One part of Joy Eaters that I believe sets it apart, and has been an absolute pain in terms of set-up and programming is the "Nightmare System"

Mitch is an "Eater," a specialized type of psychic that gains power from devouring dreams. As such, he does not gain stats or abilities when he levels up like the rest of his party. Instead Mitch has to get his power by raising and consuming nightmares.

During battle Mitch can use the "Commit" command to commit a nightmare he's battling to memory. This adds a "Dream Egg" to your inventory.
When a "Dream Egg" is hatched, it adds whatever nightmare was being battled to the "Hall of Nightmares," a place in Mitch's subconscious.


(This is an early design on the Hall of Nightmares, the final one will be much nicer, and Elvira, your dream advisor, will have an animated sprite)

From within the Hall of Nightmares you can interact with the nightmares that inhabit your mind, training and praising them. Each Nightmare has six different stats: Stamina, Cunning, Toughness, Lifespan, Level and Happiness. How you interact with your nightmares will raises and lower the stats accordingly.

Because Mitch does not learn abilities naturally, he relies on his nightmares to provide him with them. Nightmares learn abilities as they level up, and the abilities they learn will change based on how happy they are (generally higher happiness = better abilities, but some nightmares will have completely different skill lines based on happiness, so it might be better to piss them off). Your Nightmares' abilities are your own, and as long as a nightmare resides in the Hall of Nightmares any ability they have is one you have!

But what happens when your nightmare reaches the end of his lifespan? No nightmare can live longer than 10 days in the Hall of Nightmares, and it would be a shame to waste it by just letting it die. Well, that's when you get to Devour them! At anytime you can choose to eat your nightmare, adding their stats to your own.

That's where the balancing act of raising nightmares comes in. A well-trained Nightmare will give you a higher stat boost when you eat it, but will be unhappy and will give you less useful abilities, and a coddled nightmare will give you powerful abilities while it's alive, but won't raise your stats as high when it comes time to eat it. Do you focus on getting more powerful abilities and hope those will make up for mediocre stats, or do you farm for stats and learn to work around less useful powers? You can only raise three nightmares at a time, where do you find the balance?

The nightmare system is unfinished and has a lot of programming and testing to go, but I'm really excited about the dimension it'll add to the game! Stay tuned for more junk about it!