Future Plans #32

Hey everyone!

Next reward post is probably my favorite post for each month — another sneak peek at my next visual novel, Fate of the Celestial Mirror (xianxia otome/BL game)!

Today, I want to highlight and show a bit about one gameplay feature: the crafting system, also called Refining in game to align with xianxia terms.

Refining

One small mechanic I've always loved in RPG games is crafting and cooking. Idk why, but there's something super cute and satisfying about making these tiny pixel items come together. And since refining is such a big thing in xianxia stories, it's only fitting that I have that mechanic in the game too.

The crafting system in this game is divided into two types: Pill and Artifact. Basically Pill Refining = make consumable pills equivalent to like potion making in other RPGs. Artifact Refining = blacksmithing and making items.

 This is how the crafting screen looks like. Learned recipes are on the left, and if you have the ingredients for the recipe, you can click Add Ingredients to Furnace and it throws them into the furnace slots above. You can then choose how many to batch craft by clicking the + - buttons.

It is also possible to free craft without learning the recipe -- you can click on the furnace slots, which would result in a dropdown of your inventory and allow you to select an ingredient & quantity to insert into the furnace to craft.

BUT trying to free craft without a learned recipe has a chance to result in failure even if the ingredients combinations are correct! This is mostly a balance mechanic so people can't just look up all the recipes on the walkthrough and then never have to buy one in game LMFAO

There's a lot more to talk about for the crafting system (including an optional minigame) but I will leave that to another day when they're more settled and programmed in.

One last tidbit to share on the crafting system is that -- it can be accessed with the 'C' shortcut on the keyboard, orrrr you can go to your house -> your study and then you'll see furnaces there with a CRAFT button above!

It's a small thing but I thought it'd make it more immersive, that you can actually walk up to the furnaces in your house to initiate crafting, hahah.

(Actually, this reminds me I should probably change the button text from Craft to Refine to be consistent 🤔)

Anyway, I hope you like this small feature highlight and that you'll look forward to this game too! It's definitely my baby passion project and I'm so excited but nervous omg 🥺