The Drop

A brief rundown on progress made on The Drop in the last month! An early look at content, features, mechanics, and other madness to follow.

CONTENT
■ All three playable characters available in the test demo version have been revealed: Moke, Lani, and Tehgonan. See the Characters tab for full stats on them.
■ Over 50 items to use, eat, wield, and throw have been added and will be available in the demo version, with hundreds more to follow.
■ Three enemy types have been implemented. At least a dozen more will be added before the demo is released.
■ Different "themes" for each floor are now possible, such cave or desert settings. This affects the environmental spawns, items, enemy types, and some special events for that floor. Screenshots of these will be added later.

MECHANICAL
■ Character passive traits have been implemented. This includes knowledge of all items with a certain property (such as plantlife), active abilities that trigger when attacking, and reactive abilities that trigger when being attacked.
■ Item handling is fully functional. This includes random item spawns, item drops off enemies (common and rare), picking up stacks of items, identifying unknown items, and all item interactions.
■ Basic property interactions for enemies have been implemented (specifically, FEARS and LIKES). Attacking an enemy with an item or spell that has a property that an enemy fears (for instance, poison) will cause that enemy to panic and run away for several turns. These interactions are "learned" as they are encountered. Similarly, an enemy who likes some property of the item or spell (and who is not already after you) will ignore you for several turns.
■ The vision stats have been combined. Instead of a separate "range" and "spread" value, there is now just a single "vision" stat that incorporates both.
■ Healing magic is working properly. Some healing spells have a random side effect, such as stunning the player for a turn or two. These have been implemented as well.
■ Status effects on both enemies and the player are now present.

INTERFACE/OTHER FEATURES
■ The random music playlist is now active. The player can add or remove songs to control whether they show up as random floor BGMs, or even add his own music (MP3, WAV, or OGG files).
■ The status screen has been modified to display passive traits, the character's background, and the combined vision stat. As such, the current status window screenshot is out-of-date.
■ A few new spell icons have been created to represent healing magic and non-damage magic.
■ A whole lot of icons for the new items have been made.
■ The "inspection" window has been rearranged to be less cluttered when listing a target's properties. Also, certain interactions are now color-coded to stand out better.

DESIGN CHANGES
■ Item properties can no longer be learned by throwing the item. It must be eaten, used, or (for weapons) equipped.
■ Status effects on spells now have a better chance to land when the player is higher level, up to a cap of 200% of the base chance.
■ Items with the "FOOD" property can be eaten to add essence (aka experience). These items are relatively rare and have benefits when used in other ways as well. In addition, some enemies can be distracted, bribed, or even befriended with the right kind of food.

This month, I will be concentrating on environmental interactions (using magic to freeze water or burn grass, and whatnot), as well as how these interactions affect enemies in combat. I'm still gunning for the test demo release at the end of December.