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Announcement
Announcement
Misao of Commercial Excellence!
Ayo?! Looks like Prayer of the Faithless has won the Misao for Commercial Excellence!
A huge, HUGE thanks to everyone who voted for it in the poll! Seeing support for this game so long after release is truly heartwarming, and makes the long development journey more than worth it! I was thinking about making a more long form post talking a bit about the journey I keep whining about, but I think that's best saved for the anniversary post.
For now, as celebration for this award, PotF is 80% off for the next week! If you've just arrived here and want to give it a play, you can buy the game now or download the free demo right here!
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1878350/Prayer_of_the_Faithless/
Itch.io: https://vermillionnova.itch.io/prayer-of-the-faithless
Again, a huge thanks for voting for PotF for the commercial excellence award, and congratulations to all winners of the other categories!
Announcement
Prayer of the Faithless is Released
Red_Nova
16 post(s) 
- 05/27/2022 01:10 PM
- 2882 views
Announcement
Release date: May 27th
- Red_Nova
- 19 post(s)
- 04/22/2022 04:05 PM
- 3515 views
Announcement
Request
Announcement
Progress Report
Progress Report
Game Mode: Nova Must Die
Remember when I posted monthly updates on this game? Those were the days, huh?
Like many others, development slowed down when the pandemic hit back in February, but I also had the added weight of changing jobs and relocating to a place that almost immediately became the hottest hot spot for coronavirus in the entire state (which is in the top 5 for cases in the whole US). This is normally the kind of timing for a low budget dark sitcom, but here I am, trying to maintain my sanity while keeping myself from dying whenever I go out to get food.
Which, y'know, is a REALLY GREAT place to be in during the exhausting, soul-draining phase of polishing and testing a game about trying to maintain humanity at the end of the world.
But enough about me. Let's talk about PotF. Even though I haven't posted any updates about the game for a long time, that doesn't mean development stopped! I snuck in a few hours here and there whenever I could find the energy, but I had to adjust my approach thanks to the aforementioned events.
Remember back in December when I said I'd go through a final death march, fixing only the problems that would take less than a day's work to fix? Well, that's still kinda happening, but I didn't anticipate the sheer amount of items that needed fixing, so I was quickly overwhelmed about halfway through the death march. In order to keep my brain from frying while still making visible progress, I broke the death march down into two endeavors: A technical death march and an artistic death march.
The technical death march was where I would focus only on the gameplay side of PotF, including adjusting parameters, equipment and item stats and placement, ability, and enemy balance. This playthrough has been completed, and so the gameplay side of PotF is more or less locked down barring final tuning based on tester feedback. This is also why I haven't been posting screenshots lately. Pictures of code changes me slowly losing my soul debugging skill problems isn't exactly appealing to see.
The artistic playthrough is where I'll be focusing on anything and everything that doesn't have to do with gameplay. So writing, art, audio, etc. While there is still a lot of work to do here, it won't be as mind-numbing as before, so I anticipate I can burn through these tasks a bit quicker. I'll even be able to post some screens of finalized areas now! Isn't that great?
Anyway, I'll try to be more active from here one. I appreciate the patience, everyone!
Like many others, development slowed down when the pandemic hit back in February, but I also had the added weight of changing jobs and relocating to a place that almost immediately became the hottest hot spot for coronavirus in the entire state (which is in the top 5 for cases in the whole US). This is normally the kind of timing for a low budget dark sitcom, but here I am, trying to maintain my sanity while keeping myself from dying whenever I go out to get food.
Which, y'know, is a REALLY GREAT place to be in during the exhausting, soul-draining phase of polishing and testing a game about trying to maintain humanity at the end of the world.
But enough about me. Let's talk about PotF. Even though I haven't posted any updates about the game for a long time, that doesn't mean development stopped! I snuck in a few hours here and there whenever I could find the energy, but I had to adjust my approach thanks to the aforementioned events.
Remember back in December when I said I'd go through a final death march, fixing only the problems that would take less than a day's work to fix? Well, that's still kinda happening, but I didn't anticipate the sheer amount of items that needed fixing, so I was quickly overwhelmed about halfway through the death march. In order to keep my brain from frying while still making visible progress, I broke the death march down into two endeavors: A technical death march and an artistic death march.
The technical death march was where I would focus only on the gameplay side of PotF, including adjusting parameters, equipment and item stats and placement, ability, and enemy balance. This playthrough has been completed, and so the gameplay side of PotF is more or less locked down barring final tuning based on tester feedback. This is also why I haven't been posting screenshots lately. Pictures of code changes me slowly losing my soul debugging skill problems isn't exactly appealing to see.
The artistic playthrough is where I'll be focusing on anything and everything that doesn't have to do with gameplay. So writing, art, audio, etc. While there is still a lot of work to do here, it won't be as mind-numbing as before, so I anticipate I can burn through these tasks a bit quicker. I'll even be able to post some screens of finalized areas now! Isn't that great?
Anyway, I'll try to be more active from here one. I appreciate the patience, everyone!
Game Design
A Thousand Ways to Die
Since Prayer of the Faithless has a more free-form battle system that allows you to distribute turns among your party, special care needed to be taken to ensure that no one single action overshadows the others. As I progress through the death march, I do the best I can to observe how I act as a player and catch certain behaviors that I don't want to encourage. For example, if I notice that I'm mashing attack for more than three consecutive rounds, then I make the necessary changes to encourage more variety of actions during a player's turn without requiring me to go back to the very beginning and test all over again.
A behavior I caught myself doing early on was, upon equipping a magical relic, I would almost exclusively use magic attacks for quick and easy victories. Because magic attacks ignore SP damage reduction and enemy Psyche stat was usually lower than Armor, that was always the ticket to doing big damage with little cost. I had thought that the massive SP cost was enough to discourage overuse of magic attacks, but apparently I was wrong. In a battle system that offers many solutions to the enemy problem, having one solution greatly overpower all others detracted from the idea of free form fighting.
Thankfully, though, the solution turned out to be a very quick and easy change: magic attacks will also be affected by enemy SP reduction. So, just like physical attacks, damage from a magical attack will be reduced by up to half the higher the target's stamina.
All it takes is a quick glance at the examine screen to see which defensive stat is lower, and you'll know whether to attack with physical or magical attacks
Sometimes, enemies will have the exact same Psyche and Armor stat. When fighting enemies like this, you are free to employ whatever measures you want to take them out.
Not only did this mean I was using every party member's skills more evenly, but there was also the extra bonus of making defensive options a bit more fair. For those that are not aware, you have some degree of control over which of your party members will be targeted by enemy attacks: Enemies are more likely to target the party member with the highest SP. If one of your allies is low on health and you have few healing items, then have that party member act enough times to reduce their SP, and enemies will likely target someone else.
It's not an absolute guarantee, and this tactic doesn't hold up if the enemy uses AOE attacks, but learning to control aggro is an important skill to learn in a game with limited health supplies.
In this example, Trill will take most of the hits during the enemy's turn. Since her Skill stat is higher than Aeyr's and Luke's, attacks are more likely to graze her and inflict minimal damage. Of course, Aeyr has more Armor and HP, so maybe he'll be a better choice depending on the situation.
And that's all I have this month. Death march is coming along slowly because of real life, but I try to put in a little bit each day. As always, thanks so much for sticking with me throughout all these years of development!
A behavior I caught myself doing early on was, upon equipping a magical relic, I would almost exclusively use magic attacks for quick and easy victories. Because magic attacks ignore SP damage reduction and enemy Psyche stat was usually lower than Armor, that was always the ticket to doing big damage with little cost. I had thought that the massive SP cost was enough to discourage overuse of magic attacks, but apparently I was wrong. In a battle system that offers many solutions to the enemy problem, having one solution greatly overpower all others detracted from the idea of free form fighting.
Thankfully, though, the solution turned out to be a very quick and easy change: magic attacks will also be affected by enemy SP reduction. So, just like physical attacks, damage from a magical attack will be reduced by up to half the higher the target's stamina.
All it takes is a quick glance at the examine screen to see which defensive stat is lower, and you'll know whether to attack with physical or magical attacks
Sometimes, enemies will have the exact same Psyche and Armor stat. When fighting enemies like this, you are free to employ whatever measures you want to take them out.
Not only did this mean I was using every party member's skills more evenly, but there was also the extra bonus of making defensive options a bit more fair. For those that are not aware, you have some degree of control over which of your party members will be targeted by enemy attacks: Enemies are more likely to target the party member with the highest SP. If one of your allies is low on health and you have few healing items, then have that party member act enough times to reduce their SP, and enemies will likely target someone else.
It's not an absolute guarantee, and this tactic doesn't hold up if the enemy uses AOE attacks, but learning to control aggro is an important skill to learn in a game with limited health supplies.
In this example, Trill will take most of the hits during the enemy's turn. Since her Skill stat is higher than Aeyr's and Luke's, attacks are more likely to graze her and inflict minimal damage. Of course, Aeyr has more Armor and HP, so maybe he'll be a better choice depending on the situation.
And that's all I have this month. Death march is coming along slowly because of real life, but I try to put in a little bit each day. As always, thanks so much for sticking with me throughout all these years of development!
