I figured out what I wanted to do for gameplay while failing to sleep last night. Project Lucidity is going to be a first-person shooter action game. I went this way for a few reasons. It's definitely my comfort zone, for better or for worse, and though it's probably not the easiest option it does save me the work of drawing a lot of animation sprites for Briella. It also very definitely puts you into her boots and hopefully will give the player that feel of being totally badass and awesome.
The other options I was considering were a side-scroller or a top-down action game.
Apologies for the poor video quality, something went horribly wrong with OBS. The huge endless flat plane I'm using for testing doesn't make things easier to see, either. In it I show off the power jump, power dash, power attack and regular attack. The power jump and power dash share a timer while power attack is separate. Power jump and power dash are your standard flash-step powers, while power attack is a ranged sort of "energy wave" attack that can hit many enemies at once.
The bars on the lower left are temporary; you can ignore them. The weapon sprite is borrowed from a truly ancient project of mine and is also just a temporary thing I threw in for testing. The enemy sprite here is from Freedoom but I had him lying around from Toilet Paper Panic- obviously not the guys we will actually be fighting in the game. I just wanted to get something working today even if it was hideous.
The HUD is a mockup. I'll probably redo the graphics, and it's not functional yet, but I think this is the general layout I'm going to go with. This is technically a diegetic UI; it's supposed to actually be on the inside of Briella's helmet so I'm trying to go for a magic/fantasy style and might add a vignette effect as well. The symbols on the bottom are indicators for power dash/power jump and power attack, and will turn red when not ready and blue when they are ready. I may animate between the states if I have time. The bar on the top represents health and is a little more complicated. There is sort of a shield mechanic at play, though it's really just a threshold on the health value. As Briella's shields are depleted, the bar will turn from blue to red, and will turn back as they recharge. When shields are gone, it will flash red. I may add warning sounds and flash the bar when damage is taken as well; it really depends on how much I end up having time for.
I feel like I've made a lot of progress today just figuring out what I want to do, but there's still quite a bit of work to be done. The aforementioned HUD, weapon sprites, and enemies all need to be made. There are four main levels where you control Briella directly, and possibly one or two short ones as well. And of course it all needs to be integrated with the story stuff that's already been built.
But I think that's all for today.