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Spell Schools + elements

So for Resonate 1.0 as you may know i have DELETED THE DATABASE and i'm making the gameplay from ground up.
Last time I feel the Elements were really unsubstantial and tacked in, no enemies had elemental resistances/weaknesses and attacks basically and I felt it was overall kinda stupid.
While in the future I'd like to have spell schools like Astrology, Space magic, Time magic, Tarot etc. for Resonate, as a short game, it is unfeasible, so I decided to divide the spells into elemental categories.
(the Spell Cards system will persist, and each spell card is now tied to an element and it will balance your elemental resistances / weaknesses accordingly.)
Each elemental category (of the 5) has 8 spells divided by level.
The elements are:

<>
White(Holy) <> Black(Darkness)
>
>
>
Red(Fire, heat, intensity) > Green(wind, thunder, nature) > Blue(Water, cleanliness, healing)

Each enemy can have up to two elements, which will (hopefully, lol) be shown next to their name when selecting them.

The (work in progress) spell list is:


Lv. 1 Cure Light - Heals a little HP.
Lv. 2 Starlight - Damages all foes. May Blind.
Lv. 3 Divine Beam - Deals holy damage. Ultra effective against Dark foes. May Blind.
Lv. 4 Barrier - Halves magical damage received.
Lv. 5 Magna Bless - Removes Curse and bestows Bless.
Lv. 6 Rejuvenate - Fully recovers one ally's HP.
Lv. 7 Prismatic Beam - Deals very high Holy damage to a single foe, inflicting many statuses.
Lv. 8 Liberate - Reduces one ally's HP to 1, hugely increasing their stats for 4 turns.


Lv. 1 Venom - Deals small damage to one enemy, with a small chance to Poison.
Lv. 2 Blood Link - Drains HP.
Lv. 3 Umbral Bolt - Deals dark damage to one enemy. May Curse.
Lv. 4 Chaos Sand - Deals dark damage to all enemies. Small chance of cursing / poisoning / paralyzing.
Lv. 5 Bubble - Increases Maximum HP by 50%.
Lv. 6 Abyss Spear - Deals high damage to all foes, attempting to instantly kill. May miss.
Lv. 7 Giga-Gravity - Reduces enemy HP by 1/2.
Lv. 8 Shadow Servant - Creates doubles to an ally, increasing Evasion and allowing them to act twice for 3 turns.


Lv. 1 Flame Spike - Deals small damage to one enemy, with a small chance of Berserk.
Lv. 2 Battle Song - Raises STR of all allies for 3 turns.
Lv. 3 ~EMPTY~
Lv. 4 Raise - Recovers an ally from Death.
Lv. 5 Berserk - Makes one ally attack nonstop with heightened Strength.
Lv. 6 Prism - Immunity to status ailments.
Lv. 7 Nuclear Flare - Deals extremely high damage to a single foe.
Lv. 8 Ifrit Caress - Deals extremely high damage to all foes.


Lv. 1 Silent Rain - deals very small damage to all foes, attempting to Silence.
Lv. 2 Cure Wind - Heals a little HP to all allies.
Lv. 3 Antidote - Removes Poison/Paralysis for the party.
Lv. 4 Deep Freeze - deals medium damage to one foe, Silencing and reducing agility.
Lv. 5 Hailstorm - deals medium damage to all foes, reducing agility.
Lv. 6 Fall Berg - Deals high damage to one foe, greatly diminishing Agility.
Lv. 7 Miracle Rain - Recovers all allies' HP fully, removing Poison/Paralysis.
Lv. 8 Absolute Zero - Deals high damage to all foes, reducing agility.


Lv. 1 Energize - Next action happens faster, stats boosted for one turn.
Lv. 2 Protect - Halves physical damage received.
Lv. 3 Tempest - Deals small damage to 4 random foes, with a chance of Paralyzing.
Lv. 4 Disable - Inflicts Silence / Forget / Blind, and reduces stats by 25% for 3 turns.
Lv. 5 Electrocute - Deals high damage to one foe, Paralyzing.
Lv. 6 Eagle Bless - Increases HIT% by 25%, increases CRT by 25% for 10 turns.
Lv. 7 Mjolnir - Deals very high damage to 4 random foes, with a small chance of Paralysis.
Lv. 8 Overdrive - Act 6 times in a row, then die.


Additionally I'm thinking on each element combination having a secondary spell list, the only spells in this category that exist right now are:


Lv. ? Regen - Makes one ally's HP recover every turn.
Lv. ? Purify - Damages one foe, removing positive status effects.


This might, however, not be wise. To be honest I'm not sure if I should even be making so many spells -- I want to have a lot of variation so the player can choose spells and break the system as they wish, and 1.0 will be considerably bigger than the current version since I'm changing and expanding dungeon layouts so they flow better + adding a new final dungeon + adding a post game dungeon + newgame+, and many of these spells actually can't easily be found (or at least not multiple copies of them) so you're likely to only see about half the existing spells through a gameplay (unless you grind)
I'll make sure most gimmicky and important spells are handed to the player very clearly, such as Prism (arguably THE most important spell on the original Resonate) and etc. being at very obvious treasute chests.

Another thing I'm thinking about; not only having Spell Cards like you do on Resonate, but also having Grimoires that offer all spells of a specific element up to a particular level as well. You'll never be able to get the high level spells through grimoires but you can potentially have 5 lv.4 grimoires for 20 spells brought to battle (that's actually not as useful as it sounds) or, more importantly, having a single grimoire with a set of useful spells + nice acessories on the other slots.
I'm still thinking on it, though.



BTW what I hope the length of the new Resonate will be:

1st 'chapter':
1hr

2nd 'chapter':
1hr

3rd 'chapter':
30min

final 'chapter':
1h30min

bonus dungeon:
3hrs

+

monster arena:
a fuckload of time

+ new game+ modes = lots of replay value

so welp the game may benefit from this.

Posts

Pages: 1
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
Sounds great! ^_^ Can't wait to see all of this implemented!
Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
W-woah you've scrapped the database? Holy crap that's a bold move!

Yeah, echo what unity said. I'm really interested in seeing what's gonna come from this!
Well there's no point in trying to fix something that's been built wrong! It needed to be scrapped and rebuilt within the restraints of a contest deadline. Besides, it's gonna be my first Steam game! It must have nice balance and be fun! :D
I hope you get to enjoy itttttttttttttttt <333333333
It's gonna be fun. I'm afraid I may be amping the scope too much but well, I can always cut stuff off in case it doesn't work out lol.

For starters, I'm thinking about diminishing the number of levels per element to 6, and having 2 cross-element spells for each school.

That amps it to 57 spells, but that could help making them clearer too. XD welpy-welp i'll see
CashmereCat
Self-proclaimed Puzzle Snob
11638
Really really cool, Jos. ^_^
It looks like you've inverted the spell lists for green and blue. The list under the green orb has healing and ice spells, while the list under the blue orb has thunder and wind spells.
I think you should reduce the spells per element, but give more specialized stat boosts per card. Grimoires should have 0 stats, and maybe be required for double-color spells?

Main problem with elemental weaknesses is that it's hard to tell and hard to remember. I don't mind if the focus is more on the secondary effects being the element's "identity".

Just to be sure that a player will eventually have access to all the cards, I think one of the postgame stuff, maybe arena, has themed sets. Defeating the full series of Fire monsters gives you 1 of each fire card, etc. Giving access to the art assets used throughout the story is also good postgame rewards.
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