Zeboyd Games is, in my opinion, the name to beat when it comes to Western indies reinterpreting classic JRPGs. Rather than simply reskin Final Fantasy 4 over and over, Robert Boyd and Bill Stiernberg take mechanics and systems from the whole history of the genre and put a modern, streamlined spin… Read more »
Last time, I described how I designed Silicon Void‘s turn clock in response to what I perceive to be flaws in Chrono Cross‘ combat mechanics. In this post we finally leave Chrono Cross behind and look at a mechanic that has an entirely different inspiration. Besides the upcoming enemy turn… Read more »
Since the main selling point of Silicon Void (play the demo!) is the combat system, I wanted to spend some time digging into the rationale behind its mechanics. Two general principles guide my thinking about turn-based combat: Every action you take should have multiple consequences, allowing novel scenarios to emerge from a limited… Read more »
I’m about forty hours into Persona 5 and I wanted to share some scattered thoughts on the combat system now that I’ve had a lot of time with it. No story spoilers below, but I do refer to some mechanics that aren’t revealed until later in the game. Unfortunately, I… Read more »
In this final article on Chrono Cross combat mechanics I want to touch on various Element effects that aren’t related to directly dealing damage or healing. With such a large mechanical “surface area” there are numerous opportunities to design situationally useful abilities that let the player and the AI manipulate the… Read more »
“Elemental” damage is a fundamental concept in RPGs: it gets pretty boring pretty quickly if your one attack is equally effective against all targets, so games will typically have several different categories of attack that are differently effective, giving you a slightly more interesting choice to make. In Atlus’ Shin Megami Tensei franchise, exploiting elemental weaknesses… Read more »
Elements are all the abilities a Chrono Cross character has other than basic attacks and defending. They include everything an RPG usually categorizes as “magic” – attacks, healing, buffs/debuffs, status effects, summons – as well as consumable items and special mechanics like stealing items. In a game full of weird, unique… Read more »
Almost every RPG is concerned, at some level, with random probabilities. Aside from edge cases like The Legend of Zelda (and people debate ad nauseam whether Zelda should be considered an RPG anyway), somewhere in the code of an RPG you will find formulas descended from the dice rolls of Dungeons & Dragons,… Read more »
It’s 2017 and it’s time to start our deep dive into the combat mechanics of Chrono Cross. I plan to put up more frequent and shorter posts on this topic for the next couple of months, and then move on to discussing my own game’s combat. Although it’s heavily inspired… Read more »
Have I mentioned I’m working on an indie RPG? Yes, I have. One of these days this site is going to morph into a more traditional dev blog where I talk about the mechanics of my own project. That transition begins now with a focus on the games that are heavily… Read more »
