Goblin Stone Devblog #4: Combat System
For this devblog, we will be talking about the Combat System! It was quite important for us to get this right as we anticipated the player spending a majority of their time in combat. Combat for us is the “Meat and Potatoes” of the game and became the starting point for development. It’s something we’ve been consistently improving and iterating on. We have had some challenges in terms of the design and we wanted to ensure combat interesting both in presentation and in mechanics. It was a bit of a challenge but we like our current iteration!
Battles
We decided to have our battles remain in side view to be consistent with how adventures are presented. From the get-go, we also wanted a turn-based command style where the player had time to pause, think, and play with strategies.
We first tried a Rounds Base System, where within a round all characters get a turn. We felt this system didn’t cater well to the uniqueness of the game where goblins usually outnumber the enemies. We were looking for a more fluid system that allowed quicker enemies (like goblins) multiple chances to attack against a larger much slower enemy. So we shifted to an Active Battle Style game play using a single “time bar” that shows when each character would act, a bit like Final Fantasy or Grandia. This seemed to work much better for our case and resulted in a more engaging experience.
When it came to presentation we ran into many challenges with how to present the UI. It had to be easy to understand and it had to show only the information that was needed for the player at a specific phase in combat. There was also the central time bar we had to figure out. We had to design something that was compatible with the way characters were laid out in combat.
To give you a more detailed look into our current combat flow we listed the different phases of battle below.
A very early mock-up of the Battle UI. Quite different to our current version.
A mock-up with the “time bar” for the new combat system. This is quite near to what we have now.
Phases of Battle
Waiting Phase:
This is the phase where all units start moving towards the Center of the Timeline at a fixed rate. No commands can be issued here. The phase ends when a unit reaches the center of the Timeline.
Command Phase:
This is where the game pauses and players are able to select a skill and use it accordingly. Command Phase starts once a character reaches the center of the Timeline.
Action Phase:
Once a target is selected, we move on to the Action Phase. This is where the skill/attack is used and damage is calculated. After attacking, the unit will then move back along the timeline according to the Cost of the skill used.
Waiting Phase
Command Phase
Action Phase
Timeline System
Since our design was turn based, we had to think of a way to determine the order of the turns. We wanted it to be simple enough to allow players to understand the design quickly. Here is a quick overview of how it works:
Each turn will be determined by a character’s position on the Timeline. The combat abilities of your Goblins cost Time Units(TU) instead of Mana or SP. The bigger the cost of an ability, the farther away that unit will move back in the Timeline after it attacks. In essence you pay for the cost of the the ability after it’s used. We really liked this system for determining the turn order. It also feels more sensible. A character that uses a powerful ability would feel exhausted after using it and would need time to recover before having another go. The timeline also displays all Units’ order in battle.
Death
Character death is something that every player dreads in a game. But being a game about breeding with goblins, we wanted to explore the concept of making death in a game feel positive. It’s design was something we wanted to wrap our heads around and has proven very very challenging. We understand that character death may be the hardest thing for players to embrace. “How to make death good?” well, we had a couple of ideas for it!
First off is that goblins produce a resource when they die. This resource is essential to building your Lair and for the progression of the game. Death is not the only way to get this resource, because that would be terrible! However, death gives out a lot of it.
Another interesting thing we did is grant a combat advantage when a goblin dies. The enemy that killed the goblin, gains a special debuff called “Leveled Up” which causes them to prematurely celebrate. During the duration of the debuff, the enemy becomes stuck in their celebration pose and is vulnerable to attacks. You might imagine the Final Fantasy’s victory celebrate animation, except foolishly done in the middle of a fight.
There a couple more such as special genes from breeding that give auto triggered combat advantages on death. but we’ll go into that in another post.
Hope that you enjoyed this post! For our next post, we will be talking about Classes and Abilities.