Posted November 30, 2023 by Team Isekai
This update adds a new side quest, a new character, and a major combat enhancement. There are also various bug fixes and other changes.
Target Lock: You are now able to lock onto enemies by clicking your thumbstick or middle mouse button. A reticle will be displayed over your target and your camera will begin following them. In cases where there are multiple targets available, distance will be weighted against how close the potential target is to the center of your screen before choosing one. Flicking the thumbstick in any direction will attempt to swap the target to any enemies in that direction.
While I don't intend for combat to be so complicated that it requires a target lock mechanic, I think it's going to be a critical quality-of-life feature when it comes to ranged attacks and spell casting. It'll be easier to work on the spells with this feature already in place as well.
Enemy Knockback: A repeated point of feedback has been the way enemies slide back when attacked. It's been noted as especially noticeable due to how player momentum halts when attacking. With this in mind I've changed how knockbacks are handled and I've added a new attack: Power Strike. Previously, all enemies slid back on any melee hit. This still happens, but now the damage threshold for knocking them back is much higher. In addition to sliding back on powerful attacks, enemies can now smack into each other in a sort of pinball effect. You can whack an enemy, have it smack into another, then that one will fly back and smack into another. I had fun making that feature.
Power Strike: This is a new skill designed to take advantage of the new knockback mechanics as well as alleviate mobility issues when it comes to melee combat. It's a powerful cleaving attack that can strike multiple enemies in a single blow. You have to charge up a melee attack to unleash it, but you're able to move around while charging it. It's a great attack to queue up while repositioning.
Running Strike: This is another new skill designed to address mobility in melee combat. You perform a Running Strike by sprinting at full speed before attacking. You'll slide forward for a bit, striking anything in front of you with increased damage. It doesn't knock back like the Power Strike, but it can still land on multiple targets if they're clustered together. Just be careful not to slide off a cliff.
Backstab: While backstabs were previously in the game, they were basically just a free crit and nothing special. With this update, backstabs are now a fully-developed feature. Instead of a regular attack that's a guaranteed crit, backstabs are now an their own category of attack that does a massive amount of damage. Backstabs are also integrated with the target lock mechanic in that you will be alerted when you are within backstab distance of a target. You do now have to be locked onto an enemy to backstab it, the alert just hooks into the targeting reticle functions internally.
With these features in place I think the gameplay side of things is in a good place to start designing monsters to use the new moves against. I still need to add menus for reslotting spells and potions, but aside from that I'm happy with where the melee is at.
I've added a title screen shout-out for Champion tier patrons! It's a live list so even if you aren't at that tier now, becoming one later would automatically display your prestige to anyone playing this/future versions of the game. I'd like to eventually include way to permanently credit supporters of a certain threshold or supporters who've reached lifetime amounts, but I'll need to get more familiar with Patreon's API to automate it and make it something you'd have to opt into.
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