Devlog #13: Tutorials & Status Effects

Progress Updates

Most of the work over the last couple weeks has been dedicated to:

• Writing in-game tutorials
• Fleshing out equipment and skills
• Implementing the last of the combat status effects

In other words, a little bit of everything!

Tutorials

One big thing I've been working on is Tutorials. These pop up with a confirmation at certain times (your first battle and the first time shopping, for example) to ask whether you want to view the tutorial for that mechanic.  If you're an RPG hot shot who doesn't need to read the instructions, or if you're replaying, you can just skip it, but if not, you'll get a little multi-page primer:

I've built this out to be fairly modular, so you'll be able to revisit it in the menu if you need a refresher, and I can split them apart and add more as needed depending on how people seem to receive it. There's a bit of a tradition, especially in JRPGs, to have kind of in-fiction tutorials where characters explain mechanics to you in dialogue, but I've always found that off-putting for reasons I can't quite explain (plus I'm not sure this game really has the right tone for that), so we're going with straight-forward instructions instead.

Status Effects in Combat

Then come the status effects! Combat in South of the March is pretty heavy on them: there are lots of buffs, and debuffs, and damage-over-time conditions, all of which I'm trying to make fairly easy to follow at a glance. The new combat UI drops them in as small sort of tokens at the bottom of the respective player or enemy card, like the shield icon here:

Some effects, like a "Stun" that causes a missed turn, will just show an icon, while others, like the Defense buff above, also show up or down arrows to indicate the level (between 1 and 3) of the buff or debuff. In other words, at a glance, you can tell if it's a little bonus or a big bonus.

We haven't nailed down all the icons yet, but expect to see statuses in South of the March like:

• Poison & Bleed (damage over time)
• Defense buffs (lower damage taken)
• Strength buffs (raise damage dealt)
• Sickness (an all-over debuff that cascades through all stats)
• Anxiety (damage over time applied to the Stress mechanic)

Plans for the Long Game

Part of the implementation includes fleshing out statuses that may not even appear in South of the March. For example, I expect there to be a "Burn" damage over time status, but so far I'm not sure it actually fits anywhere here. I'm still including it, though, because I'm basically trying to make sure South of the March has rich bones that can grow into the next, not yet announced, much longer game.

Keep an eye out for more updates soon!