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Where Should the Game Focus?

  • Sviel
  • 05/17/2014 11:56 PM
  • 257 views


At this point, my decisions had led up to creating a Zoids-themed RPG. The RPG element necessitated a focus on strong characters, while the Zoids bit suggested well-developed combat. Not coincidentally, these two areas lined up with my strengths as a developer.

Other Zoids RPGs, like the Saga series, also focused on characters, though the combat was decidedly standard fare. However, they had very large casts, often upwards of fifty characters, since they included just about everyone with a speaking line in any piece of Zoids media. This is an effective method when dealing with established characters since you just have to remind the player of who they are and nostalgia does the rest. I decided to take a more intimate route and focus on a handful of characters to facilitate properly developing them and in order to help combat remain interesting.

Existing Zoids games have combat systems ranging from strategy (Zoids Assault) to action (Zoids: Battle Legends) to turn-based (Zoids Saga). Given my graphic restraints, I chose to follow in the footsteps of Saga, though I'm mulling a strategy style game for another time. The turn-based starting point lent itself well to creating combat that was not so obtuse that it new players couldn't penetrate it, but deep enough that clever players could perform at a much higher level than standard. Of course, there are a plethora of RPGs that take this opportunity and squander it.

Next, I'll detail a few pitfalls of turn-based combat in RPGs.