I’m currently working on a game in RPG Maker (VX Ace), using the engine to prototype a concept. It will be starring Spike & Kitty, a couple of anthropomorphic cats who will run amuck. Currently the assets are either rough placeholders or pre-generated with the engine.
Spike was originally an anthropomorphic cat with a few screws loose because he had a dog’s name. Kitty was an anthropomorphic ninja-lawyer (the most evil of professions) who realized that evil ninja tend to die often and so she better switch to the hero side, because hero-side ninjas are cool and thus live.
A couple of years ago a discussion on a forum was in regards to embarrassing ‘original creations’ 14 year olds tend to create. Sonic rip-offs, or invulnerable characters with names like Cloud Goku. I looked back and realized maybe Spike & Kitty weren’t so bad and gave them an update.
The concept is pretty simple: Spike & Kitty wander the wilds upon which they will meet a monster (see Monsters of Smikverse), get a quest to assist said monster and wind up breaking into and fighting enemies in a corporate office building. For those not versed in RPG’s, typically the heroes get a quest from some important city person and kill things in a dungeon.
This game has been eating at me for the past couple of weeks to be worked on so I guess if I want to sleep, I gotta work on it.
Feature: Interactive Comic Panels
One of the ways I would like to separate this game from other JRPG’s is that combat makes use of interactive comic book panels. While you still give commands to your player characters (currently just Kitty) they illustrate the outcome in various panels.
When Kitty lands a non-fatal attack on a low-level enemy, it will indicate this to the player with a “wounding panel”.
Part of the game’s experimentation is in narrative. Hit Points were originally meant to abstract combat and represent how many mistakes a character could make before being defeated in a fight, but most games forget that and just treat it as health and many JRPG fights involve the two sides taking turns bashing each other until one side falls down.
In a story, comic or movie however the lifespan of an antagonist is proportionate to their importance to the plot. Extremely minor villains with little relevance don’t take multiple hits, they’re usually lucky to just withstand one.
So minor enemies need to die in two hits at most, possibly in a single stroke.
I want to take back the original purpose of Hit Points, and the only way to do that is to illustrate damage differently. That means making damage look like damage and not just numbers that pop up after an effect.
It also means that Kitty doesn’t take hits — she’ll be shown blocking or dodging instead, even though she still loses HP.
Since Kitty won’t be shown being hit, I’ll have to get creative when it comes to restoring her Hit Points.
The other feature will be the Parlay system, but I’ll post about that when I get to it.
