Hey guys! Sorry I haven’t blogged in a few weeks; I’ve been busy. Today I’m going to talk about items in my game; or, as they’re called, Tools.

Items are skills, skills are skills, abilities are passives
I’ve gone for a very non-standard approach with items in my game; for one, there is no “equipment” in the game. You don’t equip anything in the normal sense. However, that does not mean that there are no weapons or armour. Bare with me here. Instead, your weapons are items which you use in place of skills. Really bare with me here.

Throughout the game, you receive weapons and armour, such as swords and shields. These will go into the “Tools” menu in battle; and so instead of equipping them, you choose one to use in combat each turn, much like you would with a skill in an ordinary RPG. From there, they will do damage or provide some other benefit to the player. So really, the weapons are used as skills.


But, of course, there are some big differences between items and skills; you can buy items, you can sell items, items don’t use MP, and (some) items are consumable. These are the basic reasons why I chose items over skills(well, close enough, anyway).



What this means is that instead of equipping a shield to reduce damage, you use a shield to block an attack during battle. You don’t use “slice”, you use a sword. Each tool will also have separate properties. An axe, for instance, may hit last in the turn, while a sword is much faster. A boomerang will hit all enemies, and a fire staff will do fire damage. The way the weapon is used will even make a difference; shuriken deal ranged damage, knives deal pierce damage. You can use a whip as many times as you like, but each time you use an arrow, it’s gone forever. Although tools are very similar to skills, there are some crucial differences that make tools more appropriate for this game.

Fantasy shops: fair and portable
Well, with items being so important in this game, it’s obvious that shops will have a pretty critical role to play. They’re where you will gain and lose “skills”, after all! But my shops will be a little different to normal, to make them even more important.

One, shops have a 100% pay-back rate. That is, you sell things for the same price you buy them for. This is so you can easily exchange weapons throughout the game – there’s no point having options if you’re going to make the player too scared to use them.

Two, shops will be accessed through the menu. As with all good systems, I plan to explain this away quickly and using fairies. The benefits of this should be obvious; if you lose against a boss and think, “I could really use a rapier for this!”, then all you need to do is go into the menu and do a bit of switching. I think most people would prefer this to trekking back to the shop each time you have a change of heart.

Three, the shop will be complete. Well, kind of, anyway. Whenever you obtain a new weapon, it will be added to the shop(a cool guy called Gubid is doing a video on how to do this for me and I will be sure to link him when it’s released). You will also find recipes that add items to the shop that you don’t yet own. There’s no point having a shop with nothing in it, after all!

And, finally, the shop will only trade in non-consumable items. For reasons best known only to me, I don’t want any money leaks in this game. So everything you buy and sell to and from the shop will be non-consumable. That means by the end of the game, you’ll always be worth more than you were at the start.

Shops will be very important in my game. Never be afraid to buy and sell weapons!

Anyway, that’s the general overview of items in my game. I’ll talk in specific about different types of items, like poisons and shield, later. Thanks for reading!