As promised for approximately three straight dev diaries now, today I’m finally going to dive into a closer look at the patrons of the Bleakwatch Inn! But before that, I’ve never really set the stage for exactly what is going on in Bleakwatch, so let's do that first:
Bleakwatch.
A dreadful name for a town, but it’s a town with a dreadful purpose: to keep watch over the great evil sealed within the tower.
But as so often happens with such things, time has taken a toll and over hundreds of years the purpose of Bleakwatch’s existence has been lost to myth and memory.
Except now the evil has escaped.
Its first act? Cursing the town that kept it entombed all these years. Come sunrise, anyone left will be the first victims of its dread return.
So now as the hour nears midnight and the bartender pours a final round, the only ones who remain are those who were either too brave or too foolish to flee. Can these truly be the kinds of heroes to save this town - and perhaps the world - from what’s to come?
In Last Call, the player assembles a party of four from the brave/greedy/foolish souls who’ve decided to try and defy the town’s fate and defeat the great evil lurking in the tower before their curse comes to fruition.
At the start of the game, the player will only have access to the default group of four characters: the Gallant, the Cutpurse, the Ardent, and the Apprentice. Through subsequent runs, a variety of other classes will eventually be unlocked, giving the player a large pool to try out all sorts of party combinations.
Designing how each of these classes plays - and how they interact with each other - has been one of the biggest and most interesting challenges of creating the game up to this point.
Ability Possibilities
Right, so after promising to talk classes, I’m going to step back for a moment to talk about abilities. Given how important abilities are in terms of defining the classes, it’s worth looking at what defines abilities in a little more detail.
Every class has a unique pool of abilities available to them, though at the outset they will only have one unlocked. This is in addition to some “core” abilities such as their Basic Attack, Defend, and Move.
The Cutpurse’s initial ability, for example, is Cheap Shot.
From its description, we can see Cheap Shot deals 8 damage to a single target, and at the same time allows the Cutpurse to retreat (move back) one row. We can also see that it starts with 2 uses. Class abilities almost all have a use cap, and one use is automatically restored after each encounter. Alternatively, healing fountains can also restore all uses of an ability.
The other pertinent information about Cheap Shot are its Position and Range. Position defines where a unit has to be to allow this ability to be used. Cheap Shot is a Melee (M) skill, and requires the Cutpurse to be in the front row to use it. Range defines what enemies can be targeted by the skill. Again, Cheap Shot has a Melee range and can only hit enemies in the front row (or the closest enemy after that if the front row is empty).
Another example is the Apprentice’s starting ability, Ember:
Ember, from its description, deals 15 fire damage to a single target. I won’t dive into elemental strengths and weaknesses today, but it is important to note what kind of damage an attack does against certain enemies.
Ember has a Position of Extended (E) and Ranged (R), meaning it can be used from the back or middle row, but cannot be used from the front row. Its Range is Ranged, meaning it can hit enemies anywhere on their side of the field.
From these basic definitions, players can see where and how class abilities can be used, and determine what set of abilities they want active on a class at any given time.
The other important thing about abilities is that during a run, they can be upgraded as the unit levels up.
Cheap Shot, if upgraded to level 2, increases its base damage to 12. Different abilities will improve in different ways as they upgrade, increasing their damage, uses, and utility. The Ember ability, upon reaching level 3, stops being a single-target attack and instead grows to target a small hex area, greatly increasing the Apprentice’s ability to rain down hot fiery death on her foes.
What is a Class? (A Miserable Pile of Abilities)
While the classes of Last Call each have a few inherent stats, the thing that really defines them are the abilities available to them in their skill pool. Depending on how the player mixes and matches those skills, they can create different roles for each class within their broader overall archetype.
I use the term “archetype” here because I think that’s an important reference point for most players. Even if you intend to break out of the standard fighter/cleric/magic user structure, I think it’s still a useful exercise to start from that basic framework. It helps guide players into a foundation they can comprehend (“this unit hits things”, “this unit heals things”) before allowing them to explore the nuances.
The Gallant, for example, starts from the concept of the archetypal Fighter. The Gallant’s inherent stats reflect this: he starts with the highest HP of the starting four, and his Speed is right in the middle compared to the others. He also comes with a class feature of having 5 inherent DEF, which stretches his HP even further and makes him able to withstand a lot more damage than his starting comrades.
His abilities reflect this role as well. His basic attack does 10 damage, making him the hardest hitter, and his Challenge ability allows him to redirect enemy attacks from allies to himself, taking advantage of his HP and DEF.
From this fairly basic starting point, the player can start to take the Gallant in some pretty different directions. Perhaps they decide to focus on building up a slate of his self-buff skills, keeping him as a self-sufficient frontline damage dealer and all around meatshield. Or perhaps they focus more on some of his mobility skills, building him out to be a nimble fencer constantly shifting around the battlefield. Through subsequent runs and unlocks, they may decide to make him a mix of both!
On sort of the other end of things, the Apprentice fits the clear initial archetype of Mage. She’s got the lowest HP of the starting group, and is also the slowest. Her default position is in the back row, which helps shield her while she casts spells, but which also prevents her from using her basic attack (Bash, an Extended range attack that requires being in at least the middle row). What she can do, however, is cast her powerful Ember ability, dealing the heaviest damage available of any of the starting group’s abilities. She can only use this once or twice a battle to begin with, though, making it vital for her to start to expand her ability set quickly.
As she grows, players might want to enhance her damage dealing with more focus on her fire magic, or on debuffing foes with her ice magic. Or perhaps they might want to try supporting her mobility skills to take advantage of her incredibly strong Arcane Blast ability, which deals massive damage but requires her to put herself at risk by moving into a front row position.
The point, as you might have gathered, is choice. Giving players a clear foundation from which to start experimenting. With the pace of the unlock system, I aim to give them a steady supply of new options without overwhelming them, giving them time to try new party and class builds before the next set of choices comes along. As classes level up and new classes are unlocked, these options should give them a huge variety of playstyles to try out and find one (or more) that really clicks for them.
Room to Grow
While I’ve got the skill pools for the starting four classes, as well as the unlockable classes, already built out, there’s still plenty of room to grow. With playtesting will come lots and lots (and lots) of balance tweaking, but also insights into what doesn’t work in practice as well as it did on paper. And players will probably find exciting (and potentially overpowered) interactions I haven’t even predicted, and I think that’s very exciting!
Next time: Diving into the other side of the equation to talk about the enemies the player will face along the way, and what makes them tick.