SheltRPG Devlog 3 - The Three Modes

The first couple devlogs acted as a general introduction to the whole idea of SheltRPG as a game, but we haven’t actually covered any specifics yet, so I hope this entry will begin to give you a bit of a better idea of what kind of experience to expect. Let’s then take a look on the overview of the whole gameplay loop… which is still pretty general in a sense, but at least this is the first time we’re talking about the gameplay of our game. The further we go, the more I’ll be able to share about the details.

The way we’re making SheltRPG right now, we’re dividing the development into three main parts, or modes.

1 - Customization and Exploration

2 - Battle

3 - Visual Novel

It is an ambitious project for us, with a lot of stuff we’re learning and figuring out as we go through the development, so I approached it with a very strict resolution that we would make the first iteration of our game with a focus on its most vital elements first and foremost, while smoothly simplifying whatever is not crucial. We are all full of grand ideas and the time for them will come one day, but the most important thing is to make something coherent, manageable and fun in its relative simplicity first, exactly so we can build on top of it in the future.

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1 - CUSTOMIZATION AND EXPLORATION

This is the part of the project I want to streamline in some ways, focusing mostly on the parts that tie the most closely to the battle system, while simplifying the parts that can wait to be expanded on in the future iterations of the game.

Basically, this part of the gameplay loop is the bulk of what the player will do in-between battles. Imagine a camp where you can talk to your allies, access menus for crafting, skills progression and other mechanics of preparing your team for the next leg of your journey. That’s the customization part.

The exploration part is what I want to simplify the most right now, by settling on a simple map of unlockable nodes that the player can click on to explore, progressing the story. In the far future I’d love to get a more involved exploration mode where you would run around with your avatar and check every corner of the map like in most rpgs, but that’s an endeavor that doesn’t seem as crucial until we get the more important parts of the game properly covered.

2 - BATTLE

This is where all of the work has been focused on so far, and the one element that I consider the most important to get right, because it’s the centerpiece of what I think makes this project unique.

In short, it’s a turn-based battle system with heroes on one side of the screen and the enemies on the other, jrpg-style. The unique part is in the integration of the six mana types that everything in the system revolves around. Just like in Shelter’s story you know, mana can be released and absorbed during the battle to cast special abilities. I’ll be delving into all of the tiny details of the battle system in the future devlogs.

3 - VISUAL NOVEL

With my experience in Shelter the VN, it felt pretty natural to default to that medium as our main method of presenting the story.

The plan in regards to that is about what you would expect. You select a node on the map to explore and, if it’s not a simple grinding spot encounter, a VN-style scene will play. If a battle is a part of the event, you’ll go through the battle, and then probably have another VN scene afterwards. Some of those may be integrated into the camp events. I’d love to look into a possibility of injecting short scenes overlaying the battle for scripted triggers (like the boss entering the second phase of the battle), but we’ll see what we can do with the tools we get.

There are some Unity assets for VN-making already available (like Naninovel) so we’ll look through our option of integrating one of those.

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Making the game has been an equally lengthy and meaningful process, as we’ve been building literally everything from scratch. I know, however, that putting all this extra time and care will keep paying off in the future. The goal is to build tools that allow us smooth and flexible creation of units, abilities, mechanics, encounters and (still to be implemented) storytelling gimmicks.

As I’ve been focusing most of my energy on Shelter the VN all this time, I haven’t been able to have as much hands-on involvement in SheltRPG as I’d like yet. Most of my time on our RPG project has been put into designing everything and giving specific instructions/direction. To be honest, that is what I wanted to do in the first place, since I need to learn delegating more work to my team mates in a project like this, and yet I can’t wait to be able to do more. Fortunately, that’s slowly changing as we’re getting more of the battle customization elements in our engine finished and I’m able to spend some time filling them up (like new units and abilities).

Since the battle mode has been the one element we’ve spent the most time on so far, I think it will be good for me to share more about that next, so…

Next Devlog:

"Battle - Overview"