Chomp-based Design

A lot of time this week was taken refactoring the way I structured the effects that cards have and putting in more generalized support for status effects. As a result I only managed to add one new enemy, but that work should make adding new enemies quicker in the future.

Total sum of (frontend) changes is:

-Fixed a few bugs, mostly related to the target preview system

-Statuses now display under a battler's hp bar (including the interrupted status used in the Warlord fight)

-Added the stun status, which cancels all a battler's actions for a certain number of ticks

-Added the grappling and grappled statuses, a status that links two battlers together. Neither can dodge while the grapple continues, and certain attacks will only hit a character you're grappling

-Added Stunning Blow, a card that only does 2 damage but also stuns for 3. At the moment it's the only way to avoid undodgeable attacks, like the Chomposaurus's Dazing Roar 

-Added the Chomposaurus, a new enemy who makes use of both the stun and grapple statuses

I wanted to talk quickly about the design of the Chomposaurus.

The Chomposaurus was mostly structured around the last two cards below, Chomp and Gnaw. I was inspired by games like D&D and Pathfinder. Large toothy monsters like a T-Rex often have a bite attack that comes with a grab, and then some kind of attack that hits grappled enemies. 

I knew right away I wanted to replicate that with an attack that somehow enabled a set of follow up attacks that were more dangerous. It seemed like a fun way to incentivise dodging the initial attack. I've also always loved grapping effects in games, and it's not something I've really seen in the card game space.

The version I eventually landed on was a grapple status that links two enemies together, prevents dodging, and is reduced by dealing damage. This means that grappling is very good for characters relying on block cards, and very bad for characters that dodge more. That seemed appropriate. It also means that your attacks become a form of defense as they break the grapple, which is a cool inversion.

Here you can see me using attacks to break the grapple, stopping the gnaw effect from doing more damage to me.

Note - I did not add any player cards that use the grapple mechanic, but that's because I think it deserves more investment than a card or two. Expect to see a whole grappling card set coming later to enable that archetype.

Once I had that core of the Chomposaurus design done, the rest centered around that. The big hit with the grapple meant the Chomposaurus was very susceptible to summons as chump blockers, so I gave it two AOE attacks in Stomp and Dazing Roar to help deal with that. I also didn't want to give it any defense as that felt against theme, so I gave it a lot of HP and Dazing Roar as a sort of pseudo-dodge.

Next up - Some more enemies, probably also dinosaur themed. Enemies will probably be coming in themed blocks for reasons that will become clear as the interbattle game develops. I also have an idea for another shop option, but I'll leave that as a surprise. Check in next week if you'd like to see that!

If you're interested and want to see what comes next, I'd love to have you follow along! You can also play the demo on my itch.io page here: https://isochronalgames.itch.io/timelinegame

Gifs in this were created using ScreenToGif - thank you ScreenToGif!