As stated before, the original idea for the battle system basically boiled down to TEPPEN. However, this just made all RPG elements fall apart as skill expression and mastery over the game still required you to wait the same amount of time. Sure, you got better at the game; but it still takes the same time to kill the starting area baby enemy as it did before. I want an extremely skilled player to be able to out-think and fly past their previous performance if they were to replay the game, the real-time timers for playing a card does not allow for that.

Now onto my favorite part of game design. Mechanics and systems.

Touched on briefly in the last post, I'm building primarily a card battler with light world interactivity. I'll go over world interactivity first before diving into the combat system.

World interactivity is (part of) what brings an RPG to life in my opinion, whether that interactivity is something you read, like in a text based RPG, or something you see happen. It can be simple and it can be completely obvious. Exploration of a world can happen in many other ways than finding a secret nook with some hidden treasure. In an earlier project of mine, "Cooking with Cain," I made this mistake.

This is the first level of Cooking with Cain, a 2D game with combat centered around cooking ingredients in hell. Here the level is pretty sparse with a lot of empty space and the only real guide in this space are enemy positions and the level layout. You are rewarded for exploration, yes, but the only interaction with the world is getting a tree and using it as a bridge.

This ended up feeling very dead. With most the level being empty space, there's not a whole lot to actually do. There's a lot of dead air between fights and not a whole lot of communication with the player about what you SHOULD be doing. Yes the player is free to do whatever they want, it's not holding your hand at all; but, what is there to even do? The scenery isn't exactly changing a whole lot between areas and the only real points of interest if you make a beeline to the end without exploring is, stairs, tree, bridge, checkpoint, and enemies. It's very simple, which is okay, but it's also bland and uninteresting. Had the game been an ARPG then this layout would make more sense, the wide levels could be filled with tons of enemies to kill along your way and there could be more natural interactable decorations.

As a side note for later: since I'm building a 3D game I also have to keep sight lines, obscuring terrain, and obstacles in mind. Oh, and also the third dimension.

Some research for my game's level design comes from Paper Mario TTYD, Lost Kingdoms II, Zelda Wind Waker, and Inscryption. There's a lot to learn from Paper Mario's Rogueport and how there's always little ways to interact or digest the game world in some way. Besides the amazing theming, art, and music, Rogueport stands out as a great hub area even to this day partly aided by the level design. I could write an entire essay on Rogueport alone, so I'll move on. The level design outside of the towns in Paper Mario are much more straightforward, and while I think they could generally be improved; I really like the small interactivity even in long hallways. There's always a block to hit, a tree to shake, and bush to search, something in the background to nudge the player to exploration. There are areas that are unreachable, things to discover.

Lost Kingdoms II is a game I never actually played, it's something I found while searching for research material for making this project. Lost Kingdoms II is a real time card battler by FromSoft for the Nintendo GameCube. It's very unique, and I'm surprised I had never heard about it at all before. Lost Kindgoms II has more of a JRPG, get invested, sort of story telling. Lots of dialogue and exposition atypical in a modern FromSoft game. Enemies are also just sort of everywhere, they are less important than in a Dark Souls game; they're there mostly as things to do as you move through a level and obstacles to overcome to test your skill. The battling is extremely interesting, you have your cards that you can use at any time. There's a lot of world interactivity this enables, using different cards to perform different actions and explore levels and fight enemies your way. There's also a lot of lever and pedestal puzzles that allow the player to do more than just go from room to room fighting things and getting cards.

So am I just going to make Lost Kingdoms III? No, not really.

The idea to use cards outside of battle is very cool and very tempting. But I think I'm going to hold off on that to keep my scope smaller and within reach... at least I should.

There are a couple things with Lost Kingdoms that just don't work for what I'm building. For one, there's a lot of card shuffling that has to be done in real time, which just doesn't sit right with me. Your cards are drawn and so if you don't like the draw, you just discard and draw again. In the meantime you are running your character in circles trying to draw the card you actually want.

There's not a whole lot of card game strategy that goes on. There is no preparation for your next move as much as there is in something like chess, Starcraft II, or any competitive card game. It becomes less of a strategic card game, and more of a real-time battling RPG with skills that rotate. It's very cool, but not what I'm aiming for. I want something that allows the player to think several moves ahead, and rewards the player for planning out their strategy far into the future. Something that is complex enough to think very deeply about and plan accordingly; but simple enough to understand at a moment's glance. 

This "simple on the surface", but "complex underneath" iceberg effect is something you can see in auto battlers like Super Auto Pets or, more recently, Backpack Battles; although the latter is a bit harder to digest. Hearthstone and Legends of Runeterra are also fantastic examples of this. My favorite being Legends of Runeterra. It strikes a great balance between complex and interactive strategy while maintaining an easy to understand set of cards and synergies.

My game structure will be like this. Overworld sections are divided from battling sections. Both have completely separate mechanics. World interactivity happens in the overworld with a completely separate character controller. This is most similar to a JRPG. 

Overworld mechanics will be jumping and double jumping. I have some world interactivity in mind, but can be expanded upon later. Right now it goes as far as: digging in X marked spots, momentary hovering, lever puzzles. 

It could go further into, chopping down choppables, flipping over flippables, shaking shakeables, etc. The "interact-with-ables" is something that is present in older Zelda titles and Paper Mario. In Wind Waker you get a sword, but can only cut cuttable objects. You get a grappling hook, but only grappleable objects can be grappled, you get a mirror shield which is used for like 5 puzzles before it's just a fancy reflective shield. Paper Mario lets you fold into a boat and a plane... at designated boat and plane sections.

The newer open world Zeldas ditch this idea completely and basically allow you to interact freely with your tools as you choose; but I still think there is a case to be made for the interact-with-ables style. Is it more restrictive? Yes. Is it easier to design for? 1000% yes.

This interact-with-ables style is less about giving the player creative freedom and more about having them constantly engaging with your game world. While it is very cool to allow them creative expression at any point in time, that is also a much more resource intensive endeavor; and something that must be accounted for in every aspect of the level design at any point in time. 

The question is: is it trivial to put interact-with-ables into the game world if all they really accomplish is letting the player move in a flavored way? Is putting cracked walls in a Zelda dungeon a useless "puzzle" because it's just so obvious and clearly not a puzzle? In Paper Mario, would it have just been better to exclude a button press and not advertise the boat-folding or plane-folding as a new "skill"?

I don't think so. These are the little things that help bring life into the game world. Without them, the player is just simply not interacting. They are moving through a ride but have to keep all hands and feet inside the vehicle. These interactions are trivial and don't add meaningful complexity to a game world, they are simple "just flavor"; however, I'd argue that these are very important to include as they are a cost-efficient way to add more life and interactivity into your game. Once made, they can be put in multiple places and their functionality can be reused over and over. Why have the Paper Mario boat section when all of them could just be plane sections? Because flavor is important. The more interaction, the more engagement, the more the player can understand how your world works. The deeper it is ingrained what they can and can't do, and the more they understand your rules. This then opens up the player to try and stretch to the limit of your rules and truly feel satisfaction in exploration and mechanical skill. A player understanding your world is the first hurdle they have to overcome in order to start experimenting and exploring your world.

Interact-with-ables are a cheap and key part of providing small moments of interactivity and learning moments, detached from the combat system, and allows players to connect with your world. This is what I got wrong with the Cooking with Cain level. On a fundamental level there is nothing that suggests to the player how the world works. It is simply a toy box with things in it.

Going back to the amusement park attraction analogy. If you are telling the player to keep all hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times, that is okay too. But the level design should reflect that. Had I understood this, Cooking with Cain levels would have been much different. There should not have been any walking, at all. The main portion of the game was combat and there was hardly any emphasis on environment other than some limited art, so it would have been much better served with a movement system akin to Slay the Spire or Darkest Dungeon. There was never any need at all for an entire 2D level area that can be traversed with character movement. The level design SHOULD have meshed with the gameplay, which revolved entirely around using ingredients in combat rather than collecting them.

This would be a redesign of the earlier level shown. Contains all the same things but is much simpler than before, and the choices I wanted the player to make are better communicated.

However, in the game that I'm building I don't want a "hands and feet inside the ride" sort of game. I want the player to feel that they CAN reach out and touch things outside the vehicle at any time. If I were to bring Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom into this, I would say they truly created a world without rails and allow the player to drive around anywhere they want within it. 

Open-world is super exciting, but not feasible for me. I'm going to stick with some rails. The player can reach out and touch some things, but there are going to be safety rails the whole way. They can accelerate and decelerate as they please, but they're still within the confines of the rail. MAYBE there could be a section where the vehicle stops and the player can plop themselves into a safari zone and freely roam; however, this wouldn't be the whole game, and is more of a passing thought than a design plan.

For what I'm building I've settled on (for now):

• Interact-with-ables
  • Digging diggables
  • Shaking shakeables
  • Breaking breakeables
• Hover puzzles
• Jumping puzzles
• Lever puzzles
• Block puzzles
• Physics is probably a no-go

To summarize. 

There are a lot of ways to go about designing levels and worlds, but I think the most important thing when deciding is what will fit best for the type of game you're making. And this decision should come down to what you're most trying to emphasize about your game. While my game IS going to be primarily a CCG/tower defense/ strategy game, I still want to pursue the magic that the best adventure games make you feel. And so, my levels will be designed to emphasize that magic of adventure, journeying on a quest, and exploring.

Alright. Now finally the battle mechanics...