Need your suggestion and ideas for a game I'm making.

[kanedafanatic]

Now, don't get your hopes too high: I'm still at the very beginning of this project.

So, I've spent a lot of time playing Fantasy Maiden Wars and a bit communicating with it's fanbase. Thing is I love and hate this game, and the kind of player who plays it isn't my kind of crowd. What I hate the most about this game is the lack of lateral game design: the lack of possibilities for self-expression and creativity. Because the game was made more "traditionally", vertical power creep made it so only a few archetypes/characters stood out the most. It's true that 70+ characters in a fangame is a lot but when I look at this, it makes want to cringe:

(credit: the FMW Modding server over on Discord.)

For a SRPG fangame about Touhou and the amount of characters it has, it annoys me that priorities were put over safe, classic RPG archetypes and mechanics more than emphasising on the characters' abilities and talents. This is the same game that has Sakuya's time stop ability, but can only be triggered depending on a fixed probability. Functionally: the fuck you mean Sakuya can't stop time on her own? you mean her finger' got 65% chance to miss a button and unnecessarily get hit? That's really dumb, it should be on the player's side to decide if Sakuya should stop time and not get hit (and retaliate) for a specific cost of MP/an another element.

So that's why I had the idea to make a game that puts priority over gameplay and the characters' abilities, and to see if it's feasible in the first place and execute onwards if it works. I want to implement those characters and abilities in a way that myself or anybody would want to try out each and every character to find their style of gameplay. I want the challenge to come laterally first and vertically second: about finding the solution and giving that freedom of approach first and then optimize on the preferred strategy and character selection to win. I believe it is the best way to tackle a Touhou SRPG given the power nearly every character has changes the fundamental mechanics of everything. Think of the Diablo philosophy of "If everyone is overpowered, then no one is.", and then implement it in a Touhou SRPG. Pretty much everyone is overpowered by nature, I don't see why it hasn't been done before.

So, that's why I'm asking to the forums if you think there's a mechanic worth exploring for a certain character you like. Could be those found in the tier list or not: ideas that doesn't compromise about the characters' main ability but is still able to be challenged nonetheless (a lateral solution, preferably.) Here's some examples that I thought out to explain my idea:

- Sakuya: I've mentioned the core of the idea and I will elaborate further. Any incoming attack can be cancelled with her time-stop ability. The ability is reliant on a separate stat that shows the player the amount of time Sakuya has left, and using time-stop grind away those seconds. Unless under special circumstances (Yukari's boundary manipulation, for example), the player can stop time on the touch of a button, before an incoming attack or before engaging battle. Time can be gained back by being proactive: eliminating enemies, evading lethal blows, defending and so on. This "condition" also affects her higher-tier attacks/spell cards, Killer Doll, for example: high power, lethal attacks coming from Sakuya also consume time but will deal serious if not one-shot the enemy/boss entirely. Time is an important resource, and you have someone that can kill anybody on sight just because of that. Unless specified, it doesn't matter who or what you are dealing with, Sakuya should be able to time-stop anybody and anything.

- Yukari: I won't deny, it's kind of hard to apply this idea of mine right to such a character. She stands near the top in terms of power and virtually has no weaknesses. However, her Boundary Manipulation should be implemented with the most faithfulness possible. Anything is within her reach: teleportation to a spot 20 tiles away, take or appear any item, ignore certain fundamentals by manipulating the boundary between x and y and so on. again, she has no weaknesses. Instead, I think a good idea outside of just nerfing Yukari with lower stats would be to consider a "second mode" usable on command. Where the normal Gap Hag plays like a normal character on the with her own set of attacks and commands, the player can switch to "Boundary Manipulation" Yukari where in exchange of losing the next turn's action, everything is possible to Yukari to execute in the turn after she prepared. In practice: on the first turn, Yukari's action has been used, her "Boundary Manipulation" mode had been toggled before attacking. The second turn, she can only defend. The third turn, this is where she can execute any special command, movement, attack, buff/debuff or condition of any kind. In case the player wants to use "Boundary Manipulation" mode again, the same loop applies and Yukari can cast a new action two turns after.

- Cirno: She's an ice fairy. She manipulates ice. Other than giving a debuff to her attacks: the ability to freeze her environment should be an inert ability. Temporarily blocking certain tiles with ice, or freeze an enemy solid should be a given. Plus, and that can apply to every fairy: they can respawn mid-battle if they die once up to a few times. It's canonical that fairies reappear after some time, they are tied to nature. As such, gameplay-wise, you can abuse tactically reconsider your units with fairies for frontlines or support roles.

Now, giving more "canonical/accurate" abilities to character doesn't mean that everyone will be equal. Like, Rumia could have a chance against Wriggle but definitely not against Reimu or Yukari. Rather, everyone that enters her perimeter related to her manipulation of the dark will see their accuracy down to a ridiculous amount. Like I said, my goal's to incentivize lateral thinking by coming up with solutions with the characters you have on hand, but there are some thing you can't really change. Swarming the enemy with low-tier youkai, fairies and low-cost units and prioritizing numbers over pure damage is a strategy you can go with, but I don't want it to be the main strat everywhere: you'll still hit a wall.

 

[NuMetalFan]

While I don't have any particular ideas, your philosophy reminded me of NetHack. That game has a surprising amount of depth and item/enemy interactions. For example, you can throw a pie at enemies to temporarily blind them, and if they have no hands to wipe their face with, they're left blind permanently. You can cover your armor with grease to prevent monsters from grabbing onto you, or you can accidentally wipe yourself from existence, and so on. There are also several classes, and unlike in CERTAIN ROGUELITES they aren't divided into meta and trash. Each one is viable, and the biggest difference between them is how easy the earlygame is, and the opportunities you have in the endgame. That's what you're going for, right?

Back on topic, I think Wriggle can serve as some sort of debuffer. Take a look at this, it sounds nasty is you think about it for a minute. Stronger fairies would also make for good support units.

 

[kanedafanatic]

(...) There are also several classes, and unlike in CERTAIN ROGUELITES they aren't divided into meta and trash. Each (class) is viable, and the biggest difference between them is how easy the earlygame is, and the opportunities you have in the endgame. That's what you're going for, right?

I can't give you a concrete answer but it's close to what I'm going for. What I want to execute is this compromise between vertical gameplay and lateral game design. Stats like health, MP, attack, evasion, defense, etc., diverse and numerous core archetypes between characters: a striker, an interceptor, a tank, a mage..., and upgradeability acts as vertical (depth). Changing a tank's priority from defense to healing without altering the core archetype, introduce special mechanics to individual characters and stage design taking into account character strength and weakness acts as lateral (width).

I want my game to strike this balance between depth and width; where numbers do matter so that you keep an eye on your strategies and struggle if you play like a dunce. I also want my game to have this freedom of engagement where it matters less who you pick and why, but how you use and modify them to fit a compromise between the core archetype, the level you are adapting to and your playstyle.

Personally, it's the lack of balance between vertical gameplay and lateral game design that makes me love and hate FMW. Stats are indeed important: you can shape the characters at will directly with the currencies you get from beating enemies the characters you want, but only on paper. In actuality, you'll remain with the same ones from start to end because they're the only ones who have a chance to beat the next bosses. The game awkwardly tries to mitigate that by introducing level scaling (raises experience multiplier if character level is low and lowers it if it's too high), pre-installed character upgrades, new variants: the idea is there but it acts more like a band-aid on a open wound. The game has deepness but is so narrowed out that it can't give space for the player to experiment and express themselves.

Then again, FMW is not a free game. It's better to play safe and sacrifice a bit of gameplay and sell the game rather than experiment and alienate the potential customer base. Here, it's different; experiments is allowed and a balance can be set.

Back on topic, I think Wriggle can serve as some sort of debuffer. Take a look at this, it sounds nasty is you think about it for a minute.

Wriggle... Wriggle.

There can definitely be something at play there. Insects comes in large and wide varieties, with one more dangerous than the other. Having Wriggle play as this frontliner that can attack and can give various debuffs against enemies, depending on which attack is given. An strong attack might give a weak Poison element because of a specific bug, an another weaker attack gives a strong Bleed element because of an another bug, and so on.

Like I said, I'm mapping out ideas. However, Wriggle has variety in choice, I'll give you that.