Scribes DevLog 0 – Hello Again
8/6/2023
Hello all, and welcome to the Scribes DevLog!
So, I haven’t updated anything on this website pretty much since the last DevLog, which was a year ago. Being entirely honest, I almost forgot I even had this site. Lately, however, I’ve once-again been feeling the urge to document the development of my game, so I decided to dust off this site and pick up the DevLogs again.
Now, I’m mainly writing this DevLog to semi-quickly summarize the highlights of what’s happened since the last one. I’ll write up a more in-depth look at my recent work in another Log. So, Let’s get into it!
What happened to Comatour?
Long-story short, Comatour had a fundamental design flaw that I couldn’t find a satisfactory work-around for. To elaborate, the floating islands didn’t mesh well with the melee-focused combat. Specifically, the combat would require the player to pay close attention to their character and the enemies in order to dodge/parry/counter effectively, while the chaotic nature of the floating islands would demand the player’s attention be spread across the entire screen to navigate/avoid falling. Another issue was that I couldn’t come up with a fun/interesting way for the player to interact with the islands outside of simply standing on them.
What it ended up boiling down to was that Comatour was trying to be two different games: One about intense and highly focused close-quarters combat, and the other about exploring a chaotic world made up of movable floating islands. So, I took a step back and thought about which of these two ideas I should keep.
In the end, I figured that there are already a mountain of games which focus on intense close-quarters combat, and many of them are made to a standard that’d be hard to compete with. However, (likely due to the technical challenges it poses) I haven’t really seen any games that have a floating island system quite like the one I made for Comatour. After realizing this, it became pretty obvious which idea would make for a more interesting game.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to start designing a new game from scratch. I already had a game idea I’d been working on with a main mechanic that not only combined perfectly with the floating islands, but was actually improved by the inclusion of floating islands. So, I started up a new project file and began working on Scribes.
What is Scribes?
Scribes is an open-world top-down ARPG about magic casters called scribes who live on an archipelago of floating islands. In the game, you’ll explore the islands, enter dungeons, fight bosses, and learn magic symbols which can be combined to cast a wide variety of spells.
For the magic system, I designed a wheel menu that allows players to change their equipped spells in real-time using the magic symbols. This works well with both the game’s puzzles and combat as spells can be switched on-the-fly without pausing/slowing down the actual gameplay.
Scribes uses a twin-stick control scheme, meaning you move with WASD/the left stick, and aim your spells with the mouse/right stick. You’ll be able to equip two primary spells and two offhand spells which can be changed using the magic wheel. The left and right mouse buttons or left and right triggers are used to cast your primary spells, while SHIFT/SPACE or the left and right bumpers are used to cast your offhand spells.
Taking the magic system even further, as you play through the story, you’ll be able to find up to 16 pieces of parchment by exploring and doing side-quests. Each piece of parchment can store a single spell on it, and be combined with other pieces to create scrolls. When using a scroll, all of the spells on it are rapidly cast in sequence (with some optional logic applied). While this can produce extraordinary affects, it’s important to note that scrolls require a resource called “pulp”, and the cost of each scroll is tied directly to the amount of spells on it.
What makes these scrolls particularly special is that Scribes has a custom physics/chemistry system which allows the affects of the individual spells to interact with each other. So, an example of a scroll you could make is one that lays down a trail of water, converts that water into a flammable oil, and then lights that oil on fire (3 spells). Another example is a scroll that summons and launches a crystal ball which violently explodes when a creature gets close (4 spells).
Though the game is still somewhat in an early phase, I’m quite proud of my work on it so far. I’ll spare the details for the next devlog, but just know that I’m getting quite close to being able to work on actual (playable) game content, which is exciting.
Welp, that’s all for this one. I’ll see y’all in the next devlog!