I Hope You Like This

I may not have explicitly said it yet, but this game I’m working on is an exploration into the turn based battle system. Rather than keeping the system tied to it’s typical RPG genre, I want to explore it on a battle-by-battle basis, which will hopefully reveal some interesting depth previously unseen in the system. One difficult aspect of designing battles given these restrictions is giving the player clues as to what they’re supposed to be doing. The following is my current solution, and I think it is more eloquent than I first imagined. Currently, I call it “The Grid” (I really wish Tron wouldn’t have coined that term, haha)

The Grid is a 3x3 square where the competitors reside. There is one grid for the opponents, and one for the player. I decided on a small size because I want very restricted movement (it’s not necessarily the point of a turn-based battle system), but at the same time, there needed to be a way to give visual cues to the player. With a small grid system, the layout of the opponents can be a clue as to how to go about the battle.

Setting up the battles as two opposing grids lead to some interesing design decisions:

• Skills should target groups of squares on the grid, not groups of enemies.
• Effects can be placed on squares, making opponents want to be in certain formations.
• Allow for moving on the grid in place of using a skill. This could be used to make sure your characters are in a position not likely to get hit by certain skills.
• Make skills effect character location. Using a strong skill may push you or the opponent to a new square. Using this in conjunction with other skills can setup interesting combinations.

Lets look at a simple test scenario

Okay, so we’re the squares. As you can see, the squares are pretty close to all being on a single row, which could be dangerous. Likewise, the triangles are close to all being on a single column. This could be an advantage. Lets say that we have a skill to knock that pink triangle back one square. If we can do this, we could use yet another skill that targets a whole column.

Of course that’s just one simple combination. Hopefully, a lot more complex and interesting gameplay can emerge from this sort of system. I’m really interested in creating a versus mode for this. It would be exciting to see two people face off within this system as opposed to player versus A.I. There’s lots of balancing that must be done for player versus player, so I suppose we’ll see how everything progresses.

Expect more info on skills and various other abilities as the battle system improves.