by M Charles

'Ello, M. Charles here.

PART 16: HOW TO BREAK A CIRCLE, ONLY TO COME FULL... WITH A TWIST...

Today was very odd, but eventful. First, I decided that the entire line-up needed a rethink. I thought about the enemies more carefully, and I removed all Character options other than Balthazar. From 4 to 1. I figured, this would be off-set sufficiently by the class variety in the deck construction; and offering lots of enemies would be just as strong as offering many Character options.

I went through a few different ideas. I thought about Space Western -- then dismissed it -- I thought about a more traditional WWII steelpunk/Art Deco route -- then dismissed it -- and I thought about a more Hellboy sort of thing, with a non-human player-character, where you would hunt down the little 'goblin' creatures, now called Zoagians, and sell them on the black market. I held onto some of this. At some point, I went back to the Space Western idea.

The irony is this: in dismissing 3 of the 4 player-characters, I ended up testing out a few different, singular, more focused ideas. And this led me back to 4 characters but within a Space Western framework. Once again, proving my general rule that you must never dismiss any idea, and always retest ideas, from every vantage point. Retain what is good, and dismiss what is unneeded or undesirable.

I even reconsidered making the whole thing a fantasy. But realised that the sci-fi direction was stronger in a few ways. Most profoundly, I stripped away almost every foundation, just to see if there was a better way, or a better configuration.

Maybe there was a better way. Welcome to the West? In space? On Mars? With raygun six-shooters? And robots? And super-armoured police? And evil spiders? And post-apoc humanoid ghouls? And amazing aliens of all kinds?

It has everything, and it hasn't snapped under the pressure -- implying, either, the whole thing is working, or I've gone entirely mad.

Think Shadows of Brimstone (2014) (I own the 2020 Revised Edition) meets The Fifth Element (1997) meets Firefly (2002) meets Hellboy's black market meets The Ghosts of Mars (2001). Ah, that old chestnut? Why didn't you say so!

You must be the judge. Let's take a look.



In terms of the actual dungeon/gameplay, now. I'm thinking a Zoagian Factory, across the entire surface of Mars. See Crash Bandicoot 4 Factory Levels for inspiration (and the growth chambers of Blade Runner, among other fiction centred around cloning or otherwise mass prod). See image below.



Finally, the player board/area:



Practically the same as before, but different style, fewer cards will exist (don't need many cards -- at least not for the deck construction part of the game), and the six-shooter template/board, with little raygun 'bullet' tokens (taken from a small Connect 4 game).

To close the loop on the Zoagian gag: the idea is that they're genetically engineered aliens, perfectly designed for a violent sport popular across Aion (stylised AION), otherwise known as the Aionic Empire. The sport is so popular, and the Aionic Empire so vast, that the factory now takes up the entire subsurface of Mars, creating an endless iron labyrinth of breeding rooms, storage rooms, toxic waste areas, living quarters, and much more. But the joke is that they're a kind of McGuffin, and everybody is looking for them. This explains why the player encounters so many different enemy types down there: from Aionic Police to Steelbreakers. At the same time, there are a few native Martian enemies as indicated. The Aionic Police thinks Balthazar is a criminal for stealing the Zoagians for meat on the black market; but Balthazar thinks the Aionic Police are criminals for breeding/creating them for the expressed purpose of violent sport. Other alien races want them for different reasons still.

Zoagians are the currency, therefore. The more you capture, the more you can trade at the Black Market between runs. This is how you create metaprogression. However, in keeping with Rogue Legacy (2013), you won't be able to leave the Black Market with Zoagians; any unused Zoagians will be taken. This means, you'll have to earn as many Zoagians as possible during a run, and use as many as possible on upgrades afterwards.

Capturing Zoagians works good, mechanically, but it also adheres to the general Tomb Raider/cowboy (i.e. cattle wrangler) sort of narrative. Oh, and I should just add: Mars is terraformed to be a bit like the Old West (of course), in a semi-advanced state, but constantly attacked by horror Martian creatures (Ghouls and Spiders). And it's nonetheless under the control of the Aionic Empire. (Not sure how to frame the Aionic Empire's control over Mars at this stage in the timeline, and in relation to our needs. Maybe the Aionic Empire is old and failing, so it doesn't have such a tight grip over Mars? Maybe it's new, so also doesn't have a tight grip over it? Maybe it does have a tight grip over it, but the 'space cowboys' are able to sneak through sometimes?)

I have no idea if the 4 player characters will be cosmic or actual unlocks, or if you'll be able to unlock better versions of the characters, with the base characters being open from the very start; and I don't know if the differences will be large or small, if they are a form of metaprogression/upgrade. But I'm always open to changes and improvements, even if that means taking one step back to take two steps forward. Whatever pushes the game forward. No matter what, I'm getting closer to prototyping. Unlike Chess, there is no such thing as bad forward movement in game design. Pushing forward is always a good thing, even if it means moving in a slightly different direction.

Balthazar is practically the same, just a little more serious in tone, with casual English; this may even work better. My original idea was for him to be a rather formal 15th-century knight sort of archetype, and with a light overlay, akin to Labyrinth (1986).

I spoke about the issue of guns before, remember? Well, this neatly solves that problem, too. Now, I've retained an 'old culture/style/genre' (i.e. cowboys) but gained guns/advanced weapons (i.e. rayguns). (Amusingly, I worked on another Western horror fishing dungeon crawler game some time ago -- but, of course, never thought to turn this project into a Space Western.)

Since I'm borrowing components from Shadows of Brimstone, now, instead of Destinies (2021), it opens up a few ideas around tokens, trackers, exploration, and randomisation systems. But I won't force players to print/make/buy many tokens. I want as much of the game as possible to be playable with cards and/or dice.

And if you want to know about the actual gun/combat system -- I've not worked on that yet, but my rough idea is to simply use a limited ammo system in addition to a basic modifier system using numbered cards (i.e. the Attack Modifier cards from Gloomhaven). This way, you won't require many components, and the combat will be streamlined, smooth, and fast-paced, primarily featuring input randomness and basic tactics. And maybe some luck-your-push mechanics, as opposed to strict output randomness. I'm also thinking about area of effect vs. single-target mechanics, along with certain special abilities. We'll see.

I don't know where the Magic/Elements system fits into all of this good sense. Nowhere, perhaps? I also don't know about the ageing/lives system/death comeback mechanic. I'm thinking about getting rid of that, and just creating a simple HP Regenerate system as a checkpoint/forward momentum system in-game, along with the ability to increase HP limit (thereby making it harder to die, over the course of many runs).

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