#tactical games

[theresattrpgforthat]

Hey! I really love your recommendations— I’m just now getting into Ironsworn as a solo game from one of your posts. I was wondering, and I know this is a difficult and maybe weird ask, but do you know any solo rpgs that have good tactical combat? I enjoy narrative systems a lot, but my biggest passion is getting deep into tactics and strategy. I can’t even imagine how a solo game could get much more tactical than Ironsworn is, but if there are any out there I’d really love to try them out.

THEME: Solo Tactical Games

Hello, thank you so much for the lovely compliment! Let’s see if I can find anything for you.

EZCARGOT, by Garlickatsu.

"The surface has been lost. What remains is a gray, featureless and foggy wasteland. Dangerous, unidentifiable Entities roam free. Humanity lives in Rifts that keep them safe from Entites. These Rifts are kept open using a highly volatile resource called Anomaly. You pilot an EZ.CARGO.Trailer to transport one chunk of stable Anomaly between Rifts. Scan for the route ahead. Protect the Anomaly. Make it to your next destination alive."

EZCARGOT is more of an exploration game than it is a combat game, but the fact that you’re protecting an Anomaly makes combat feel necessary, even if it’s just a necessary part. That being said, the building and maintenance of your EZCARGOT vehicle is definitely at the centre of this game. This vehicle has compartments for various purposes; generating energy, firing weapons, carrying the Anomaly, and more.

On top of maintaining the EZCARGOT and protecting your precious cargo, there is the hazard of the land you must travel to get from rift to rift. If you want a game that’s weird, futuristic and dangerous, you might like EZCARGOT.

Delve to Earn Dimes, by flumpledev.

The surface world became uninhabitable for most people long ago. Not due to any cataclysm or war, but due to low wages.

In this solo journaling TTRPG you play as a crew of career dungeon delvers who are able to afford to live on the surface- as long as you spend most of your time surviving inside the dungeon. With a blackjack resolution mechanic you will need to weigh risk and reward, survival and honor in The Undercity.

A deck-of-cards dungeon delve, this game gives you a crew of characters to manage, rather than just one. Each member has different skills, attached to the four suits of your deck of cards. These cards also double as encounter generators, creating obstacles and enemies as you move down each floor of your dungeon.

Each day of in-game time, you will have an encounter. I suspect many of these encounters will be combat focused, since in most case you’ll have to decide whether you press on and deal with the encounter, or flee. You’ll also have a boss to defeat on each floor in order to keep moving onward - and a juicy reward after each boss fight that gives you the feeling of levelling up.

Hollow Hike, by RollForThings.

Hollow Hike is a short Dark Souls-inspired RPG about travelling a blighted land as a deathless Hollow, repeatedly dying and reviving against difficult foes, discovering the secrets of a lost kingdom, and slaying the Ashen Lords along the way. Hollow Hike is designed for a one-player experience, but can optionally be played with a GM for a duet game.

If you like gritty combat, you’ll probably like Hollow Hike. Similar to plenty of traditional fantasy games, you have a level and a class, and similar to Dark Souls, you need to collect souls to level up. If you die, you drop all of the souls you’ve collected up until then, and you’ll have to reach the same point in order to pick them back up - if you’ve played Bloodborne, this is probably familiar to you!

One of the ways the game is challenging is in the single-use nature of your items. You can use them to give yourself slight advantages in combat, but once you use them, they’re gone. However, I think the highlight of this game is the bosses on each level. They’re the doors to a new realm when they are defeated, and if they are an Ashen Lord, they’re extra special - they bring you one step closer to a true escape.

Factory of the Machine God, by Anthony Hobday.

A solo pen-and-paper tactical mech combat game.

An AI virus has uploaded itself to Mech Factory 12 [North Sea]. It has named itself “The Machine God.” We cannot send autonomous mechs against it. You will be airlifted to the factory. Go to the 5th floor and shut down the server. Clean-up crews will land on your all-clear.

This feels very much like an old-school rpg, with levels of the factory to work through, 6 skills, and various module spaces with which you can build your mech. Because you’re building your ideal war-machine, I think character creation alone can make this game tactical, but of course you’ll also have to battle various enemies as you try to get closer and closer to the final boss. The game also comes with an order of operations for enemies to act, which makes it easier for you to plan ahead and try and make the most of what you have.

Factory of the Machine God is rather minimalist in presentation, but I think it has a really strong concept as its base conceit, and I think it’s worth checking out all the same.

My Spoons are Stabby!, by Caramel Sugarevil.

Welcome to My Spoons are Stabby, a solo roguelike game where you’re dungeon crawling through your mind and dealing with the monsters you find there. The best weapon in the Monster Hunter’s arsenal is their mind, so we developed The Chaos Machine, the holodeck that mentally links to the Hunt Team. Through that, they can work through their issues individually or as a team. 

My Spoons are Stabby uses a deck of cards for task resolution, and your character has four stats that correspond to each card suit. You play by drawing cards from a draw pile and placing them into a daily spread of 6.

Your primary resource is called “Spoons”, which are required to do most things. If you run out of spoons too soon, you can take a wound or use up resources, but both are limited - and if you get 5 wounds, you lose the game.

The genre of the game feels a bit like urban fantasy. Each card you draw introduces various complications and monsters, many of which have special rules about how to deal with that day’s specific problem.

If you want a game that’s a strong metaphor and feels a little bit like a pick-your-own adventure with a few extra pieces to manage, you might like My Spoons are Stabby.

Welcome to the Dungeon, by wym_lawson.

You are the overseer of the realm of darkness, the supreme ruler of all monsters, known to the humans as The-Tainted-One. Despite these grand titles and immense responsibilities, you just want to live a quiet, peaceful life with your skeleton friends and pet slimes. But why do the humans find the need to invade your domain, seeking to destroy you and disrupt your peace?

Fine. If they insist on war, you will give them just that. In Welcome to the Dungeon, you play as the Dark Lord. Your goal is to build a dungeon filled with traps and monsters to thwart these pesky Heroes. Each victory against these intruders earns you resources, enabling you to enhance and expand your dungeon. Hopefully, you will be prepared to face the ultimate adventuring party led by the Chosen One.

I think Welcome to the Dungeon is kind of a tactical combat, but most of the tactics happen before any of the combat starts You create a dungeon with a certain number of points; the more points used, the higher the level of the dungeon. Apart from rooms, you’ll also need to create traps and Monsters - if you’re familiar with Boss Monster the boardgame, I think it feels slightly like that.

You’re also going to building the Heroes, which are the foes that you pit your dungeon against. These heroes have levels, just like your dungeon, but they also have classes, special reactions, and traits that will make defeating them difficult. If you defeat them, you get more points! Perhaps you can use those to make your dungeons even deadlier on your second play!

First Monarch, by Mundos Infinitos.

After THE FALL, We conceive the perfect MONARCHS And they, released their CRIMSON MIST. Many became SPECTERS, cities crumbled. Some survived, underground. The GUARDIAN has found her CHOSEN, With the duty of defeating the… FIRST MONARCH

The creator behind Mundos Infinitos is very good at packaging a whole experience in just a few pages. One page of First Monarch is full of oracles, generators that make your adventure unpredictable. Another page is dedicated to character details and special abilities; including a Bloodlust track that fills every time you turn a failure into a victory.

You play two characters in First Monarch, rather than one: a Chosen and a Guardian. The Chosen is the character with special abilities, but the Guardian has a special dice that can be used to lend you her aid in certain circumstances. She can also give you her blood to reduce your Bloodlust.

All in all, a lot of flavour in a very small package.

Other Posts To Look At

Not all of the games in these posts will be tactical, but these are the recommendation posts that I think are most likely to have tactical games.

Solo Showdowns Recommendation Post

Chrono Trigger / FFVI Solo Games

Solo Knights

Also Consider…

Godspark, by M.Allen Hall.

The Void series from ParaMyth Games.

[158590]

[ashenpumpkin]

GO PLAY TACTICAL BREACH WIZARDS RIGHT FUCKING NOW

okay but here's the actual review.

Tactical Breach Wizards, or TBW, is a comedic tactical sim game taking place in the far future. You play as a rogue team of wizards led by one Zan Vesker in an attempt to stop world war 5 he saw in a vision into the future.

It has a unique mechanic related to Zan's powers which allow you to "rewind" actions you taken this turn of combat and change your mind on what you wish to do, as well as being able to "foresee" what will be the enemies actions after yours before you commit to the end of your turn. This creates a fun environments to experiment with a variety of solutions to the fun challenges and puzzles the game throws at you.

Also you get to defenestrate [Verb, 1: To throw (something or someone) out of a window.] a lot

Scoring:

Writing [10/10]: The game is funny, like seriously funny, while still maintaining a very interesting story, and managing to hit powerful somber notes [such as conversations held with Dall], as well as intrigue. The characters are well rounded, and their banter is wonderful. The ability to delve into the "chats" option and explore various character interactions and conversations as the story progresses is really enjoyable.

Artstyle [10/10]: The game is beautiful, the character designs are on point, you can do bonus objectives to unlock cool skins for your characters. The artstyle conveys the different areas the game takes place in, and their culture and style from it.

Gameplay [9/10]: Responsive, Fun, Easy to understand but hard to master. The levels and challenges the game provides left me very satisfied. There's manually adjustable difficulty settings to make the game harder or easier to your preference, fitting even people who aren't the biggest fans of tactical sims. My only complaint is that some of the bonus challenges can not be completed during your initial playthrough of a level, requiring a revisit later. As well as one of the achievement being missable in the the first mission, and that mission cannot be replayed, forcing you to delete your save if you want 100% completion.

Music and Audio [9/10]: Your moves as a player have satisfying sound design, the music slaps throughout the game, menuing sounds smooth, actions taken feels smooth, cutscenes sound great. I just wish each combat music track was a bit longer, to avoid hearing it loop from the start on the harder stages.

also there's this cat, as well as tactical wizard yuri if you play your cards right.

in conclusion, i rate the game a [9.5/10]. And i highly recommend you go buy it. There's even a free demo for you to try out! GO PLAY IT!

[zestysthoughts]

Tep Tons: Video Games (2024)

10: Minecraft Legitimately, a great game. Every now and then I'll return to it and it's just a good time, the grind can get pretty monotonous though. Best horror experience, would get annihilated by the Warden again.

9: Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus Everything I'd want from an RPG, and exactly what I'm looking for in a tactics game. Unfortunately pacing is really sluggish, in part because the controls and activations are kinda clunky. I'm excited for the sequel! Would replace my flesh with machine again.

8. 140 A short and sweet indie game. An abstract musical platformer with boss fights and a bumpin' soundtrack. Unfortunately Carlsen Games doesn't seem to have made any more games after this and Thoth. Would get slapped by giant blocks of static again.

7. Saints Row: The Third Few games have given me as much joyous mirth as this. It's one of those franchises where if you took elements from every game and mashed them into one, you'd have a perfect game. Would use the Penetrator again.

6. Redout 2 An improvement over the original in almost every way. The butt-clenching speed, the satisfying weight of the ships, the extensive customization, this is probably the game I'm most skilled at. The campaign is overlong and the music isn't quite as iconic as the first though. Would blow up from overheating again.

5. Portal 1 and 2 It's a twofer! Both are a delight. They're funny, spooky, clever, haunting, beautiful games. Unfortunately I haven't been able to fully experience the co-op, where apparently some real juicy puzzles are at. Would break the Aerial Faith Plates again.

4. Warframe A great game getting better and better with every update. I love the world, the story, the gameplay, the weapons, even Duviri! Probably #2 in the amount of time I've put into it. Unfortunately this is the game that killed any interest in game grinding I might've had. Would breathe Vay Hek's air again.

3. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild The first LoZ game I'd actually played, and it was so delightful! It's a cozy world I found a lot of peace and relaxation in, even the combat was pleasing. Unfortunately while TotK expanded on it mechanically, it may as well have retconned everything else for the amount of impact BotW had on it. Would hunt Lynels again.

2. Starcraft 2 My favorite game of all time. I've been in love with this world since I was a wee lad, and my teens were dominated by SC2. Definitely the game I've sunk the most time into, especially co-op and campaigns. The gameplay is buttery smooth, and I'm terrible at it lol. Unfortunately you can see the campaign was too ambitious for the time/funding they were allowed, so the quality of animation, writing, and production take some dips, as well as some of the content added toward the end of development. Still, one of the only games to make me cry even today. Would give my life for Aiur again.

1. Undertale Again, legitimately a great game, the greatest game of all time. No meme, I adore this game and my favorite character unironically is Sans. I love a character with an otherworldly understanding of what's going on. It's been dissected to death so I won't harp on it, just know that everything about it is wonderful. Hot take though, Megalovania is totally overrated. Would eat the spaghetti again.

[sweetsandmemes]

Was listening to Warrior of the Mind and it just reminded me Fire Emblem or Persona.

So I would like to think Athena, as in the goddess, would play those types of games. So that’s my headcanon for a Greek goddess.

[fogaminghub]

🌟 Hey, fellow gamers! 🐴 Ready to conquer "Preaching Forgiveness as He Went" in Red Dead Redemption 2? Check out our detailed guide to unlock strategies and Gold Medal requirements! 💥

Don't miss your chance to dominate the mission and get the Bolt Action Rifle! 

[accecakes]

It’s a darn gosh shame 😞

SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIKEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!

[ordosmarkzero]

The Banner Saga

[nokikissa]

Couple low quality Darrell gifs I made for funsies :3

[riza-hawks-eye]

Matching Outfits You Say???????

[theresattrpgforthat]

hey! love the blog, could you recommend any tactical combat games in the vein of lancer/icon? I'm hopelessly addicted to moving little dudes around on a grid rn

THEME: Tactical Combat Games 

Thank you! Here are some games that centre tactics and combat. Enjoy crunching those numbers and moving around those dudes on a grid!

Trespasser, by tundalus.

It's clear even from your place of rustic isolation. Hideous beasts run roughshod through the countryside, roving bands of marauders reduce settlements to smoking rubble, wide-eyed prophets babble madly at the sky, and common folk like yourself live in a constant state of terror. Well, you've had just about enough of it. No more tilling the fields in obscurity. Of course, that's all assuming you survive your first day. 

Trespasser is a tabletop roleplaying game about peasants-turned-adventurers carving out safe refuge amid the long collapse of their dying world. Designed for player-driven sandbox campaigns of survival and dungeon crawling, Trespasser borrows themes of early tabletop and pairs them with a tactical combat system inspired by 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. 

You’ll get good use out of a number of dice with this game, although most checks will require a d20. Rather than a power fantasy however, this game prioritizes survival: your characters are but mere peasants, trying to make their way in a large, dark fantasy world. It is expected that your character die, and another character will have to replace them. If you admire the principles of old school gaming but also enjoy picking character options and pushing miniatures around a grid, Trespasser might be for you.

Rotted Capes, by Paradigm Concepts, Inc.

The Golden Age of Superheroes has ended, not with a BANG, but with a BITE! The Dead overran the world and humanity's protectors are missing, dead or worst of all, Z'ed!Once dismissed as the B-List Superhero, you are now mankind's last hope for survival in this horrific world where the Super Zombies sit atop the food chain, looking hungrily down upon you. 

At its core, Rotted Capes is a roleplaying game of post-apocalyptic survival in a world overrun by zombies with a particular twist; this event has taken place in a typical superhero comic book world and the players take on the roles of superheroes struggling to protect what’s left of humanity.

If you want to crunch numbers, Rotted Capes is the game for you. You have Attributes, Skills and Powers that all add up to give you modifiers on every roll, with special abilities and moves you buy with XP at the beginning of the game. With both regular zombies and zombified super-heroes, you’ll be up against varying levels of difficulty that require teamwork, strategy, and an urge to give in to the flaws that your character carries with them in order to survive. The book itself is a bit difficult to navigate, but once you get used to the system, you’ll have freed up some brain space to figure out where (and when) is the best moment to strike.

Zafir: Tactical Roleplaying Game, by Zafir Games.

Zafir: Tactical Roleplaying Game is a fast-paced, tactical, cover-shooter, tabletop RPG that brings something new to the genre. The setting is inspired by ancient middle-eastern themes and Zoroastrian mythology, with a unique magitech twist, bringing the world into a magical analogue of the industrial revolution. Guns, magic, airships, and energy crystals all coexist in the world of Zafir. 

Set just two decades after a massive world war, the nations of Zafir are at an uneasy peace. Banditry and sky-piracy are rampant, and the need for muscle and guns is at an all time high. Will your crew help fight back the tide of outlaws, or become outlaws themselves?

Zafir requires 4 different-coloured six-sided dice for play, each dice representing stats and trackers, as well as a battle map and tokens in order to keep track of what your characters are doing. Characters are broken down into your standard categories of Class, Origin, Attributes, Equipment, Abilities and Proficiencies. Your character also has a Responsibility, which gives your character non-combat skills, and languages, which hint to the complex lore of the setting for this game. The bulk of your tactical play will take place inside Missions, although there will likely also be as many social role-play opportunities as you like in between each mission. With a large world to explore and a wealth of character options, feel free to min and max to your delight!

Gone Rogue, by QuickWit.

The world is in chains, having willfully relinquished control to the automata known as the Legardien. You are members of the Rogue, the last bastion of resistance against our metallic overlords, on your way to their shining capital of Sion. You are desperately outnumbered, outmatched and outgunned, perceived as the enemy by the sheep licking at the Legardien heel. You will enter Sion to overthrow the despotic Legardien from their seat of power and restore the reigns of humanity back to our own hands. No matter the cost. To yourself, or to mankind. The time of peaceful obedience is over, the age of the Legardien at its end. We are the Rogue.

In development since late 2019, Gone Rogue is a tabletop roleplaying game in which players take on the roles of fearless revolutionaries in a futuristic pacifist dystopia. Skilled, audacious and armed with advanced weaponry, you must enter a city unaccepting of your ideals. Your mission, to reclaim mankind’s freedom in an uncompromising battle against an army of autocratic war machines.

Gone Rogue uses a series of archetypes to determine your character’s role in the party, each with starting stats and abilities. Your character will also choose a Suit that will give you traits, upgrades and inventory items. This is a game that cares about inventory, movement, hit points, cover and more, so expect to pull out your grid maps and start crunching some numbers! However, don’t forget that there’s lore and worldbuilding involved as well - at the beginning you will need to answer some questions as a group, about what the resistance looks like, what the characters’ stake is in this fight, and what kinds of NPC’s the party has access to. This game has only a starter kit right now, but as starter kits go, it has more than enough to get you playing!

FIST, by claymorerpgs.

Now: the second half of the twentieth century. The powers that be are locked in a tense nuclear standoff, and the fate of the world hangs in the balance. Away from the watchful eye of national intelligence, a cadre of exceptional misfits is assembled. These soldiers of fortune are uniquely equipped for covert and unusual operations. In these uncertain times, the line between science and superstition has been broken, and the new arms race is only beginning. You, or your associates, may be faced with weapons, tactics, and actors unlike any you have ever seen. For a price, those exceptional misfits can help. 

When you’re all out of options, it’s time to call FIST.

FIST is a tabletop roleplaying game for one referee and two to six players. It draws heavily from Chris P. Wolf and Olivia Gulin's Offworlders and John Harper's World of Dungeons, as well as being inspired by Metal Gear Solid, The A-Team, and Doom Patrol. 

Characters take on traits that act as building blocks; each trait gives you a special skill, an item for your inventory, and a stat modification. Character advancement adds on more traits, making for highly customizable characters. FIST also has community-made supplements for additional traits, foes, and missions to give you the experience that works best for your table.  When it comes to dice mechanics, the roll instructions are fairly simple. The game is designed for theatre of the mind: the tactics come into play when it comes to how you solve your problems. Thematically, you’re looking at supernatural warfare: think about modern mercenaries going up against strange horrors beyond our mortal ken.

Beacon, by Pirate Gonzalez Games.

BEACON is a high-fantasy TTRPG inspired by LANCER, D&D 4e, and Final Fantasy.  BEACON is a tactical, highly-customizable game where you are encouraged to mix features from various classes, like the teleporting Shadow Dancer or un-killable Gravewalker.

Design the details of your setting together (your Reflection), create your character (your Beacon), and get ready to do battle against the cyclical, everchanging threat of the Scourge. Will you and your fellow beacons be able to defeat the Scourge this time, or will you find a way to break the cycle forever?

If you like LANCER and ICON, you will probably like this game. Like both of the aforementioned games, Beacon uses two different systems for narrative vs combat-style play, and also uses d20s and d6s for your character’s roles. The bulk of Beacon revolves around quests, which are the adventures your characters will embark on, each with information and preparation requirements, a number of stages, specific rewards, and downtime between each quest. Highly structured gameplay allows for a wealth of resources for GMs - and with over 400 pages of character options, combat information, NPCs and setting information, Beacon at its playtest stage is a game to be reckoned with. If you’re looking for a tactical RPG with a fantasy element, I highly recommend you check this one out.

The LUMEN System, by Spencer Campbell.

LUMEN is a rules-lite system for making and playing RPGs focused on telling the stories of powerful characters. LUMEN was first developed for the games LIGHT and NOVA, and has been converted to this genre agnostic SRD so that you can use it to make your own games with the same system. 

At its core, LUMEN is designed to tell power fantasy stories. The characters played have access to incredible powers, and use those powers relentlessly in pursuit of their objectives. It’s inspiration comes from video game genres such as looter shooters (Destiny), hero shooters (Overwatch), and dungeon crawlers (Diablo). 

LUMEN uses d6 dice pools, 3 attributes, and a series of classes that give players something unique that sets them apart. While the system relies on players determining how they will go about solving their problems, much of their problems will involve combat. Games can include status affects, health tracks, spells and similar special abilities, and more. LUMEN focuses on fast and lethal combat, so you won’t be moving around on the map, but players will use the tools they have at hand to gain the upper hand in stressful situations, invoke consequences and complications, and look cool while doing it. 

Some games that use the LUMEN system include Hedge (Wardens fighting off a Faerie Apocalypse), Blazing Hymn (Mech pilots protecting humanity from monstrous Angels), and Lords of Eternity (Superhuman beings of immense power, duelling with swords).

[fortheloveofexy]

One thing I love about Neil is that as much as he's good at pissing people off, he's also uncannily good at getting a lot of those same people to be on his side and even unite behind him. Whether it's through manipulation, cleverly persuading them or just genuinely inspiring them to follow his lead, the guy has a weird knack for getting people to do what he wants.

[kyl3dawolf]

fallout tactics, 2001

[wickworks]

Lancer Tactics dialogue layout crisis of faith

(from this month's backer update)

Every so often, I'll run into something in development that eats away at me until it pushes me to a crisis of faith and I have a breakdown, burn down a bunch of work, and build something better from the ashes. These are moments of transformation and we're almost always able to come out the other side with something much better than what we started with.

This all sounds very dramatic until you take a step back and see the issue in question is just, like, the layout of a menu. But if medieval priests were able to have schisms over angels on pins I can have strong feelings about graphic design, dammit!

This month's episode revolved around how we're doing character dialogue. For reference the plan was to do a standard 4-slot visual-novel talking heads layout. I call it a 4-slot because there's usually four positions that characters can stand; two on the left, two on the right:

I had it ingame, and it was working. But... something felt off. Do you see the difference between every one of the above examples and this?

It's all about perspective, baby.

Answer: all the character art in those examples are drawn at a slight angle so they can be flipped back and forth to be made like they're looking at each other.

Trying to do this with the perspective we chose early — straight on — makes for a chorus line of weirdos who are looking directly into your soul as they ostensibly chat with each other. Credulity is strained; the illusion of these puppets interacting in the same space is paper-thin.

(I was skeptical of choosing this perspective for this reason, but we ultimately went with it to make the customizable assets in the portrait maker easier to fit together)

We tried a bunch of different layouts, but they all at least one of these problems:

they'd stare into your soul while ostensibly directing comments elsewhere.

they felt like text messages; this would be fine if that's what we were going for, but we wanted something that could represent face-to-face conversations. (Tactical Breach Wizards was able to pull this style off because they had little 3D dioramas to go along with it)

or, most damning of all, they felt like zoom calls.

So, my heart aflutter and spirit in want, I spent a day doing a research dive into various dialogue layouts (bless the Game UI Database!) to see if any other games had managed to pull this character art perspective off. I ended up with this massive non-chronological taxonomic tree:

(fullsize here)

The type of layout that particularly caught my eye was this style where each character had their own little box. These layouts borrow a concept from comic books called "closure" where the space and time between characters are left blank. Freed from the constraints of trying to simulate a single space, these layouts allow the reader to fill in the blanks with something that feels more true-to-life than anything we'd be able to render ourselves.

I was especially impressed with the dynamism of Tales of Symphonia and The World Ends With You; rather than sticking to single slots they would animate the entire panels moving around to indicate motion an relative position of characters.

So we threw out the old code and copied them. Here's what we've come up with:

We'll be able to have portraits interact, like smacking each other (I felt like a kid hitting two action figures together, lol)

We can also apply effects like princess-leia-holograms and full-screen "lighting" effects like warning banners:

Carpenter and I came up with a number of arrangements that the portraits can smoothly transition between:

I've also implemented support for choices during a dialogue, potentially leading to branching paths.

Overall, I feel SO much better about this system than our initial designs. It might feel a little more cartoony, but I think we're making a cartoony game so that's not a problem.

Whew. We bit a lot off to chew with this project. I feel like I just made a second visual novel game engine inside of the first. Fingers crossed that it all ends up worth it.

[dessa-banks]

Breach!

Tactical Breach Wizards (2024)

[aurelion-solar]

Riot Games Client - New Login Screen Art