. Maybe even a tower?! Let’s stick with mountain.
RIVAL’S MOTIVATION:
Your rival wants to find the flower cause he thinks the Princess is hot and wants to marry her.
You just want to find the flower because that’s what a hero would do.
(Oh, look! Character motivations! Your rival’s is hormones, lol)
This is starting to steal some plot from a novel I want to write, but whatever, it’s really not taking that much.
MORE STORY PLOT
Before you can even get to the 3rd dungeon, you have to retrieve some items or some weapon to unlock the path to the 3rd dungeon, or maybe some excuse that the Hero Test needs to make sure only the best candidates are sent to look for Rapunzel’s Flower, so they need to pass some Quests first, the one being in the Starter Dungeon,
That’s where things go wrong tho, and you find that the assassin, who is not part of the Hero Test, has stolen some needed recipe piece to unlock the 3rd Dungeon….or something.
I really only want a general outline that I’ll flesh out more after I know and have all my mechanics build and in place.
So you, and probably rival too, run into the assassin, who has just stolen the piece from some girl, probably a mage or something, some girl hero in the packs with animated sidevew battlers to use as a party member. [Note from the future: turns out the sideviews aren’t animated. There will be a blurb in a later post when I find that out]
ENTER OUR HEALER
OH YAY we have another supporting cast member! Mage/Healer type girl! She’s taking the Hero Test this year….
Because she’s a healer.
HEALER’S MOTIVATION
This year the test is about finding Rapunzel’s Flower and as someone studying to be a Medicine Nurse or whatever, finding Rapunzel’s Flower and being able to study it’s qualities would help the medical community create better meds (and she wants some fame for it, but she tries not to be conceited) So her personal weakness is pride, that she actively tries to turn into helping others. Let’s call her….Nurse Joy! *cough* *hack hack* *cough* I’m kidding. Let’s name her Grace.
I did NOT plan for that to fit the story that well, I just guessed a mage/healer cause I thought I saw a girl character like that in the packs (that I haven’t bought yet) so see? Even with the limitations of asset packs you can still find ways to get things to fit your story line.
So Assassin steals the necessary part, and to make this game go faster, we’ll have our heroes automatically go back to the castle to tell the king via cutscene.
King is self-centered and is more worried about how this will reflect on him then on his sick daughter. Maybe someone comes mentioning the princess hasn’t been seen but the king is more worried that the Other Kingdom will complete their Hero Test with better people cause his contestants this year can’t even stop a measly thief.
So the king kinda storms off grumbling about his reputation, and the queen steps up to tell the contestants that she knows of another way to get to 3rd Dungeon, but it is not as easy. She asks everyone to give her some time, and the Quest Master will let them know what to do next.
Cutscene, and our heroes are hanging out in some hangout area like an inn or Hero’s Guild or something, Quest Master comes by and explains that (let me look at his released free battlers, I kinda want to incorporate the help of some creature) Okay, they are on my external hard drive that I don’t want to go grab right now, let’s just look on his site.
WHEN OUR LIMITED RESOURCES LACK WHAT WE WANT
Okay, side note, there aren’t really any free walking sprites for the monsters, so despite what I’d like to do with on-screen battles, we may just have to do random battles :/
As for the creatures with animated idle poses…
Eeeehhhh….
Well back to those asset packs, there’s this Arcane Summoner with this blue summoning energy beast, this actually fits with my concept of Energies, and that sometimes they live in people too. But it’s rare. So the queen sends you to find this guy who lives…
Well shoot, we were going to put 2nd Dungeon in the Capital….and we still will!
Summoner is a strange guy who lives…somewhere in the town. When Rival first hears this, he scoffs at the idea, how can going to somewhere in town be more dangerous than a monster cave…
MORE STORY STUFF WITH MAJOR SPOILERS
Well, because he actually lives below the Capital in a monster cave, and it’s his presence there that keeps the monsters from attacking.
The queen fears that if he leaves that place, the monsters will be released from the underground and rampage the capital, but as the Princess is the last surviving heir, they must save their kingdom.
Grace suggests they should just make a democracy (“I’d make a great president…no wait, well of course I’d have to be voted in!”) but the reactions she just gets is laughs as ‘that’s not how this world works’.
Player sweat drops at the situation.
And so, to the Underground 2nd dungeon you go, fighting off monsters that consistently get stronger.
THOUGHTS ON CRAFTING
Where’s the crafting again? How does this come into play?
Well other than to craft better healing items (advanced healing crafting unlocked after gaining Grace) the player also has to craft their weapons.
Which have durability. So they break, so you have to collect more items to fix or make new ones.
There’s also some basic rock/paper/scissors or earth/fire/water type element play to Energies and battle, so depending on the material you use will determine the typing of your weapon and what you’ll be strong/weak against and different monsters (organisms taken over corrupted Energies) will have their own typing depending on the Energy associated with them.
So into the dungeon you go, you’ll probably have to do some Item Crafting to make keys or other simple puzzles or something. IDK at the moment it doesn’t matter. Probably not, we just need to defeat monsters. No puzzles other than find key/open door. Or just maze, find exit.
You can Item Craft from the menu but to make weapons you have to go to the Blacksmith, who has a character sprite! Yay!
In the second dungeon will be a mid-boss monster that will drop a good item to create an indestructible weapon (May do something like this with the first dungeon as well, perhaps have 3 weapons, one for each main typing, be indestructible, one you get in the first dungeon, one in the second, and then the third at the mid boss of 3rd dungeon.)
I will probably use the crafting system to change your indestructible weapon into a more powerful version of itself as well, or use the crafting system to change the typing of that weapon.
After the item drop there will probably open a transport area to go back to the beginning of the dungeon, that way the player doesn’t have to go all the way back through just to get to the town to craft their weapon.
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I tried. I tried to warn you about the spoilers! Anywho, that was part 3 🙂 Hope you’re enjoying my thought process as I create a game!
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Thanks for reading and God bless,
Meike Kima