Upcoming CATC features, part I

A whole bunch of features to flesh out the game mechanics. 

The first feature is the new Temp HP effect, which grants temporary HPs that must be depleted before you take actual damage to your HP. In many games, this is called "shield" but calling it "shield" may cause some confusion with the shield equipment type so called it Temp HP instead.

The inclusion of Temp HP also meant the completion of all defensive effects I want to put into the game: Block, Evade, and Temp HP. Their pros and cons are included below:

Block is designed to be good for a tanky/frontline character. It can reduce a large amount of damage, particularly from multi-attacks or groups of enemies. (Block in this game do not decay on hit)

Evasion is almost the opposite of Block, good versus single hits, but poor versus multi-hit/groups. It also saves you from status effects as well. Best used when comboed with Reveal effect so you know exactly what attacks are coming and which to dodge.

Finally, there is the new Temp HP effect. Unlike Block and Evasion, this lasts until the end of encounter (or depleted), designed to be used as a buff at start of encounter to give everyone on your team a HP buffer. Also have the benefit that Temp HP effect can usually be given to allies, rather than self-only, which makes it a good option for a support/backline character.

The next game mechanic are conditional effects. This is a big one because often the most interesting part of a deck-building game is finding those synergies between cards and combos. It is something on my to-do list for a long time and I finally got the time to implement it.

With the addition of conditional effects, I can finally tune an area of the game that many were asking for: Cha-based playstyle. That's something I'm interested in too but it was rather difficult to balance appropriately. The problems lies in the fact that grabs are fundamentally a poor option when you are outnumbered. So if Cha cards are so strong that they are good versus group of mobs, then that probably meant that they would be completely overpowered when facing against fewer numbers or bosses.

So instead of making Cha decks centered around grabs, let's try making it centered around managing Lust:

The basic premise is that you use the Lust inflicting cards on opponents first, then play your payoff cards when opponent Lust is >= 50%. For example, Seducation which causes the very strong Charmed effect. 

The other cornerstone are the sleep-inflicting cards that only work when the target is healthy. The idea is that you use them at beginning to disable a portion of enemies, then get to work on your target one at a time.

I also added an encounter objectives display on the top left of the screen. This is because I want to add other battle types than just "defeat all enemies." Such as rescuing target, survive for X rounds, etc. (Not in next patch)

Originally, I planned to add a tile system and a room-sewing together system like what HRT had, so each mission would be one continuous battle moving from one room to the next. However, at this point the development time would take too long for CATC, so I decided to settle on the next best alternative - enemy reinforcements.

Pretty straight forward, for some battles, there can be enemy reinforcements/waves that will spawn at round X or sooner if you manage to defeat all existing enemies. You must defeat all the reinforcement to meet the eliminate all enemies objective. There is a red marker that tells the player a enemy is spawning from around that position:

Finally, a sneak peak. The first non-humanoid enemy?