Completionist Devlog | Week 4

This week involved fully implementing many of the systems I had built the frameworks for in the weeks prior. This included finalising the overall game objective and loop.

Movement

In the previous weeks I had built up a system which could allow the user to initiate a move phase via a UI prompt. On top of this, I implemented logic for two forms of basic movement: Diagonal movement and Horizontal/Vertical movement.  

In this week, I began to think about what movement types would complement each unit’s playstyle and ability. Pairing units with move styles helped shape the role of the unit and helped with the balancing of a unit’s usefulness. Through this process, the following move types were assigned:

Horizontal/Vertical unlimited (Rook)

• Wizard
• Alchemist
• Scholar

Diagonal unlimited (Bishop)

• Dark Mage
• Lover
• Oracle

One square all directions (King)

• Divine
• Necromancer

One square forwards / take diagonal forwards (Pawn)

• Sword

This left two units unaccounted for: the Shield and the Ranger. Both of these units felt like they would benefit from movement outside of the chess standard movement. This raised a good opportunity to implement fresh movement styles.

Horizontal unlimited / One Square Vertical (Special)

• Ranger

The ranger’s ability is limited to a vertical field. To help complement this, the unit is given unlimited horizontal movement. This is offset by very limited vertical movement. The synergy between the movement and ability makes this unit much more powerful.

One Square Horizontal/Vertical and Jump (Special)

• Shield

Jump allows the unit to extend their movement if there is a unit in their path. Where the path of the shield unit would normally be obstructed, it can ‘jump’ over the unit, thus moving two spaces instead. This adds to the flavour of the shield character who selflessly places themselves on the front line to protect ally units.

Abilities

Abilities are done!! To save my tired brain and fingers from writing way more than necessary, I will simply demonstrate all the abilities with minimal explanation.

Activatable

Wizard: Teleport

Switch the place of an adjacent ally unit and any ally unit

Alchemist: Accelerant

Give a basic unit accelerant: enhances movement

Dark Mage: DeathTouch

Gives a basic unit DeathTouch: upon own death kill the attacking unit

Oracle: Premonition

Sacrifice unit to use two abilities this turn

Divine: Smite

Sacrifice self and ally adjacent unit and kill one enemy unit

Ranger: Arrow

Kill unobstructed enemy unit in straight vertical line from this

Necromancer: Resurrect

Resurrect one deceased ally unit in the place of this unit

Reactive

Shield: Protect

Save attacked unit from death by sacrifice this unit in it’s places

Active

Lover

Prevents enemy units in a straight line from using their abilities

Scholar

Makes information on enemy deathTouch/ accelerant affected units known

King Design

Finally, I focused on the implementation of the King unit. This required a large amount of thought and tweaking as it is responsible for defining the game objective. To help distinguish this game’s identity outside of chess, I focused on making this unit greatly differ in functionality from the chess counterpart. The first design choice was to make the king unable to move. This makes the unit feel more feeble/fragile and encourages the player to think differently about how to best defend this exposed square. To help offset this weakness, the king is given 3 hit points. Instead of receiving and avoiding checks, the King will simply be delivered a hit by an attacking unit. Upon three successful strikes the king falls and the opposing team wins.

Thanks for reading this far! See ya next week 😊