Update 9/17/2014

Hail Wanderers!

A short post today as I'll go more in depth with the progress of the tree game later this week once I've tested a few more mechanics. I've spent most of my time so far this week making a diagram of the trees that the player will have access to in the game, along with creating and doing some preliminary balancing work for the different special abilities of each tree. The end result looks like this:

Each tree has the basic skill outlined, along with three possible variations of each skill. Variant 1 is a low tier positive bonus, variant 2 is a greater bonus, but has a negative effect to go with it, and variant 3 is the improved bonus without the negative component. The idea is that the player would invest resources into unlocking each variant and would do so in sequence. So the player would have the option to just unlock the first variant if they wanted a safer build, but by working through the risky second variant, they would gain access to the much improved third variant.

As you can see, the chart is missing some trees which I will add in the coming days, but I have enough done to test the next system that I want to nail down. Over the next few days, I'm going to iterate on the win condition for the game. As it stands right now, it is a purely elimination style game, but I would like to introduce some form of competitive goal that doesn't involve as much direct conflict and allows for some areas of accidental cooperation. I'll explain more of what I mean later in the week after I've tested some ideas, so stay tuned for that.

Oh, and as a final note, the progression from tree to tree isn't using a straight combination logic, it is operating more on the logic of how the essence of each element is combined. So for example, adding wind (which is free and chaotic) to a bomb tree will create a firework tree, which is the same logic of a bomb (explosive, etc) but with the added ideas that the essence of wind brings. It's not perfect logic, and it may not hold easily to all people in all places, but I think it is reasonably easy to understand and though the combinations are at first surprising, there is enough of a logical flow so that a player can at least see how it all works in hindsight and possibly make some of their own predictions. Or at least that's the intent, please don't hesitate to let me know your take on things in the comments.

Until next time,
Guardian Soul