I really like your solution to the durability situation. Ive never seen a weapon break mechanic like this and I think its going to be great in practice. When you were talking about attacks charging weapons up I kept thinking of the soulreaper axe in OSRS, the more hits in a row you do the stronger subsequent hits become. Excited to see where you take all of this. :)
If you’re planning to add in spells that are triggered for healing and throwing, maybe you could consider allowing the player to set what spell they want coming from what action? You could also potentially have the spell have different properties based on its trigger, like a fire spell on throw would cause an explosion where the weapon hits, but if it’s on your heal it could instead summon balls of fire that rotate around you as a sort of shield?
It reminds me of something but I can't put my finger on it. Selecting spells to buff a specific action and being able to swap interchangeably when needed.
Another customization option that doesn't require player input would be to link different spells to different weapon types. This is the first video on this game i've watched, so I'm not too familiar with weapon variety, but you could make it so each weapon falls into a particular category, and each category has its own spell on breaking, i.e., heavy weapons do a big earthquake or fireburst around you, ranged weapons might do an auto-targeted lightning bolt, short weapons might do light AoE damage but also push enemies away and stun them, or freeze them. This would encourage players to gather a variety of weapons, even ones they don't necessarily like to fight with, as it would give them access to situationally useful spells.
I think that you can incentivise the player to switch weapons by making enemies more vulnerable to certain types/elements of weapons. One thing I always thought made sense was for spears to be more effective against armoured enemies but naturally less so against crowds
Super excited to see where else this project goes! You inspired me to make my own game in the Top Down format, and I am LOVING IT! Thank you! Keep up with the amazing content!
These are some cool mechanics. Btw, I liked the idea of the weapon becoming dull after the durability was lost. The player being able to repair it would solve the presented issues.
*the weapon shattered in your hands, as you are filled with the power of moonlight and your health increases. you feel that somewhere, on the other side of the screen, some youtube commenter's mind was blown by the genius of such a mechanic.
Subscribed! You're not like so many other devlog channels who describe their game and how they made it, but not the questions, mechanical interactions, and effects of each decision like you do. It makes the videos interesting without the need for that *_IN YOUR FACE_* fast pace editing style that's too afraid to stay on one subject for over 2 minutes. I feel like I get something of value as you explore a question with each video, and as a side affect of you explaining the mechanical _interactions_ , I feel like I know how the game feels without having even seen a trailer yet! Good stuff 😎
4:35 This is an AMAZING idea! Receiving damage is the player's mistake. So sacrificing your consumables is the trade-off to fixing that mistake. They would have to trade their power and extra money method for restoring health.
This is super clever and creative. I admire how you're really focusing on crafting a unique experience by tweaking fundamental things like durability - which most games would overlook and default to a standard durability system. Wishing you the best in your journey!
the way im seeing it now, instead of having my favorite weapon that breaks and replacements i don't want, now i have my favorite weapon and healing packs everywhere
I do like Terraria's mana mechanic where it will eventually need to recharge and you'll need to switch to melee weapons because of that. Your limited-use torch reminded me of that.
youtube algorithm fed me this one, and as someone who loathes weapon durability, this is a super great alternative for "using up" a weapon! Def following this game's development now
The idea is very cool: one thing i feel could work is making it so stronger weapons heal more, otherwise a player might only stick to using weak weapons to heal. however that would probably come with balancing issues
I like it. Perhaps instead of the weapon breaking you briefly hold it up and it turns white and bursts into magic, either transmuting it into moonlight or sacrificing it to the moon diety. Maybe "moonburn"? Idk how strong the moon theme is. Perhaps moonlight could be healing for you, you regen if you're outside but not while inside, though maybe there could be beams of light coming down from the sky you can heal at, that might be used as respawn points too. Only if that fits with your existing story, idk.
Like the changes so far! I didn’t even think about the healing, but with the whole positive incentive thing, it seems like it is working out more! Glad my feedback was able to help you with some of your decisions. Can’t wait to see more of the game as it progresses!
to make it more clear when an enemy has lost health, you could do something similar to the game “deaths door”. in the game there are no health bars, but enemies gain glowing cracks that cover them more and more until the enemy dies. a visual cue like this may help clear things up, especially when there are many enemies it is useful to know which are lower health.
Think is a pretty good idea, and i have a small one. So what if they were enchanted weapons that can give them more range, speed, effects... but when you use them, you get another thing like maybe a temporary shield or shows down nearby ennemies, but idk it's your game, your choice.
i really like the weapon destruction to heal/cast spells! gives a good sense of risk reward to getting those heavy hitting spells in since your also getting rid of a heal, simplifying the health down to one hit does one damage to the player is also pretty smart for making damage feel more meaningful, but i feel like the same being applied to enemies could lead to some balancing issues later, i dont know what youve got planned for balancing things down the line, but i noticed during the clips of the eyeball/beholder boss fight the damage tick of the torch fire was doing huge amounts of damage to the boss since it was applying the same amount of damage as a normal hit with a weapon but without any risk
Just found this series, but I really like your solutions to make the player not feel bad about durability. Besides incentivizing the player it also seems to have added more depth to your core gameplay loop. *chefs kiss*
Just found this channel and your game looks pretty cool. Love the design of the protagonist. On the topic of having to balance weapons for the new system, you don't have to have weapons only deal 1-2 damage. Since enemy HP seems to be hidden in this game, you can have enemies have numerical HP while still having the player have hearts as health.
My idea is that if weapons break they become an item in your inventory that cannot deal damage BUT you can use it to repair a diffrent broken weapon that will make players use diffrent weapons and not make them lose their favourite weapon
I'll speak from my experience. Your idea reminds me a lot of Panzer Paladins. There are a lot of melee weapons with limited durability, that can be thrown at enemies or broken for their special effect like small healing or temporary buff. This didn't actually stop me from hoarding them, especially the unique weapons dropped by the bosses which I kept as my trophies. Keep in mind fomo-perfectionists like me.
I asked myself how to make weapons breaking fun when playing Zelda. So in that games context, where you have a stockpile of them, I came up with this. Imho weapons are supposed to be used until they are used up, that's kinda the loop, use-break-replace. The break part hurts people and they want the ability to stick with something they grew fond of. But giving the players something permanent removes the purpose of all the other weapons lying around. So my suggestion is, to make it possible that weapons are repaired. The one way to do this is by picking up some ressource, "energy spheres" or "shards" or whatever. This ressource drops each time a weapon breaks. The player can then switch to another weapon and absorb this ressource, repairing whatever damage it had taken. This loop creates an incentive to use new weapons even if only to abuse them until breaking. Further more, I think it would be cool if people had an incentive to not just break weapons as soon as possible, but also get some actual use out of them. So the amount of dropped ressource increases the more damage the sacrifical weapon dealt, maybe add some simple timed combo meter. This way the player can regularly return to their favourite weapon, maybe they can even keep two or three around. But they also regularly have to cycle through randomly found weapons and thus get into the use-break-replace loop. In the context of your game, it seems like you can only carry one weapon and then you have one permanent weapon as a backup. I think my idea does not really work here. But I find it good to see that we think alike in terms of getting actual use out of breaking a weapon. The concept of not only taking away, but instead giving the player something as a reward for using the weapon up.
Hey there! Newcomer to your channel, rn I'm starting a course for game dev, so I'm pretty new in programing. The thing is that I love gamedesign and I've readen a lot about it, so maybe I can tell an interesting ponint. The thing is that about what did you say about Zelda, the durability mechanic is to make the player think out of the box, like: Do I have to fight them, can I? Or maybe, do I try to steal his weapon, etc. It's a cool mechanic and a great way to make the player use all sorts of weapons, but it's not a must have, so you can just not implement it. Even with that, I love the idea that breaking your weapon heals you or casts a spell! Keep on going!
Another approach you can take is to charge a weapon using hits, or even kills. When you spend it with a spell, the power of the spell is proportional to the amount of charge present on the weapon. This charge can only go up to a certain limit before the weapon is simply saturated. Certain special weapon classes (or spells) can take it a step further, and have violent reactions to being saturated (I,E: your weapon could explode in your face)
A big improvement getting rid of pointless big numbers for health & damage as that stuff takes away from the simple charm games like this should have IMO. As a suggestion besides weapons healing, you could also consider giving different weapons separate bonus buffs when broken, example is break your axe and get a buff to do double damage for 10 secs.
I always look forward to watching these now. I think you're doing a great job exploring designs for the weapon system. One piece of feedback from me, though, is that I LOVE damage numbers, especially if they're small, like in the range of 0-100. Something about seeing those numbers pop out is really satisfying to my ape brain, and it lets you add progression into the game. It's kind of a "cheap" tactic, but it works nonetheless. Vampire survivors is an example of a popular game that did this well, where your damage starts out at ~10 and ends at ~100, making you really feel like you're getting stronger. Another one: Runescape starts you out at 1-2 damage per hit, and the dopamine hits progressing to hitting 50+ at endgame was kind of wild. It definitely depends on the scope and style of your game, though. It's just one decision out of many, but it affects a lot of systems. Good luck on your designs!
Really good idea for the weapons, giving more uses for them, maybe a mechanic where the player can do the inverse could also be interesting, sacrifice a bit of health to summon a random weapon, giving the player the choice of having a bit more danger in exchange for some damage.
I think it'd be really cool to keep the concept you currently have, but still have a durability for weapons, but if you reach the final hit of your weapon, you do bonus damage, or maybe activate some cool unique spell depending on the weapon type. All this while still having the option to break your weapon at any time to heal. Maybe if you have some sort of visible way to show your weapon's durability (sprite changes with ie 3 stages), you could change the amount of healing a damaged weapon gives, compared to a new shiny weapon. Maybe only some weapons heal if you break them, and some give you some other sort of bonus! Just my idea tho. First video i've watched by you, it looks very interesting! Goodluck on your game dev journey :D
A missed charged boomerang attack hits a collision box landing on the floor exploding dealing damage to enemies. It’s way better than losing the boomerang altogether. There needs to be conditions for healing by destroying weapons. For example you need to perform consecutive hits to an enemy without missing to fill up the healing bar. The more it’s full the more you’ll be healed when destroying a weapon giving another incentive to fighting enemies. Destroying cursed weapons hurt you, you’ll receive both a negative and a positive stat boost for a limited amount of time; high risk and high reward. Destroying blessed weapons gives you temporary health upgrades and you’ll heal slowly over time. Give the player an option on how to destroy a weapon, for example you want to break down a metal sword so you can use the resources to craft another weapon of your choosing.
I propose adding Moon Dust Potions as healing option before boss rooms or in general droping at random from enemys (2% DropRate for example). But you don't use it when you pick it up, you have only 2 max 3 slots in your inventory for potions and you can have only one potion of one kind. Another potions idea: -Speed Potion -Throwing potion of slownes. (Would look like when you froze enemy in God of war.) -Swordsman potion. (Increse atack speed when using sword. Also adding bigger chance for Critical Hits. There could be potions for every kind of weapon.) I think that would encourage people to use more types of weapons insted of using them only to gain health and casting tunder bolts. -Luck Potion. (More & better drop in general.) -Berserk potion. (Timer would appear on screen, it would increse crit chance and give 20% chance you stun enemy while hitting it. After beeing hit you invincibile for 5-7 seconds and you look pissed.) Also i think it would be good idea to add some bad effects to good potions so they are not that op. Like Speed potion would increase your speed for 45 sec but after that you slower than before for some time. EDIT: Also adding Propositons section on dc would be fun i think.
For me the worst part of the Zelda durability is that it felt awkward in the middle of combat. You either need to look for a weapon on the ground dropped by an enemy or pause the game by going into your inventory. Both of these for me feel weird like tripping in the middle of a fight. Also I just get anxiety about I weapon I found breaking and not being able to get it again. I know I could just look it up online but that doesn’t feel good to me.
It would be cool if you add a "darkness" meter where its a op ultimate ability but if you use it to much you get like a bad ending if the game has a ending
Very cool idea. I wonder how this would look as a bullet bell style game where both when you throw the weapon and cast the spell it will heal you. So it incentivizes extremely rapid consumption of weapons in the area to both deal a lot of damage and heal. I feel like it might produce a play style where it’s okay to be taking damage constantly as long as there are enough weapons to use up around you.
That's definitely a good solution as long as the player never gains too much health compared to what the enemies can deal. Like in BotW or TotK healing would never be worth breaking a weapon alone, but the game in general is obviously not designed around that mechanic so that makes sense.
i think one option to do with the throwing mechanic is encouraging the players to use it by making the enemies fragile with it, by some ice spells idk but using this you can force a decision for the player to deal more damage for the next few hits if they thorw their weapon away (srry for bad english im from Brazil and haven't practiced in a while)
I feel like the main reason it feels so bad to lose a good weapon, whether its from durability or some other mechanic, is because the weapon is either better used against stronger enemies or if i think it would be a while before i find a better weapon. If the weapon is too valuable it feels like a loss to lose it as well
Honestly you could mix the two health and damage systems similar to something like terraria, where you have the visual representation of your health in small groups, for example say each moon is 10 health and each point of damage you take it darkens that fraction of a moon, so if you take 5 damage from a hit it takes half a moon. I say this because i feel that generally games where enemies have 1 or 2 hitpoints tend to overly favor fast weapons, with numbers you can make slower weapons deal a lot more damage to compensate, as well as if you have a distance weapon like the boomerang it instead is a bit lower damage for the safety of attacking from far away
whenever I play a game with weapon durability I think, it would be cool if you could make one weapon your unbreakable signature weapon but it's less powerful. This looks like a great game for that. Your one signature weapon doesn't break but you can't use it to heal and it doesn't doo as much damage on a charge attack.
i imagine in the start of the game for the tutorial your given a reallly op weapon and at the end of it your put in a situation that you need to break it to heal. (maybe because of a trap that puts you on half a heart before a fight or a passage that does damage and would kill you unless you heal)
Suggestion --- maybe make it so that some bosses or some weapons are dealing twice as much as our normal sword or something. Simillar to how the traitor lord in hollow knight works
The law of equivalent exchange is the one and only truth. If each weapon had a unique spell to cast when it's destroyed id at least carry around a bunch of different ones as "scrolls"
I absolutely love the idea of healing using weapons. It would add so much unique strategy. However, I am not very fond of the damage spells breaking weapons. To me, it feels unnatural, and like you shouldn’t use the lightning spell anymore. It makes it feel less useful. But the healing breaking weapons is perfect.
Never heard of you before today and i just binge watched all your devlogs :D this is amazing Love the game and changes but honestly i think i slightly prefer the previous health system with numbers Maybe you could try making the higher damage numbers a lighter color or bigger so theyre more noticable since you said its difficult to tell apart different values Sorry if this message doesnt make sense im eatching this after an exghausting day
I really like the changes, the encouragement to get rid of a weapon is smart and could lead to some really fun OP builds. The fun of ability usage should be encouraging enough on its own for people to not just spam the same attack
You can also give weapons stamina, like each weapon is magical, and the more you use it it lose stamina, low stamina weapons will do less damage instead of breaking, this will force the player to switch to a full stamina weapon, and you can recharge the weapon magic in some charge stations like between fights or in some places, like repairing them. also you can consume the all weapon magic to heal your self or to charge your stamina or to do a powerful magic attack like the zap. ofc it will break the weapon, and if you use the weapon at 0 magic it will break too.
What if killing a few enemies temporarily charged a weapon and and made it do more damage while thrown or heal more when consumed. This would give positive reinforcement for not only destroying weapons but also for using other ones that you pick up, rather than just picking them up and quickly consuming them to heal. This introduces a little bit of risk vs reward decision making as well, a quick heal now or risk it and wait to get a bigger one.
Love the look of the game. Also tiny comment, i love the pxel art style but be careful to make sure all elements stick to the pixels. The direction graphics on the boomerang looks to be a higher res than the rest and looks jarrung to me at least.
You could probably also just make certain areas are easier with certain weapons. Like spears make these enemies easier to deal with but you can still do it with a greatsword just a tiny bit harder
I love the mechanic that allows the items to be consumed. Potential that casting mechanics could be altered by the item being held? For example, Holding a weapon could cause an AOE version of the lighting (and a weaker healing) while throwing and hitting an enemy would be a concentrated strike. (resulting in increase damage on that enemy and a more concentrated heal). Potentially items within different material / classification / type would be required as a prerequisite to cast certain spells or cause different altering affects (or spells all together). You could create a rather in-depth system while still allowing it to be super accessible and easy to use. Cycling between two weapons would allow players to swap to a different weapon with a certain effect so their character always has 2 options in addition to weapon effect. What do ya think?
I'm not sure how well equipped your game would be for it currently, but a positive incentive for "using up" or "destroying" weapons could be a mastery system, where when you use up or destroy a weapon you gain mastery at using that weapon/type of weapon and future versions of that type of weapon would be stronger for it
Moons for health are cool but I think you should make the half moon state look more like a half moon than a stylized crescent I think you already had a solution to getting players to switch weapons often - cooldown abilities tied to weapons. But if you want breaking weapons specifically to be part of the game and you actually want a positive motivation attached to it. Keep the idea of breaking the item at any point to heal, imo it should be "break an item to cast a spell" with a heal spell being one of the options. As you attack with a weapon, it builds up a charge that drains over time when not in use. Once you reach enough charge the weapon gets stronger (more damage/more stun/faster attack speed, depending on the item), but it also is stronger for spells (so heals 1 moon instead of 1/2 moon for example). Say each attack gives 5% charge - at 50% charge it's empowered and gets a buff, at 75% charge it is and above it's "overheated" and gains an exponentially higher chance of breaking on use for a critical hit or special effect. But you can switch to another weapon and let it cool down - and if you're really good you could juggle multiple weapons to keep them all in that 50-75% sweet spot. You could even replace manual spellcasting with needing to trigger a weapon breaking by charging it up first. As a bonus: (certain?) broken weapons could remain in your inventory and take a long time to be usable again, or even require using a consumable or returning to a save point to refresh.
I really like your solution to the durability situation. Ive never seen a weapon break mechanic like this and I think its going to be great in practice. When you were talking about attacks charging weapons up I kept thinking of the soulreaper axe in OSRS, the more hits in a row you do the stronger subsequent hits become. Excited to see where you take all of this. :)
If you’re planning to add in spells that are triggered for healing and throwing, maybe you could consider allowing the player to set what spell they want coming from what action? You could also potentially have the spell have different properties based on its trigger, like a fire spell on throw would cause an explosion where the weapon hits, but if it’s on your heal it could instead summon balls of fire that rotate around you as a sort of shield?
This! This was what I was immediatelely thinking about!
It reminds me of something but I can't put my finger on it. Selecting spells to buff a specific action and being able to swap interchangeably when needed.
Another customization option that doesn't require player input would be to link different spells to different weapon types. This is the first video on this game i've watched, so I'm not too familiar with weapon variety, but you could make it so each weapon falls into a particular category, and each category has its own spell on breaking, i.e., heavy weapons do a big earthquake or fireburst around you, ranged weapons might do an auto-targeted lightning bolt, short weapons might do light AoE damage but also push enemies away and stun them, or freeze them. This would encourage players to gather a variety of weapons, even ones they don't necessarily like to fight with, as it would give them access to situationally useful spells.
Also, different weapons could have different effects, the stronger weapos having bigger spells
Does this mean, more Devlog's now? :O Hyped! Love to hear you are working on your passion full-time now!
I think that you can incentivise the player to switch weapons by making enemies more vulnerable to certain types/elements of weapons. One thing I always thought made sense was for spears to be more effective against armoured enemies but naturally less so against crowds
Super excited to see where else this project goes! You inspired me to make my own game in the Top Down format, and I am LOVING IT! Thank you! Keep up with the amazing content!
These are some cool mechanics. Btw, I liked the idea of the weapon becoming dull after the durability was lost. The player being able to repair it would solve the presented issues.
*the weapon shattered in your hands, as you are filled with the power of moonlight and your health increases. you feel that somewhere, on the other side of the screen, some youtube commenter's mind was blown by the genius of such a mechanic.
Subscribed!
You're not like so many other devlog channels who describe their game and how they made it, but not the questions, mechanical interactions, and effects of each decision like you do. It makes the videos interesting without the need for that *_IN YOUR FACE_* fast pace editing style that's too afraid to stay on one subject for over 2 minutes.
I feel like I get something of value as you explore a question with each video, and as a side affect of you explaining the mechanical _interactions_ , I feel like I know how the game feels without having even seen a trailer yet!
Good stuff 😎
4:35 This is an AMAZING idea!
Receiving damage is the player's mistake. So sacrificing your consumables is the trade-off to fixing that mistake.
They would have to trade their power and extra money method for restoring health.
I stumbled upon these devlogs a few months ago and I've been following along ever since! Keep up the great work!
The consume to heal is good game design, I like it!
I think that in general these changes are very cool and the animation of regaining life looks great.❤
The way your aprocing your game, mechanicaly first, then everything else is really fascinating,
This is super clever and creative. I admire how you're really focusing on crafting a unique experience by tweaking fundamental things like durability - which most games would overlook and default to a standard durability system. Wishing you the best in your journey!
i played the demo ! this is my new favorite game 1
the fact that devlogs of games i see are generally forgiving, i now want to see devlogs for getting over it
I LOVE simplified damage and health systems. And I think breaking your own weapons to heal is very elegant. Great ideas!
the way im seeing it now, instead of having my favorite weapon that breaks and replacements i don't want, now i have my favorite weapon and healing packs everywhere
Moons as healthbar is freakin inspired game dev congratulations
I do like Terraria's mana mechanic where it will eventually need to recharge and you'll need to switch to melee weapons because of that. Your limited-use torch reminded me of that.
I just saw this and even though I'm not a fan of pixel art, I love how smooth & fast your game looks! I would actually love to play this
youtube algorithm fed me this one, and as someone who loathes weapon durability, this is a super great alternative for "using up" a weapon! Def following this game's development now
The idea is very cool: one thing i feel could work is making it so stronger weapons heal more, otherwise a player might only stick to using weak weapons to heal. however that would probably come with balancing issues
I like it. Perhaps instead of the weapon breaking you briefly hold it up and it turns white and bursts into magic, either transmuting it into moonlight or sacrificing it to the moon diety. Maybe "moonburn"? Idk how strong the moon theme is. Perhaps moonlight could be healing for you, you regen if you're outside but not while inside, though maybe there could be beams of light coming down from the sky you can heal at, that might be used as respawn points too. Only if that fits with your existing story, idk.
_Oooh_ that weapon snap animation looks so satisfying!! Good luck on doing game dev full time! :D
Like the changes so far! I didn’t even think about the healing, but with the whole positive incentive thing, it seems like it is working out more! Glad my feedback was able to help you with some of your decisions. Can’t wait to see more of the game as it progresses!
Thank you for the comment that made it into the video 😇
to make it more clear when an enemy has lost health, you could do something similar to the game “deaths door”. in the game there are no health bars, but enemies gain glowing cracks that cover them more and more until the enemy dies. a visual cue like this may help clear things up, especially when there are many enemies it is useful to know which are lower health.
Congrats on going full time! The magic almost “upgrading” the mechanics throughout the game is a cool concept :)
Think is a pretty good idea, and i have a small one.
So what if they were enchanted weapons that can give them more range, speed, effects... but when you use them, you get another thing like maybe a temporary shield or shows down nearby ennemies, but idk it's your game, your choice.
i really like the weapon destruction to heal/cast spells! gives a good sense of risk reward to getting those heavy hitting spells in since your also getting rid of a heal, simplifying the health down to one hit does one damage to the player is also pretty smart for making damage feel more meaningful, but i feel like the same being applied to enemies could lead to some balancing issues later, i dont know what youve got planned for balancing things down the line, but i noticed during the clips of the eyeball/beholder boss fight the damage tick of the torch fire was doing huge amounts of damage to the boss since it was applying the same amount of damage as a normal hit with a weapon but without any risk
Great video! And seriously congrats on going full time. It feels like a pipe dream for me, so it’s inspiring to see people find success
Mate you really know how to make satisfying animations/sounds! The healing from the weapon is so satsifying dude!
Just found this series, but I really like your solutions to make the player not feel bad about durability. Besides incentivizing the player it also seems to have added more depth to your core gameplay loop. *chefs kiss*
your game looks really cool and i will definitely be coming back for more devlogs
Just found this channel and your game looks pretty cool. Love the design of the protagonist. On the topic of having to balance weapons for the new system, you don't have to have weapons only deal 1-2 damage. Since enemy HP seems to be hidden in this game, you can have enemies have numerical HP while still having the player have hearts as health.
My idea is that if weapons break they become an item in your inventory that cannot deal damage BUT you can use it to repair a diffrent broken weapon that will make players use diffrent weapons and not make them lose their favourite weapon
I'll speak from my experience.
Your idea reminds me a lot of Panzer Paladins. There are a lot of melee weapons with limited durability, that can be thrown at enemies or broken for their special effect like small healing or temporary buff. This didn't actually stop me from hoarding them, especially the unique weapons dropped by the bosses which I kept as my trophies.
Keep in mind fomo-perfectionists like me.
I keep being surprised by how creative and smart these design solutions are. Love it, I think this system has a lot of potential!
I saw this devlog series and noticed it was super similar in style to my own game I’m working on. Thanks for the inspiration and motivation :D
I asked myself how to make weapons breaking fun when playing Zelda. So in that games context, where you have a stockpile of them, I came up with this.
Imho weapons are supposed to be used until they are used up, that's kinda the loop, use-break-replace. The break part hurts people and they want the ability to stick with something they grew fond of. But giving the players something permanent removes the purpose of all the other weapons lying around. So my suggestion is, to make it possible that weapons are repaired. The one way to do this is by picking up some ressource, "energy spheres" or "shards" or whatever. This ressource drops each time a weapon breaks. The player can then switch to another weapon and absorb this ressource, repairing whatever damage it had taken. This loop creates an incentive to use new weapons even if only to abuse them until breaking. Further more, I think it would be cool if people had an incentive to not just break weapons as soon as possible, but also get some actual use out of them. So the amount of dropped ressource increases the more damage the sacrifical weapon dealt, maybe add some simple timed combo meter. This way the player can regularly return to their favourite weapon, maybe they can even keep two or three around. But they also regularly have to cycle through randomly found weapons and thus get into the use-break-replace loop.
In the context of your game, it seems like you can only carry one weapon and then you have one permanent weapon as a backup. I think my idea does not really work here. But I find it good to see that we think alike in terms of getting actual use out of breaking a weapon. The concept of not only taking away, but instead giving the player something as a reward for using the weapon up.
Hey there! Newcomer to your channel, rn I'm starting a course for game dev, so I'm pretty new in programing. The thing is that I love gamedesign and I've readen a lot about it, so maybe I can tell an interesting ponint. The thing is that about what did you say about Zelda, the durability mechanic is to make the player think out of the box, like: Do I have to fight them, can I? Or maybe, do I try to steal his weapon, etc. It's a cool mechanic and a great way to make the player use all sorts of weapons, but it's not a must have, so you can just not implement it. Even with that, I love the idea that breaking your weapon heals you or casts a spell! Keep on going!
Superb graphics! I like the moons instead of hearts health system, looks pretty cool and is quite memorable. Thanks for sharing your progress! :D
Good luck in journey man! Love to see more progress keep up the good work
Another approach you can take is to charge a weapon using hits, or even kills. When you spend it with a spell, the power of the spell is proportional to the amount of charge present on the weapon. This charge can only go up to a certain limit before the weapon is simply saturated. Certain special weapon classes (or spells) can take it a step further, and have violent reactions to being saturated (I,E: your weapon could explode in your face)
this is really cool, your approach is very good its clear the game design will benefit from the thoughtful approach. very very interesting
A big improvement getting rid of pointless big numbers for health & damage as that stuff takes away from the simple charm games like this should have IMO. As a suggestion besides weapons healing, you could also consider giving different weapons separate bonus buffs when broken, example is break your axe and get a buff to do double damage for 10 secs.
I always look forward to watching these now. I think you're doing a great job exploring designs for the weapon system.
One piece of feedback from me, though, is that I LOVE damage numbers, especially if they're small, like in the range of 0-100. Something about seeing those numbers pop out is really satisfying to my ape brain, and it lets you add progression into the game. It's kind of a "cheap" tactic, but it works nonetheless. Vampire survivors is an example of a popular game that did this well, where your damage starts out at ~10 and ends at ~100, making you really feel like you're getting stronger. Another one: Runescape starts you out at 1-2 damage per hit, and the dopamine hits progressing to hitting 50+ at endgame was kind of wild.
It definitely depends on the scope and style of your game, though. It's just one decision out of many, but it affects a lot of systems. Good luck on your designs!
Thank you for the feedback!
Gaur plains. Nice👌
Great music choice
I always love seeing how other devs get around a problem, great thinking!
Really good idea for the weapons, giving more uses for them, maybe a mechanic where the player can do the inverse could also be interesting, sacrifice a bit of health to summon a random weapon, giving the player the choice of having a bit more danger in exchange for some damage.
Whoa, I randomly stumbled on this video and I'm so glad I did - This game looks great!
Great fixes and with potential abilities to enhance the heal and throwing abilities sounds very incentivizing. Well done good sir
I think it'd be really cool to keep the concept you currently have, but still have a durability for weapons, but if you reach the final hit of your weapon, you do bonus damage, or maybe activate some cool unique spell depending on the weapon type. All this while still having the option to break your weapon at any time to heal. Maybe if you have some sort of visible way to show your weapon's durability (sprite changes with ie 3 stages), you could change the amount of healing a damaged weapon gives, compared to a new shiny weapon. Maybe only some weapons heal if you break them, and some give you some other sort of bonus! Just my idea tho. First video i've watched by you, it looks very interesting! Goodluck on your game dev journey :D
I 100% agree with this choice. Durability never felt like it added to games for me.
A missed charged boomerang attack hits a collision box landing on the floor exploding dealing damage to enemies. It’s way better than losing the boomerang altogether. There needs to be conditions for healing by destroying weapons. For example you need to perform consecutive hits to an enemy without missing to fill up the healing bar. The more it’s full the more you’ll be healed when destroying a weapon giving another incentive to fighting enemies. Destroying cursed weapons hurt you, you’ll receive both a negative and a positive stat boost for a limited amount of time; high risk and high reward. Destroying blessed weapons gives you temporary health upgrades and you’ll heal slowly over time. Give the player an option on how to destroy a weapon, for example you want to break down a metal sword so you can use the resources to craft another weapon of your choosing.
You're putting a lot of effort into this project, and I'm very curious about the future! Keep up the good work!
I propose adding Moon Dust Potions as healing option before boss rooms or in general droping at random from enemys (2% DropRate for example). But you don't use it when you pick it up, you have only 2 max 3 slots in your inventory for potions and you can have only one potion of one kind.
Another potions idea:
-Speed Potion
-Throwing potion of slownes. (Would look like when you froze enemy in God of war.)
-Swordsman potion. (Increse atack speed when using sword. Also adding bigger chance for Critical Hits. There could be potions for every kind of weapon.) I think that would encourage people to use more types of weapons insted of using them only to gain health and casting tunder bolts.
-Luck Potion. (More & better drop in general.)
-Berserk potion. (Timer would appear on screen, it would increse crit chance and give 20% chance you stun enemy while hitting it. After beeing hit you invincibile for 5-7 seconds and you look pissed.)
Also i think it would be good idea to add some bad effects to good potions so they are not that op. Like Speed potion would increase your speed for 45 sec but after that you slower than before for some time.
EDIT: Also adding Propositons section on dc would be fun i think.
Huge congrats for going full time!
For me the worst part of the Zelda durability is that it felt awkward in the middle of combat. You either need to look for a weapon on the ground dropped by an enemy or pause the game by going into your inventory. Both of these for me feel weird like tripping in the middle of a fight.
Also I just get anxiety about I weapon I found breaking and not being able to get it again. I know I could just look it up online but that doesn’t feel good to me.
I wasn't convinced until I saw the healing. Though that was neat.
It would be cool if you add a "darkness" meter where its a op ultimate ability but if you use it to much you get like a bad ending if the game has a ending
Very cool idea. I wonder how this would look as a bullet bell style game where both when you throw the weapon and cast the spell it will heal you. So it incentivizes extremely rapid consumption of weapons in the area to both deal a lot of damage and heal. I feel like it might produce a play style where it’s okay to be taking damage constantly as long as there are enough weapons to use up around you.
your game looks really fun to play, keep up the good work.
Feels so satisfying, clean and polished!
congratz on being a dev full time!
Wow, breaking the weapon to heal looks super nice
That's definitely a good solution as long as the player never gains too much health compared to what the enemies can deal. Like in BotW or TotK healing would never be worth breaking a weapon alone, but the game in general is obviously not designed around that mechanic so that makes sense.
Weapon switch combos. Incentives switching and you can make switching routes which have more or less effectiveness against particular types of mobs.
I guess great minds think alike. I designed a character like a year ago, never used it for something. And it looks exactly like yours
Thank you for the video! You put some really interesting ideas there! It was a little lesson of game design for me.
UA-cam recommendation made me discover this promising game 😊 can't wait to see how this progress :D
i think one option to do with the throwing mechanic is encouraging the players to use it by making the enemies fragile with it, by some ice spells idk but using this you can force a decision for the player to deal more damage for the next few hits if they thorw their weapon away (srry for bad english im from Brazil and haven't practiced in a while)
the breaking weapons for healing is a great idea
I feel like the main reason it feels so bad to lose a good weapon, whether its from durability or some other mechanic, is because the weapon is either better used against stronger enemies or if i think it would be a while before i find a better weapon. If the weapon is too valuable it feels like a loss to lose it as well
Honestly you could mix the two health and damage systems similar to something like terraria, where you have the visual representation of your health in small groups, for example say each moon is 10 health and each point of damage you take it darkens that fraction of a moon, so if you take 5 damage from a hit it takes half a moon.
I say this because i feel that generally games where enemies have 1 or 2 hitpoints tend to overly favor fast weapons, with numbers you can make slower weapons deal a lot more damage to compensate, as well as if you have a distance weapon like the boomerang it instead is a bit lower damage for the safety of attacking from far away
whenever I play a game with weapon durability I think, it would be cool if you could make one weapon your unbreakable signature weapon but it's less powerful. This looks like a great game for that. Your one signature weapon doesn't break but you can't use it to heal and it doesn't doo as much damage on a charge attack.
wow fantastic changes! Love your changes that is incredible!
Progress! ;D
I love your new system!
i imagine in the start of the game for the tutorial your given a reallly op weapon and at the end of it your put in a situation that you need to break it to heal. (maybe because of a trap that puts you on half a heart before a fight or a passage that does damage and would kill you unless you heal)
Suggestion --- maybe make it so that some bosses or some weapons are dealing twice as much as our normal sword or something.
Simillar to how the traitor lord in hollow knight works
I like the sharpness feature. You should make it where player can sharpen weapons, so you can deal more damage. Please add a sheild.
The law of equivalent exchange is the one and only truth.
If each weapon had a unique spell to cast when it's destroyed id at least carry around a bunch of different ones as "scrolls"
I absolutely love the idea of healing using weapons. It would add so much unique strategy. However, I am not very fond of the damage spells breaking weapons. To me, it feels unnatural, and like you shouldn’t use the lightning spell anymore. It makes it feel less useful. But the healing breaking weapons is perfect.
Never heard of you before today and i just binge watched all your devlogs :D this is amazing
Love the game and changes but honestly i think i slightly prefer the previous health system with numbers
Maybe you could try making the higher damage numbers a lighter color or bigger so theyre more noticable since you said its difficult to tell apart different values
Sorry if this message doesnt make sense im eatching this after an exghausting day
I really like the changes, the encouragement to get rid of a weapon is smart and could lead to some really fun OP builds. The fun of ability usage should be encouraging enough on its own for people to not just spam the same attack
Wow, I love this art style!
this might be one of the more original ideas ive heard
Uwu the breaking ability to heal, is very impressive
You can also give weapons stamina, like each weapon is magical, and the more you use it it lose stamina, low stamina weapons will do less damage instead of breaking, this will force the player to switch to a full stamina weapon, and you can recharge the weapon magic in some charge stations like between fights or in some places, like repairing them. also you can consume the all weapon magic to heal your self or to charge your stamina or to do a powerful magic attack like the zap. ofc it will break the weapon, and if you use the weapon at 0 magic it will break too.
What if killing a few enemies temporarily charged a weapon and and made it do more damage while thrown or heal more when consumed. This would give positive reinforcement for not only destroying weapons but also for using other ones that you pick up, rather than just picking them up and quickly consuming them to heal. This introduces a little bit of risk vs reward decision making as well, a quick heal now or risk it and wait to get a bigger one.
Good job man! I’m excited to see how this turns out!
Love the look of the game. Also tiny comment, i love the pxel art style but be careful to make sure all elements stick to the pixels. The direction graphics on the boomerang looks to be a higher res than the rest and looks jarrung to me at least.
You could probably also just make certain areas are easier with certain weapons. Like spears make these enemies easier to deal with but you can still do it with a greatsword just a tiny bit harder
Very good changes !! Love to see it =)
I love the mechanic that allows the items to be consumed. Potential that casting mechanics could be altered by the item being held? For example, Holding a weapon could cause an AOE version of the lighting (and a weaker healing) while throwing and hitting an enemy would be a concentrated strike. (resulting in increase damage on that enemy and a more concentrated heal).
Potentially items within different material / classification / type would be required as a prerequisite to cast certain spells or cause different altering affects (or spells all together).
You could create a rather in-depth system while still allowing it to be super accessible and easy to use. Cycling between two weapons would allow players to swap to a different weapon with a certain effect so their character always has 2 options in addition to weapon effect.
What do ya think?
Cool idea, I’ll keep this in mind!
absolutely love your content
Yoo beautiful looking game man. Good luck with it ❤
I'm not sure how well equipped your game would be for it currently, but a positive incentive for "using up" or "destroying" weapons could be a mastery system, where when you use up or destroy a weapon you gain mastery at using that weapon/type of weapon and future versions of that type of weapon would be stronger for it
Moons for health are cool but I think you should make the half moon state look more like a half moon than a stylized crescent
I think you already had a solution to getting players to switch weapons often - cooldown abilities tied to weapons.
But if you want breaking weapons specifically to be part of the game and you actually want a positive motivation attached to it. Keep the idea of breaking the item at any point to heal, imo it should be "break an item to cast a spell" with a heal spell being one of the options.
As you attack with a weapon, it builds up a charge that drains over time when not in use. Once you reach enough charge the weapon gets stronger (more damage/more stun/faster attack speed, depending on the item), but it also is stronger for spells (so heals 1 moon instead of 1/2 moon for example). Say each attack gives 5% charge - at 50% charge it's empowered and gets a buff, at 75% charge it is and above it's "overheated" and gains an exponentially higher chance of breaking on use for a critical hit or special effect. But you can switch to another weapon and let it cool down - and if you're really good you could juggle multiple weapons to keep them all in that 50-75% sweet spot.
You could even replace manual spellcasting with needing to trigger a weapon breaking by charging it up first. As a bonus: (certain?) broken weapons could remain in your inventory and take a long time to be usable again, or even require using a consumable or returning to a save point to refresh.
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