A Quick Explanation of Book Combat

One of the defining features of Author Adventure is the book-based combat system. This system allows for hundreds, if not thousands, of options during combat to change the way particular characters fight, and, by using it correctly, can really give a strategic edge in during battle.

Each character has three options during battle: Offense, Defense and Run. For the sake of this post we will be ignoring the third option. If one of the other options is selected, a menu appears with four slots, either containing offensive (damaging) spells, or defensive (buffing/debuffing/healing) spells. The first option in each category is preset, but the other three are fully customizable.

The first option is always based on the character and changes as they level up. This option contains a spell based on a novel or short story written by the currently selected author. For example, Shakespeare could have the spell “Insanity” (based on the play Hamlet) which confuses an enemy to possibly attack a fellow enemy. As the game advances, however, these spells become less useful because the party will be facing stronger opponents. To compensate for this, at set levels the characters will “write” new stories and thus gain new spells, replacing the old ones. This will require changes in strategies as players continue further into the game, making the play experience much more interesting.

That is simply two of the eight slots available to each character, so what of the other six? These come from enemies. Every enemy in the game is based on an antagonist from a famous piece of literature and, upon death, may drop a copy of their respective story for the player to keep. The player can then equip these books on their characters, extracting the book’s spell for use during combat. Each book can contain an offensive or defensive spell, and some even contain both. This allows for extreme customization in each of the character’s book “loadouts”. We are still undecided on the total number of enemies (and thus the number of books) available, but there will be somewhere around 50 different equipable books or so.

This described the basics of finding and equipping books, but the spells they contain are another story. The system used in Author Adventure allows for many unique spell types with differing properties and interesting uses, but that is for another time. Keep your eyes on this blog as it is updated with more information regarding Author Adventure!

What You May Have Missed in the Teaser

The teaser released Monday for Author Adventure may have been short on gameplay, but it did show a few features in the game that you may not have noticed.

Scrolling Clouds

All of the battle scenes in the trailer showcase the Overworld location which has a mountain range in the background. However, you may not have noticed that the clouds actually move across the sky. This was done to add constant movement to the battle. During the majority of any particular battle something will more than likely be animating, but on the off chance that none of the participants are, (such as while selecting spells) the clouds will always be moving. As opposed to simple, static images, the battle feels “alive”.

Another small addition to the game was randomly placed scenery during battle. While not a big deal at all, it makes the battle at least seem like it is occurring at different locations in the world

Enemies

Out of the twelve enemies shown, 8 of them are meant to be from specific books. The other enemies were created before we had officially decided that all enemies would be based on antagonists from novels. They will either be removed or altered for the final release to keep Author Adventure consistent.

Spells

During the battle sequences Twain and Shakespeare are both seen scrolling through their list of spells. Each spell they currently have equipped is based on an actual book. While the spell could change the final version, this will give you some idea what we are going for in terms of spells. More information will be revealed about our book-based combat soon.

And a random trivia fact: The song used for the trailer is actually two separate songs. The first song was meant to be an “opening theme” and the second was a random song created by Allan which he dubbed “Wild West” because the pattern of the backbeat was meant to resemble the beat of a horse running.