🧌: "Working Title: BLACK MAGIC" - 15/12/2025
You traverse a randomly generated dungeon, where realmfolk are enslaved by machines.
Liberate as many captive workers as you can find by destroying their cages, ball and chains,
weights, shackles and more, weilding weapons like boltcutters, hammers, angle-grinders and
more. Your character, and all the other enemies, are 2D cuttouts slotted in a clear
circular base, and the levels are modular terrain pieces, kitbashed and bodged together.
Play is realtime and spacially continuous, while combat is timed, turnbased and gridded,
with inaction registered as stealth or defence depending on your foes awareness of where
you are. In multiplay, one player can be in timed, turnbased combat on the grid, while
another can be moving in realtime and freely for as long as they are outside the combat.
Affecting the combat in any way enters them into it, even if they remain undetected.
Animations are limitted to the position and orientation of the entire character pieces,
which includes turning to face whichever direction they are facing, and hobbling in
whichever direction they are moving. To contrast the simplistic visual style aforementioned,
vivid visual effects for spells, comprehensive sound design, and emursive music breathe life
into the "pieces" on the "board". Ethereal giant hands point overhead, and dice roll across
the level when attacks are launched for damage, passing through objects without collision,
bouncing only off the table.
Perspective is first-person until combat hits, then the camera changes to more tactical
isometric controls, including rotation, translation, and scaling.
🧌: "Focusing the Scope" - 16/12/2025
Several aspects of the last blog I have since brought under scrutiny. It is often my habit to
try to encapsulate themes or feelings into specific mechanics too quickly, rather than
letting the intended vibe stay abstract for as long as it needs to. I'm not convinced on a dual,
turnbased and realtime approach to time, but I haven't ruled the idea out yet. However, I do think
the 2D cuttouts idea may be better used for the enemies, if at all. Instead, to capture
the vibe of players sitting around a table, an Overview Perspective may be interesting, where
players can zoom out to see the map they've travelled so far, where they still need to go, and perhaps
to help them plan out a route through the levels.
This very much takes inspiration from the game Peak in the sense that you can plan your routes
with a view of what's ahead. But also, if the heart of the game is a procedurally generated maps,
then I want to be able to show them off.