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Hey everyone!
I'm really sorry I made you wait for a demo of upcoming features I've been working on these past few weeks. Exploration mode and combat rework was more work than I have thought it'll be, things started getting complicated and lots of bugs were needed to be fixed before I could officially share the demo of the said features.
It always troubled me that I couldn't offer players a proper interactive way to engage with the world during more action-based content like Tomomitsu palace raiding, so I came up with a simple solution that would be easily manageable for a single dev like me to work with and implement into the game which is exploration mode.
Players will be able to travel between different map points taking different routes while unlocking various events.
As you can see in theYou must be registered to see the linksit's already using a quick event system which adds an interesting way for storytelling. It's a window that lets me add quick and simple events with choices.
This feature will be added to the district maps too. Each district will have its own map with different events. Combat difficulty will range from easy to hard, players will be unlocking new districts with higher-level enemies and new enemy types as the story will go.
I think I managed to create something great which will improve the overall story and enjoyment of the game.
That also allows me to add one of the last major future features I'm planning to work on in the summer.
Collectible Ordinary Yujo's which players could hire or steal from Tomomitsu's pleasure houses or various other places to work for them instead of him.
Pleasure house requires workers to function and one of the main objectives of exploration mode is to allow players to explore different districts unlocking the lower class courtesans. They'll have very minor significance on the game's plot but will help significantly during night services servicing the customers besides the main four courtesans.
Exploration mode also allows me to add another key feature into the game. Heroines kidnapping.
Our antagonist, Tomimitsu, will also be able to make trouble for us by kidnapping our heroines during various phases of the main story. Players will be given a limited time to rescue them, but if they fail or ignore the timer, a bad chain of events will unfold.
So, better get good and rescue your bellowed girls as soon as possible if you don't want anyone else touching them!
The combat was reworked. Each class (Ronin, Wanderer, Pedler) has a total of 8 active and 2 passive skills. 4 active and 1 passive skill are unique to each class and offer a different gameplay style.
Max level was increased to 20 for now.
Ronin is supposed to be the most straightforward class. Good at taking and dealing damage. One of his unique abilities "Rally" allows players to even out the HP % of all alive allies and add minor healing. It's a pretty useful skill to keep everyone alive. His other ability "Howling Scythe" combined with "Overdrive" makes him a formidable foe as each strike hitting enemy weakness has a 40% chance to add an action for the current turn and "Howling Scythe" can strike the enemies for 3-5 times. You can notice in the demo video me striking an enemy 3-4 times in a row thanks to luck and this mechanic.
Ronins finishing move is straightforward damage, but with an extra ability leaving the enemy susceptible to extra damage. Once the main skill deals damage it adds a state during which the enemy will receive extra damage accumulated during the state's duration after it expires.
Wanderer is a trickster who can steal items from enemies and replace them with bombs to damage the enemy after a certain amount of turns passes using his "Steal" skill. His other ability "Foul Play" confuses the enemy to attack himself with a chance of 50% instead of the player. "Steal life" restores the player's health by attacking his enemies (classical RPG skill, but useful nonetheless), and his other ability "Gamble Strike" strikes the enemy exposing him to attacks, but if it's a miss, it has a negative effect on the player.
Peddler is the weakest of all the classes when it comes to dealing and taking damage, but he's far from useless. His unique skills make him helpful to his allies as he can improve allies abilities by collecting gold during combat. His finishing skill literally slams a treasure chest into the enemy generating money equivalent to the damage dealt by tenfold and it also buffs everyone with powerful random effects.
His other ability "charity" is also very useful. This makes an item to change its target destination from "single enemy/ally" to "all enemy/ally".
So basically you can heal everyone with a single healing item or damage all enemies with a single bomb brought from the item shop, etc. It's a very powerful ability.
The general shop also was expanded. I've added over 50 new items to equip your character and that includes upgrades to improve the existing weapon or clothes.
Overall, I worked on every single skill to make them unique and interesting even for the enemies.
One of the features of combat is stances.
I think the video shows enough and I don't need to mention that much in the post. Each stance makes the user vulnerable to adverse stance. Using them smartly can increase players damage output by 60% (boost damage+strike enemy weakness).
It also makes combat more engaged where you have to count every attack if you want to maximize efficiency. The smart play is rewarded.
Enemies also react to players and their allies stances.
It adds a little bit of multitasking, but I found it be rewarding when you hear your hit hitting enemy weakness with a nice "crack" sound.
Turn-based combats can get a little boring, I hope it'll add interesting gameplay mechanics to each encounter.
I think it's working pretty well.
Further, I have to apologize as I have to delay the update a little bit more to the next month at least. I'm very sorry for this as I keep underestimate the work I need to do before everything is completed. I still need to work on some bugs, complete 2 exploration maps and add regular brothel events, sex scenes and work further on the main story.
I work very hard on this but I'm still don't have enough time to wrap this up for this month's release. I want to release a whole package of new 2 explorable maps, overhauled combat, and stories within a single update which should be one of the most exciting updates so far.
I hope my work will be appreciated and this won't disappoint anyone as everything is coming together to offer the best experience I can make for you.
Thankfully, with this new exploration done, I won't have to make new features from scratch and I think I'll be able to return to a more stable schedule as creating new mechanics from 0 is always the hardest part of the development process. I think I'm about 90% of what I wanted to achieve with my game (feature-wise) using the RPGM engine at my best abilities and I'll be able to roll on a new phase of Wicked Rouge development which includes mainly storytelling and improving on existent mechanics soon.
I hope this mixture of things will offer an enjoyable and engaging experience.
That's it for today,
I hope you had fun watching the new gameplay video and reading my lengthy post.
-fidless
