So a lot of detail in today's blog. Both regarding Sweet Expedition than Dawn of Djinn. So I'll sum it up and let you check the sections for more detail if interested. In Sweet Expedition, spent a lot of time cleaning up partner moves and mis. map stuff. Dawn of Djinn I've put a lot of time reworking classes, to the point Mono-classes are basically done. Might mess around with them a little bit more to try to assure they're balanced. Keeping them interesting for single Djinn play while making sure they aren't so good (or at least have some drawbacks) that players have no incentive to mess around with the class system. Check out more below.
Paper Mario:
I actually made a goal in advance for once. My goal for this week was to finish adjusting moves for all the partners in Sweet Expedition and make a video showcasing them off. I made a good chunk of progress on achieving that goal. But I was just a bit short on fully achieving that goal, so probably in another week or two, if not sooner, I should have something more in depth to share.
The adjustments I wanted to make to Goombario are done, Kooper is basically done but I'm still a little conflicted on exactly how powerful I want to make the final move. (Actually I took a break and noticed a visual bug with the move as well so maybe that's further from done than I thought.) The partners are also to the point where I'm basically done with everything I originally wanted to do, but I got an idea that I want to explore a bit before fully declaring them done. Looking forward to sharing more details, as this one new move was something I wanted to implement for the Game Jam release but it was getting to a point that I had to focus on getting other things complete so I could release it in time.
Also messed around with some mis. stuff tied to the maps, not flat out drastically changing layouts and textures yet. But I've messed a little bit with enemy formations and adding new puzzles, most of these edits were directly to scripts/code and not as much messing with the map editor yet. But I think they're pretty neat.
And since I didn't get around to finishing the partner video like I wanted this week, I think I can stop holding back and share a couple of the "puzzles" I've been working on, if only to curve expectations. I want to leave the more complex ones as a surprise, but this should get the idea across that my goal with the puzzles are more so to give the partners additional mini activities to do outside of battle, often for neat prizes, rather than be the most mind boggling or revolutionary thing.
Though, I actually decided to showcase the update to one of Goombario's move over on Discord yesterday, since I ran out of time to actually finish this blog, so I guess there's no harm showing that clip here.
If you played the Game Jam release you may have noticed that Multibonk got replaced by this move. Doing a powerful single jump with explosion 'elemental' damage. I was perfectly happy with the move being just that, but I decided to explore another idea as I started making more and more powerful moves for Mario.
Nuclear Bonk 2.0 is much more powerful but comes with a major trade-off. Goombario gets hurt in the explosion, disabling your partner the follow turn. It does similar damage to doing Headbonk two turns in a row, so you'll have to decide if getting that extra damage right away is worth the trade-off.
One thing I didn't showcase in this clip is that the explosion only goes off if you get the Action Command. Otherwise, you do damage similar to a normal Headbonk. So don't fear. If you mess up the timing, it's still a huge waste of FP, but at least you won't be punished with a turn lost as well. Maybe you'll even find a niche scenario where failing the Action Command could work in your favor.
Hopefully next weekend, if not the week after, I'll at least be done with Kooper's move pool and I can actually make that video showcasing the returning partner's new move pool like I wanted.
Comments