Author Archives: admin

How to do perfect (or almost) gameplay balancing

If you check at the bottom of this post you’ll see a sort of spreadsheet page (and indeed, it is!) and you’ll wonder what the … is that.

It’s my system to do perfect gameplay balancing! In games like RPGs, where you have lots of skills/stats, is really hard to balance properly games. There will always be some classes/races with better attributes than others. This is inevitable, but there are some tricks you can use to at least try to make a balanced game.

In what consists my method? simple, I take a spreadsheet program (Openoffice in my case) and I lay down the stats needed in row/columns like in the example below. Then, I use the SUM function to sum all values in rows/columns. The result should be that all totals are equals: it means that if I have a class with more Willpower, there will be another with more Wisdom, and so on. But in the end if you sum all values they should be all equals, grouped by your RPG system (in my case races/elements).

Hope I managed to express myself well. If you’re making a complex game, just try it, might save you some time! Of course there are still lots of things to balance inside the game itself but this should be a good start.
balancing

Another rpg card game?

Yes, I’m playing around withrpgcardgame some ideas for another RPG / card game.

After almost 4 years have passed since I released Magic Stones, I felt the need to write another RPG between a VN and a dating sim 🙂 I have already my other project called Tower Of Destiny which is in full3d but that one will require lot of time (the engine is still to be finished).

For this one instead, using python, I think I could have a playable prototype in a week or so. I have already a bunch of card hand-drawn ready to use (no more 3d models this time!) and an interesting battle system and character development.

In practice you would control “Generals”, who have under their command several units. Each unit is a real character, which his own stats, inventory and skills (or special moves). There would be 3 basic archetypes: Melee, Magic and Missile unit.

The battle would be turn based like Magic Stones but in this one you actually have Action Points. So you can do several actions in your turn. Simple actions like changing your weapon or preparing a spell would require few AP, while other action like attack, swap positions or use items would require more AP. Using skills would also require AP. Differently from Magic Stones each unit could learn several Skills / Special Attacks. There would be a set of common skills between same archetype + some advanced skills. For example the Fighter is the basic Melee unit, and it would share several skills with the Mercenary. But the mercenary would have (at higher level) also skills like dual-wield, critical strike, and so on.

Then the game would consist on release 1.0 probably just in tournaments where you fight against other teams of characters. I plan to have the initial game out at a very interesting price like $9.99 and then release several add-on pack each one priced at $9.99 but with lot of content.

Anyway, all of this is just a plan. From now to the point where the game is finished it could become anything including a online-only game 😀

The best moment for an indie

This is actually the best moment for me, as indie. What I’m talking about? About the period of time between a finished project, and the start of the new one.

Indeed I’ve officially finished writing all the texts needed for Heileen 2: The Hands Of Fate, even if of course I haven’t finished the game itself yet. But from now on, it is just a matter of waiting for the voices / missing art, and playtesting (but I’ve already done that a lot while writing the story). So while there’s still some work to do, nothing that really require my creativity.

Instead, right now I’m thinking about what to do next. I have several other projects going on, but some are long-term ones, or are carried on by other people (I’ve other writers working on more games). For sure the first thing will be to implement a small mini-farming game for the Flower Shop dating sim, and then… don’t know. I am evaluating several ideas right now, including some light-horror stories, an investigative one, a sci-fi team combat based game with story, and more.

It’s going to be a fun end of the month 🙂

Deadlines and commitment

It’s scary thinking that today is already the 10th october and I announced Heileen 2 for november 🙂 But at same time is thrilling and having a deadline keeps me focused and committed to finishing the game. Not that I wouldn’t have finished it otherwise – but I have the insane tendency to always add more stuff in games. I start small, then day by day I have new ideas and I want to add them all in the game. It might sounds good but it isn’t: if you do something too big too fast, there are several side effect that might happen:

  • bugs – adding too much content/features in short time WILL inevitabily lead to bugs. And you know, nobody likes them 🙂
  • lower quality – this is obvious: adding too much stuff (in my case text or gameplay experiences) in short time means I won’t have time to test them properly and see if they impact the gameplay in a good or bad manner
  • possible delays – last but not least, it can lead to a situation where you won’t meet the deadline. Like happened with Bionic Heart for example, where I delayed the exit of 2 weeks because of voiceovers

Right now I’m still writing the final part but I’m almost done. It’s really nice to see all the various endings, all the possible ways the story of Heileen can end. BUt will it really end with this game? who knows… 😉

Lots of decisions

morgan-julietIn the final part of Heileen 2 I’m trying to make things less dramatic. Some of the dreams Heileen has are pretty scary, true nightmares. But they don’t really fit too much into the light theme of the first game, so I’m changing slightly direction in this last part.

There will be fun moments and even the endings with the most risky sins like Wrath or Envy won’t be anything too bad.

On the left, meet Morgan and Juliet. Yes, exactly, Morgan isn’t free… even if Heileen instantly fall in love with him. But who knows, maybe things will change through the story, after some events…?

I’m also trying to keep the player active through the whole story. I know that the original Japanese VN have VERY FEW choices, and lot of text, but I think as they are they can’t work well with the western audience (if not at all).

Beside, I too like to have more control over what is happening. I don’t like too much to ask myself “why the main character did that? it was stupid, I should have had the choice to do differently!”.

decisionsSo even during this last part, that in theory was a sort of “prologue”, I’m putting many menu with decisions that will affect (even if in some cases only slightly) the final outcome.

The most important part for the outcome will be the choices you made in the previous 21 dreams, but also what you will pick in this final part: so in summary there will be 14 unique endings (one for each Sin / Virtue) and a sort of early ending for a total of 15 unique endings.

But there also will be several subquest that are triggered through the game and are independent from the main story (even if to finish them you’ll have to reach the pirates part) and the final score that you can reach will be 100 (so 20 different quests that you can solve).

I believe with all that content the game will be quite replayable and long, maybe not as Bionic Heart (who is my longest and more varied game to date) but still not bad at all 😉