Some more dungeons

Most dungeons for the next chapter are finished. Here’s one:

It’s supposed to be a dam of some sort. It’s quick and short, and it exists mainly as an extended tutorial for a peculiar magnetism-based mechanic while exploring that is expanded on later. It also exists because there are two particularly long cutscenes before and after and I wanted to sprinkle a bit of gameplay in between to make it more bearable.

It doesn’t even feature monsters or anything. Although I might put in a filler boss maybe. I’ll see.

Here’s another, more ordinary stage:

This is meant to be a mine, and it expands on the puzzles introduced in the dam. By this point in the game you can actually alter your own magnetism to control how you interact with the charged elements in the stage.

Traversal is not as straightforward, although to be fair it is basically a straight line. There’s also enemies everywhere and a few plot battles. You are actually supposed to come here earlier, but you lack the magnetism-changing ability so you cannot proceed further until later on.

All battles taking place in here will start with “Cathode rays” on the battlefield. They are a special kind of neutral obstacle that fires in all four directions every turn, hitting allies and foes alike. It does little damage, but it changes the magnetic charge of the units it hits. And many enemies in this stage will use cards that give them an edge against charged units.

Other than this, I also got the UI ready to allow swapping of skills while exploring. It’s one of those boring things that nonetheless needs to be done. It should also be compatible with Android, although that one I will need to test a little more.

I also finally got the mandatory quest system ready.

This system was born out of a need to distribute goodies to the player such as new card recipes or battle traits. This seems like the most reasonable way to go about it.

To keep things simple, all quests — called “commissions” in-game — are found in a single location, the Apothecary, which is essentially the team’s HQ. You are just helping the dwellers of the Apothecary with their problems, and they reward you with items and dreaded lore exposition (which you can skip, for I am not without mercy).

I’m still considering what types of quests to include. Fetching materials is obvious. Fighting specific minibosses might be another one. From there on, I will have to see what I can come up with that is relevant to the game’s specific mechanics.

And that’s most of it. I also made a bit of music (I think all music for this chapter is ready) and a few sprites for terrain/obstacles. I still have a significant amount of graphical work to do. But next I’ll mostly be focusing on finally making enemies and getting them ready to work.

I’m thinking of cats. Chess cats.