Liora's Price of Dignity Devlog 2

In the previous devlog post I talked mostly about the core system for the next game. In this post, I want to talk a bit about the auxilliary systems and take a first look at the three core characters.

Before we dive into that - since I saw some some comments on the potential of doing a larger setting shift - I want to lower the expectations on that regard for our "smaller games", such as Liora's. When I do another big project on the scale of SKA, I plan to do a larger shift, but for the smaller games, I plan to stick relatively close to what we have been doing in SKA.

This includes the setting, reusing quite a lot of assets, skills and as you will see in the following, sub-systems. I hope that this will keep the scope small so that I can focus my time on developing triggers and effects for the Contract System while leveraging the knowledge we have developed in SKA for the things that work while playing around with variations of them. (Pierce will definitely be weaker and Water Skin will probably allow you to walk over water tiles in exchange for MP)

Think of it like the Shin Megami Tensei games, where certain elements are recurring, but the core systems and the interactions with them are vastly different. So, with that preamble out of the way, let's take a close look at the gameplay loop surrounding the Contract System.

Gameplay Loop

Similar to SKA we will have days and phases in the day. Although this time around, we will only be looking at a single-world setup. Other than that, I don't think the following structure will be all too surprising:

The gameplay loop consists of 4 phases:

Morning: A negotiation event or a follow-up event from the previous day’s Night Phase may trigger. After that the player can perform some additional preparations and choose the dungeon to go into.

Day Time: During day time phase, the player will be crawling through a dungeon.

Evening: The player can spend their time improving their equipment, learning a skill or also doing a leisure activity.

Night: Autonomous playing of event scenes.

The morning phase is mostly just prep so you can perform some negotiation or perform other prep work and then we have the combat oriented dungeon crawing phase to make progress and gather materials. The Evening time-slot corresponds to the day-ending events from SKA where you can do the usual set of improvement events like infusing materials, learning skills, etc.

The one new item that's different from SKA is "Leisure Activities". While there is some cross over as reading books here will count as one, this will generally refer to activites to maintain the relationship between Heroine and Boyfriend and get some temporary buffs like couple acitivities. Of course, Contractual obligations may interfere here and going on a date with the Antagonist might take priority. :) And from there they might then lead to autonomous scenes triggering in the final Night slot.

For the dungeon side - again for the sake of maintaining a small scope - we will only have a small number of dungeons with a "limited respawn system".

There are a limited number of side-dungeons and a Main Dungeon.

Each area has an associated Area Level.

The side-dungeons start at a low level; the Main Dungeon at a high level. Each area in the Main Dungeon has an increased base level.

Every time a side-dungeon is cleared, all monsters respawn and the Main Dungeon’s level is reduced by 1, while the side dungeon’s is increased by 1.

The Monster resides in the final area of the Main Dungeon.

The level of a monster is determined by the area level + the monster level

At certain level tresholds, encounters change (e.g. more enemies, stronger enemies)

Maybe some will recognize this setup from the game Nebel Geisterjäger, however, there enemies respawn upon re-entry of a dungeon level. Here, a respawn will only be triggered once the area boss has been eliminated. So overall, the resources are still limited. Probably all enemies in Liora's game will have some sort of drop in contrast to SKA so we can create a choice between sneaking to an area boss and winning time by skipping the other mobs (and , or investing resources into hunting them down so you can get the most value out of a respawn trigger.

Of course, in order to traverse the dungeons, various skills will be helpful. One of the side dungeons will probably feature the Underwater Dungeon biome and Air Bubble will also make a return - and again require quite a bit of funds to learn. Deals with the Antagonist for money can then hook into this.

There are various other subsystems that I have in mind but rather than talking about them, I would test them out in a prototype and then show them in-game. I hope that these two sections, together with the previous post on the Contract Sytsem, were able to give a rough picture of the gameplay shell. For the remainder of the post, I would like to take a sneak peak on---

Characters

---our characters.

I have been struggling a bit on narrowing down their personalities. I think I need to write some actual dialogue to really figure out the details. But the rough strokes are there.

Heroine: First, we have our Heroine, Liora (Nickname Lia). While I went with a passionate character for Aura, I think this time around I want to go for someone who's on the outer level a bit more serious and stern.

The game will probably have a bit of a more traditional class distinction, with Liora focusing on the mage role (more of an intelligent one than Charlotte though :'D).

In terms of background story, she's a remote descendant of royal blood. A fact the Antagonist becomes aware of at the beginning of the game and what motivates him to lock his sights on her in order to raise his own station.

Character Voice Samples:

Sheesh, keep your voice down. You are bothering everyone else.

Do you always have to be so blunt?!

I’m sorry, this block head can be a bit rude sometimes.

We promised not to be late!

Honestly… You are impossible… What would you do without me?

I think she sounds a bit similar to SKA's Nadia in my head. ...Which doesn't quite bode well for our Boyfriend character?!

Boyfriend: Rean. Luckily, he won't be following Albrecht's path of being a bit clumsy and wimpy. I was thinking of putting the traits of passionate, hot-headed and a bit easily to provoke into a fight on him, so we can have him get baited into entering bets with the Antagonist. I imagine him with red hair and a bit of a delinquent, and in terms of class, more of a Warrior, a character type I wasn't really able to do in SKA because I don't think Luciela would have hated him too much haha :'D.

In contrast to George, who never really put much value on the concept of manliness, I think Rean would struggle more with his illness causing his body to decay and also not let him perform as a man.

Character Voice Samples:

You bastard, what did you say about Lia?!

Khh! Like hell I’d lose to the likes of you!

Gimme a break…

Kahaha! I’m telling you, I’m fine, I’m fine.

I decided to choose the name Rean in reference to the Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel. Although they don't share character qualities (George's "Haha" is based on Rean's constant reaction to everything being Haha, though), I think dense main protagonists of a large harem of girls make good source of names for a cuck character. :'D I may change my mind on this name though.

Antagonist: Finally, we have our antagonist, Edgar. I'm still very undecided regarding his qualities. His background being an aristocrat of low standing, who seeks to improve his position by joining the hunt for the monster hiding in the depths of the main dungeon and conquering Liora in the process, I could see different ways of going about his character. The two core achetypes essentially boiling down to him being more of a Hermann or more of a Roland. With his focus on Contracts, I think the former would be more fitting, but ideally I think I would like him to be different from the two and placed somewhere in the middle.

Looking down on brute violence (contrasting Rean), but also confident in his combat abilities (so definitely not a Hermann haha). If I were to use Martials to characterize is, I would probably give Rean Rampage and Offensive Stance and Edgar Pierce. And also give him skills for applying Enchanments (essentially coatings) to buff himself (and potentially a certain phallic object in bed). Does it make sense to anyone reading a characterization through skill assignments?! :'D

Character Voice Samples

Work smarter, not harder.

She’s out of your league, mutt.

Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. All bark, no bite.

Mediocrity must be exhausting.

For his name, I chose Edgar because of the etymological origin "Rich Spear". Apply a hentai interpreation to the Spear part.

Combat

Since I mentioned earlier that the characters will be limited in their skills to that what their class allows, some might wonder how this will work with the Tactical Advantage system. My current plan is to start out Liora with the Special Skill "Strategize" which will allow her to give any party member her Tactical Advantage state as a priority action. So you can hit weakness with one of her spells, and then transfer it to a party member who can use it for a strong Martial.

If possible, if I were to add completely new skills, I would like for them to have similar such teamwork components because we can then tie them into the Contract System. E.g. "Liora must give her Tactical Advantage to Edgar" or "If Edgar has Tactical Advantager he must use Pierce" to name an example of how teamwork could be influenced positively and negatively through contract clauses.

A final system I have in mind but haven't quite decided on if I will include it into the game is a generic "Battle Contribution" system. Basically just counting the amount of damage dealt to an enemy (maybe weighed by its level) compared to the total party damage. This would allow for a generic system for our characters to compete with each other when performing bets or otherwise act as a trigger for contract clauses. "If Liora's Battle Contribution was less than Edgar's, she has to do [X]" as an example.

Prototype Development

But we are now getting into the levels of details where I need to start working on a prototype to further develop the ideas and just try them out. Next month I plan to work on SKA but the in April I will be starting the development of the first prototype build for Liora. As a warning: It will be a whitebox prototype, meaning most dialogues and maps will just be placeholder and function just enough so we can test the developed systems. Regular development to turn the protoytpe into a minimum viable product (MVP) will follow after that.