Spent some time doing boring stuff. Bug fixing from my last playtesting session, cleaning up certain elements, assigning 'categories' to enemies (effectively their money/XP drops), giving certain items/skills more unique icons, stuff like that. It's not the most glamorous thing to talk about but it has to be done at some point, and this is the kind of dull shit people don't talk about when it comes to designing stuff like this. A lot of mid development is just polishing and getting basic things to keep working properly.

It's partly why I gave up on previous attempts at making this. I had too many other things going on so I didn't have the time to actually get all the boring shit done, this time I actually am.

It's an awkward case of better to do early, but as late as possible.

Polishing stuff is risky because if you have to modify it later you risk having to polish it again. Leaving it as late as possible is good, but if you leave it too late you end up with a lot of boring shit to do right at the end which just drags on. That's why I like doing it as soon as possible, but judging when to do it is hard. Skills and the like shouldn't change from here on out though so it's pretty set in stone, same goes for items. I've locked myself in with those by implementing the randomiser.

Locking myself in is a good thing in this case since otherwise I'd spend ages tweaking things and it would never see the light of day. It's better for everyone if I just lock myself in and force myself to get it done a certain way so that it actually, you know, comes out. Plus I have a story that I really want to tell, and gameplay that I think people might enjoy. It's not fancy by any means, but it's more focused around decision making.

Most of the battle system is built around options and player freedom.

Limited item quantities, limited CE/HP, and so on make resources important. I wanted to fix the issue I personally have of hording potions and never using them, so I put a cap on items, made potions easily accessible, and made health/Energy a valuable resource. With Energy you have two main ways to recover it: Defending and potions. One is free but takes multiple turns, the other uses an item and is quicker (plus anyone can recover anyone's Energy). Same deal with HP, but Poppy's healing spells also work.

Again, the point is to force the player to make decisions. Defend and hope you can heal, use a potion, or use a skill? One is free but ineffective, one is effective but uses Energy, one is less effective but can be done by anyone and uses one of a limited item supply. You can easily replenish that item supply, but not without going to a town first. My main goal was, as I've said, freedom of choice in how to tackle situations while making resources important to force decisions to be made, making every option viable depending on the context.

Why would I use a revive potion when my healer can do it? What if the healer dies? But then which revive potion do I want, one that restores very little health or one that restores a lot? The healer can heal themselves or I can just use a health potion instead, choices...

You can carry an infinite amount of items to be clear, but only 5 of each. This means at most 25 HP potions, 25 CE potions, 25 revives. Each five of varying efficiencies, meaning you have a lot of choices on which one to use and when. 25 sounds like a lot (and it is) but it can be easy to burn through them, which is why it's important to also use the other methods of restoration available (Poppy, defending, accessories) to lower the amount of potions you use, especially in the tail end of the game.

At the end you also get other skills that can help with all this too. Melee characters can recover Energy character's CE at the cost of SP, and one character can permanently increase the max HP of all characters at the cost of CE. All of this enforces the importance of resource management (being HP, CE, and potions) while still being open to plenty of play styles and offering plenty of freedom in how you can deal with situations. There isn't really a wrong decision, all choices have valid applications.

The difficulty still needs tweaking and balancing but my end goal is to have it be a consistent difficulty throughout with plenty of decisions in battles to keep it engaging. The items and skills really combine to make a very free type of system that I'm happy with. You're not locked into one thing since you have to use every character's speciality to stand a chance in later sections. Healing is important all throughout, melee is high damage, ranged is supportive, and Energy is versatile.

Here's a quick rundown: Healing is obviously important for staying alive, but also curing status effects and reviving fallen party members. They get back up on 1hp after battle though, so do you do it now or wait?

Melee deals decent damage with varying weapon types but gains SP every turn, building into powerful abilities that attack multiple targets for a lot of damage, a single target for a lot, confusing a target (or all), converting SP to Energy or transferring it, or doing a metric fuck ton of damage to multiple or all targets. Range is effectively support, one set of skills are about dealing damage, one set is buffs, one set is applying status effects. You effectively have the choice of dealing damage, making other people do more, or weakening the enemies. Finally, offensive Energy. This is just various elemental attacks that target one enemy, three random enemies, or all. They also apply debuffs corresponding to the element, and every element deals more or less damage to different enemies.

So again there's choices there with which debuffs to apply, and how much damage you want to deal. Not to mention one of the debuffs lowers enemy defence so... choices!

Aaand that's about all I've got to say for now. Everything is slowly coming together and I'm super excited to actually get this out there this year, especially with it being one part of a greater story line. I have plans for a couple more games already, they won't be done for a long time and will be fairly different, however. The story I have in mind is a fun one though and has a lot of different elements going into it, so I really want to see the story finished at some point.