Over the next few months I’m going to provide updates more frequently as we get closer to the tentative release date of October 1st.

These past two weeks I’ve focused on building a solid foundation for combat by adding a number of new effects. I also sprinkled in some UI work to make combat feel better, though I have some more plans to further improve it.

I’ve also recorded the first gameplay video showing off some of these combat effects as well as the inventory and ability systems here:

Combat Effects:

• Damage
  • Standard damage that reduces the targets HP
• Heal
  • Standard heal that increases the targets HP
• Poison
  • Deals a set damage amount repeating over a number of turns
• Execute Damage
  • Deals damage that is increased by the amount of missing health
• Lifesteal
  • Deals damage to the target and heals the caster
• Stun
  • Prevents the target from using abilities for a set number of turns
• Shield
  • Absorbs incoming damage
• Damage Reflect
  • When attacked a portion of damage dealt is reflected back
• Cleanse
  • Reduces the duration of negative effects
• Bleed
  • Reduces the effectiveness of healing on the target
• Level Changes
  • Any of the 6 skills can be increased/decreased by an effect

I have plans for more combat effects later on. I’ve built a solid framework for these effects so it will not be very difficult to add in new ones when I come around to it. For now though, I’m happy with the effects listed above and I’m eager to get back to working on the dungeon mechanics

Combat UI Improvements:

On top of the combat effects I made some tweaks to the way the combat events display.

• There is a longer delay between the player executed and mob executed events, so it’s easier to distinguish where the effects are coming from
• Damage is no longer always red – poison damage is purple, damage reflect damage is orange, etc. This makes it easier to identify the source of the damage

What’s Next:

My primary goal now is to complete the core dungeon gameplay loop. There are a couple milestones I need to reach for that to happen:

1. Add at least 3 new types of dungeon rooms (treasure room, trap room, restoration room, possibly others)
2. Add an end of dungeon chest that contains loot
3. Add combat XP gained from mob battles
4. Modify equipment to to have ATK and DEF stats for each skill
5. Implement equipment bonuses into combat effect calculations

This is an ambitious list that will likely take 4+ weeks to get through. I’m going to give myself 2 weeks for the dungeon rooms and take things from there. With any luck I’ll knock of the dungeon chest too.