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Designing a top down Action RPG? How?

First blog post, yay! And the topic for today is... top down action RPG design for my game, UnEarthed. As a top-down action adventure RPG, there were a few things I thought of when trying to think of how the game will be be played. First, I wanted... characters that feel powerful, where we can jump in and see 100% ACTION. Second, I wanted faster paced action, not some slow motion combat. Third, I wanted some kind of challenge. So how would I make a game like that?




Skills need to feel powerful, characters need to feel powerful. But if they are too powerful, it makes the game too easy. To offset that, I'll need to make enemies powerful, and make enemy attacks that are harder to dodge (meaning we will have to use our special ability to negate damage, more on that later).

For the matter of faster pace combat, I figured that I need some kinda ability that all characters have, that either reduces damage, or has invincibility frames. Such an ability will either have to use a cool down timer or consume resources. I wanted the game to be faster pace, so I made it a resource consuming ability that either negates 50% damage or makes the character invincible for a split second. There is NO COOL DOWN, but it does drain the secondary resource stamina quite heavily. (Warrior cyclone, mage teleport, archer tumble, knight shield charge btw.)

Then last of all, the challenge part. I still need to figure this one out... That is why I am putting in rogue-like dungeons where the enemies are much stronger, and if you die, its game over screen, you lose all the loot, gold, exp that you gained during the dungeon run (for normal death penalty, I am planning to have the character wake up at the inn with 15% exp/gold lost). The dungeons will also contain the best gear though, so it might be worthwhile to give it a shot. Just a thought. I really need more ideas for this :(



P.S.
As this is my second game ever (first one got abandoned) and I am only 53 days into coding it, I have no idea what I am actually talking about and I just want to make something fun to play. If anyone has any cool ideas, let me know and I might put it into this game!