Time of the Essence

HELLOOOOO!

It's been a while since the last post, although many of you no doubt have kept in touch with me via the Italian Telegram Chat and our Discord server!

Just wanted to make a little announcement/presentation about one of the projects I'm working on while Fabula moves to its new print form - Time of the Essence.

For those of you who are familiar with crafting JRPG games such as Atelier, you already know what this will be about: apprentice alchemists growing and experimenting as they help people solve daily and not-so-daily issues.

Contrary to its older sibling Fabula Ultima, Time of the Essence (TotE) is a more relaxed and sandboxy game, focused on a gameplay loop that has you receive requests from people, explore the region near your town for ingredients, and hopefully deliver while also finding some ingredients to experiment with on the side.

Crafting in tabletop RPGs is a challenging beast, one that has been tackled many times and often with poor results. That is why I decided to build a whole game around it: yes, it will require some bookkeeping and item juggling, but at its core that's what the game is about.
I am, of course, working on ways to simplify the process and make gameplay as smooth as possible.

Features I'm aiming for in development:

• Limited recipes, unlimited possibilities. Instead of giving you specific recipes, the game will give you a generic recipe that covers a large amount of options (such as "Sword" or "Ointment"). Then, the ingredients and materials used to create the item will give it a unique set of traits and abilities: an Ointment made with Angelherb will provide much stronger healing; one made with Pure Mountainwater will have a greater number of uses; and if you throw in extra ingredients, things will get even more varied.
• Easy to reference book. The book will have sections that are color-coded and provide a constant table of contents on each page. Finding what you need should be extremely easy, and the whole book is more colorful for it!
• Cute but with some danger. The looks of this game are heartwarming and cute, but you still need to have a big heart and muster a lot of courage to explore the areas furthest from your town.
• Tangible consequences. The protagonists' actions have a very real impact on the world and help people be happier, despite the world itself being what remains after the great mistakes of the Ancestors. Warmth and happiness are needed to fend off the dark.
• Step-by-step exploration. The areas of your region will be revealed as you travel and explore, making it a discovery for everyone at the table. No heavy prep required.

These are the big ones; there's a lot of other stuff I'm toying with, of course, but I'll tell you more when I have some final or semi-final thoughts.

Hope this gets you hyped - I sure am!