Aventure Tactics - Alpha 2 Release

Hi all!

I updated the Adventure Tactics game (placeholder title) with more core mechanic implementations. The pre-alpha and alpha versions already had a functioning gameplay loop, where you, the player, could select in which terrain to battle enemies next. I now added a core loop for encountering new enemies and which selects the terrain for you (there's no longer a problem of not knowing what to do for new players). The loop gives some hints about what you might encounter. 

Content

Skill rebalance - I rebalanced some skills in small ways that made some weaker ones more playble. Also added a couple skills for more unique gameplay of magic-heavy monsters.

Roguelike progression - Although by no means complete, you now find short descriptions of the terrain you venture into. These mention obstacles and hint about what you will  encounter. Hints are deliberately vague, with the hope that they will make you feel clever for learning to identify hard enemies for your current build and run away. However, you can play just fine by ignoring them, since running away has the occasional penalty. I have also created some random events, though these are still in the prototype phase. But you can get some pretty sweet rewards - especially in the wizard tower, which provides spells with double augmentation (!!) once you clear it.

Visuals - Thanks to feedback by some actual people, I made some minor changes to the in-game UI, e.g. to make health bars gradually empty as health numbers decrease, and putting shield indicator towards the center of the screen. I also reworked the character selection menu, where previous animations were clunky. I changed the aesthetics to something that was easier to program and more aesthetically pleasing in action, even if screenshots are a little less impressive. Finally, you also gain a peek at what enemy attacks look like, though you can't examine them in great detail yet.

Content

• 6 terrains with distinct gameplay, mob types, and rewards
• 4 playable characters
• 11 mob monster types (you can also play with these)
• 26 acquirable skills, each with a unique feel
• 3 types of skill upgrades (stronger, easier to use, longer duration)
• 4 types of random events (currently poorly-written just to test the functionality)

Moving forward

The game is still in the alpha version, which means that there may still be issues here and there, though the main problems currently are lack of balance, content, occasional textual mistakes, no sound effects, and a lack of an options menu. I also want to reduce overlap between the mobs appearing in some terrains. Especially for the Sky terrain, I plan to make more explicit mobs in the future, because it feels like a clunky version of the Countryside. 

Finally, I am in the midst of designing three mechanics to improve gameplay, after which i can hopefully move on to finalize content:

a) An explicit "Provisions" mechanic that you need to replenish to stay alive. Provisions will likely be rewards sometimes. My goal is to create rewards that do not affect combat to help add some extra depth to the gameplay. It's also pretty cool for events to reward you with something other than skills and more skills.

b) Catch-up mechanics that will let you keep playing even with battered old saves. Beyond obvious in-game events to help you when you run out of items or max health, I am also looking to design methods to help your other saves from the current ones, maybe creating some type of cross-save trading.

c) A way to keep your character type from getting too sidetracked into non-fitting. For example, I would really like for Mages to have some kind of insentive to keep using spells (e.g. Lightning, Fireball) instead of more melee-based (e.g. Sword, Club). There are several good ways to do this, and I am in the midst of deciding how exactly it would work to keep everything as simple as possible.