"Team Attack" Pitches (Patreon)

The idea for the star gauge and team attacks came at some point during the overhaul of the battle system for Chapter 10! The battle system existed pretty much exactly as it does in the finished product, though there wasn't a star gauge and some moves were a lot stronger.

Some of the people who tested the battle system brought up that having super strong moves made some pieces of equipment essentially "must-haves" and it felt a lot less customizable than it should be. Plus, with the removal of RPGMaker's TP system (Formerly known as SP in Evoria), it felt like something was missing.

So, SeaBea brought up the idea of a "limit break" type system, where the group's SP would be shared between them. After some playing around with this, the concept shifted and the star gauge was born! I thought it could be fun if party members could team up and perform special moves, illustrated by static scene art!

The first image here (of an attack between Renee and Cherry that's currently unused in the game) is how I pitched team attacks to SeaBea! Of course, having a shoddily drawn outline isn't quite the same as seeing it in action, so I made a prototype for that Renee/Cherry attack shortly after! After that, the whole system clicked for the both of us!

The other two images were pieces of programmer art I used to fully develop the other team attacks before SeaBea made official art for them! When the beta testers got their hands on this revised battle system, it all worked far better than before! The team attacks/star gauge added a whole lot more personality to the battles and overall the system worked much better!

So that's the story behind the team attacks! In a weird way, they were kinda the saving grace for my funny Paper Mario-esque battle system. Just goes to show, sometimes you just need that weird secret sauce to get everything working well!

-F.P.