Growth RPG 2020 Post Mortem and Future

     First before I get into anything I would like to thank you all for supporting me. Its absolutely incredible that I am able to make developing the Growth RPG my full time job. It means so much to me that this many people enjoy the game. There's still more fun things to come, so I do hope you continue to support me.

     Overall I'm pretty happy with the state of the game after a year. It started off as a run of the mill turn based RPG with 2 bosses and now its an action RPG with 5 bosses and 2 new areas. I got a lot done with the main skeleton so now it supports a way bigger variety of models. I was even able to add Beast in as a boss, which I didn't think I could do a year ago. Unfortunately I did not get to finish the new dungeon system before the end of the year like I hoped but I was still able to create the first one. I've had a bit of trouble with the skeleton system this past year. I've had to reimport everything at least twice. Hopefully this shouldn't happen again, I think I have the skeleton in a place where I can easily add new bones if I need to and not have to reorder everything. A bit disappointed with the state of the inventory right now. I switched over from using an icon system to one that would render the objects in real time, theoretically saving me work in creating icons. But its taken so long to setup and its been buggy, so overall not worth it. I may end up scraping it and going back to the icon based system. Combat definitely has a long way to go, but its at a way better place than it was a year ago and I think it has a good rhythm to it.

This Year

     I think I'll have 2 more years in development to get to v1.0. This year I will focus on implementing any needed mechanics, adding more bosses/environments, and expanding combat/growth.

     In the past I had a roadmap, but I found that it would constantly change so it wasn't particularly useful. I may do one next year when things are more concrete, but consider this my roadmap for this year.

     More specifically for mechanics I want to get a party system working if it wouldn't make combat too chaotic, along with NPC relationships. I want to fix up the IK system so I can have NPCs actually touching things, a texture system for characters so you can have more than one pattern on your character. I want to add minigames to include more growth scenarios. I would also like to address the issue of overly large characters on the overworld. I haven't exactly decided how yet, maybe limiting the size your character on the overworld in certain areas, only allowing you to become that large for fast travel. That doesn't seem very fun, but I'm still trying to think of solutions.

     My idea for the environments is open world but the attribute gates will exist to lock you out of certain areas. You go through an area beat a boss and then the story would advance, making every other area harder. So there would be enemy scaling but its based around progression, not player level so if you want to grind you can. The idea being what attribute you decide to focus on will set you down a specific path, but all paths would be viable and if you want to get way bigger than the competition you can. I would like to get at least blocking done on most of the levels this year.

      I think for the final game loop I want to have a bit of focus on grinding. Now when I say a focus on grinding this I don't mean running into the same bush and fighting the same enemy over and over I would like to make it satisfying and fun. For example being able to refight old bosses with new mechanics or go dungeon diving or play minigames. Leveling up is a big motivation and most of the fun of the game, naturally it encourages grinding and I want to make sure people have fun doing it.

     For the dungeon. My plan is to finish up the system I'm working on in the next couple months and get feedback on it. For the final game I would like multiple types of dungeons across the world that are all differently themed to grind in. But if that ends up being too much work then one that would get more pieces to it as you go through the world. A lot of it depends on the feedback I get when I fully implement it.

      Combat needs a lot of work but I think it has a pretty good rhythm now with building up AP and spending it to grow. It still needs a lot of work. I would like to slow attacks down but have characters hit harder and build AP faster. This year I would like to implement grabs, along with special context sensitive growth animations. Originally I was considering having combat take place on the overworld but I think I will stick with loading a new level. That way I can make the combat level as big as it needs to be and it can be stocked with intractable objects. The UI/controls still need work too. I will be mainly working on the active combat, so passive will be secondary, but I still plan on keeping it in the final version. I am also thinking about changing the current system to a new hitbox based one.

     For the story, I will not be implementing it this year. My plan is to implement it all at once in a few updates, but I will be planting the seeds of it so to speak. Adding in important NPCs and locations.

Future of the game

Next year will be mainly focused on cleaning the game up, balancing combat, implementing the story, and replacing any placeholder models with final versions. So late 2022 early 2023 I plan on releasing V1.0 and then I'll keep working on the game adding extra mechanics/content.

sorry this took a bit longer to get out than I initially thought, but I wanted to be sure I was able to get everything down.