In the last post, we briefly talked about “elemental interaction”. In the game, “How to use natural elements to fight” is one of the important experiences that we hope to bring to the players. This time we will talk about the development process in this regard:

Inspiration
The earliest source of inspiration for "natural element interaction" was the game "Divinity: Original Sin 2" which was released in the previous year and was highly praised. In the first generation, the gameplay was like Diablo's Action RPG. In "Divinity: Original Sin", the gameplay was a more traditional ActionPoint-style C-RPG, and provides an extremely interesting and interactive aspect of natural elements. At that time, our group of developers were also very addicted.

IMAGE：Divinity: Original Sin

Introduce
The original intention of making "Crown Trick" is to provide a easier-to-use retro synchronized turn-based gameplay system, but the problem is that this retro gameplay is complex and fragmented. So after we removed these complex points from the gameplay, the game was simple but the interesting aspects of these retro games disappeared.

Gogue Like game dense information interface

So, we spent a lot of time thinking about how to add a new mechanism to the game to support the fun of the core gameplay. At this time, we put our eyes on the instinct of the original sin of the gods - "to introduce a set of nature for the game." Will the element interaction system be interesting? ". With this idea, I started to try implementation.

Try
Although we got inspiration from these games, it is quite another matter to make this mechanism in the game. The game is based on the "grid" unit, and based on the "round" process unit, then the elements must meet these two points after joining, but also natural enough and easy to understand.
Therefore, the element of "the elemental terrain of the lattice shape" came into being.

'Crown Trick' Battle scene

Next, we needed to determine what elemental terrain is introduced.
In "Divinity: Original Sin 2", not all elements correspond to a kind of terrain. For example, wind and electricity do not have independent terrain. This may seem natural, but the sense of consistency will be weaker. Using it as a core game mechanism may cause certain inconsistencies and imbalances.
To ensure that each element has independent terrain and differentiated effects in the game, we will try to design a set of element interaction mechanisms for the game.


'Crown Trick' Elemental terrain
The following terrain effects are still being designed and adjusted. This is our attempt at the mechanism. If you have better ideas or suggestions, you can tell us.

• Flame - damage terrain, multi-round DOT, if the player can extend the enemy's ignition time by pulling, then the income is higher.
  
• Explosion - damage terrain, single-shot one-time damage, if you can not pull with the enemy, then the return is higher.
  
• Poison - damage terrain, multi-round percentage DOT, stackable.
  
• Ice – controllable terrain, will freeze the enemy
  
• Electricity - controllable terrain, will paralyze the enemy
  
• Oil – controllable terrain, will slow down the enemy
  
• Wind - increase / decrease the terrain, will weaken the enemy
  
• Water - increase / decrease the terrain, will enhance yourself

'Crown Trick' elemental interaction

So what happens when different elements come together? I can demonstrate some simple examples, such as water terrain.


'Crown Trick' Water elemental assemble

Flame + water = steam, steam will provide stronger DOT and an additional increase / decrease effect
Flame + wind = blow, the fire will be blown into a small fire, the scope is expanded, but the power is low.
Flame + oil = point fuel, become a sea of fire.
Electric + wind = thunderstorm, brings damage and paralysis to the enemy
Ice + wind = ice storm, can bring damage and freeze to the enemy
……


Game goal
In fact, the complete interactive elemental terrain is a very big challenge. In the process of making all the combinations of two elements, there are still many combinations of elements that are unnatural. We are constantly trying to explore more feasible combination results (the above-mentioned explosion terrain is the latest introduction, replacing the original fire wall terrain).

Although it is difficult, the production process is full of constant change, but our goal has never changed - to introduce 8 kinds of natural elements to the game, with each combination of two elements producing a change, each change has its own effect, so that Player can defeat the enemy by combining elements to get an experience each time.

Elemental-related design ideas are introduced here for the time being. Again, this is an attempt at the mechanics of the game. If you have better ideas or suggestions, please let us know. We will continue to update and introduce new links in the follow-up, so stay tuned~



Guess: How many several combinations of water lements topography?


Unfinished, to be continued...

上一篇：
Devlog: The Birth of The Big Eye Crown

The China Spring Festival is coming soon.『Crown Trick』wishes you :Everything to be plain sailing throughout the coming year!

Hello！

Since our game announced the Steam store page, there are always players and fans asking: What kind of game is this? Or is this game similar to XXX? How is this game played? And so on...

This kind of question is always difficult to answer in one word. In fact, it’s easier to understand if you play the game. But...the game is not done yet. So how can we explain ourselves without a playthrough? This is how The Big Eye Crown blog series was born. We hope that through this form, we will be able to talk to the fans and future players who I have not met, about the game, answer some questions, and most importantly do a little bit of shameless self-promotion, hehe!


（What are you staring? ）

We are a group of Rogue-like fans! We’ve played almost all the mainstream and non-mainstream Rogue games on the market. We’ve even put in thousands of hours on some of the games. Everyone on the team had the desire to make a Rogue-like game. We thought, hey we love Rogue games so much, why not making one?!

At the beginning of the project, we wanted to make a game in an underground city about exploring and fighting monsters. Different dungeon monsters will give you different abilities. You can capture all sorts of strange monsters as you traverse the dungeon and then you can use their skills to fight. The maze of the entire game is randomly generated, and there are other various changes which keep the game fresh even after multiple play throughs.


（Early demo screenshot）

In terms of combat mode, we drew inspiration from the classic Shiren The Wanderer (an incredible Japanese RPG series, also one of the earliest Rogue games) in the "synchronous turn-based combat". The "synchronous round " is simply explained as: when you don't move, the enemy does not move; when you take a step, the enemy also takes a step; all operations take place in the same round. The well-known music battle game Crypt of the NecroDancer also uses a similar combat system.


（Try and catch me!）

In fact, the "turn-based" model of gameplay is not a mainstream type of gameplay. Even in the age when Roguelike games were more popular, this was a little more niche. Nowadays, there are very few such games, and there are many reasons for the decline. However, we feel that this classic gameplay feature should not fade away with time. We hope to reinterpret this classic style gameplay in our own way.


（Shiren The Wanderer ）

Our game differs from the big map setting of Shiren The Wanderer. Instead, our game is similar to The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth with an underground labyrinth of rooms as the setting. Crown Trick also includes controls for different weapons such as swords, guns, and pistols. We wanted to give the game a clearer sense of purpose and strategy, while also making the game more accessible to players of any background or level. I’m not sure whether it wll be welcomed or not, but we just want everyone to be able to play the game.


（Randomly generated room）

In addition, the elemental interaction design is inspired by the game Divinity: Original Sin. The different elements of the terrain have different effects on the battle. In the original Divinity: Original Sin there are a small number of elements that can interact in pairs, resulting in new gameplay changes. We have made new gameplay features based on this concept, adding more elemental terrain to the randomly generated maze, and set up a function where elements can create new interactions with each other. This is a gameplay experience that is not currently available in similar games.


（In-game element dynamic effects）

Eight elements have been designed so far. Can anyone guess how they’ll interact?


Unfinished, to be continued...