This weeks sketches can be found in this PDF.
This week's challenge was to design a game of the genre we least liked to play. For Jonas Engl and me these were simulators and turn-based RPGs.
In Gangs of Corros you're taking control of one of the groups in the ever-changing turf wars in the gas-light fantasy-city of Corros. In a possible campaign mode, every fight/match would be a single attack on a particular area. Controlled territory would generate resources that in turn allow to recruit a wider variety of gangers. You can either battle against human opponents or AI-opponents.
Our two major issues with the round-based RPG genre were that they tend to be “press one attack option until the enemy drops” and “grind the eversame combat to power-level your characters” (e.g. Final Fantasy VIII or some stretches of Pokemon). To make combats diverse and require varying strategies‥
- each combat has a varying set of environmental influences (e.g. day, night or rain)
- there’s multi-fighter combo-attacks (e.g. tsunami for drenching followed by eletricity)
- special attacks providing movement in the initiative order
- and attacks that are more effective against certain types of enemies or moves of them.
The combat itself consists of a positioning phase, where you take turns placing fighters to face each other off. This is followed by a phase where everybody selects their moves for each combatant. Lastly the attacks are resolved from the left to the right―one pair of fighters after each other. The attacks-types (quick, power/slow, defensive) basically are a rock—paper—scissors system. Environmental influences, effectivness and combos can change the outcome however. In general, attacks with special effects are a bit less effective, but provide a larger advantage elsewhere if combo'd effectively.
Feedback
It probably will be a lot better action and complexity-wise instead of picking all ganger’s attacks before resolving them to pick and resolve attacks opponent-pair by opponent-pair.