Will try to post more often about progress in the game and will try to do that with as little “fluff” as possible (that’s the price to pay for the increase in frequency :P) so let’s hop right in!
August 10-31 progress:
Features:
– added help chapters so players can read up on how some mechanics in the game work
– added code to handle individual mission difficulty
– added icons for the top menu and replaced text buttons – added enemy initiative order button so you can see in what order enemies will act
– added villager/civilian happiness/morale meter – added morale and legend/story points as mission reward types. One of the ways of losing the game is by the people losing faith in the heroes (happens when mission objectives are failed) and morale can now be restored. Legend/story points are used to unlock new stuff for future runs.
– Changed web shot to slow down units insted of incapacitating them (too similar to ice otherwise). This effect will last until a unit is attacked which will break the web – added the “flying” passive ability. Flying units can pass through rocks and hostile units and stand/cross water tiles. The ability can be given to any unit and can be applied to items.
Sorry for the looong radio silence. I have been… busy. Without going into too much details I made a lot of big realisations last summer which caused me to take a long break from the development of the game. I’m in the middle of an ADHD investigation that started because there’s always been some suspicious symptoms but lately with two small kids, a full-time and committing to my hobbies everything simply became too much. All is good and I’ve gone through most of it now and I’ve been working on the game for quite some time but made no posts so this one is going to be BIG! With that said… Let’s get to it!
Oh and please be patient with the loading of the embedded twitter posts. There are a LOT of gifs here 😀
Upping the resolution of the title screen
I started working on the new title screen and it’s still not done but I’m almost there, just have to clean up the background a bit.This new one will look much better in all resolutions. Let’s compare them!
Houses can now be visited
I loved the feature in Fire Emblem where you can visit the houses on the map and get items, learn more about the world or get surprises. I’ve added a skeleton for house visits that you can see in action here:
Ever wondered what the little houses 🏠 are for? You can visit them!
I’ve also managed to get some side objectives and mission types other than “kill everyone” set up. Right now there are missions where you need to defend something for x turns, rescuing units before they get killed or escorting them to a safe location. There’s also varying rewards in place like money, items, experience or increased morale…
I've coded a basic framework for side objectives and rewards! Rewards can vary between extra gold, extra XP or valuable items. Here's some gameplay from a mission where you can rescue villagers! #gogridvale#indiegame#gamedev#pixelartpic.twitter.com/6WXeTdl91t
I LOVE the combat in Divinity Original Sin 2 and needed to work even more on the environmental stuff that I already have going so I created a basic framework for craziness! If you cast fire on oil you create an explosion. If you cast fire on ice it melts and units become “wet”. If a unit is wet it will take more damage from lightning etc. Cast fire on water and the tile starts “smoking”… This system needs lots more love but we’ll get there.
In the end I have opted to remove the telegraphed attack feature all together. It never became what I wanted it to be so this game is now a “traditional” turn based game with timing mechanics. Still… The AI is predictable and the game will be very clear on how “it thinks” so players can use and exploit that to their advantage. Gladly, lots of the code I wrote did come in handy and the game shows you which enemies are in range and how much damage you might receive before you move to a certain tile. You can see that here (note that those exclamation mark look much nicer now but this is the “clearest” gif I have of how it works):
I needed to find a way to add additional enemies to levels and couldn’t find anything better than the classic portals although they do come with a twist… If you “kill” the portal (it’s a normal enemy) you stop it from spitting out reinforcements but if you leave it alone you will soon be overwhelmed…
Uploaded first build to Steam and tested the game on my Steamdeck…
This gave me so much joy and motivation! The game works like a charm on the Steamdeck and being able to download, install and see it run for the first time was magical!
Soon XD. No more promises. I’m working on it! If you want to try the very first version (before I release it publicly on itch.io) signing up for the newsletter is the way to go: http://tinyletter.com/sinistersiamese
With that I say goodbye for this time! Hope you like the updates and don’t hesitate to tell me what you think :D. Big thanks for taking an interest in my work ❤
Hi friends, fans & family! I have some exciting news to share but before I get to it I’m going to tell you what my vision for “Guardian of Gridvale” is/was and where it is now…
The vision
When I first began working on “Guardians of Gridvale” I had a couple of goals:
Show the enemies upcoming actions so that the player doesn’t have to guess/figure out what the AI will do
Make sure that skills manipulate positioning of heroes and enemies and alter the environment itself
Have a timing mini-game to give an extra “oumph” when attacking
Goals 2 and 3 were fairly “easy” to achieve from a design perspective and I kind of knew how to approach them but showing the enemies upcoming moves proved to be tricky. Why? Because I didn’t want to straight up copy “Into the Breach” and so I thought of different ways of achieving this. The design lead me to make a system where the player makes moves and the enemies update their upcoming moves. This all sounds good and well in theory but I ran into some problems…
The problem
It is difficult to implement. You have to take into account where enemies will be and make sure they’re not in the way of each other in the future for example. It also needs to be computed very often which has implications for how smart the AI can be. Undo functionality was messy and error prone too.
The logic behind how it works is difficult to explain to the player and a lot times how the enemy will react to my moves becomes a guessing game which was the opposite of what I was going for.
The design is not tight and unique enough. It is not traditional turnbased gameplay nor is it entirely new. You could for example just turn off the enemy intentions and the gameplay becomes the standard I go, you go.
The realisation
So as I was working on the game a week ago something hits me that was sort of gnawing at the back of my head for a long time…
This is simply not as fun as I envisioned. It is not as creative as I envisioned and I felt that I was failing to make what I set out to make.
So I started thinking… What if the enemies show you their moves but don’t update them at all? “Into the Breach” gameplay is about protecting buildings so getting away from attacks is trivial: you just move out of the way. My game is about combat though so this won’t do. And then it hit me!
What if the enemies are in “overwatch”? “Overwatch” is a mechanic popularized by XCOM where units aim at an area and fire at the first enemy that enters that zone.
I ran some tests and found that I could do a lot of fun stuff with something similar. What if the enemies move and end their turn aiming at the heroes? If the heroes try to move they are instantly attacked. Eureka!
The solution?
I implemented this system this week:
Enemies move and end their movement targeting heroes
Player has their turn. If a targeted hero tries to move he gets fired on before completing the move.
Enemies get to attack (if they haven’t already during the player’s turn).
Here’s two gifs that show you enemy movement and them attacking when the archer moves:
This improved the game immensely imho. It is pretty easy to grasp for the player and pretty unique. I did however need to fix a couple of things:
Heroes can now move+attack or attack+move. No longer is a hero’s turn over after an attack.
The player will get their ass kicked because the enemies do so much damage. To counter this I came up with giving the player a completely free turn. That’s right. The very first turn you get to move and attack without a reply from the enemies. This gives you a lot of freedom when positioning your heroes. Then the turn sequence starts.
But does this mean that the player can’t avoid damage? No. You have several way of doing this:
kill attacking enemies before they can attack.
Use defensive skills like blocks, parries, dodges, teleports etc
Use offensive skills like pushing/pulling away the attacker so his attacks is canceled. Use attacks that swap places with enemies or charge right passed them etc. Unlike moving, using attacks does not cause the targeting enemy to fire.
This will indeed make the game “puzzlier” which some of you might not like but rest assured there will never be “perfect” solutions. You will take damage for sure and be forced to manage that. Trust me when I say that the game has been much improved by this move. It’s way more fun now! Can’t wait to show let you try it!
If you haven’t done so already, don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter which is the only way of getting in on the very first, crude/raw demo of the game. Here’s the link: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/sinistersiamese
Hi friends, fans & family! I have a bunch of text coming your way today so I’ll waste no time and get right to it!
Genre change
A major change perhaps… or not? I am going to make “Guardians of Gridvale” a roguelike/roguelite. I know it sounds like a big change but I promise that most of the things will remain as they are: you will still manage a group of heroes with the same tactical, turn based gameplay! There’s just gonna be a greater focus on randomisation and less focus on a “main story”. The banter between heroes etc will still remain. Why am I doing this? Well here’s my reasoning but first a picture of the hero selection screen…
It was my intial idea
This game was born because I wanted to try to make something somewhat similar to ”Into the Breach” but with another setting and some different mechanics. I loved the idea of having banter between heroes and flesh that out in comparison and when I mentioned the game on social media a lot of people wanted a tactical RPG and not a roguelike. I caved but now I’m thinking that I shouldn’t have and need to be true to my initial ”vision”.
It’s a genre I love myself
I practically only play roguelikes/roguelites these days apart from those rare occasions where I have time to play something more time consuming (and that’s when I play my RPGs 🤪). I don’t have time to play more involved, epic story games at this moment in life unfortunately.
“Easier” to get the main loop in place
I practically get rid of the “main story” part of the game if I make a roguelike. Banter will remain but I don’t have to make an overarching story which probably wouldn’t be super good anyway. I also will have fewer parts that depend on each other allowing me to just make a beginning and an end and have whatever is randomized in between. Whether it is ACTUALLY easier remains to be seen but a lot of the things I have planned will be easier to implement with a few tweaks…
Possible to expand upon
Since the game will be made with replayability in mind, adding more heroes, items, maps and enemies is an obvious way of adding to the longevity of the game. It’s harder to make people come back to a game that has a big story focus once they’re done with it.
More commercially viable
Steam loves strategy games and roguelikes and while I’m definitely not making this for money my game will have a better shot at a tiny bit of “success” with streamers and the audience this way.
What will this mean for the game then?
⁃ The tactical combat will remain untouched. You’ll still use the environment, the swingmeter and see enemies attack intentions.
⁃ Maps will be handmade. The game will pick a map and randomize enemy and hero positions and maybe some other stuff but retain that “handmade” feel as much as possible
⁃ I won’t stray from my goal of having varied objectives. I don’t really like “kill all enemies” style missions
⁃ Banter between heroes and humor will remain a pillar of the design
⁃ Your starting party will be picked by you with more heroes appearing randomly during the course of a run. You’ll unlock heroes to get more to choose from.
⁃ There will be a bunch of items and equipment in the game. I’ll tell you more about those at some other point but here’s a picture for making it this far 😀
⁃ There might be “choose your adventure” type text situations to handle with different choices available depending on your current party etc. I say might because it’s not a priority but I think it would be fun to do. Still, that takes work and I don’t really have much time…
Loss conditions
What is the loss condition and what will carry over between runs? Good question. This and a lot of other things will be determined through experimentation together with you, the player.
I will be playing even more roguelikes/roguelites going forward so give me your recommendations! Games with a party of several characters are extra welcome!
I’ve told you before how the Swingmeter affects attack damage and this time I wanted to talk a bit about how to defend in Guardians of Gridvale. There are no timing mechanics and no random damage when it comes to your enemies attacks. Defense is mostly a matter of positioning even though there are some defensive skills and some equipment that’ll boost your chances of not getting your ass kicked.
Enemies telegraph their attacks
One of the main features of Guardians of Gridvale is that the enemies show who they will attack on their turn. This gives you a clear indication of what the threat level is for each of your heroes. Moving your heroes might however change your enemies plans so keep that in mind. If a hero that was previously unreachable get’s in closer an enemy within distance will update his intention to attack that hero. Checking how much damage your hero will receive is crucial to minimise damage and not get KO:ed.
Defensive bonuses:
There are plenty of different tiles that provide defense bonuses. Tree tiles will grant a defense bonus as will hills and houses for example. Roads on the other hand will provide defense penalties so keep that in mind before rushing in to attack. The other way of getting a defense bonus is by standing next to a companion. In other words, positioning really matters and can often be the difference between life and death.
Undo button
Guardians of Gridvale features an undo button and let’s you move your heroes around to check what positions are the most favourable for you. Put a hero in a position where they will be stomped by several enemies? Press Undo and choose a different position to see how that would play out. Note however that as soon as you perform any other action such as attacking or using any other type of skill, the chance to undo is gone and your current positions are locked until next turn.
Defense bonuses and positioning really add up:
Here’s a bit of math for you (everybody loves math right :D). If a hero with a defense of 0 gets attacked by 3 enemies that each does 5 damage, how much damage will that hero receive? That’s right, 15(!) damage. However, if the same hero instead stands on a forest tile (+1 def) that is next to a friend (+1 def) and puts himself in a position where 5 enemies can attack him, he receives the same amount of damage. Don’t underestimate how much of a difference those bonuses can make.
Here’s a short little gif to show you how this works:
The last couple of weeks I have been focused on tying the core loop together. The various game parts are still in an unfinished state and need more love. Right now I need to tie all the different screens together to get a proper flow going. The core loop will probably go something like this:
Select a story mission or “random” mission
Select which heroes go on the mission and equip them, select new skills, level up etc
Play mission
Get loot, rewards and XP
Go to camp to rest, get to know the heroes etc
Rinse and repeat
Hero selection
The part I’m focusing on right now is the “Select Heroes Screen” which means I’m adding new heroes among other things.
There will be a total of 8 unique heroes to choose from and which heroes you pick will depend on a lot of factors like for example:
What are the conditions for the mission? How many heroes can you send? Is every hero available? Are there any heroes that need extra XP? What is your play style?
I’m taking care to make sure that the player has an incentive to rotate their squad but I don’t want to do it in a heavy handed way. I’d like to make the player WANT to rotate their squad without them HAVING to which is not the easiest of things and time will tell how well I succeed with that…
Apart from this I’ve been rewriting and fixing A LOT of code since I’m getting very close to the part where I will be adding content like crazy and the parts of the code where I will mess around the most need to be in top shape so they’re easy to change and maintain.
Today marks the beginning of a new era! It has been two weeks since I put op the steam page and started gathering followers and wish lists. I am satisified with the results so far and now that far more “players” are going to start seeing the game I will begin to go more in-depth with the mechanics. Today I’m gonna focus on the “Swingmeter” which has turned out to be a quite divisive feature. I actually ran a poll on my twitter: https://twitter.com/SinisterSiamese/status/1454680974986514438?s=20 where you can see quite clearly that not everyone is excited about it so I decided to dive a bit deeper this time. Let’s begin!
The feature
The swingmeter appears when the heroes perform some types of attacks. It’s a moving slider that is stopped when you click the mouse and is one of the many factors that decides how much damage an attack makes. It’s important to note that attacks don’t “miss” so even if you perform poorly on the swingmeter mini-game you will still do damage albeit slightly lower. You can score a critical, a normal or a poor hit.
The controversy
Some players absolutely hate timing mechanics and feel that one of the main reasons for playing tactical turn based games is because they are games about thinking and not reacting. They tend to assume that the swingmeter is more important than tactical thinking but that not true at all in this case.
The details about how damage works
There are multiple factors affecting your damage output in the game: equipped weapons & armor, passive and active skills, tile bonuses, tile penalties, defense bonuses from allies… I’ll talk more about all of these at some other time but the takeaway is that the swingmeter adds a damage bonus/penalty after ALL of these factors have been applied and it won’t be an exaggerated factor. The timing mini-game is meant to be a bonus, NOT a requirement!
The fallback
If you happen to be one of the player’s who isn’t too happy about the swingmeter I just want to make it clear that the feature can be turned off in the options. The damage bonus/penalty will then be applied randomly and function the same as in most traditional turn based games. Just random damage in other words. It will also be possible to tweak the speed of the swingmeter if you like it but find it too challenging.
All of this will need lots of balancing and iterating and might change a lot before the final version though once people start testing the game 😅
Until next time and thanks a lot for following my progress!
I just published the “Coming Soon” page on Steam which means that “Guardians of Gridvale” can now be wishlisted!!! This is a HUGE step for me and for the project so please GET IN THERE and WISHLIST 😀
Hope you are all doing well! September is the month I was born and now I’m 40(!) which means I have to start speeding up development so I can get the game done before my daughters send me off to an old folks home! I’ve done A LOT in the past weeks and I can’t waste time so let’s gooooo!!!
Night scenes, lighting, camping
I have been wanting to implement a camping system for the game since well… the actual beginning and I’ve had quite a strong vision for what that would be like. Problem is that it’s a lot of work but… I now have a skeleton in place! I have fiddled around with the lighting in Unity and started making night versions of my current tile sets. Making night versions of the tiles was pretty easy since I just took one of the finished tile sets and fiddled around with the color, saturation and lighting sliders. The lightning on the other hand was a bit more work but thanks to Youtube tutorials I fixed it. I also made some of my lazy trademarked (:D), 2 frame animations to breathe some life into the scene. What do you think? How the mechanics will work will be saved for later…
Dialogue system and actions
I’ve reworked the dialogues and moved them out of the mission json file that I had earlier. This will make it much easier to localise if I decide to do that in the future. It also keeps the files from becoming to messy. Besides that I refactored my mission structure and now have a much better system in place. The coolest part is that I can now send in different actions and tie them to the dialogue so I can for example have a line that says “Oh no! We’re being ambushed by psychotic, dolphins!” and write code that executes as soon as that line of dialogue has been clicked. The dolphins would then animate in to the scene for example. This lets me do some simple “cutscene” style stuff.
Skill tree layout
I did another pass on a possible layout for the skill trees. This part will require lots of work before it works properly but now it’s finally starting to look kinda good. At least I can start preparing for some cool screenshots for the Steam page.
Wall tiles
I’m gonna have some castle stuff like in Fire Emblem so I started drawing some walls. They are now implemented and look like this:
Title screen cleanup
I’ve also been cleaning up the title screen and removing stray pixels etc. Here’s what the background for the upcoming menu screen will look like:
Upcoming stuff:
The goal right now continues to be getting that Steam page up and running. I’m gonna add one or two more enemies and then I’m gonna start working on that trailer so I can finally put up the page. The goal? To do it in October. Let’s see if we can make that happen!
As always, a MASSIVE thank you for supporting the development of the game. I would never have gotten this far without other people interested in the game!
Last day of August and I really can’t keep putting off posting something 🤪. Maintaining a dev blog is not always easy cause unlike social media sometimes it feels like you’re just speaking into the void. Much fewer comments and interaction in general but the honest reason is because it requires more typing 😂
I’ve had a looong vacation this year and have worked a little less than usual but I’m getting back to speed in the last weeks of the month. Here’s what I’ve been doing:
POLISHING
My main focus right now is putting up the steam page (yes the demo has to wait for now 😬) and to do that I need decent screenshots and a somewhat good looking trailer. For that to happen some things need to look better. I’ve added some colored text to the swingmeter, some stars as a hit effect, push arrows for UI feedback and updated a bunch of skill icons in the UI among plenty of other things. Here are some gifs to show some of it
How to kill a spiderSkill icons and keyboard shortcuts
NEW CHARACTER
I’m aiming to have 8 playable characters and from the beginning I knew that I wanted a bard/troubadour/minstrel. I will not have all 8 in the demo and probably only mention them fleetingly in the marketing materials but having plenty of heroes to choose from is super important to me. I have a pretty solid idea of what this girl will be able to pull off in combat and although she’s distinctly a support unit, she has some quite powerful tricks up her sleeve. Any fun name suggestions?
BUGS & REFACTORING
I don’t want to bore you with the details but as usual there’s been a hefty amount of bug fixing going on. AI, selection and a bunch of other stuff. I’ve also changed big pieces of code to make them more flexible and easy to work with since some parts will be touched more often than others.
ROADMAP
As I mentioned earlier the no. 1 thing right now is the Steam Page. Why? Because it’s important to have it up early to start gathering wishlists. Wishlists are pretty much the only somewhat reliable way of doing a forecast of how well you’re game will sell. The way it works is that everyone that wishlists the game gets updated when the game is released and when it’s on sale so it drives quite a lot sales. Another thing is that when you reach certain thresholds the game gets even more visibility on the platform which drives even more sales. In other words: wishlists are important.
I would be so happy if in September I can say that the page is up but before this year is over might be more realistic. Either way, the sooner, the better.
Sinister Siamese Studios 