Game Update
Super excited to have just finished creating a harder mode for the game. It took the last couple of weeks, but I think it will really change the way that players approach the game. On this harder mode the player troops will sometimes die permanently after a battle if their HP has been reduced to zero. This should make the player think a little more about throwing their troops into the enemy. This will also make the player spend more time on the force organization screen as their squads will change over time with dead characters being removed.
I have to do some play testing for it , but I’m excited to see how this goes! We also created a situation where the player can change the difficulty at any time. That way they can try it out and if it gets to difficult they can step it back down. This is similar to how other games handle it. Once a player has chosen a difficulty it will be set for at least one battle however.
Personal Update
I made a purchase of a couple of items on the Steam sale. I bought Stone Shard, SRPG Studio, and Tactics Ogre:Reborn. I’ve been meaning to play Stone Shard for some time. It’s a medieval survival game that has a unique mechanic of having the world move when you move. It’s interesting in a turn based/real time sense which is meaningful for me to look at with my idea of “Same Time Strategy.” It does very similar things.
I’ve been meaning to try out SRPG Studio to see how it works for making turn based battle games. It seems very similar to RPG Maker in the way that it’s set up. Having made my own tactical RPG game I can really appreciate the engine that is already set up to track a lot of data related to player troops, enemies, items, and save states. It should be fun to play around with something that has a lot of those logisitcal things handled.
I mostly got Tactics Ogre:Reborn so that I would have it if I wanted to play it. I already own it on original PlayStation, and I picked up in Japanese cartridge form as well at a convention. I owe a lot to the developers of Ogre Battle, as it is the inspiration for my game Six Aspects. I wanted to see if there are some things to learn from this one that I wasn’t aware of. I also hadn’t finished the game yet and so I’m hoping to find some time for that as well.
I’ve been enjoying playing guitar for church lately, and I’m not sure what that will look like when my boys come back. On the one hand I feel that it’s important for my older sons to have a strong youth group to plug into. On the other hand this could be a stepping stone to have them in music.