Core gameplay - DevDiscussions

Forgotten Stories is planned to be a turn-based RPG which involves real-time input. The combat abilities will use a trait system where some traits are effective against certain types of enemies. These traits will be tied to story genres. Additionally, to fit with the overall "storytelling" theme of the game, attacks cannot simply have a binary success and fail state, as stories use failure to push the main character further in the future. This post will break down the design ideas, suggest solutions to design problems, and explain the core of the game - the gameplay itself.

Firstly - what is a "turn-based RPG with real-time input"?

Turn-based RPG is still a staple genre within games and is used for story-heavy games due to the text heavy nature of this genre. In these games there are two primary mechanics which the players can utilize. Players have access to attacks which have a percentage chance to succeed or critically succeed, and they vary depending on power, speed, buffs and debuffs, or other factors important to the game mechanics. Besides attacks, players can utilize items which give useful boons outside of the possibilities of attacks, but are a limited or non-renewable resource.

The Issue: On the player's turn, they can choose to either attack or use an item (or flee the battle if they so wish). The rest of the attack will be determined based on the general statistics of playable characters and enemies, as well as a factor of luck if an attack can miss or critically hit. This system balances strong attacks based on a chance to hit, but this can often be "cheesed" by returning to a save point over and over until the attack succeeds. This makes chance-based attacks more of an inconvenience to players who are powerless to fight against an internal dice roll.

The Solution: The attacks in Forgotten Stories will also require player input, and their strength will be determined by the skill of the player. They will still have a chance to strategize by choosing which attack they will do, but now the strength of the attacks will also vary based on the confidence of player skill. While it will not eliminate the entire need for saving and restarting, it is a system which rewards players for good combat instead of rolling dice behind the scenes. Each attack will have a different sequence that the player must complete, and the success of the sequence will determine the attack outcome.

Some attack concepts:

* Please note that while all playable characters have a unique ability look, this is likely to change with scale and only a few characters might have unique looks for some attacks. For the purposes of concept art of attacks, each look was drawn to show the potential of the varieties and how one attack might have a different feeling to it based on the character.

The 5th attack shows the idea of attacks having a "fail forward" mechanic. Missclicking words will not punish you, but instead give a different undesired but still useful effect. This also adds variety to player goals and the utility of an attack, where the player can choose their own fate or accept failure as a part of the battle process.

Attacks will be designed in a way in which the failure to execute them will not cause an immediate reason to restart the game. Attacks will require skill, and players that lack the necessary skill should still be punished by the gameplay. Some battles will still have a chance to lose. The goal of this design is not to eliminate failure, but rather to take away the randomness of percentage chance attacks and add gameplay elements where high skill will be rewarded, but average skill can be compensated with clever tactics.

Losing a battle

One of the core ideas for the game is that losing a battle will not result in a game over screen. This is important as many RPGs require frequent saving due to the fears of losing game progress in just one unfortunate fight. Very often while playing RPGs I will have 30 save files in a span of 8 hours after any major event due to this fear. While RPGs provide players with necessary tools to do this, this is not a vision for Forgotten Stories. The idea is to incorporate losing fights into the game and letting players "recover" after a loss. It will diminish the impact of a loss, and in some circumstances it won't be possible to do such as during boss fights, but world exploration should not cause unnecessary inconveniences to players.

Around the world players will be able to find ways to regain health through exploration, such as eating and resting. Passive healing will only happen in few safe areas, outside which the players will fend for themselves to survive. Losing a battle will leave the player with only 1HP on all playable characters, making them unable to enter combat or progress further into the world before regaining some HP. This changes the artificial world boundaries from an immediate fail state after one lost battle to a longer internal battle that the player will have where they juggle the want to go forward by healing, or returning once they decide they cannot go further. It gives back the power to the players and should make exploration more impactful with choices available to players beyond loading a save file.