VantaPsy DEMO V3.3.7 - V3.3.8 Update Log

Overview

There are few minor stuff I added and tweaked, but the important two mechanics I've added are Traits and Time.

Traits

Traits affect dialogue options and character reactions, potentially leading to varying outcomes. It also affects combat, e.g being conscientious increases weakness damage, while being impulsive (the opposite of conscientious) increases damage while in AP Debt.

Making decisions will impact your Traits and how characters respond to you. Kinda like a karma system in other games.

Time

This is gamifying a plot point that already exists in the game. Progressing through the game, your Time will decrease. If it reaches 0, you will permanently die and can restart the game in New Game+. Making 'good' decisions will increase a multiplier that will affect how much Time is decreased, while making 'selfish' or 'negative' decisions will decrease the multiplier.

Reaching certain thresholds will also inflict the player with various effects, e.g Wounds - you only restore some health after combat.

This system is done in a way to balance the decisions you make. The time that gets decreased is percentage based, not fixed numbers, so hopefully it's not too restrictive. That being said, I wanted to make a mechanic out of the plot of the game, where you are suffering from Frallation and your time is short.

Closing

Those were the major 2 mechanics. It may seem small, but there's a lot of moving parts and I tried to overlap mechanics so they tie into each other and feel cohesive. I.e. Time is influenced by your Traits, Traits impact the decisions you make but also combat, gaining Affinity Points with characters will gift you with Cards, which also affect combat, but also open up story lines, wherein you can make more decisions and get more rewards. You need to engage in Combat in order to progress, so if you care about the story, you will have engage in combat and all the mechanics tied to it. Hopefully you get where I'm going with this. None of the mechanics were added just for fun, I thought really hard about everything.

Anyway, I'm still working on the things I've mentioned before. Sorry, I really just wanted to get the major mechanics out of the way so I can focus on details and side quests later. 

Also, I wanted to clarify that the Traits Mechanic affecting how people react isn't fully implemented. I mean, there are instances where it happens, but honestly, i want to focus on more complicated features before doing those. That's more a creative thing than a mechanic anyway, so please be patient.

Working on/next updates

Sorry that I haven't done much in the way of visuals. The coding side of things took up most of my time. I still need to work on aspects I mentioned before.

• Visual updates to various areas
• Cutscenes for scenes that don’t have them
• Add Lovers card level up scene
• Unique Animations for Weapon Types (Sword, staff, dagger, axe, etc...)
• Animations for Magic tiers
• Animations for various abilities
• Animations for when an Action is stocked
• Enemy Sprites (Certain enemies are still placeholders)
•  Add clarity to the Party Menu, as well as the Cards Menu.

Major Mechanic (Hotswap)

I want to implement a Hotswap mechanic. I won't go into it, but I want to make sure the rest of the game works perfectly before adding this. Hotswapping is basically a way to quickly change party members.

Questionable Mechanic to add - Debate and Investigation 

I want to add a debate mechanic that goes hand in hand with investigations. The plot does revolve around a mystery (The titular Soul Snatcher) so I want to gamify the player doing their own investigations and coming to conclusions on who the Soul Snatcher is. This would also lead to various endings. The problem with this is that I would need the entire game to be done to fully develop the world in such a way that the player can engage in a robust investigation. Until that happens, this is going on the backburner for now, and depending on how cramp the game gets (It's already quite packed with mechanics) I may or may not actually add this.

If you're wondering, think of the investigations like that of Disco Elysium. Something like that.

Also, I updated the cover