Devlog #9- Mac's Turn
Most modern RPGs have a battle gimmick of some sort, and I guess you could say today’s devlog topic is my main gimmick.
Other than the ~4 characters selected for your party, you also get control over a fifth character, Mac, while in battle.
After all, he has control over the battlefield so it only makes sense he’d pitch in.
-----------------------------
Every battle starts with Mac’s turn, allowing the player some time to get a grasp on the battle before things get started (and maybe consider running if you’re out of your depth)
He also has an INSPECT option that can toggle a display with all enemy and player stats (this doesn’t use up his turn).
As for his options that do use up a turn, Mac has four; HYPE, QUIZ, SKIP and RUN. As the host, Mac can’t harm any contestants so his input can only alter player and enemy stats through manipulating the crowd’s perception of the battle.
----------------------
HYPE- Mac works the crowd in an attempt to hype them up for a team bonus. This is purely RNG, and the success rate starts at 20% and rises every round that the crowd is not hyped. (20%>40%>60%>100% so a guaranteed bonus every four turns). These bonuses only last for one round, and reset back to 20% when successful.
Which bonus you receive changes according to your current party. For example, having Ayumu and Rina in the party gives you the ‘sibling bonus’ (+30% crit) when you have a successful HYPE. There will be a variety of hype bonuses for different parties, adding another layer of depth to who you choose to have in your party.
------------------
QUIZ- This will surely be a future devlog topic on it’s own as there's much more to elaborate on, but I’ll summarise it quickly here.
If you select QUIZ then you will first choose a party member to participate in Mac’s quiz show. Next you are transported to a different stage, and asked a question from a pool of questions that slowly builds up as you progress through the game. (Questions about the game are added as you learn new information, witness events, etc)
Ghosts will shout out what they think the answer is but it's just random so don't listen to them.
Get the question wrong and your chosen party member will lose some HP, but get it correct and you’ll receive one of 16 random bonuses. These bonuses aren’t entirely random though, as they come from a collection of 16 bonuses that you slowly build up over the course of the game. You can see your reward board in the menu, however in battle these are shuffled and hidden.
(I'm currently reworking the menu but it'll look something like below)
So the same way as you’ll gradually upgrade party member's skills, you can develop Mac’s reward board. This allows for some long-term strategy- simply replace your weakest bonus with stronger bonuses for a jack of all trades, or specialise by exclusively adding specific bonus types, e.g. only healing bonuses for an on-the-go doctor.
...But remember these bonuses are never guaranteed, because you still have to answer the question correctly.
---------------
SKIP: This is just a straight-forward skip turn, for when you want to save for a guaranteed HYPE bonus, but you don’t want to risk trying the quiz show.
RUN: The same ability to run that your party members have.
---------------------
Final Thoughts
I’ve been iterating on Mac’s turn in battle since the game’s first inception, with the main idea revolving around the quiz show.
Originally I planned to just have the quiz show, but while creating the tutorial I realised the quiz show was too intrusive by itself, and I needed another option other than making a player constantly skip and feeling as though they are wasting a turn.
So I took the team layout bonuses I had already planned to implement, and changed them into the HYPE system. This is a win-win change because now I have a more simple option for Mac’s turn that flows faster than the quiz show, and also the team bonuses can be much more exciting and impactful now that they are just temporary.
---------------------------
Nagayami Nights: Prologue can be wishlisted now on Steam >here<
Thanks for reading! I’ll be traveling to PAX Aus next week, but I’ll do my best to squeeze in a devlog as usual!
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
I love that little Mac animation at the end! Wasn’t sure how I felt about the character since his gameplay sprite looks a little sans-ish at a glance, but I’m starting to see him as his own character through the other bits of art and gameplay elements. More and more I’m seeing the unique theme and concepts shining through here!
I like the gimmick concept of the quiz but I wonder how it feels in execution. Personally I’m not much of a quiz guy, but that aside I find the problem with quizzes is once you know the answers it takes away from the fun, since recalling an answer is less engaging then actively remembering it. Of course, I could be wrong and many players might like the reward of getting a guaranteed bonus for knowing the answers off by heart, but that’s just me.
I know it’d be a lot (a lot) of extra work but perhaps you could consider adding an active element to the quiz to keep it spicy. Each bonus could have its own memory game or problem solving element attached. For example, one bonus might show 4 ghosts on screen at once with different names, hide them, then the quiz question might be “who was wearing the yellow jacket”, or another might have a line of cast members each do a jump/series of jumps and then ask questions like “who jumped first”, “who jumped highest” or “who jumped twice”.
Like I said, I know it’s a lot of work but it would keep the quiz segments actively engaging, and take away some pressure off remembering everything about the world and instead focus the quiz on the moment. That way it doesn’t matter if the player is on their 10th run or grinding their 500th battle, the quiz will still be engaging like a warioware or Mario party mini game.
Thanks, very happy with how that animation turned out! Mac has a bit of Sans vibe to him especially with the pixel art glowing eyes and grin, but you’ll see he’s different in personality- much more stubborn and grandiose.
Personally, I enjoy quizzes but I know some people don't so I made sure from the get-go that it would be completely optional- players can just choose the HYPE option instead for a pure RNG-based bonus and quickly get back to the battle. My hopes would be that players mainly opt for HYPE and occasionally use QUIZ because I want it to always feel like a risk (high stakes make for an exciting quiz). It'll have some of the most powerful buffs in the game but the wrong answer HP loss penalty with no option to heal will get players to think twice before using it.
I see your point in questions getting stale, and I plan to avoid this by adding *tonnes* of unique questions that are slowly added as the game progresses. I’ve made the system so it’s really easy to add new questions and test them, so I’m thinking it’ll likely get to about 5000 questions of varying difficulty, far more than the player would likely ever see. Also some of the questions will read player data for unique answers (e.g. “How much damage did X do on his first attack this battle?” or “What was the last resource you picked up?”)
Your idea for active problem solving questions is also really interesting and something I’d never thought about, but certainly possible! I have a bunch of “whos that pokemon?” style silhouette questions for characters and enemies already, so spot-the-difference/short-term memory image based questions wouldn’t take much more effort to implement, and that could add a nice bit of variety! Thanks for the feedback :)