I have quite a few things that I’d love to try for the module: one is a parkour system that tries to put together the ease of Assassin’s Creed parkour, with Mirror’s Edge freedom; another one is a different approach to CCGs, trying to get away from the MtG formula (while actually taking inspiration from an MtG minigame, which I find quite ironic). I had actually started working on this summer and would absolutely love to do it, but I really don’t wanna do any networking right now.

And finally the idea that I actually wanna pursue first, this one also has been in my head for quite a while, going through some changes while being played in my head and I really want to try the different versions in an actual game: a PvE (ideally a rogue-lite to be precise) auto-battler.

Now, some mobile games actually kind of have a similar mode, I know AFK arena does for sure, but given the business model of this kind of games, it ends up losing everything that is fun about Autochess and its offspring: the drafting of your team and trying to make the best team composition you can with what the game gives you.

Now, the (maybe temporary, maybe not) name is a tribute to Gary Gygax and his Dragonchess game, as my game also takes some inspiration from Dungeons and Dragons. This inspiration comes in what is the biggest deviation from the standard auto-battler: unit leveling.

The new leveling mechanic would be the main one I’d be focusing my effort for the module, as it’s quite a drastic change, normally you would level up a unit by merging it with other two units of the same type and level, up to level 3 (so it’s 3 1s to make a level 2, and 3 level 2s to make a level 3). For now I have a couple ideas I want to try, but as I need to think about them a bit longer, I’m gonna leave them for the next blog entry.

One issue that I can see is the inherent stat-check nature of the genre and while the multiplayer nature of auto-battlers add another layer of variance and complexity that alleviate it, in a purely PvE experience I’m afraid it might become boring very fast. This is purely speculation and I think that a class/leveling system like the one I’m thinking about might make it far less noticeable therefore making the experience more fun, but only in the next few weeks, once I’ve had some feedback on a working prototype I’ll find out if I’m right; and if so I am thinking about a couple additional layers of controlled variance and/or restraints.

For now this is all, next I’m going to think about how I would like the classes mechanic to work, in-game and start implementing a basic prototype.