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Goblin Stone Devblog #5: Goblin Classes I

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Goblin Stone can’t be a Role-playing game without its own set of classes. In this devblog, we will be introducing the goblin classes. What makes goblins interesting is that they do not improve by leveling up. One way to improve them for battle is by carefully choosing their abilities and selectively improving them.

Presently, there are seven goblin classes to choose from when building your adventure party and four more goblin classes in the works. Let’s take a look at the first four classes available in the Goblin Stone demo.

PEON

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At the start of the game, players will need to recruit goblins to increase their forces. These come from squatters that visit the lair’s campground or stray goblins encountered during adventures. These unremarkable goblins with little combat skills all start out as the Peon class. Peons may not seem to be the strongest goblin out there, but they can be an essential part of the party that can help increase your inventory space. Their passive ability to carry 50% more loot than any other class is advantageous when players need to forage for more materials or gold.

Peons, however, cannot be equipped with any weapon. They have two default combat abilities which have comparatively low damage compared to the combat abilities of other classes.

ABILITIES

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GUARD

“A Goblin of most unwavering bravery, it rescues those in trouble and stuns the foe with its skillful use of Shield”

The Guard’s job is to prevent and soak up damage and protect weaker allies. They have more armor than any other class. Their ability to delay the opponent with powerful stuns can help prevent devastating enemy attacks.

ABILITIES

RAIDER

“Opportunistic and exploitative, the raider bides his time waiting for the right moment to strike.”

The Raider is a very offensive opportunist that capitalizes on units afflicted by status effects. This class works best with other classes that inflict Stun and Bleed. Unlike other classes with a mix of utility and support skills, all of the Raider’s abilities are offensive.

ABILITIES

SHAMAN

“Strength and power borrowed from the spirits of goblins past.”

The Shaman is a supportive character that derives healing powers from communing with ancestors. They also have an impressive range of utility that can delay enemies and bide time for allies to recover. Their strong ties with the spirits also allow them to deal damage when needed.

ABILITIES

There are currently 4 abilities available for the Raider and Shaman class in the Goblin Stone Demo. Similar to the Guard class, each class will have a total of 8 abilities. 4 of which are currently in development and will be available in the Early Access release.

A class is a primary definition of what a Goblin can do during an adventure. Each class is different, and each has its strengths and play style. Some classes may be well suited to adventuring together with other specific classes due to synergies.

Our next post will cover how to change the goblin class and the three new goblin classes we added in our recent demo update. Until then, please share with us your thoughts and feedback!

Goblin Stone Devblog #4: Combat System

For this devblog, we will be talking about the Combat System! It was quite important for us to get this right as we anticipated the player spending a majority of their time in combat. Combat for us is the “Meat and Potatoes” of the game and became the starting point for development. It’s something we’ve been consistently improving and iterating on. We have had some challenges in terms of the design and we wanted to ensure combat interesting both in presentation and in mechanics. It was a bit of a challenge but we like our current iteration!

 

Battles

We decided to have our battles remain in side view to be consistent with how adventures are presented. From the get-go, we also wanted a turn-based command style where the player had time to pause, think, and play with strategies.

We first tried a Rounds Base System, where within a round all characters get a turn. We felt this system didn’t cater well to the uniqueness of the game where goblins usually outnumber the enemies. We were looking for a more fluid system that allowed quicker enemies (like goblins) multiple chances to attack against a larger much slower enemy. So we shifted to an Active Battle Style game play using a single “time bar” that shows when each character would act, a bit like Final Fantasy or Grandia. This seemed to work much better for our case and resulted in a more engaging experience.

When it came to presentation we ran into many challenges with how to present the UI. It had to be easy to understand and it had to show only the information that was needed for the player at a specific phase in combat. There was also the central time bar we had to figure out. We had to design something that was compatible with the way characters were laid out in combat.

To give you a more detailed look into our current combat flow we listed the different phases of battle below.

 

A very early mock-up of the Battle UI. Quite different to our current version.

A mock-up with the “time bar” for the new combat system. This is quite near to what we have now.

Phases of Battle

Waiting Phase:

This is the phase where all units start moving towards the Center of the Timeline at a fixed rate. No commands can be issued here. The phase ends when a unit reaches the center of the Timeline.

Command Phase:

This is where the game pauses and players are able to select a skill and use it accordingly. Command Phase starts once a character reaches the center of the Timeline.

Action Phase:

Once a target is selected, we move on to the Action Phase. This is where the skill/attack is used and damage is calculated. After attacking, the unit will then move back along the timeline according to the Cost of the skill used.

Waiting Phase

Command Phase

Action Phase

 

Timeline System

Since our design was turn based, we had to think of a way to determine the order of the turns. We wanted it to be simple enough to allow players to understand the design quickly. Here is a quick overview of how it works:

Each turn will be determined by a character’s position on the Timeline. The combat abilities of your Goblins cost Time Units(TU) instead of Mana or SP. The bigger the cost of an ability, the farther away that unit will move back in the Timeline after it attacks. In essence you pay for the cost of the the ability after it’s used. We really liked this system for determining the turn order. It also feels more sensible. A character that uses a powerful ability would feel exhausted after using it and would need time to recover before having another go. The timeline also displays all Units’ order in battle.

 
 

Death

Character death is something that every player dreads in a game. But being a game about breeding with goblins, we wanted to explore the concept of making death in a game feel positive. It’s design was something we wanted to wrap our heads around and has proven very very challenging. We understand that character death may be the hardest thing for players to embrace. “How to make death good?” well, we had a couple of ideas for it!

First off is that goblins produce a resource when they die. This resource is essential to building your Lair and for the progression of the game. Death is not the only way to get this resource, because that would be terrible! However, death gives out a lot of it.

Another interesting thing we did is grant a combat advantage when a goblin dies. The enemy that killed the goblin, gains a special debuff called “Leveled Up” which causes them to prematurely celebrate. During the duration of the debuff, the enemy becomes stuck in their celebration pose and is vulnerable to attacks. You might imagine the Final Fantasy’s victory celebrate animation, except foolishly done in the middle of a fight.

There a couple more such as special genes from breeding that give auto triggered combat advantages on death. but we’ll go into that in another post.

Hope that you enjoyed this post! For our next post, we will be talking about Classes and Abilities.

Goblin Stone Devblog #3: Embarking on Adventures

For this devblog we will be highlighting Adventures. Adventuring is a major feature of the game where a good chunk of the player’s time will be spent here exploring, fighting, and collecting loot. It entails leaving the Lair to explore different locations available on the World Map. During adventures, Goblins go out and harvest materials used to build out the Lair. Each location on the world map is unique, with its own loot and monster preference.

 

Early Concepts

During the pre-conceptualization phase, we played around with some ideas and tried out different concepts. We always knew we wanted a side scrolling experience, but how to present it was an enduring challenge. In particular we had to find a good way to allow branching paths so we don’t just get a simple linear experience. We also wanted to make it feel like we are really exploring so we opted for each level to be randomly generated. Random dungeon generation proved to be a very daunting task but we believe it will be well worth it in the end. On the right and below, are some of our early concepts back when we were still trying to figure out how to design adventures.

An early concept of how Adventuring might look like

Another concept we were playing around with. You can see the finalized design of the Goblins.

 

Our current iteration of the world map’s interface

The World Map

The World Map is viewable through the Goblin Lair’s War Room. It provides access to different locations to adventure in. We wanted to keep the visuals in the old parchment map style, while still adding a bit of 3D to it to keep consistent with the rest of our UI. We actually did a few iterations on the World Map’s interface and felt we had it in a good place. Though, after a few play test sessions, testers found it confusing as hell. We had to iterate over our original design and rethink it. On the left you can see its current state.

 

Adventures and quests

Once a location is selected in the World Map, the Goblins will be set on their Adventure. Each adventure comes along with a quest objective, which can vary from finding a specific item in the area or defeating a certain enemy. The availability of quests are random, some are easy other are rare and rewarding. Quests in general are still in the works. We hope to to able to talk more about it soon!

Goblin Stone Devblog #2: The Goblin Lair

Welcome to the ever-expandable home of the Goblins! The Lair is one of the main features in the game where players will be spending a lot of time in. The Goblin Lair is where players construct, manage various rooms, all of which play their own roles in supporting the Goblins on their adventurers.

It was quite difficult to develop and get right. We had many iterations on the look of it. In the end, we settled on a 3D presentation in contrast to the 2D environment you see during adventures. We were also adamant about not visualizing the rooms as boxes but rather in more organic looking cut-outs a bit similar in look to an ant colony which we felt was more natural-looking.

 

Building and Upgrading

There are a number of Rooms to build in the Lair. The most important one (and our favorite) is the centrally located Ancestor’s Hall. It’s like a shrine of sorts that functions as the the heart of your home. Upgrading the Ancestor’s Hall unlocks new Rooms and allows you to upgrade rooms as well.

There are Guild Halls for managing each class, Warrens for breeding more goblins, and a Larder for storage just to name a few. The layout of the lair is not fixed, the player has the freedom to rearrange rooms after they are built. A feature we really wanted to develop.

Build some Rooms in the Lair

WIP of the concept for the World Map

Adventuring

To build out your lair, the player must bring his goblins on a variety of adventures to collect materials needed to build and upgrade rooms. The world of Goblin Stone is quite vast and various locations house different materials. To the left is a world map which shows a glimpse of the world the goblins will be adventuring in. We will talk more about the map and adventuring in general in a different post.

Goblin Stone Devblog #1: Introducing the Goblins

The Goblins

Say hello to our little Goblins! They are one of the smaller monsters and the main protagonists of the game. Because of their size, they are the perfect prey for eager Adventurers and wild creatures. Goblins may be weak but they make up for it in numbers.

In Goblin Stone, Goblins and Monsterkin in general, don’t level up and gain experience points from battle. However, the same is NOT true for the the dangerous adventurer groups out there in the world who thirst for EXP. Instead, goblins grow better with each generation. Careful breeding is the only way to becoming stronger!

The final design of the Goblins!

The final design of the Goblins!

 
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Explore the vast amount of possibilities through breeding. You can discover new combat traits and appearances. Improve your colony and adventuring party. Make their parents proud!