Totally forgot itch had devlogs, so I'll start making updates here too...
Our latest project is called Necromacner's Quest, this time following the limitations of the ever-so-popular NES/Famicom. The game itself is a turn-based RPG, inspired by retro RPG games like Dragon Quest, Phantasy Star and Final Fantasy.

The Plot:

In Necromancer’s Quest you play as Urulu, a young girl-turned-necromancer as she descends into the Underworld hoping to resurrect her deceased twin sister. Upon her arrival she meets with Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Underworld, who explains that her sister’s body/soul has been ripped into the six pieces that have been spread all over the Underworld. So before she can even think about bringing her sister back to life, Urulu has to collect all the pieces of her sister’s body first.

The Gameplay:

The main quest is to explore the Underworld in search of the pieces of Olivia's soul. Unfortunately for our main character, Urulu does not have a party to support her on her quest, instead she has to face the challenges of the Underworld all alone. In other words, Urulu has to fight all the hungry, hostile monsters of the Underworld one-on-one (much like in Dragon Quest). The catch is, all actions require the use of life energy, the very thing keeping you alive, i.e. HP, MP, AP are all one and the same value, and you need to be careful with how you use it.

By defeating the beasts on her path, however, Urulu can absorb their life force, growing stronger in the process... Which in turn invites stronger and stronger monsters, each seeking to satiate their hunger for more succulent life energy. So your Exp is also a apart of your HP, the stronger more life force you have, the stronger you are, but the stronger you are, the stronger the enemies coming after you are.

Urulu can avoid this stampede of hungry beasts by transferring a part of her life force into various vessels found lying around in the Underworld, lessening her own “scent” by doing so. She can also get her life force back from the vessels by destroying the vessel. These vessels would essentially work like potions in other RPGs.

I'm also thinking of a possibility of making these vessels for other purposes than just healing, like buffs and strong attack spells (like Rin Tohsaka's jewels in the Fate series)

Currently I'm still fairly early on when it comes to content, with only 2 dungeons, 13 enemies, and 1 boss, but when it comes to the systems, animations, menus, battling, etc I like to think I much closer to finishing. I still need to finish the battle system (add functions for guarding and running, and effects for attacks) and make towns (including things like shops).

The end plan is to have 8 dungeons, (1 "tutorial", 6 for the body parts, and 1 final boss dungeon), each with at least 3 unique enemies going forward from what I have now along with 7 bosses total (at least).

PS. I'll have to drop a disclaimer right now, on Unreal Engine forums, which I frequent much more often, my record on updating my devlogs is quite abysmal, but I'll keep on updating this topic every time I update the one on UE forums, and with two topics to keep up to date, maybe I'll remember to update them more often... but no promises.

I've now (more-or-less) finished the battle system with not only attacks, but item usage, guarding and escaping from battle also working. Not to mention the addition of attack effects, both visual and audial...

...which means I can now move on to making the first town with its buildings, shops, NPCs and dialogue.

Okay so it’s once again been quite a while since my last post, but I have a good excuse for it: I started making the town and started the shops and the shopping system, which led me to setting up the pause menu for the items and equipment which led me to overhauling my combat system, which took time… 

So let’s start with the shopping system:

I started building it as a basic buy - sell type store front you see in… practically all games, but then I started thinking about how much I always hate it when I first have to sell something then buy new equipment - equip it and then sell the old equipment… I mean, why not just do it all at the same time?

This idea led me to making a trader’s store system where instead strictly buying or selling, you are actually trading, so both selling and buying at the same time. (I also figured I could use this with some characters that only want to trade certain items for certain other items, not accepting pure life force as is). 

Next the pause menu item handling:

Here, the most important aspects are the “add life”, “enchant” and “divide” functions.
The add life function (still trying to come up with a better name for it in the menu) allows the player to infuse the vessels with life, strengthening their effects and making them more useful.
Enchanting should be fairly self-explanatory, the player enchants the vessels with a spell thus giving the vessel the effects of that spell, thus making the vessels even stronger, and possibly even making the spell itself stronger through the vessel.
The divide function shouldn’t be too difficult to understand either, it essentially divides item groups. While at first it may seem a bit unnecessary (at least according to my brother) it does have a purpose. Since the adding of life is done to all items in the group as is enchanting, you might want to divide your items so that they may for example have different enchantments per group and/or you might want to also divide them by strength, i.e. having a few items with more life added that you save for harder enemies and some items with less that you use for easier enemies.
There is also a quickslot which is for battle and break/discard which, well, destroy the item and return any life force added to it back to the player.

So I decided to fully commit to the consumable battle system, where you mainly fight by using items and casting spells. The style is inspired partly by Rin Tohsaka from Fate/Stay Night who uses crystals imbued with magic to fight and half by my own hoarder tendencies as I avoid using consumable items in games as much as possible and figured I’d make a battle system built entirely for hoarders just to spite myself. It’s also good to note that while all other items and equipment, or “vessels”, are used as consumables in battle, equipped equipment isn’t and they can be used as many times as needed, but they also weaken with each use, meaning that all their effects on you grow weaker the more you use them offensively.
Firstly there’s the quickslot, which essentially functions as the basic attack command so you don’t always have to go through an extra menu window or two just to attack (this was inspired by my brother).
And lastly there is the overhauled magic casting system, which I decided to turn into a memory/password type casting instead of just picking a spell from the list. The reason for this (and quite frankly the reason for the whole revamp) was that the original battle system as is, felt boring. The first thing I started focusing on making more interesting was the magic system and the first thing the popped into my head as I was thinking about cool magic attacks was actually the finishers from DBZ Budokai 3 which have you choose a button to that your opponent has to guess, if they fail three times you finisher lands with a really cool animation and everything. So at first I thought maybe adding in a QTE where you would essentially have to cast the spell correctly before the opponent attacks, failing to do so would mean failing the spell. My brother however vetoed the idea saying that one of the main reasons people (like myself) play turn-based RPGs is that they do not require quick reflexes, instead relying on thinking and planning. And I agreed. So I stepped back a bit thinking of other ways to make the spells more interesting to use and remembered the Blitz abilities from Final Fantasy VI, which I quite recently beat, where you have to input a specific button combination after activating the ability to choose which Blitz attack you want the character to use. This also reminded me of Wizardry where you have to manually input the spell you want your characters to use and have to remember each spell by name, much like the blitz attacks.
So I figured “why not try the same?” and now the spells have to be learned not only by the character but by the player too if you want to use them.

sigh
That was a long post, and now that all of that is done, I think mechanically the game should be mostly finished par polishing and adding some exceptions to certain system. Which leads my focus onto art and writing for now, and while the first town’s blueprint is mostly finished, it’s still missing its residents, so I think the next post will be once I gather up some willing souls to inhabit the (literal) ghost town.