Gameplay Ideas - mjfalkenstein/GameProject GitHub Wiki

I was thinking the game would have 2 main states of gameplay, one for in-combat and one for out-of-combat.

Out-of-combat would control similarly to the older pokemon games, or maybe the old legend of zelda games (depending on if we decide to include grid-locking or not). The player would control each member of the party separately, and could command them to follow each other or act on their own. Each character might have abilities that help solve puzzles or have relationships with other characters that are necessary to speak with them (or something like that).

In towns the characters would split up according to the story and their interests. You could see different characters doing different thigns and depending on what character you approach them from might trigger a side quest. Example: a swordsman character enters a town known for its blacksmith, so he fucks off there. The player chooses to take control of the character from this town, because that's what the story quest needs him to be, but on the way he sees the swordsman arguing with the guard at the smithy. Turns out their negotiations went wrong and now the guard wants to kick him out. The player can ignore this, change characters to the swordsman or approach the situation by any of the other characters to have a different reaction. He goes in with his curect character and turns out he knows the guard from childhood, so the swordsman gets off scot free but with no advantage. If he approached the situation from the lovelace characters POV he would have been able to romance the blacksmith, who's a woman, to get a legendary sword. If he switched to the swordsman he would have had to have a fight.

In-combat would be almost along the lines of frozen synapse, where the player essentially pauses the game and queues up actions for each character, which are then carried out simulatneously. For example, when a combat sequence begins, the player might have the tank walk up to the enemy and taunt, while the other character performs ranged attacks.

The game could switch between these two states when the player is spotted by an enemy NPC, and when all enemies in combat are defeated, or the player chooses to flee the battle.

The in-combat and out-of-combat states exist only while the player is in a "town" (any sort of instance, could be a town, dungeon, whatever). When the player wants to move between towns, they move to some pre-designated exit areas in the instance (like the front gate of the town or something) and essentially fast-travel to places. Depending on story context, there would be a probability that the party is attacked on the road to the destination. When the player fast-travels, none of the characters may be in combat, and the entire party fast-travels together.

The battle part of the game is grid based. There are 6 characters in total but usually 3-4 are in the party at a time. Each character has a number of active abilities and more can be learned as they progress, but only two can be equipped at a time. Weapons all act in different ways, with the old tech weapons essentially being as powerful as a characters active ability. The strategy part of the combat comes from interacting with the different terrain tiles, each of which can be interacted with in different ways and altered by abilities. Example grass slows movement by a little bit, but can be made into frozen ground to get rid of the penalty or be set on fire, or turned into tall grass, which can also provide concealment. Walls can be broken, buildings collapsed into rubble, things can be set on fire, water can be electrified, etc.

Old tech items have a theme of destroying and being consumed, while simple items and abilites have a theme of continuous use for less power. For Early game example an artefact revolver has 6 shots after which it is destroyed, but massive power and essentially infinite range, while a sword has moderate damage forever. Later on the old tech items also destroy the world by leaking chemicals and such.